The eleven-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of a Byzantine Mission in Moravia (863) revived the interest of Slavic historians and philologists in the history of SS. Cyril and Methodius and served to reopen discussions concerning the significance of their activity in Moravia for the development of the Slavs.

It was widely believed that their mission had a profoundly religious character—the conversion of the Moravian pagans to Christianity. This interpretation is not quite correct. The words which the author of Cyril’s biography lets the Moravian ruler Rastislav address to the Emperor Michael should make us cautious about the real character of the Byzantine mission in Moravia. Rastislav is supposed to have declared that his people had already rejected paganism and were observing Christian rules. Some saw in this declaration an exaggeration and attributed it to Rastislav or to the biographer. Recent archaeological discoveries made in Moravia, however, confirm the correctness of Rastislav’s declaration. Thus far the foundations of sixteen stone churches have been discovered, and at least five of them were erected before the arrival of the Byzantine mission.

The lucid account of the Moravian mission of Constantine–Cyril and Methodius that Professor Dvornik has given is a persuasive and up–to–date statement of widely accepted views. Yet scarcely a single specialist would be willing to agree unhesitatingly with all the details even in such a brief résumé of the quarter-century of relations between the emerging Slavic nations and their neighbors. Indeed, some, as his footnotes suggest, might take exception to certain of his major points.

The difficulty lies in our historical sources–in their paucity, their unclear allusions, their omissions, and, worst of all, their contradictions. First of all, so little of the ninth–century material has survived that we are dependent on the views written decades or even centuries after the events. Then, even the contemporary writings have come down to us in modified form, owing to varying amounts of recopying and editing, with inevitable distortions, omissions, reinterpretations, and interpolations.

One book, one article, and a series of archaeological finds have contributed the largest part to the progress of Cyrillo-Methodian studies in the past thirty years. The book was by Father Dvornik: Once and forever its author established the reliability of the Vitae of the Slavic Apostles—our two principal sources for their mission—by carefully fitting them into the framework of Byzantium’s history in the ninth century. The article was by Fathers Meyvaert and Devos: In a few pages it demonstrated more mathematico what many foremost scholars had already suspected—that the Vita of Constantine–Cyril was in existence by 882 (before Methodius’ death), and that, by this time, it existed in Slavic. The latter demonstration was a hard pill for Byzantinists to swallow. The archaeological finds were made in Southern Moravia. By unearthing several ninth-century towns, archaeologists were able to provide an explanation for the strength of the Great Moravian state; by discovering a number of early churches, they were able to demonstrate how well established Christianity was in Great Moravia even before the Cyrillo-Methodian mission had arrived.

There are few events in history which had such a profound influence on the cultural development of so many nations as had the Byzantine mission to Moravia. Although the mission failed in the country for which it had been destined, the work of the two Greek brothers, aided by a few disciples, produced unexpected fruit among the Bulgarians, Serbians, Croats, and Eastern Slavs, and became the basis of the oldest Christian Slavic culture. This shows us the excellence of the first literary achievements in Moravia and testifies to the geniality of the inventor of the Slavic alphabet, and to Constantine’s extraordinary philological talent. A mediocre work could not have survived the Moravian catastrophe and the many upheavals in the early history of the southern and eastern Slavs.

The wide divergence of views among the Russian Westernizers makes it difficult to generalize about them, and the personality of Vladimir Pecherin, in particular, defies all categorization. In his search for perfection he was, like the radical Westernizers, led from idealism to left Hegelianism to revolution. But unlike the radical Westernizers he ultimately freed himself from the revolutionary mystique and moderated his demands for perfection, finding meaningfulness in a life of service as a Roman Catholic priest at a hospital in Dublin.

It seems worth while to re-examine Pecherin's intellectual development, since the only Russian biography of Pecherin, by Mikhail Gershenzon, was completed before the publication of Pecherin's memoirs, Zamogil'nye zapiski. Of two recent German works, the essay by Victor Frank centers on Pecherin, the Russian exile, but takes the memoirs insufficiently into account in evaluating Pecherin's religious views.

In 1861, in the second issue of his new journal Vremia, Dostoevsky published an article entitled “Mr. bov and the Question of Art.“ In it he attacks the utilitarian aesthetics of the radical literary critic N. A. Dobroliubov (1836-61); at the same time he sets forth the fundamentals of his own idealist aesthetic. Dostoevsky's article is his first major critique of the utilitarian and materialist outlook of the radical democrats led by N. G. Chernyshevsky (1828-89) and Dobroliubov. It anticipates his later polemic with the radicals in Notes from theUnderground (1864). The problem of freedom, significantly, is in the foreground of both works. The insistence on freedom in artistic creation is the central motif of “Mr. Dobroliubov and the Question of Art.” It is to this problem that we wish to direct principal attention.

The Stolypin Land Reform was a series of actions taken by the Russian Imperial government during the years 1905-17 to cope with the social and economic problems of the European Russian peasants. The basic part of any analysis of the Reform, therefore, should be a description of these actions as a coherent historical development in themselves. This essay presents such a description. The discussion is divided into four topics: general interpretation, the problems the Reform had to cope with, the general outline of its evolution, and the role of force in its execution. Related topics, such as the historical forces or events which produced the Reform, its results, or its significance in larger developments, are mentioned only incidentally.

The problem of the origin of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies in the 1905 Revolution is an important one in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement and the formative stages of the organs of the Soviet state. The problem is a complex one, involving both theory and practice—the conflicting theories of the revolution held by the various revolutionary parties in Russia in 1905 and the actions taken by their members both at the center and in local headquarters. Two revolutionary organizations are of paramount importance in this connection, the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP).

Because the problem is directly related to major doctrinal controversies that broke out between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks after the 1905 Revolution, the historical record and its interpretation have been subject to powerful pressures.

Although, before the First World War, Slavic affairs received but little attention in the United States, libraries were in this respect somewhat ahead of the times and started building their collections at a relatively early juncture. It is true that in 1901 Herbert Putnam, then Librarian of Congress, found that the Library proper could count only 569 Russian and 97 Polish books among its own holdings. The Russian collection, he commented, “has few of the original authorities, and is weak in modern descriptive works. On the history of Russia and on the Crimean War [there are] only a few of the principal authorities.” Yet pursuant to an act of Congress passed in 1866, the Library held in deposit, though not in ownership, a more substantial if not very appreciable set of publications which had been received by the Smithsonian Institution in exchange for materials supplied to learned institutions in East and East Central Europe.

Almost any book on Lomonosov, and certainly any book or article about Lomonosov and the Russian language, is bound to quote this passage from the dedication to his Russian Grammar:

Charles V, the Roman Emperor, used to say that one should speak Spanish with God, French with friends, German with enemies, and Italian with the female sex. But if he had been skilled in Russian, he would, of course, have added that one could speak it with all of them, for he would have found in it the magnificence of Spanish, the vivacity of French, the strength of German, the delicacy of Italian, and in addition the richness and conciseness of Greek and Latin.... Cicero’s powerful eloquence, the splendid majesty of Virgil, Ovid’s pleasant oratory do not lose their merit in Russian.