This article develops the concept of “Soviet environmental subjectivity.” Taking a theoretical step toward comparative political ecology and neo-materialism, it makes the case that engagement with the natural environment comprised a potent, but underappreciated, determinant of Soviet subjectivity. To elaborate this argument, the article examines the life stories of three individuals who spent time in a common region in the far north: ornithologist Oleg Semenov-Tian-Shanskii, geologist Leonid Potemkin, and aspiring ballerina turned technician and prisoner Inna Tartakovskaia. Their lives reveal certain distinguishing features of Soviet environmental subjectivities, including a common desire to both exploit and protect the environment and a tendency for the state's punitive use of harsh natural conditions to alter subjective experiences. Furthermore, the very different paths of these individuals—one became an environmentalist, one defended the Soviet treatment of the natural world, and one did not actively engage in environmental politics—indicate the possible pervasiveness of environmental subjectivities in the Soviet Union.

In the years after 1905, Social Democrats in Russia agonized over the form of struggle in which to engage. The defeats suffered in the revolution and the new legal possibilities offered after 1905 led to strains among the socialists and changed considerably the nature of their debates from the prerevolutionary years as each faction attempted to deal with the potential of a legal labor movement and the actuality of continued police repression. Paradoxically the years of “reaction” were also the seedbed of Russian trade unionism. Many Social Democrats, most notably the so-called likvidatory (“liquidators”), believed that the time had come to concentrate on the legal labor movement, to broaden its appeal and deepen its roots among the working class. Others, tied to the traditions of the underground party and the primacy of political work, opposed the new reliance on legal activity. All Social Democrats inside Russia were faced with the reality of economic depression, a decline in labor activism, and political repression. They faced together a strategic dilemma. The deeper they retreated into the underground, the more tenuous their ties with the workers became. Yet the more actively they engaged in trade unionist and other legal activities, the more vulnerable they were to police persecution.

In Brat'ia Karamazovy (The brothers Karamazov), Fedor Dostoevskii suggests the impossibility of earthly justice but compensates for this harsh truth through a vision of transcendent joy. His message of Christian belief, inexpressible in the indicative, infuses every word of the novel on a poetic level and becomes manifest in the unfolding of the plot.

Over the last three years, the Polish United Workers’ Party has suffered a major crisis, the most substantial crisis of any Communist party in any Communist party state. The disintegration of the party was at least partly responsible for both the development of Solidarity in the summer of 1980 and the imposition of martial law in December 1981. The lack of trust in the party and its authoritarian and unrepresentative character led the workers to demand an institution more responsive to their own needs. But the growth of Solidarity during 1981 and the continuing disintegration and fragmentation of the party led the military to preempt the leading role of the party in 1982.

The collapse of the party in 1980 and 1981 was due to a number of factors. The party leadership had to bear the burden of the economic failures of the late 1970s and the consequent decline in the standard of living. The party itself had grown rapidly in size during that period, even though the influence of ordinary party members and local party organizations declined in the face of increasing tendencies toward centralization in the second half of the decade. This development led to problems of morale even within the party and to the growth of horizontal barriers between the membership and its leaders. The population at large was increasingly annoyed and disgusted with the failure of the party to improve the economic situation and to allow a more honest and open discussion of Poland's problems. The dissatisfaction was compounded by the widespread perception that the elite was increasingly looking after its own interests only and that benefits and privileges were accruing only to those in power.

Konstantin P. Pobedonostsev was long considered the real power behind the throne during the reigns of the last two emperors of Russia. He was said to have determined the reactionary policies of the 1880s and 1890s. Robert Byrnes has recently demonstrated that Pobedonostsev's influence was in fact considerably less than had been assumed. Byrnes quite properly maintains that Pobedonostsev had very little power under Nicholas II, that his importance for Alexander III began to decline after 1890, and that even at the height of his power Pobedonostsev could not always persuade Alexander to adopt his point of view. However, although Byrnes concludes that his influence was limited, he still attributes to Pobedonostsev considerable power in “his own special spheres of interest.“ Evidence exists, nevertheless, that even this assessment of Pobedonostsev's power needs to be reconsidered. An event occurred in March 1883 which demonstrates that he was not always in a position to determine policy at will even in matters of vital interest to him.

The Stalinist revolution began to accelerate in Poland, as throughout eastern Europe, in 1947, with the implementation of multi-year plans, the repression of opposition and the enforcement of unity in the bloc; by the beginning of 1950, the transformation of the bloc was more or less complete. The construction of the Stalinist system did not occur in a vacuum but was shaped in part by societies, and the regimes which emerged were thus more complex than has been generally acknowledged. That complexity stems in part from Stalinist regimes’ interest in transforming society through mobilization and integration, rather than merely subduing it. Active participation in political and economic life was required; mere acquiescence to the demands of the regime was insufficient; and class conflict was to be eliminated, replaced by an alliance between the working class and its former adversaries.

As social and cultural historians have known for some time now, court records can yield rich rewards. Judicial proceedings, particularly those involving defendants with a good story to tell, can illuminate issues and mentalities—indeed whole cosmologies—that otherwise are beyond the purview of later generations. The more irreconcilable the narratives of prosecution and defense, the better, for their very irreconcilability is what provides historians with the opportunity for intervention and partial, albeit posthumous, vindication of the accused. But while the Soviet juridical system has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention, almost all of it has been animated by political- or legal-historical questions. Little use has been made of trial proceedings and related materials to explore what they might reveal about other dimensions of Soviet life.

Historians are generally agreed that during the first two years of World War I American feeling against Germany was far stronger and more intense than against Austria-Hungary. While relations between the Germanic and American peoples had not been truly friendly since the 1880s, attitudes in the United States toward Austria-Hungary were much less antagonistic. Historically there had been little direct contact between the latter two countries. It scarcely seemed necessary to Americans. The area was not only remote geographically but also remote from the national interest. As a result, there appeared to be no deep-rooted bitterness or resentment in the historic relationship between the two nations. Indeed, in the period immediately preceding the war, relations between Austria-Hungary and the United States had consisted largely of diplomatic formalities even though before the war, Austria-Hungary, next to Italy, had furnished the largest European immigration to the United States. Americans for the most part were unaware that Austria-Hungary was a multinational empire composed of many diverse ethnic groups. Few Americans knew of the vast numbers of immigrants who had come from Austria-Hungary from the areas of Slovakia and Bohemia.

“Devil” is a key piece in Tsvetaeva's “anti-Eden” cycle of autobiographical prose, a phrase I have coined to describe her rewriting of both the creation myth of Genesis and its Russian incarnation in the Arcadian boyhoods of Tolstoi and Aksakov. In the series of memoirs which she wrote in the 1930s, she reworked the male myth to reflect twentieth century female experience and, most importantly, to inscribe her selfdefinition as poet.

The period of the 1930s has been called the time of the “Diplomatic War.“ During these years Nazi Germany seized the initiative in international affairs and tried to impose its will on the other states of Europe. The reaction of Britain and France to the threat of German expansion was appeasement until March 1939, when, with Hitler’s occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, it became clear that the Führer’s aims were not limited to the German-inhabited areas. Thus the states of East Central Europe found themselves in a highly vulnerable position: in the West they faced increasing political and economic pressure from the Reich; in the East there was the Soviet Union with its very exportable Communist ideology which would have undermined the political and social order of all these states. In this situation the East Central European states all sought some way of being independent from their two powerful neighbors.

Since the inception in 1954 of Soviet economic aid to non-Communist underdeveloped countries, commitments have grown to over $6 billion and deliveries to $2.7 billion. Concomitantly an extensive literature on the subject has emerged. Per unit of aid money, the attention paid to the Soviet programs is much greater than for a comparable flow of resources from other countries. Undoubtedly circumstances that go beyond conventional considerations about international capital flows are responsible for this interest. Writers take various approaches, such as the motives of the donor, contract terms, contribution to the development of recipient countries, impact on alignment with bloc politics, and so on. With few exceptions the investigators attempt, one way or another, to estimate the payoffs accruing to the donor from such international transfer of resources. Yet there is no comprehensive record that could serve as a basis for the numerous appraisals and evaluations. Ironically, at the milestone of one and a half decades of Soviet aid activities the "authentic" sources on the subject still use varying figures.

In the final diird of the nineteenth century, the Polish-Ruthenian (Ukrainian) borderland in the eastern Lublin and Siedlce gubernias of the Kingdom of Poland became a location of intense ethnic and religious rivalry, a situation not uncommon in numerous borderland regions throughout eastern Europe. At first, Russians and Poles competed for the nationally "malleable" population of the Chelm and Podlasie regions, as this territory was known. After the Russians were evicted from the Kingdom of Poland in 1915, Poles and nationally awakening Ukrainians saw not only distinct portions of the population but also the territory as "theirs."

When the economic reform (NEM) was introduced in Hungary in early 1968, it was announced that political reforms aiming at the "democratization of the socialist system" would also be made. The Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP) and the government stated that economic decentralization would be accompanied by the "strengthening of socialist democracy and the broadening of the participation of the masses in political activities." Several measures were taken to promote this objective through discussion and debate–but not through dissent or decision-making. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, which seriously affected the entire East European bloc, Hungary's move toward democratization became less pronounced and the government's policy definitely more cautious both in words and deeds. In this study I attempt to analyze the meaning and scope of the political changes that took place in Hungary in the aftermath of Czechoslovakia, giving special attention to the concept of democracy, the organization of the party and government, the position of the mass organizations, and the meaning of the increasing group conflicts.

The first months of Soviet power raise important questions about the ideology of the transition to socialism and about the nature of Bolshevik power. The destruction of the old state apparatus was accompanied by vigorous institution building; the “red guard attack against capital” was balanced by the emergence of potentially powerful Soviet economic apparatus. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed in March 1918 was followed by a period of state capitalism in which a strong socialist state was to supervise elements of capitalism in the economy. All stages were accompanied by vigorous debate within the party and, from March 1918, by the political alienation of a section of the working class. By the onset of full-scale civil war and the transition to war communism in late spring 1918 the Bolshevik party and the institutions of the new Soviet state dominated the political life of the country. Was there something in Marxist ideology that, when interpreted by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, encouraged centralized and dirigiste forms of government regardless of actual conditions? A large body of literature now exists that examines this issue from various perspectives. This literature has recently been enriched by a number of studies that look at events from the perspective of lower-level participants and area case studies.

When Lev Tolstoi emerged as a religious teacher in the 1880s, taking a sharply polemical stance against the Orthodox faith, the leadership of the Russian church groped for ways and means to stem the spread of the pernicious new heresy among the Russian public. The most ambitious but also the most disastrous attempt was made in 1901 when the synod promulgated an official pronouncement (poslanie) against him. This document, which created a worldwide scandal, was undertaken by the church itself and not, as has been widely assumed, at the instigation of the state authorities. In its poslanie the synod declared that Tolstoi could not receive an Orthodox burial unless he repented. This strategy badly backfired, since Tolstoi under no circumstances wanted such a burial and therefore made no move toward repentance. At the same time many Russians, including fervent believers, felt that the church itself with its requiem ban had sinned against the Christian injunction of all-embracing love. When Tolstoi died in 1910 and the burial issue became acute, the synod strenuously, but unsuccessfully, searched for a way out of its predicament.

In his article, "Schindler's Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers," Robert Hayden combines comparative history, political commentary, and amoral realism. In the process, he presents a number of arguments with which it is difficult to disagree, but also many that are provocative and, indeed, offensive. Because Hayden makes so many arguments in this piece (both primary, secondary, and parenthetical; explicit and implicit; open and disguised) my critique will not follow the organization of his paper. Rather, it will challenge Hayden's article on three counts: 1) its factual accuracy; 2) its lack of reference to existing literature on the topic; and 3) the logic, validity, and moral consequences of its arguments.

The remote location of Beshankovichy's mass grave for Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide reflects the exclusion of local Jews during the German occupation of Soviet territories and limits their memory to a few knowledgeable survivors and witnesses. In contrast, local commemorative practices focus on memorials for Soviet soldiers, partisans, and their aides. The paper reveals an incongruence of the place of historical experience on the one hand, and the locale of popular commemoration on the other, highlighting the impact of the Holocaust in Belarus to destroy Jewish history and its memory. The spatial division reflects the trauma of loss as much as shame for local participation in the mass murder. Drawing on oral histories, archival materials, and field visits, the study builds on a growing field of scholarship on the role of space and place in the construction of memories and identities in the aftermath of atrocity and trauma to discuss the geographical dimensions of memory and amnesia.