In "The Whisper of History and the Noise of Time in the Writings of Osip Mandel'shtam" Gregory Freidin writes that "only a cultural orphan growing up in the revolutionary years could possess such an insatiable need for a continuous construction of a gigantic vision of culture meant to compensate for the impossibility of belonging to a single place." Freidin's richly suggestive remark hints at both the nature of and the reasons for Mandel'shtam's "orphandom," and the means by which he sought to surmount or circumvent his pervasive homelessness and achieve a "homeland, a house, a hearth" in culture.

One of the fundamental demands of the nationality policy of the Soviet Government in its early years was the participation of native populations in the political structure of their respective administrative areas. This principle was particularly emphasized in areas such as Kazakhstan, where Russians had manned the governmental structure before the revolution of 1917. The present paper attempts through statistical evidence to describe the extent to which this was achieved in the first decade of existence of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, then a part of the R.S.F.S.R. The agencies of government so examined are the soviet system, the administrative apparatus, and the Party.

Politically, the phrase “Polish October” refers to the installation of a new government in October 1956, along with the hopes this event inspired for a more liberalized regime. In cultural terms, however, the Polish October is analogous to the “Thaw” in the Soviet Union—but much warmer—and it includes a period of about two or three years, roughly from 1955 to 1958, during which intense debate, settling of accounts, and a reevaluation of tradition took place. Socialist Realism was discredited once and for all, and a burst of new publishing occurred. Drawers were emptied of manuscripts by already established writers as well as by those who were making belated debuts, while postwar West European literature appeared in translation. In addition, many forgotten or forbidden works of Polish interwar literature were reissued, and a selective program of publishing emigre works in Poland was initiated.

The Lookout at the citadel perched above Trieste had trained a long telescope on the squadron of ships beating up the bay under full sail. Despite the clear light of the Adriatic summer morning, the lookout's practiced eye was unable to make out as yet the design and the colors of the flags flying from the gaffs of the large frigates he was observing. But even at that distance he could clearly see the prominent steeving of their bowsprits, and that the masts were set at nearly equal distances. He gave another look to the small squadron, and went to make his report to the corporal on duty.

Soon the rigid arms of the citadel's telegraph began to wigwag jerkily to the batteries on the mole the message that three Russian frigates of Count Voinovitch's squadron were making for the harbor. These ships were well known at Trieste, as they had refitted there during the stormy months of the preceding winter of 1799–1800. The squadron was then assigned to the task of blockading from the sea the fortress of Ancona, occupied by a French garrison. It also helped the raw Italian levies, which besieged Ancona from land, under the command of general Lahoz, whose troops were reinforced by a few hundred Russian and Turkish marines and seamen.

What sort of man was Paul Pestel, the unfortunate and influential Decembrist? What was the character of his mind, and what were the principles of the reforms for which he gave his life in 1826? The answers to these questions were long concealed. On the one hand, the Tsarist Government suppressed Pestel's writings and locked up the records of his mock trial until 1905; and on the other, admiration amounting to hero worship confused the minds of many students for whom any Decembrist was deemed to be a saintly martyr to the cause of freedom.

Alexander Herzen was most responsible for the hero worship. Herzen, at fourteen, was deeply moved by the execution of Pestel and four other Decembrists, and the event gave purpose to his whole life. Thirty years later, he wrote: “Before that altar [the gallows] defiled by bloody rites, I swore to avenge the murdered men, and dedicated myself to the struggle with that throne…. I have not avenged them … but for thirty years I have stood under that flag and have never once deserted it.”

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.

The year 1956 may be regarded as the third milestone in the postwar history of private initiative in Poland.

Until 1949, the official attitude towards private initiative was one of relative toleration. The basic concept was that in a period of reconstruction of the economy, the private or "third" sector could coexist with the State and cooperative sectors without infringing the canons of socialist economics. However, even in that period, a number of legal, administrative, and economic measures were taken, the effect of which was to restrict the scope of activity and stunt the growth of private initiative.

In my study on Pushkin, “Poetry of Marriage and the Hearth,” I attempted to show that certain motives in the many-sided, yet pre-eminently lyric and autobiographic poetry of Pushkin express, indeed ground and affirm, the poet's view of absolute truths and the laws which derive from these truths and, in the poet's opinion, govern man's life inexorably, beyond possibility of any compromise. One such law which in the poetic (and, although of less importance, also in the practical) concepts of Pushkin had just such a religious, imperative significance, admitting of no modification and no reduction, was the principle of the inviolability of marriage.

The Arts of Bulgaria since World War II are of considerable interest for the history of art largely because they so directly demonstrate what happens to the arts of a previously non-Communist country under Soviet dominance. Since the Communist take-over, not only has Bulgarian art directly reflected the Soviet political line but it has done this even more thoroughly than the art of the Soviet Union itself. For beautiful Bulgaria is such a compact and homogeneous little country—about 325 miles long and 215 miles wide, with a population of only 8 million people, about 90 percent of whom are of specifically Bulgarian stock—that its Communist government can control the arts with far greater ease than can the regime of so enormous and racially diversified a nation as the Soviet Union. Even long before World War II, Slavic Bulgaria had closer cultural links with Slavic Russia than did any of the other countries that fell under Soviet political domination as a consequence of the war. As might therefore have been expected, its arts have reflected the influence of the Soviet aesthetic of “socialist realism”—and the distinct but related and highly relevant Stalinist formula of an art “national in form and socialist in content”—more directly than have those of the other “satellites.”

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.

The collection of Zemstvo Publications (Kollektsiia zemskikh izdanii) in Leningrad is undoubtedly the most important source of materials for the study of the zemstvo institutions which existed in Russia from 1864 to 1917. Because the work of these institutions touched every phase of Russian society, the collection is valuable for countless other topics as well. Containing approximately 100,000 volumes, it was formed in the 1950s from the library of the former Free Economic Society. It is little publicized and has not been utilized, even by Soviet scholars, to the degree it deserves. As of June 1966 the collection had been used, according to the staff, by only two American scholars, although access to it is granted to almost any scholar who has a card for the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, of which it is a branch.

The collection is one of the fonds which make up the Fondy Vol'nogo Ekonomicheskogo Obshchestva (Fonds of the Free Economic Society), which are housed in a room of the Fontanka Embankment Library at 36 Fontanka Embankment, Leningrad, approximately three blocks from the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library. In the same building are the main library's newspaper collection and newspaper reading room and various other reading rooms for graduate and undergraduate students.