Public opinion polls show that between 1988 and 1991 some three percent of adult Russians donated money to various political movements, four percent took part in strikes and just over six percent participated in mass rallies and demonstrations. Fewer than one percent of Russians j o i n ed new political parties, still nascent organizations that attract elites, not masses. At the same time, membership in the Communist Party dropped from ten percent to four percent of the adult population of Russia.

Recent scholarship on the purges and Great Terror has contributed immensely to our understanding of the Stalinist political system that emerged in the mid-1980s. Research by J. Arch Getty and Gabor Rittersporn, among others, has challenged the totalitarian perspective that views the Terror as part of a grand scheme designed by Stalin to silence his opponents in the Party and government, establish his personal dictatorship and coerce society into unquestioning submission.1 Instead, these historians emphasize the limits of power and control wielded by the national leadership which found itself at times frustrated in its efforts to impose its will on both society and regional party organizations. They conclude that the "cleansing" of the Party and government was the partial product of a conflict between national and subnational officials, with initiative from below sometimes playing as important a role as central directives in fueling the purges.

At the height of World War II, General Wfadyslaw Sikorski visited Dr. Edvard Beneš at his London residence. The Polish prime minister warned the Czechoslovak president that if the Red Army were to occupy central Europe it would impose communist governments there. Beneš conceded that this was so but he added that there was nothing they could do about it. Sikorski continued pressing Beneš: "Why are you so friendly with the Soviets?" he demanded. He then invited the president to harmonize his foreign policy with that of the democracies. Beneš replied that he was unable to share Sikorski's confidence in the west for the simple reason that he had experienced the horror of Munich. "What partitions of Poland mean for the Poles, that is what Munich is for us," said Beneš forcefully.

Of all of Blok's works, The Puppet Show (Balaganchik) is perhaps the most recalcitrant in terms of interpretation. Despite the considerable scholarship that has grown up around the play, many basic questions perplex critics. For instance, the motivation and, to a significant degree, the effect of Blok's decision to incorporate elements of the commedia dell'arte into his little "fairy play" (feeriia) remain unresolved problems. Such lacunae in our knowledge of the play stem from either biographical or socio-economic assumptions behind two traditional approaches to the play.

It is often the mark of a writer's sophistication and innovative powers that certain of his/her key works present difficulties in the area of genre. Pushkin's Evgenii Onegin, Dostoevskii's Diary of a Writer, Tolstoi's War and Peace and Belyi's Kotik Letaev serve as instructive examples from Russian literature. To this list one could certainly add the late writings of Vasilii Rozanov. The genre of Rozanov's trilogy Solitaria, Fallen Leaves and Apocalypse of Our Times is notoriously resistant to definition and generates a host of competing alternatives. Should they be treated as collections of fable-like anecdotes, as autobiographies, confessions, fictions or as something that combines elements from all of these genres? Each answer has validity.