It is particularly difficult to discover in the Soviet philosophic doctrine a precise formulation of a “philosophy of science” or a “philosophy of nature.” The reason is threefold. First, there is the ambiguity found in the Marxist classics, especially in the writings of Engels who, more than anyone, was responsible for the construction of a doctrina naturae from the insights of Marx and himself. Second, is the inherent necessity of dialectical materialism or any materialistic position to identify its philosophy of nature with its ontology, despite the loud outcry of the Soviet philosophic camp against any attempt to identify its position with that nauseous word “metaphysics.” Finally, there is a condition of flux in the positions of contemporary Soviet philosophers on several important facets of a current philosophical problem—the relation of philosophy to the natural sciences.

The clash of Eastern and Western influences, which was of particular significance in the history of the Rumanian people, could not fail to leave its imprint also on the Rumanian Socialist movement. Socialism was first introduced into Rumania in 1874 by some Rumanian intellectuals who had fled from Bessarabia, a province of Tsarist Russia. Marxian ideas, in their more extreme form, were brought to Rumania in 1875 and following years by Nathan Katz (Dobrogeanu-Gherea) and other Russian political refugees who had established themselves in Iaşi, the capital of Moldavia. But the political maximalism and the internationalist orientation of these refugees soon met the opposition of the more moderate and nationally inclined Rumanian intellectuals, who had been educated at Western universities and were influenced by the reformist ideas of the Social Democratic movement in the West.

Several months ago the State Publishing House of the Moldavian SSR in Kishinev (Chişinău) published a Russian translation of the historical monograph Ion-Voda Cel Cumplit (Prince John the Terrible) written by the well-known nineteenth-century Rumanian historian Bogdan Petriceicu-Haşdeu. The Russian title is Ion-Voevoda Liutyi, even though Russian writers have in the past, when translating the title of this book, rendered cumplit by groznyi. Since both groznyi and liutyi are only approximate renditions of the word cumplit, it is difficult to judge whether the substitution of the first by the second is purely a matter of the translator's personal preference or whether it is dictated from above by certain policy considerations.

The book is a popular edition illustrated with dramatic pictures that are examples of expressionism rather than of social realism.

Like Thucydides, Xenophon and Josephus, Napoleon and Churchill, Leon Trotsky had to wait to write his major history until defeat had deprived him of the possibility of making history. But all his life he was a writer by avocation, and a history-maker by vocation. “Beginning in 1897,” he wrote in his autobiography, “I have waged the fight chiefly with a pen in my hand.” When he was writing for Iskra he chose a nom de guerre-not to say nom de plume; it was Pero, the Russian word for pen.

Unlike Lenin, Trotsky looked often at himself in the mirror of history and consciously treasured his personal historic role. After 1905, in which year he played a more important part than any other revolutionary leader, he chose the first moment of respite, exile in Vienna, to write Die Russische Revolution: 1905 (Vienna, 1908 and 1909).

The people of Czechoslovakia have gone to the polls four times since the end of the Second World War to elect a national parliament—in 1946, 1948, 1954, and 1960. Although an analysis of the vote in May, 1946, is interesting and important for an understanding of the Czechoslovak situation, such an analysis would be of little value for the elections that were held after the coup d'etat of Prague in February, 1948. The principle of National Front balloting, in practice in 1948 although not codified until 1954, leaves the voter with practically no alternatives. Since the net affirmative vote for the candidates of the National Front is well over 90 per cent of the total vote, a key to understanding the uses of the Czechoslovak parliament must be found elsewhere than in analysis of voting behavior. Therefore, the elected deputies themselves are the subject of this inquiry.

The legal form of the Czechoslovak parliament was not particularly changed by the social and political events of the first postwar years (1945-48).

Translation of foreign fiction and poetry in twentieth-century Russia developed into an important field of literary activity which, in terms of prestige, came to be considered even superior to the essay. This can probably be traced back to the beginning of the nineteenth century when Vasilii Zhukovsky, a major poet, built practically all of his poetic work on translations. Now Russia has a whole army of highly competent translators, occasionally joined by poets whose original work is well known both inside and outside Russia (Marshak, Zabolotsky, Tikhonov). Mikhail Lozinsky (1886-1955), who is considered by some to be the greatest Russian translator of all time, received a Stalin prize for his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy and was held in very high esteem in Soviet literary circles. Theory of translation is taught at the Soviet university, and the problems of artistic translation are often vividly and interestingly discussed in books and numerus articles by poets, critics, and scholars.

It is not my intention in this paper to discuss those two issues that always seem to be debated whenever Eastern Europe is mentioned: the argument over the importance or utility of the study of its history, and the game of defining its precise geographic limits or its internal unity. These issues may not have been exhausted-though they are pretty limp by now—but I think it may be more profitable to turn our attention to some of the substantive and methodological problems that confront the working historian, once he has accepted this area as a field of proper concern and once he has arrived at his own definition of its scope and limits.

More specifically, I should like to consider some of the problems connected with the intimate but ambiguous relationship of Eastern Europe-including Russia-to Western Europe, both as an object of historical study and as an influence on historical research and writing.

In recent years serious scholarly monographs and monographic articles on the history of Muscovite Russia from the fourteenth through the sixteenth century have been appearing in the Soviet Union with increasing regularity. They all suffer from a heaviness of style and from a degree of tendentiousness arising from ideological premises and nationalism. Nonetheless, they offer substantial additions to our knowledge and understanding.

The Formation of the Russian Centralized State in the Fourteenth to Fifteenth Centuries by L. V. Cherepnin is a treatment based substantially on his well-known careful analysis of documentary materials, Russian Feudal Documents of the Fourteenth to Fifteenth Centuries. Cherepnin's recent monograph is divided into six enormous chapters, the first of which is a very useful discussion of the historiography of the question.