In the nearly one hundred days between the murder of Alexander Pavlovich's father, Paul I, on the night of March 11-12, 1801, and the fall of Count Peter von der Pahlen, the leader of the conspiracy, on June 17, Alexander recovered from his initial demoralization and formed the paternalist political conceptions that would guide the next twenty-five years of his reign.

A state's power, indeed its very survival, is closely related to the adequacy of its military organization to meet foreign policy needs. Not only is this adequacy dependent upon manpower and other economic resources, plus efficiency, training, and morale factors; it is also greatly affected by weapons technology.

Alexander Gerschenkron has noted that the requirements of external war compelled Russia to seek the most advanced military techniques even though it lacked a comparable level of economic and technological development. Russia's attempts to meet these needs deeply involved the government in the country's economic development, with the result, Gerschenkron argues, that this development was “peculiarly jerky,” because the government's intervention in the economy fluctuated according to military exigencies. During periods of great military need the government would place heavy burdens on the population; then, when the emergency passed, the government would relax its intervention in the economy, leaving the country disorganized and exhausted.

Turgenev's acceptance of a fate that governs human existence found expression in the use of the supernatural in certain of his stories. In the past most critics tended to turn away from these stories, in distress at not being able to reconcile this trait with their interpretation of Turgenev the realist, who portrayed the Russian social byt of the nineteenth century. And yet, a total of ten stories (almost a third of his total output of stories) in which there is a touch of the supernatural and the irrational cannot be dismissed as mere caprice.

The precise nature of Russian-American diplomatic relations during the War for American Independence has always presented a problem for historians. On the one hand, the Declaration of Armed Neutrality by Catherine II in February 1780 seemed to represent an effort to limit British sovereignty on the seas, and news of its promulgation was greeted with enthusiasm in the struggling American colonies. But on the other hand, the reception by the Russian empress of Francis Dana, the American envoy (1781-83) sent to St. Petersburg in the aftermath of the declaration to obtain Russian aid, was far from hospitable, and was in part responsible for the strained diplomatic relations between the two nations for several years thereafter. This contradiction, more apparent than real, prompted Frank A. Golder, one of America's first historians of Russia, to call for more research in the area of Russian-American relations.

It is easy to ignore the career of Vasilii Nazarevich Karazin, and, indeed, most treatments of imperial Russia do so. When Karazin is mentioned, he is usually described as a rather ridiculous figure, the putative “Marquis Posa“ of Alexander I who had a spectacularly short public career, or simply as that “harebrained Ukrainian.“ Yet Karazin is hardly unknown; he is almost universally credited with being the founder of Kharkov University and is the subject of a number of works that picture him as an able, active public figure. The purpose of the present paper, however, is not to argue Karazin's importance or to decide whether or not he was “harebrained” but to explore his role in the foundation of Kharkov University as a useful case study of the relationship between the autocracy and the gentry in the early nineteenth century.

The relationship between Pushkin and his critics has been a subject of considerable interest and discussion since the poet's own time. Belinsky made it the focus of the introduction to his series of essays on Pushkin. The early biographers provided some further information, and scholarly attention dates from the 1889 monograph by S. S. Trubachev, Pushkin v russkoi kritike, 1820-1880, which appeared shortly after V. A. Zelinsky had published, between 1887 and 1889, his extremely useful anthology of Pushkin criticism. The monograph is little more than a pedestrian rehearsal of reviews, digressing only to promulgate such myths as Pushkin's “aristocratic” attitude toward critics, but it remains valuable as a catalogue of criticism. Thereafter, both before the Revolution and during the Soviet period, the relevant published material becomes too extensive to list here. Recent comprehensive treatments of the subject may be found in N. I. Mordovchenko's Russkaia kritika pervoi chetverti XIX veka (1959) and in the Academy publication Pushkin: Itogi i problemy izucheniia (1966).

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.

“Our famous patriot and first leader of the new-born nation”—in these words an eminent Lusatian Serb scholar once described the awakener of his people, Jan Ernst (Arnost) Smoler (1816-84).

The largest metropolis in Galicia was known to its Austrian rulers as Lemberg. The Poles, who dominated the city after 1867, referred to it as Lwόw, while the Ukrainian minority called it L'viv. German, Polish, and Ukrainian-speaking inhabitants constituted the officially recognized national groups, but there also existed a large Jewish element, which in 1900 made up approximately 30 percent of the population. Appearing in Austrian and Polish statistics only as adherents of the Mosaic faith, the Jews differed from their neighbors in far more than religion. Though formally emancipated in 1868, Galician Jewry resembled in all other respects that of Russia. The combination of a very large Jewish minority and a very backward social and economic structure, in Galicia as in the Pale of Settlement, placed great obstacles in the path of cultural assimilation.

Historians of Russian literature would nearly all agree that the 1860s, the most radical period of nineteenth-century Russian intellectual life, witnessed a sharp decline in the esteem in which poetry was held, that it began to recover its prestige only in the 1880s, and that it did not fully regain its previous position until the birth of the symbolist movement. At no other time in the history of Russian literature did poetry and “aesthetics” come under heavier assault.

The revaluation of the literary past was a central preoccupation of the Russian symbolists. Some of these reassessments (Gogol and Dostoevsky in particular come to mind) have remained surprisingly fresh and valid after the passage of more than half a century. It is all the more ironic, then, that for decades the work of the Russian symbolists has been shamefully neglected by the critics. In Russia itself most of these fine poets are hardly mentioned, while a few, such as Blok and Briusov, are presented in such a fashion as to be unrecognizable. Outside Russia there have been valuable contributions to our knowledge of this period (by Mochulsky, Makovsky, Stepun, Tschižewskij, and Setschkarev, as well as Holthusen and other German scholars), but even here there is sometimes undue reliance on doubtful opinions which were formed fifty years ago; Mochulsky, for example, is guilty of this.

Vladimir Mayakovsky, who knew hardly a word of English, once upbraided his friend Kornei Chukovsky for his “too confectionized” (chereschur bonbon'-erochno) rendering of Walt Whitman into Russian. Chukovsky, it seems, was deeply impressed by Mayakovsky's instinctive feel for Whitman's rugged diction. Ever since, Chukovsky has detected in the Russian poet's verse the permanent impress of the American “kosmos.” This notion, propagated by the translator in numerous places, has fully infiltrated both Western and Soviet scholarship on Mayakovsky. In a recent philological study, Vera Timofeeva has suggested that Mayakovsky's anthropocentrism and his flair for concrete metaphors are a direct legacy from Whitman. And Helen Muchnic, following up a clue from Chukovsky, has referred to Chelovek (Man) as “a Whitmanesque poem,” though admitting that it lacks somewhat the “geniality” of the “Good Gray Poet.” Such remarks perpetuate a rather loose impressionism. Chelovek, as we shall later observe, is hardly a “Whitmanesque poem.“

The selection of a successor to Archbishop Dinder of the Poseń-Gnesen (Poznań-Gniezno) archdiocese resulted in one of the more interesting episodes in German-Polish relations. Coming as it did, just after the fall of the Iron Chancellor, the process of selection revealed with the utmost clarity the perceptions and priorities of the participating Germans and Poles.

The history of the Posen-Gnesen archbishopric gave significance to the question, for in the German Empire, as both German and Pole knew, only the Posen-Gnesen archdiocese had customarily had a Polish archbishop. This churchman tended to be the Polish community's most prominent spokesman and its visible head. He symbolized a unique and worthy tradition. In his person, until 1886, Polonia lived. Then, in that year, the Vatican and Bismarck dealt a severe blow to the Polish community by agreeing on the German Dinder to succeed the Pole Ledóchowski who had been forced to surrender his position.

For forty eventful years, ending with the outbreak of the First World War, the Young Czech Party waged an unremitting struggle on behalf of Czech national interests within the limited constitutional framework of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Political activity for such a span of time would be enough to insure the party a niche in history, but in addition it dominated Czech politics for sixteen of those years and enlisted politicians of the caliber of Kaizl, Kramář, Rašín, and briefly Masaryk under its banner in their quest for elective office. The intent of this article is to evaluate the party's contributions to the development of the modern Czech political system by outlining its history and general orientation and by comparing party platforms with achievements.

The meaning and value of Fet's poetry have provided food for debate for over a century, but its musicality has long stood beyond question. Whatever the decision about their ultimate worth, his melodic lyrics undoubtedly call up some of the sweetest sounds of nineteenth-century Russian verse. Just as there is hardly a Russian poet who has been more widely or successfully parodied, so scarcely is there one who has been more often set to music. As a mid-century poet he had serious rivals for the favors of composers and yet defeated them all—A. K. Tolstoy, Polonsky, Mei, Grigoriev, even the redoubtable Nekrasov. His whole poetic manner seemed to impinge so far upon music itself that the composer could see immediately how the music should be written and set to work at once with the enthusiasm of any expert who suddenly finds before him a small challenge which is right in his own field.

Western specialists have long recognized the importance of the private sector1 of Soviet agriculture to the economy in general and to family subsistence and income in particular. It provides a large proportion of the country's crop and vegetable output (primarily potatoes, vegetables, and fruits) and an even larger share of the products obtained from animal husbandry. In 1966, for example, the private sector produced 55,800,000 tons of potatoes or 64 percent of the USSR's total gross production of potatoes; 7,400,000 tons of vegetables or 43 percent of total production; 40 percent of its meat; 39 percent of its milk; and 66 percent of its egg production (see table). Of paramount significance is the fact that the private sector produces these quantities on only slightly more than 3 percent of the USSR's total sown land.

One of the most interesting and seminal figures in Soviet historiography is the historian M. N. Pokrovsky, whose influence has continued to be felt up to the present day. He was active in the 1917 Revolution in Russia, and in political and institutional developments during the first decade and a half of Soviet rule. He became what may be euphemistically called the "dean" of Marxist historians, yet after his death on April 10, 1932, he was ritually accused of being responsible for most of the "shortcomings" of Soviet historiography. Among the many accusations leveled against Pokrovsky the following have appeared with considerable regularity: (1) Because he was "dictator" of the historical front from 1928 to 1932, his interpretations of history were the "official" interpretations of that time and consequently had to be "reflected" by other Soviet historians.

On October 29, 1918, at a time when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was fast approaching dissolution, a Slovak National Council met in Turčianský Svätý Martin to consider two possible alternatives for the Slovak people: autonomy within a Hungarian state or union with the Czechs in a Czechoslovak state. The Slovak leaders decided on the latter. The next day the so-called Turciansky Svätý Martin Declaration was issued, which not only accepted the principle of union with the Czechs but also supported the so-called Czechoslovak thesis. The declaration stated among other things that “the Slovak nation is part of the Czecho-Slovak nation united as much from the linguistic as the cultural and historical point of view.” On the surface everything appeared settled, since responsible Slovak leaders, including the highly respected and admired Slovak patriot Father Andrej Hlinka, were the principal architects of the October 30 declaration.

In March 1921 Lenin predicted, “If there is a harvest, everybody will hunger a little and the government will be saved. Otherwise, since we cannot take anything from people who do not have the means to satisfy their own hunger, the government will perish.“ By early summer, Russia was in the grip of one of the worst famines in its history. Lenin's gloomy forecast, however, was never put to the test. At almost the last moment, substantial help in the form of food, clothing, and medical supplies arrived from a most unexpected source —U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

Hoover undertook the relief of Soviet Russia not as an official representative of the United States government but as the head of a private agency —the American Relief Administration (A.R.A.).