The article proposes an extension of the understanding of 1968 in a threefold manner: an extension of the timeframe of the events (the action in ’68), a further extension to include the legacy of 1968, and a spatial-geographical expansion to make the analysis global. By elaborating on these extensions, the article considers 1968 as a global moment in which diverse histories converge and then diverge again, while the synchronicity of events generates an enhanced consciousness of the world, making the outlines of larger structures and connections more visible. Seeing 1968 in this way, the article argues, can provide a more adequate grasp on eastern Europe's ’68 and its variegations.

The impact of neither Andrei Belyi nor Velimir Khlebnikov has been fully comprehended, and their legacies are joined in unusual combination in the work of the contemporary visual poet Elizaveta Mnatsakanova. Her poetry appeals to both eye and ear, expanding on innovations introduced by Belyi and Khlebnikov, and it raises broad questions about the integration of sensory experiences by readers of visual poetry. Mnatsakanova uses illustrative handwriting, calligraphy, and images of a hand or a face in her one-of-a-kind albums and books, and her poems are set out in symmetrical columns or other spatial arrangements. Repetition is the central rhetorical device in her work, yet her unique albums emphasize individualized aesthetic production and anticipate highly charged reader reaction. Special attention is paid to “Das Hohelied,” a part of Das Buch Sabeth, which engages both the literary tradition and the immediacy of a reader's experience with the text.

Gogol was little known in England before the Crimean War. Earlier there had been only one criticism of his works, and that an incompetent one (1841); a sketchy, erroneous mention of him in a table of Russian literature published in a periodical (1842); and the first translation of one of his supernatural tales, “Viy” (1847). Then the Crimean War brought forth a malicious forgery of his masterpiece of social satire, Dead Souls (1854), which occasioned three long articles, two of them exposing it for what it was, and a third simply exploiting it to suit the propaganda needs of the hour. On the more constructive side of the wartime interest in Gogol, first translations of two of his tales, with prefatory critical comments, were published in periodicals. Excepting a scattered handful of lost translations and one pioneering critical study, there was no further English interest in Gogol until the 1880s.

The Slavic peoples of the Austrian Empire developed a labor movement which owed its character to two elements: the common problems of all workmen in their relationship to the dynasty, the aristocracy, the Church and the predominant German minority on the one hand, and the national aspirations of the Slavs on the other. It is the purpose of this paper to trace the influence of these two elements up to dismemberment of the Empire following the defeat of the Imperial armies in World War I.

Much of what we know about the prerevolutionary Russian working class comes to us through the prism of its more politically active and committed element, or through the historical record of events resulting from the interaction of "conscious" and less "conscious" workers. The tensions between intelligent^ and activist workers and, to a lesser extent, between activist and nonactivist workers have been ably portrayed in various monographs; of these, however, those studies that focus on the making, so to speak, of worker activists have tended to depict their subjects either on very broad canvases or in finely drawn miniatures.

When Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, carrying out the decision of the military council Peter I had called at the time of the siege of Nienshants, placed an earthwork fortress on one of the islands of the Neva Delta, it is highly unlikely that anyone suspected what the consequences of this step would be. It was simply a timely move that made it possible to cut off the Neva’s channel by artillery fire, so that the Swedish fleet could not aid the beleaguered town by sea. The fortress proved useless in all respects: It never had occasion to beat back the enemy, whereas defending the Admiralty Wharf on the other side of the river was beyond its reach. It seemed appropriate to build another fortress around the wharf as quickly as possible. On all sides of both fortifications a small town began to spread out irregularly, and it bore the name of the tsar’s heavenly guardian, the apostle Peter.

The events of the last years of NEP—the New Economic Policy—confront historians with two complex and still controversial issues: the effect of these “new” policies on the Russian economy, on society, and on methods of Communist rule in the country and the political conflict dividing the party leadership in the late 1920s. The first issue raises the question of the extent to which NEP was evolving in a direction compatible with the Communists' dream of a socialist society, with the short-term political needs of the Soviet state, and with the priorities of economic development. The second issue focuses on the political instability generated by the controversy over domestic policy and methods of rule, as well as by the personal antagonism between the two key political leaders, Nikolai Bukharin and Stalin. The debate on these questions, answers to which are crucial to our understanding of the origins of Stalinism, has for the most part relied on evidence drawn from central party and state activities, giving the discussion a panoramic view of the history of those years.

The persistent stress on the most extreme aspects of Russian history, in a search for the roots of Bolshevism, has led to a remodeling of the Russian past into patterns more consistent with the Soviet present. As one result of this bias, such tendencies as liberalism and moderate agrarian socialism have been, at best, summarily discussed, and Lenin's Tkachevist interpretation of Marxism has obscured the basically reformist character of Russian Marxism that persisted from Plekhanov's Organization of Labor group, through Legal Marxism and Economism into the Menshevik and Liquidator opposition to Bolshevik policies.

While it is never wise to read the Vitae sanctorum as strictly historical accounts, we must be cognizant of the medieval hagiographers' frequent efforts to transform political history into theological and spiritual history. Thus did the authors and redactors of the vaiious texts concerning saints Boris and Gleb seek to project a piously viable and ideologically useful Christian argument for the sanctity of these princes who had perished in the course of the protracted civil war following the death of Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich of Kiev (d. 1015).

In the current poststructuralist and reader-response era, interpretations, especially “correct” ones, are no longer fashionable. Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov have also lost some of their luster in the wake of the rediscovery of Mikhail Bulgakov and Andrei Platonov, or, for that matter, the Russian Vladimir Nabokov, and the recent general revision of the postrevolutionary literary canon. When Il'f and Petrov do receive critical attention, the focus invariably turns on the ambiguity of their message, pro-Soviet yet provocative, their deliberate literariness, and intertextuality. These same qualities, however, that earn the “in” authors their literary laurels are, in the case of Il'f and Petrov, viewed as evidence of moral compromise and stylistic shallowness.

The cult of heroism in the USSR today lies at the very heart of the ideological patterns of justification, instruction, and inspiration advanced by the governors of that society. The model behavior of the new Soviet hero, as it is presented in literature, in the classroom, or in the press, is designed to drive men to the fulfillment of their public tasks and to regulate, as well, the organization of their private lives. The concept of the exemplary hero, taken as a quintessential and idealized statement of the Soviet view of human nature, touches on many currents of thought, most directly on the junction point of ethical and psychological theory, but beyond that, upon all the disciplines concerned with the condition of the Soviet individual in his society.

The history and development of social services for families and children in the Soviet Union prior to 1967 have been studied quite extensively.1 Soviet writings published since that time, more critical and probing than most earlier materials, as well as a field trip in October 1971 by this writer, make it possible to update our knowledge and to suggest what the future Soviet policy will be in this increasingly important area.

In recent years two lines of research on USSR power and personnel have challenged some long-standing interpretations of the bases of Soviet political activity. In one line, historical studies dealing with the Stalin era have called into question the conventional emphasis, epitomized in the totalitarian model, of a single leader who commands an army of loyal apparatchiki and monopolizes the political agenda. A number of scholars have shown that chaos and confusion in personnel matters were the salient characteristics of this period, rather than a coordinated system for the recruitment, placement, and promotion of cadres—an image suggested by both the totalitarian model and Stalinist boasting of a “monolithic party,” a “unified state structure,” and so forth. In substantive policy, the actual results in implementing regime directives in the Stalin period regularly bore no better than the faintest resemblance to the announced policy. Absent the well-oiled machine highlighted in images of the “totalitarian party,” the regime's failure to control real policy results seems to have followed as a necessary consequence.

The second edition of the Diary of a Writer (1876-1877) marked a crucial point in Fedor Dostoevskii's literary career: in spite of critics' attacks, many “ordinary” readers were overwhelmed by the author's charisma and began writing to Dostoevskii from different parts of Russia, expressing their views on the moral, social, and political issues dealt with in the Diary. Such success was also guaranteed by the original rhetorical and genre system of the Diary of a Writer, which, wisely modulated and addressed, aimed to involve readers and persuade them to share the author's beliefs. Raffaella Vassena explores the case of the article “The Jewish Question” in the issue of March 1877, where Dostoevskii's rhetoric actually failed to bring about what he had intended. By concentrating on new archival materials, Vassena investigates the reasons for this failure and submits a new perspective on the controversial question of Dostoevskii's attitude toward Jews.

The first ten articles of the Constitution of the USSR establish the social ownership of the means of production as the political and economic basis of the Soviet state. Article Eleven sets forth the second distinguishing feature of the Soviet economy: “The economic life of the USSR is determined by the state national economic plan.“

The extent and efficiency of Soviet planning is a subject of absorbing interest to students of the Soviet economy. Interest is heightened by the effusive writings of Soviet economists, which depict the plan as an all-embracing, tightly knit system of relationships and controls which leaves little or no room for errors or misallocation of resources. The plan reaches down to the most minute elements of the economy.