Stalin's little-known 1928 caper, the production and distribution of bogus hundred-dollar bills, was preceded by an even less known venture of the same sort. Specialists in East European history have left it unexplored during the decades which have passed since it occurred, and several aspects of the plot behind it, as well as some of its most powerful supporters, remain unknown. It happened in 1925, and involved a string of high-ranking Hungarian civilian and military personages, with a prince at one end and a bishop at the other.

After three years of tense discussions and bruising internal disputes, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) emerged in 1921 as the largest constituent unit of the Communist International (Comintern) outside of Russia. Under the leadership of a former Social Democrat, Bohumir Šmeral, it stressed a specific Czechoslovak road to socialism and viewed the new Czechoslovak Republic as the culmination of modern Czech and Slovak history. Šmeral's essentially constructive political line inspired the majority of the party's members—numbering among its adherents a high proportion of former Social Democrats—until the fifth congress of the Comintern in 1924.

The beginning of the twentieth century brought new outlooks and aspirations into the cultural life of Serbia, but the mainstream of spiritual and creative development had already been marked by the affirmation of established national values. After 1903 important political changes, accompanying the return of constitutional government, stimulated a spiritual and national revival. In his History of the New Serbian Literature, Jovan Skerlić described the general improvement in social and political life. Skerlić, a contemporary who actively participated in the cultural and political events at the beginning of this century, pointed out that the consequences of these changes influenced the awakening of the national spirit and offered numerous solutions to questions of national importance. In 1904 Skerlić took part in the organization of the First Congress of Southern Slav Youth and of the First Yugoslav Fine Arts Exhibit marking the centennial of the first Serbian uprising. These events strengthened friendly cultural collaboration between Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Bulgarians. Even the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 could not halt this growth. Further proof of national strength was furnished by the victories in the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913. After five hundred years the liberation of the Serbian people from Turkish occupation was finally accomplished.

In May, 1926, the retired First Marshal of Poland and former Chief of State (1918-22), Józef Piłsudski, at the head of certain military units devoted to his person and with the enthusiastic approval of the political and social forces of the Polish Left, staged a successful coup d'etat against the Polish parliamentary system dominated since the elections of November, 1922, by an agglomeration of Right-Center political parties. Though on the morrow of his victory Pitsudski moved swiftly and effectively to avert the devolution of his coup into a genuine social or even political revolution—to the consternation and disappointment of his allies on the Left—the May, 1926, crisis nevertheless became the great watershed of Polish political life between the two world wars. It signaled the failure and death of parliamentary democracy throughout the area of East Central Europe, and its divisions have run deep within Polish political memories to this day.

This article expands our knowledge of nationality policies, center-periphery relations, and Jewish life under late Stalinism, a period which has heretofore been viewed predominantly through the lens of Stalin's terror and marginalization. By focusing on Soviet Moldavia, the article demonstrates that developments in this region followed a different trajectory from those displayed in the center. Local expediencies, derived from the needs of a newly Sovietizing territory with “suspect” locals, encouraged the professional advancement of ethnic Jews to positions of power and prestige previously unmatched in this region. The study explores both the opportunities and limitations faced by Jews in this peripheral region, while placing these phenomena inside the framework of Soviet nationality policies and its accompanying policy toward government professionals. Simultaneously, the article highlights both the legacy of Romanian official antisemitism within this region of postwar Soviet society and the role of the “neo-korenizatsiia” program in displacing Jews within Soviet state structures.

Historians work with sources that are products of specific social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Thus, understanding how and why sources were produced and why they survived is an essential component of historical scholarship. At the same time, many historians often employ some sort of conceptual framework—implicit or explicit, descriptive or normative—in order to translate the sources into a coherent narrative. Modern economic historians are no different. The sources tend to be quantitative and focused on economic phenomena (with many exceptions), but doing economic history well means interrogating the origins, trustworthiness, and usefulness of the data in question. In doing this, modern economic historians are largely unapologetic about employing the tools—especially statistical—and intellectual apparatus of economics to interrogate their sources, much as social, political, or environmental historians draw on ideas and methods from related disciplines in their own inquiries. This is precisely how we make sense of the historical process of economic development.