Recent analyses of the economic impact of the abolition of serfdom mark a major return to quantitative approaches in the economic and social history of Russia. Tracy Dennison, Steven Nafziger, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, among others, make wide use of data produced by the zemstvo (provincial elected assembly), the Central Statistics Committee (TsSK), the Ministry of Agriculture, and local governors. These figures are particularly crucial with regard to the debate over the impact of the abolition of serfdom and the economic dynamics of tsarist Russia between 1861 and 1914. Indeed, the authors are too quick to consider the data reliable and only concerned about which statistical method should be used. Markevich and Zhuravskaya claim outright: “Historians agree that the quality of the late imperial statistics and governor reports is rather high.” Nafziger makes a similar statement regarding zemstvo statistics, which he declares are fully reliable sources. Dennison and Nafziger add: “Zemstvo publications offer a unique window into rural economic conditions in the post-1861 period, but western scholars have only begun to explore them. We consider these household surveys, other zemstvo publications, research by central government and provincial statistical authorities (including the 1897 census), and various secondary sources to develop some “stylized facts” about rural living standards in Iaroslavl' and Vladimir provinces in the post-1861 period.”

The most important of Lenin's writings was, arguably, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. That work shifted the focus from workers’ struggles within one country to the dynamics of capitalism as a global system. The Leninist project thereby inextricably linked the causes of economic justice and national liberation, a fateful step in light of the transformation of the world wrought by decolonization. As capitalism stumbles through yet another global crisis today, what parts of Lenin's fevered vision remain relevant 100 years later?

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of “indecency” in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine “sexual underworld.” Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged “parties” at the focus of this article that arguably served as a “training ground” for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these “parties” provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of “westernization.”

Populism is on the rise: but to understand this phenomenon, we should first clearly conceptualize it and recognize that populism takes on different forms in various historical and political contexts. These “populisms” pose a threat to modern liberal democracy. As Poland and Hungary show, populists exclude entire swathes of society from the polity, and undermine the formal institutions and the informal norms of democracy.

A vast array of research institutes and cultural organizations began to study the viewer of Soviet cinema and theatre in the years following the October Revolution. These investigations called on the techniques of sociology, psychology, and physiology to make Soviet cultural production more “efficient” and “rational.” Belying the conventional assumption that the cultural revolution of 1928–1932 brought empirical research in aesthetics to an abrupt end, this paper traces the continuation and redefinition of studies of the viewer in the Soviet Union after the “Great Break.” My analysis of the work of the “Scientific Research Sector” at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) between 1933 and 1936 outlines how Stalin-era researchers shifted their gaze from viewers’ tastes and attitudes to questions of perceptual management and effectiveness. Exploring the VGIK researchers’ attempts to determine the “laws” of aesthetic perception and optimize intelligibility, the article brings to light the developments in scientific knowledge underwriting Soviet culture's transition to a form “accessible to the millions.”

I thank Alessandro Stanziani and the editors of Slavic Review for bringing the problem of quantitative economic history to a diverse readership. Colleagues divided between departments (economics and history) and by method (positivist and critical) tend not to publish in the same journals or attend the same panels. This is a rare opportunity to share in a discussion. Allow me to use Stanziani’s points as an occasion to go further and to discuss how I have appreciated numbers in some of my research because I am, as he puts it and as I agree, radical.

From their inception, the 1917 Russian Revolutions, specifically the October Revolution, have been synonymous with Bolshevik violence. In the course of the last century, almost all observers have believed that violence was inherent in the Russian revolutions and revolutions generally. Such views have obscured what a revolution actually is. Closer examination of the October Revolution confirms violence was not its defining feature. Further, the Bolsheviks conceived October as the opening salvo of international, socialist revolution; expectations largely crushed by overwhelming counter-revolutionary violence. The discrediting of war and political violence since World War II has seen the conception of revolution as a “velvet” process of political transformation emerge, particularly in Latin America, the US, Britain, and Europe. While such movements rarely look back to the Russian Revolutions, they echo the democratic, egalitarian, and emancipatory impulses bequeathed by 1917, and raise the possibility of near non-violent socialist revolutions.

Of the many crises that Europe faces today, it is the migration crisis that most profoundly defines the changing nature of European politics. It is also a turning point in central and east European societies’ attitudes to the European Union, and it signals the return of the east-west divide in Europe. The article argues that what Brussels describes as a lack of solidarity is actually a clash of solidarities: national, ethnic, and religious solidarity chafing against our moral and legal obligations with respect to the refugees. The east-west divide over migration has its roots in history, demography and the twists of post-communist transition, while at the same time representing an east European version of popular revolt against globalization. The attitude divide between Europe's west and east on issues of diversity and migration strongly resembles the divide between the big cosmopolitan capital cities and the countryside within western societies themselves.