Studies of Russian culture in the eighteenth century concentrate on the era of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, with some attention paid to the reign of Elizabeth. They deal only scantily with the reign of Anna Ioannovna, except to point out the dismal aspects of this period of German misrule. A closer examination, however, reveals that during Anna's reign, separated by five years from that of Peter the Great, the Westernization of Russian culture not only continued but in some areas assumed new forms and new directions.

While the intrinsic worth of Nikolaj Mikailovich Karamzin's work still may be debated, his importance in Russian history has become clear. Karamzin popularized Russian history for his own day and through history gave form and content to Russian conservatism. Even his sharpest critics recognized these contributions, and Alexandre Koyré referred in a cutting note to Karamzin's arguments which appeared with monotonous regularity throughout the nineteenth century.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union, in the summer of 1941, evoked a variety of responses among the millions of Soviet subjects who found themselves under German rule. Where the individual was in a position to make a choice, these attitudes—ranging from hope for a better tomorrow to fanatical hatred of the invaders—found expression either in collaboration with the Germans or in identification with the Soviet partisan movement behind the German lines. The ensuing battle between the Germans and the partisans was fought not only for highways, railroads, and economic spoils, but also for the minds of men—and here the Germans rapidly lost by default.

Though Western and Soviet political scientists seldom see eye to eye, especially insofar as the study of Soviet institutions is concerned, there is, however, at least one point of common agreement: the uniqueness of the nature and functions of the Soviet procuracy, and, particularly, of its task of "general supervision."

For it must be noted that the Soviet system concentrates in the Procurator-General's office not only the duty of state prosecutor, as is usual in the West, but also the tasks of general supervision and of supervision over the organs of preliminary investigation, an arrangement generally regarded by Soviet jurists as a vast improvement over the Western practice.

Works that deal with Russian social history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries use the word raznochinets, raznochintsy in several different meanings, which are seldom sharply defined. As a historiographic concept it was given wide circulation by Mikhailovsky and by the populist historians of the intelligentsia who followed his usage, and by Marxist social historians, notably by Lenin. Their usage, however, often obscured the precise meanings the term had had in earlier tsarist legal and educational usage.

On August 26, 1797, in the little village of Anginskoe, Irkutsk Province, a boy was born to the local sacristan Popov and his wife, and was given the name of Ivan.

Little Ivan was a bright child. At the age of four the boy, under the tutelage of his ailing father, had started to read, and by 1803, when his father died, the boy read fluently.

To ease the burden of Ivan's mother, now a widow with four children, Ivan's uncle, who was his father's brother and the local deacon, took the boy into his own family.

Although comprehensive economic data on the Russian economy during the period of the Crimean War are not available, there are some surprisingly complete series of data on prices in both internal and foreign trade. The implications that can be drawn from a study of changes in the price level cover a wide area, especially when they are studied in the light of earlier work on the monetary and fiscal problems of the period.

Printing, as a German perfection, was brought to the Slavs by a German craftsman, Sweipolt Fiol, who is considered the first Slavic printer of Cyrillic characters. Fiol's printed church book, Oktoich, in Slavic language with Cyrillic characters, appeared in 1491 in Cracow, Poland. It is considered one of the first Cyrillic incunabula of Eastern Europe.

Lucia Merecka Borski, in an article dealing with the early printing in Poland, stated that "Toward the end of the fifteenth century" a "printing house was opened in Krakow by Swietopelk Fiol (Szwaybold Feyl, Fejel, Szwajpolt Fieola, Fiola) who issued five books in the Cyrillic alphabet about the year 1491."

This paper will attempt to present a picture of the Soviet system for the bibliographical listing of all printed matter published in the Soviet Union.

These listings are accomplished through official bibliographical publications, compiled and issued by the "Vsesojuznaja Knizhnaja Palata" (All-Union Book Chamber) located in Moscow, which was established in 1920 and has existed since then under a number of official names.