The haphazard unearthing of Osip Mandelstam’s late poetry and the bio-graphical data of his (all too literal) struggle for existence produces the effect of a mosaic gradually and painstakingly pieced together by several hands. One mysterious piece, long thought lost, was the poem allegedly written in praise of Stalin sometime in the 1930s. For many Western readers at least, the first mention of the poet’s tribute to the dictator was in Anna Akhmatova’s memoirs of Mandelstam published in the emigre miscellany Vozdushnye puti, vol. 4 (1965): ” … he maintained that poems are written only as the result of strong emotional shocks, joyful as well as tragic ones. Concerning his own poem in praise of Stalin—‘I’d like to say not Stalin, but Dzhugashvili’ (1935) —he said to me: ‘Now I understand that it was a sickness.’ “

The substantive portion of this paper is intended to be incorporated later into a comprehensive study of time horizon in economic history. Hence an elucidation of the concept and of its main aspects should precede the presentation and interpretation of the relevant material that has been drawn from a scrutiny of Russian literature in the nineteenth century, that is to say, from novels and plays. In this connection, it will have to be explained why belleslettres can and should be regarded as one of the sources of insights into the problems involved.

Soviet authorities have always maintained that their national theater is a truly popular form of art, enjoyed by broad masses of the people. This view has been expressed or implied in every official statement on the medium for many years. “Soviet theatrical art,” according to a 1958 Central Committee statement, “has become a truly popular art, close and comprehensible to the broad masses of the toilers…. Our theater, by carrying the most progressive ideas of socialism, peace, and democracy to the masses, has rightly earned widespread recognition, and become an important factor in the development of all progressive art… “

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those ivho favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost

In May 1972, Petr Efimovich Shelest, first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, was demoted and transferred to Moscow in the shadowy post of deputy premier. He continued to hold his seat in the Politburo in a kind of lame duck existence, until he was prematurely pensioned off eleven months later. No official charges were placed against him immediately, and most foreign observers attributed his fall to his hard-line views on foreign policy at the moment of budding detente. He was reported to have argued heatedly in the Politburo against the Nixon visit, and his removal on the eve of that occasion was seen as a means of getting him out of the way as the President’s host in Kiev. It was also recognized that Shelest was in trouble for his failures in party administration and his inability to stem the tide of intellectual dissent in the largest non-Russian republic. But the official charges that were eventually brought against him were of a different magnitude. He was accused not only of failing to maintain the norms of Leninist nationality policy, but of actively fostering the intensification of divisive Ukrainian nationalism.

In his pioneering article, Professor Holland Hunter set himself the limited but difficult task of checking the First Five-Year Plan approved in the spring of 1929 for its internal consistency. He did not attempt to find out whether the targets of the plan for production and investment, and for “qualitative” indicators such as the capital-output ratio, were feasible: he took these targets as given, and tried to find out whether they were mutually compatible. In Professor Hunter’s words, his test “confines itself to the question whether the targets for 1933 could have been achieved under the optimistic parameters embodied in the plan” (p. 239). This point seems to have been overlooked by some of the contributors to the discussion in Slavic Review.

Messrs. Davies and Wheatcroft add useful perspective to the discussion in the June 1973 issue of the Slavic Review. I am particularly impressed with their description of how initial enthusiasm among some staff technicians led after a year or two to overoptimism at higher levels that alarmed even the initial enthusiasts. The sorcerer’s apprentice in this case was not a junior underling but a determined major figure. Unfortunately, the sequential transmission of overoptimism upward in the political structure took place precisely during a period when the surrounding economic environment was becoming less, favorable. By the time the first plan was issued, its overoptimism embodied high-level desperation in the face of technically informed skepticism.

Professor Valk, the distinguished dean of Leningrad historians, died on February 5 of 1975 at the age of eighty-seven. To review his career is to recall the splendid historical training provided by the University of St. Petersburg on the eve of World War I and to retrace the course of Soviet historical study, many of its principal aims, priorities, methods, and achievements. Professor Valk’s scholarly legacy includes over two hundred printed works; generations of students who benefited from his erudition, prodigious memory, and generous spirit; and a lasting contribution to the development of Soviet archival science and source study.