In Russia during the ninth century, there existed two societies having their basis in trade. One was the kingdom of the Khazars utilizing the Baltic, Volga, Caspian route and the other the Varangian communities along the river routes from the Baltic to the Black Sea. It was along this water road that the Varangians established their trade with Constantinople and controlled the cities that grew into the first Russian state.

In view of the fact that the Khazar state had existed for at least two centuries before the appearance of the Varangians and controlled a flourishing trade with the Slavs, the Persians, and the Arabs along the Don and Volga rivers, the question arises of why the Varangians and not the Khazars succeeded in establishing the Russian state and in controlling Russian trade.

It is not Commonly Realized in Western society, where industries have grown by gradual stages, how painful and even subversive an influence industrialization has been in Russia (and other agricultural societies on the fringes of Europe or in the non-European world). When at the end of the nineteenth century Russian industries multiplied and brought in their train innumerable features of Western European urban-industrial life, they appeared to many Russians as a source of social, economic, and even political revolution. No wonder then that industrialization called forth vehement disputes among those concerned over the future of Russia. Such agitation reached a peak in the polemics between Narodniks and Marxists over the fate of capitalism in Russia, at a time when Russia experienced her first great spurt of industrial construction, from 1894–1899. This public debate—it was truly a “great debate,” touching the fundamentals of a people's creed—resembled, and indeed continued in modern terms, the controversy between the Slavophiles and Westernizers two generations earlier. But “while in their time the polemics between the Slavophiles and Westernizers were carried on between the four walls of a few salons in the midst of a select circle of advanced thinkers, the quarrel between the Narodniks and Marxists in the nineties gripped broad social groups and at one time, it can be said, absorbed almost completely the intellectual interests of the Russian people.”

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.

At the Sixth Conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party held in Prague in January, 1912, the Bolsheviks, under Lenin's leadership, expelled the Mensheviks, arrogated the party name and organization to themselves and elected a Central Committee under their control. They also decided to publish a legal daily newspaper in Russia which was to be the chief vehicle for spreading Bolshevik propaganda among the workers and was intended to spearhead their campaign in the forthcoming Duma elections. When the paper appeared on the streets of St. Petersburg on April 22, 1912 (old style), it bore the name which has since become world-renowned: Pravda.

This first version of Pravda was published until July 8, 1914, when it was finally suppressed. At various times, its staff and contributors included Lenin, Ol'minskij, Molotov, Zinov'ev, Kamenev, Stalin, Bubnov, Sverdlov, Bukharin and many others who later became prominent in the Soviet Government. Lenin appears to have been the dominant figure on the paper. From Cracow, safe from the reaches of the Okhrana, he guided its destinies with an iron hand. His principal assistants were Zinov'ev and Kamenev, who left Paris to join him there.

Propaganda in England on behalf of the Rumanian exiles of 1848 is chiefly associated with the name of Dumitru Brătianu. But the revolutionary politician and historical scholar, Nicolae Bălcescu, also played a part in it. His activities, which are here studied on the basis of the correspondence published by his friend, Ion Ghica (the first Ambassador of the Kingdom of Rumania in London), are especially interesting because they brought him into contact with Cobden and Palmerston.

Bălcescu had been one of the leaders of the 1848 revolution in Wallachia. After his mission to the Hungarian revolutionary government, he escaped from Transylvania and, coming by Pest and Vienna, reached Paris on October 16, 1849. Within a few days he had seen the other Rumanian émigrés there, and on October 26 he suggested to Ion Ghica, who was in exile at Constantinople, that he ask on his behalf for a post as an attache or secretary at the Turkish Embassy in London.

Very close ties exist between Soviet belles-lettres and the official “line” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The organizations of Soviet writers are important connecting links between individual authors and Party authorities; before a literary work is submitted for final approval to the Glavlit, the official Government censorship, it is frequently discussed by the relevant committee of the Union of Soviet Writers.

The propaganda value attached to literature by the Soviet leaders was once eloquently expressed by Karl Radek, who said that although the pen cannot replace the rifle, it can mobilize and multiply these rifles. Perhaps some such sentiment, rather than aesthetic insight, was behind the statement generally attributed to Stalin, in which a writer is called “an engineer of the human soul.”

The articles on the literature of the Soviet peoples form only a part of the vast materials collected in the two editions of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Yet, like a microcosm, they reflect the characteristics of the whole and bear the impress of changing policy and interpretation. A comparison of these articles in the first edition and in those volumes of the second that have already been printed may, therefore, be of interest.

In line with the official policy of national linguistic autonomy, the first edition of the Encyclopedia contained both general accounts of the literature of the various national groups and accounts of individual authors. Most important among the groups discussed were the Abkhazians, Adygeyans, Bashkirs, the Buryat-Mongols, Udmurts, and the Tatars. The material in the volumes of the second edition that were available for examination appears at first glance to be much richer. The literature of twenty-nine Soviet nationalities is discussed: all of them possess their own written languages and can point to certain literary achievements. The treatment of the literature of the Avars is completely new to the second edition and the treatment of individual writers of other national groups much more detailed.

“Our hero's origin was humble and obscure.” The study of Slavic languages began in America in 1885 when Oberlin College started offering courses in Czech to prepare ministers for clerical activities in Czechoslovakia. However, the first attempt at a comprehensive program of Slavic studies was made at Harvard University in 1896, when, through the efforts of Professor A. Coolidge, Leo Wiener was engaged to present courses in Russian, Polish, and Church Slavic. Professor Coolidge previously had presented courses in Slavic history. In 1899 courses in Slavic literature were added to Harvard's schedule. The next step was made at the University of California in 1901, where George R. Noyes, a student of Professor Wiener, instituted the study of Russian and Polish. Of course, the role of Father R. H. Lord at Harvard and of R. T. Kerner at California should not be forgotten.