The intimate friendship between Pavel Borisovich Axelrod and Karl Kautsky, stretching over almost half a century, had an important bearing on the Russian Social Democratic movement and international socialism. Kautsky, who, after Engels’ death in 1895, became the most authoritative exponent of Marxism and the major theorist of the Second International, followed developments in Russia with interest and leaned heavily on Axelrod in forming his opinions about events in that country and its Social Democratic Party. The German socialist's curiosity was aroused not only because he recognized, as early as the 1890s, the potential importance of the Marxist movement in Russia but also because Russian Marxists were especially eager to obtain his advice. “Whenever a controversial question arose,” wrote the Menshevik Rafael Abramovich, “whenever a problem emerged, the first thought [among Russian Social Democrats] was always: What would Kautsky say about this? How would Kautsky resolve this question?“

In his article “Between Author and Reviewer,” published in the June 1967 issue of Slavic Review, Mr. Konstanty Zantuan takes me to task for my review of Golenishchev-Kutuzov’s book on Slavic Renaissance literatures. A discussion of the wider issues raised by Golenishchev-Kutuzov’s book could be interesting. Unfortunately, it is not possible to conduct such a discussion on the basis of Mr. Zantuan’s article. Despite a self-assured tone and quite copious references to Polish scholarly literature, the article reveals poor orientation in die subject, and its author occasionally deals with the evidence in an inadmissible, cavalier way. An examination of a few instances taken at random should suffice to prove this.

Every tenth-year anniversary of the October Revolution has been the occasion for a burst of publication by Soviet scholars to celebrate the event. Each successive decade has witnessed an ever larger output of documentary and memoir collections, symposia, monographs, surveys, brochures, and textbooks. The half-century year 1967 promises to be the culminating point of this effort, with hundreds of historical publications of every type now appearing or promised.

I had some advance acquaintance with this anniversary historiography during the month which I spent as an exchange scholar in Moscow and Leningrad in the fall fall of 1966 under the United States-Soviet cultural exchange agreement.