During the past three years the USSR and Eastern Europe have embarked upon a credit and technical assistance program in several underdeveloped countries in the Free World. These activities are not an aid program in the Western sense. Rather, they consist, except for a few small gifts and a token $1,400,000 contribution, through the United Nations, entirely of loans with specific repayment terms. The significance of the Soviet and East European program lies in its economic nature and its dual—economic and political—motivation and effect.

To a world in which free men and men striving to be free are threatened by Communist expansion, it has become increasingly important to understand how and why in other times and places the Communists have been able to seize power. The classic example would seem to be the Soviet Union itself; and yet, although more than thirty-five years have elapsed since the "February" and "October Days," the actual course of the revolution in vast areas of the Soviet Union has not been adequately studied. One such area is that formed by the former Trans-Baikal, Amur and Maritime Territories— a broad tract of land more than 600,000 square miles in area, larger than Outer Mongolia or Manchuria, lying on the shores of the Amur River, in the heart of the Russian Far East.

At noon on Saturday, October 26, 1918, as World War I drew to its agonizing close, the courtyard behind stately Independence Hall in Philadelphia witnessed one of the dramatic episodes of its long and colorful history. From a platform Professor Thomas G. Masaryk, soon to be President-designate of Czechoslovakia, read out a "Declaration of Common Aims" of the newly created Mid- European Union. Flanking the venerable philosopher-statesman from Prague were representatives of European nationalities who had just signed the "Declaration," eminent citizens of Philadelphia, and delegates of American patriotic societies and political parties.

During the winter of 1912-1913 Lenin studied the problem of nationalism with all his famous powers of concentration. Such a study was long overdue. Two great multinational states—the Austro- Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire—had been steadily disintegrating; a third multinational state—the Russian Empire— was full of latent national hostilities; and so far the Russian Bolsheviks had failed to come to grips with the issue of nationalism. During this winter Lenin asked two of his disciples, Josip Dzhugashvili, a Georgian, and Stepan Shahoumian (Shaumian), an Armenian, to formulate their ideas on the nationality problem. He probably chose these men because they were natives of the Caucasus, an area of especially complex nationality problems.

The Mass Emigration of people from the various European states was not a haphazard chapter of history. Emigration represented a natural outcome of those social problems which beset many European countries for long periods. Grave social problems determined those ultimate motives which prompted large masses to leave behind the well-known boundaries of their native land to try their luck in a strange country. In the case of Hungary, too, the social and economic background makes emigration comprehensible. Such a background explains that strange turn of social history which suddenly transformed Hungary from a country of immigration into a country of emigration.

The study of East Central European history, treated as a separate field, is not yet firmly established at American colleges and universities. Although World War II and its aftermath have revealed the importance of East Central Europe and led to serious study df this neglected area, the subject is taught in a limited number of institutions in the United States. Only two or three schools have organized centers of East Central European affairs, where the history of the region is studied in conjunction with its politics, economics, geography and sociology. The Program on East Central Europe at Columbia University is in its early stages, and the Institute of East European Studies at Indiana University is also a relatively novel experiment.

A tradition of political interest and cultural relations between Russia and the Balkan Slavs existed during the reign of the tsars. Montenegro was not only protected but also subsidized by Russia, and Petar Petrović Njegoš, the ruler of that small country, sang in his works of the friendship of the Russians and the other Slavs. When Russia aimed at expansion in the Balkans, she turned her attention toward Bulgaria. The Slavophiles in the middle of the nineteenth century granted scholarships to Bulgarian youth to study in Russia, particularly in Odessa, and several of them became revolutionary writers of the pre-liberation period.

Leo Tolstoy did not lack admirers in Finland around the turn of the last century. His literary genius captivated many Finns who likened his words to "windows opening into heaven." Others found solace in his religious teachings. " I do not know what might have happened to me in the end," confessed one of them, "if I had not unexpectedly discovered this powerful friend, who emancipated my spirit, banished from my soul all timidity, all fear, all misgiving." Literary and religious rebels, in particular, never doubted that "only once in a millennium does there emerge a person of such gifts of mind and heart."