A forum on Boris Mironov's Russian and English editions of The Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700-1917 (2000) offers the comments of four scholars on different aspects of Mironov's work. David L. Ransel introduces the forum with a consideration of whether Russian and western historical scholarship has been or should be converging, and he reviews the Russian-language response to Mironov's book. William G. Wagner discusses Mironov's key conclusions: that the imperial period was marked by the development of a more individualistic personality, the democratic nuclear family, civil society, and a state order based on the rule of law. He questions, however, the validity of the modernization paradigm as an adequate tool for analyzing these developments. Willard Sunderland comments on the use of the concept of empire in Mironov's book, calling attention to the assertion that imperial Russia was a “normal” European state and that it was not a “true colonial state.” The focus of the book, he argues, remains Russian society within the space of the empire, not the society of the empire as a whole. Steven L. Hoch considers Mironov's chapter on demographic processes, criticizing the use of demographic theory and its application to problems such as fertility and mortality. He also argues that Mironov accepts too uncritically the utility of the statistical data at hand. Boris Mironov responds to Wagnar, Sunderland, and Hoch in turn.

The Bulgarian Socialist movement should prove interesting to the student of modern socialism for two reasons: the striking ideological parallel of the left and right wings of the Bulgarian party to their Russian and Western counterparts, and the manner in which the Bulgarian schism of 1903 anticipated both the Menshevik-Bolshevik split later that same year as well as the permanent rift between the Bolshevik and Western socialist parties on the outbreak of World War I.

The Bulgarian Socialist party was founded in 1891 by left-wing intellectuals who had studied abroad, most of them in Geneva, Russia, or England. Although the party split up within a year's time over the issue of political activity by the proletariat, it was revived in 1894 as a reaction to the repressive policies of the Bulgarian premier, Stefan Stambulov. Throughout the ensuing decade of its existence the party, like its Western counterparts, was plagued by the perennial issue of collaboration or non-collaboration with bourgeois groups.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) has been hailed by followers in many countries as a forerunner of symbolism, if not as the father of modern poetry tout court. In Russia, Andrei Belyi celebrated him together with Nietzsche in 1909 as a "Patriarkh Simvolizma"; and Valerii Briusov wrote in the same year: "Is it possible to question the importance of Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal for the formation of the whole worldview of modernity?" Ellis (L.L. Kobylinskii), the most zealous of all Russian symbolist "Baudelaireans," even tried to convince the menshevik social democrat, N. Valentinov, that Baudelaire was "the greatest revolutionary of the nineteenth century, in comparison with whom all Marxes, Engelses, Bakunins, and the rest of the brotherhood which they created, are simply nothing."

In investigations of the evolution of the corporation in Europe, North America, and the Far East, historians have illuminated variations in the structure of large enterprises in different times and places and investigated responses to legal environments. In tsarist Russia as well, the development of corporations on the national, regional, and sectoral levels was influenced by legal and economic institutions. Data on Russian corporations, however, have been inadequate for the complex statistical tests applied to the European and North American economies. This article offers a preliminary overview of trends in Russian corporate development from 1700 to 1914 in light of a new database and the recently articulated theory of organizational ecology. Although the theory provides stimulating approaches to the history of Russian corporations, it also appears unduly specific in some respects to the history of western Europe and the United States.

Intercultural Relations are only now becoming the concern of foreign offices and other governmental bodies in the new world. In Central Europe they have long played a part, and especially so for the Hungarians. Lying as they do on the strategic divide between the Slavonic and Teutonic worlds, yet being neither Germanic nor Slavic, their problem has been one of national survival amidst two great conflicting currents. Further, Hungary's policies have been influenced by the conversion of her people to Rome instead of Byzantium in the tenth century. This fact has caused her to adhere traditionally to the civilization of Western Christianity and to claim membership in this cultural area. While the motivating forces in Hungary's intercultural efforts may have varied from time to time, their origin may ultimately be traced to these two main sources.

Lenin selected from the "populist heritage" and praised at various times those points which might strengthen his attempt to make a revolution, and condemned whatever parts did not relate well to a particular phase of his program. Wielders of Soviet power since Lenin have continued to demonstrate this artificial ideological flexibility in their efforts to perpetuate the victory of 1917. As political and national requirements have changed, the regime has demanded that interpretations of the revolutionary populist movement complement these developments.

By the Fundamental State Law of the Russian Empire, as revised in 1906, certain guarantees were defined concerning freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. These were civil rights presumably to be applied without reference to such limitations as nationality or religion. However, sufficient loopholes were left for the Government, so that it is more to the point to speak of temporary concessions rather than rights, liberties, or freedoms. From time to time, and in varying degrees, the Government placed restrictions on their practice by both Russians and non-Russians, Orthodox and non-Orthodox. This was especially true during World War I. Russia's executive remained autocratic and arbitrary, regardless of the physiognomy of the constitutional mask. Many of the traditions of the Russia of the Romanov dynasty were in direct contradiction to the principles of Western European liberal thought which had been superimposed on the autocratic base in 1906 to form the so-called “constitutional” regime. Therefore, there were basic ideological conflicts inherent in the political structure as defined by the new Fundamental State Law.

Conflicting accounts about the autobiographical writings of Soviet Foreign Minister Maksim Litvinov have circulated for decades. Some of the confusion can be clarified by an examination of the correspondence of his British wife Ivy Low Litvinov. On 7 December 1941, when Litvinov arrived in Washington, D.C., as the new Soviet ambassador, he was accompanied by Ivy. The American Left, which had lionized him during his previous United States visit to negotiate recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933, welcomed both Litvinovs with high enthusiasm in the 1940s. In the United States for the first time, she renewed acquaintance with various American intellectuals, whom she had met over the years in Moscow. Among them was the writer Joseph Freeman, one of the editors of the radical communist journal New Masses.

Ivy wrote frequently from her embassy quarters in Washington to Freeman, her closest confidant, who lived in New York. Those letters that have been preserved provide a sense of Maksim Litvinov's tenuous position as a diplomat, indispensable for negotiating with the west but also unmanageable within the Soviet leadership.