A recent collection of Soviet song texts differs from its many predecessors in one interesting respect. It contains Pavel German’s “Pesnia o kirpichnom zavode,“ better known as “Kirpichiki,” one of the most popular songs of the late 1920s, and a song that for decades symbolized the survival of petit-bourgeois tastes and poshlosf after the Revolution. This quiet rehabilitation can serve as the occasion to examine an aspect of Soviet cultural history that is rarely discussed outside the USSR, namely, the beginnings of Soviet popular music.

To most Western observers Soviet penal policy means Stalin's labor camps, and what is known about the camps comes from the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In our admiration of Solzhenitsyn's portrayal of the camps, however, we ought not to accept on faith his version of Soviet penal history. Solzhenitsyn treats Soviet penal practice before 1929 simply as a stage in the development of the camps. He finds the roots of Stalin's camps in Lenin's Russia, and from those roots, he argues, the camps developed steadily and inevitably. To be sure, with hindsight one can plausibly regard the civil war camps as precedent for the later ones and the camps of Solovki during the 1920s as the embryo from which the Stalinist camps grew. But to look only at these developments is to take a selective or partial view of early Soviet penal history, for the civil war period contained the embryo of another penal policy, a progressive policy, which differed radically from that practiced by the Cheka and OGPU. And it was this progressive policy, not the Cheka's approach, which gained the predominant position during the NEP years.

During the interwar period, the leadership of the Soviet Union did a onehundred- eighty degree turn in its policy toward the political link-up between Austria and Germany. The Soviets first denounced the victorious Western powers’ prohibition of the Anschluss. Later they showed outright opposition to the Nazi drive for German unification in Central Europe. The Austrian Communist Party and international communism promptly executed the same turnabout. In accordance with the new line, during and at the end of World War II, the Soviet Union joined the Allies in supporting the restoration of Austrian independence and sovereignty.

From 1928 to 1933, the Soviet Union underwent a radical metamorphosis. Almost overnight the economic order of N E P was abandoned in favor of an untested system of economic relations commonly referred to today as command planning. The magnitude of this transformation, the ideological passions it aroused, and the questionable character of official Soviet statistics during the First Five-Year Plan have all made it exceedingly difficult to conceptualize the process of Soviet industrialization in its entirety. As a consequence, most analyses of Soviet industrialization have been highly eclectic, predicated on assumptions which only appear plausible because they have not been interpreted from the standpoint of a closed model, or of an encompassing theory.

As the First World War entered its third year in August 1916, an equilibrium of sorts had been established. Bloody battles at Verdun, the Somme, and the Isonzo, and the offensive of Brusilov had amply demonstrated that neither group of belligerents had the capability of delivering a “knockout blow” to the enemy, to use Lloyd George's phrase. It was for this reason that so much importance was attached to the impending intervention of Rumania, strategically located astride the flanks of both warring coalitions and possessing an army of six hundred thousand men. It was widely believed that Rumania's adherence to the Entente would have a decisive impact on this stalemate. Paul von Hindenburg captured this conviction when he wrote: “Judging by the military situation, it was to be expected that Rumania had only to advance … to decide the world war… .“

Professor Rosefielde makes at least two important points: some official Soviet physical output series really were (and are) exaggerated, and output expansion in the 1930s was not based on a surplus extracted from agriculture. But his valiant efforts lack a sense of proportion, and his exaggerated claims weaken his case.

His version of the “standard theory,” for example, appears to confuse intentions with actuality. It seems to me that informed Western consensus about events between 1928 and 1940 runs as follows: Soviet output increases were obtained through very large increments of labor and fixed capital, without much contribution from technological progress.

The CPSU Politburo has traditionally been regarded as a group of politically powerful individuals. This article will suggest that it can simultaneously, or even alternatively, be viewed as a collection of positions. Politburo membership is not a full-time job. All members hold positions in other institutions, which constitute their occupations, the areas in which they are building their careers. Despite the absence of formal rules linking Politburo seats with specific offices, it is unthinkable that the connection would be random or that it would be arbitrary. Because the positions provide institutional identifications for individuals and tie the work of the Politburo to the activity of important Soviet elites, the pattern of representation depicts the institutional balance of forces in the regime and reflects the overall character of the Politburo and its role in the political system. A positional view of the Politburo is thus essential to defining it and understanding its development as an institution.

Collectivism was a Utopian dream that flourished in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and later became part of Soviet ideology. Eisenstein's early films, conductorless orchestras, and mass workers' choruses all aimed at inculcating the view that a collective—be it the party, the proletariat, or the masses—was to replace the individual as the determinant of social and political values. The popular "proletarian culture" movement that flourished during the civil war (1918-21) was one form of collectivism, but there were many others. Yet, as a body of ideas, collectivism in Russia preceded the 1917 Revolution by a decade or more and made a crucial contribution to bolshevism. Indeed, in the years after 1905, collectivism had as much a claim to bolshevism as did the party-centered authoritarianism of Lenin.

As a result of the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and Northern Bucovina in 1939-40, the Soviet Union was left with the largest Jewish population in Europe. Given this large population, the fact that the Soviet Union had the greatest number of Jews who survived World War II has aroused the interest of researchers and drawn attention to the role of Soviet policy in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. Some of the reasons for the survival of Jews in Soviet-annexed territories seem obvious. In contrast to other European countries, only part of the USSR was occupiéd by German armies. Therefore, Jews could find refuge in the unoccupied regions. This simple and generally sufficient explanation is not the only one which has been offered, however. Some Western scholars have argued that the Soviet government had a specific policy designed to rescue Jews from the danger of annihilation. Soviet propaganda, particularly that aimed at Western audiences, maintained that millions of Jews owed their lives to Soviet rescue operations during the Holocaust.

Steven Rosefielde’s article has two objectives: first, to display the major features and the “revolutionary implications” for Soviet economic history of evidence provided in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago; second, to devise “a coherent and consistent countertheory to the prevailing interpretation of Soviet industrialization.” In pursuit of these objectives, he initiates “a complete reconsideration of the causes and consequences of the First Five-Year Plan.”

The statements in the epigraph reflect contrasting attitudes toward the question of the possibility, desirability, and urgency of creating a "proletarian culture" during the years immediately following the Bolshevik seizure of power. Even more, they reflect basically opposing priorities concerning the most important and immediate steps to be taken in order to promote the revolutionary transformation of Soviet society as a whole.

A sizable literature on the temporal and spatial dimensions of urbanization in Russia has appeared during the past decade, and it is probably fair to say that we now have a reasonable understanding of the process in general terms. What is needed is much closer scrutiny of the impact of the gathering of people into towns. Urbanization inevitably brought change to social organizations, institutions, behavior patterns, and perceptions; in short, to the social geography of the city. But prerequisite to understanding how quickly and with what consequences such social changes took place is an understanding of the dynamics of urban population growth itself.

Historians of Stalinism have noted that Stalin received praise from unlikely sources in the Russian emigration. A pertinent case in point is the enthusiastic commendation by Aleksandr L'vovich Kazem-Bek (1902-77), a self-styled neomonarchist, and his émigré party called the Mladorossy (Young Russians). The subject of this article is the career of this would-be Führer of the émigré radical Right. My objective, however, is not only to describe a significant historical aspect of the emigration but also to bring to light a case where Stalinism won converts from a movement of hypertrophied and openly fascist Russian nationalists. Recent scholarly attention to the history of the emigration, long a neglected chapter in histories of post-1917 Russia, has inspired this exploration into the politics of the emigre radical Right and its special appeal to the émigré “sons,” the bitterly disillusioned second generation in exile.

The basic line of reasoning in the excellent and thought-provoking article by Professor Rosefielde is: The Soviets claim and some Western scholars agree that from 1928 to 1932 the economy of the USSR grew dramatically, that, at the expense of an agricultural surplus, industry made a big leap forward “which virtually assured the success of future Soviet economic development.” A common belief of specialists (Professor Rosefielde included) is that although some value indicators, especially prices (price changes), could be distorted, in general, Soviet statistics are “not freely invented,” and “it is unlikely that the Soviets kept two sets of books.” Thus, some scholars have corrected the price basis of the calculation of the rate of economic growth during 1928-32 (instead of 1928 prices, the prices of 1937/50 were used) and obtained much less spectacular, but still very impressive, figures demonstrating growth of the economy, particularly in industry and construction.

During the past decade, the most important large-scale effort to expand the decision-making and control capabilities of the Soviet economic management system has been the scientific-technical program for creating an integrated nationwide management information system. Formally designated as the Obshchegosudarstvennaia sistema sbora i obrabotki informatsii (dannykh) dlia ncheta, planirovaniia i upravleniia narodnym khosiaistvom (All-State System for the Collection and Processing of Information for Reporting, Planning, and Management of the National Economy), the system is more happily described by its acronym OGAS.1 It is an outgrowth of the rapid expansion of the systems approach (particularly its cybernetic expression) to the rationalization of management, and has developed into the technological variant of reform and an evident alternative and successor to the ill-fated economic reforms of 1965. As a system, OGAS has been projected as a solution to many of the fundamental economic, social, and organizational problems resulting from Soviet socioeconomic development.

The Russian poet Vladislav Khodasevich (1886-1939), who spent the last seventeen years of his life in Western Europe, wrote a total of five books of verse: the first two, Molodost (Youth, 1908) and Shchastlivyi domik (The Happy Little House, 1914), are largely derivative and, by the poet's own admission, immature; the last three, Putem zerna (Grain's Way, 1920), Tiashelaia lira (The Heavy Lyre, 1922), and Evropeiskaia noch’ (European Night, 1927), form the limited body of his mature work. It is on the basis of the last three collections that Khodasevich's modest reputation has been established. It is ironic that the relative obscurity of Khodasevich's best work bears witness to the vagaries of exile about which he often wrote. Indeed, in 1922, the year Khodasevich left Russia, Valéry published Charmes, Proust died while polishing his novel, Eliot founded the journal Criterion and printed The Waste Land in its pages, and Joyce's Ulysses was released in a small Parisian edition.

Professor Rosefielde has supplied a controversial reassessment of the First Five- Year Plan. My comments will perhaps be disappointingly narrow, for I shall not comment on Rosefielde’s claim that the growth of heavy industry during the First Five-Year Plan was based to a surprising degree on the expansion of the GULag economy. This assertion ultimately depends upon Rosefielde’s estimates of the GULag labor force. Other participants in this forum, or readers of Soviet Studies, may choose to challenge Rosefielde, but this is a topic well out of my area of expertise.

During the six months prior to his death in 1922, Velimir Khlebnikov attempted to consolidate in writing the momentous experiences of his brief life. The major works of this period represent various types of summations. Zangesi is a mosaic of Khlebnikov's poetic experiences. Otryvki iz dosok sud'by (Fragments from the Boards of Destiny) contains the poet's final mathematical formulas for the laws of time. “Razin. Dve Troitsy” (“Razin: Two Trinities“) might well be regarded as his own Apologia pro Vita Sua. But despite its importance as a biographical testament, “Razin: Two Trinities,” like many other pieces, has been misrepresented in the Collected Works. The absence of any substantive commentary can lead one to suppose that it is a complete and polished composition. However, an examination of the manuscript reveals it to be an unfinished and untitled fragment—in fact, little more than a rough draft. The basic text, written in an unusually large and legible hand, is laced with corrections in Khlebnikov's more typical minuscule script. No fair copy is known to exist.

The slowdown of growth in the Soviet economy has renewed interest in the agricultural productivity of the Soviet Union. The failure of agriculture to grow at the pace of industry has hampered overall expansion, and domestic crop failure has induced grain purchases abroad. The bottlenecks to Soviet agricultural growth and development are diverse. On the one hand, they may be inevitable, for the resource endowment of the Soviet Union, where the range of temperature is great and the level of precipitation is unpredictable, does not favor agriculture. On the other hand, they may be systemic, for Soviet agriculture has been criticized for weak labor incentives, stifling bureaucratic controls, and overly large farms.

Statements of doctrine by Symbolists both in France and in Russia indicate that the literary movement was based on a form of philosophical idealism, often Neo-Platonism. But its theoreticians were silent about the decadent themes which appear in Symbolist poetry. Symbolists liked to represent themselves as attuned to the ineffable—or if mystics, to the divine—but their works reveal an inclination to philosophical pessimism and other forms of melancholia. Indeed, a tension between belief and cynicism can be noted in their works which resembles, and sometimes overlaps with, a juxtaposition of good and evil. Among the French, Charles Baudelaire called the opening section of Les Fleurs du mal (1857) “Spleen et Idáal.” Paul Verlaine dedicated his collections of verse alternately to Christian ideals of purity, as in Sagesse (1881), and to self-indulgent bohemianism, as in Parallélement (1889). Stáphane Mallarmá's satyr in “L'Apràs-midi d'un faune” (1876) is the emblematic representative of amorality brought to glimpse the world of Platonic Ideas. And Joris-Karl Huysmans's archdecadent hero, des Esseintes, exhausted himself in sensual delights before being brought near to a Catholic conversion.