The search for a Russian liberal tradition may not appear rewarding if one thinks in terms of that aspect of Western liberalism which stood for maximum individual freedom and minimum state interference. Russian liberals admired rather than imitated Bentham or Mill; Adam Smith, for example, had an influence on Russian economists and politicians which was rather vague and transitory in nature. The stage of liberalism which postulated absolute natural rights, inviolability of private property, and economic laisser faire was simply bypassed in Russia. “Liberalism in Russia,” writes Miljukov, “connoted the idea of state intervention,” and since no Russian “liberal” thought had existed in laisser-faire days, it was free to become “more democratic, without being inconsistent with a former tradition.“

For foreign students seeking the facts on the Russian economy, even small items of information in Russian sources may be noteworthy. Given the established Soviet secrecy policy, such items often clarify important but otherwise obscure aspects.

In reference to various Soviet issues, particularly the recurring question of inequality, the figures below on the royalty incomes of creative workers (authors, playwrights, composers, etc.) in the Soviet Russian Republic perhaps are properly considered a case in point:

On October 4, 1946, Klement Gottwald, leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and at that time Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak Republic, declared that the experience of Czechoslovakia had shown “what had been foreseen theoretically by Marxist classics, namely, that there exists another path to socialism than by way of a dictatorship of the proletariat and the soviet state system. Going by this path are Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, and also Czechoslovakia.” So ran the report of his speech in the collection of his articles and speeches, Ten Years, published in 1947. Only two years later, the same speech was included in a new collection of Gottwald's works, with, however, the phrase “a dictatorship of the proletariat” deleted, and the country, Yugoslavia, omitted. This editorial modification of an authoritative statement puts into sharp relief the change of view which had occurred in the interval in the interpretation placed on the people's democracy by Czechoslovak Communists.

When the first Russian State Duma convened in the Winter Palace, on April 27, 1906, one of the basic questions which confronted both the new representative assembly and the bureaucracy of the Tsar was whether there would be a head-on clash between them or whether some form of mutual tolerance or even cooperation would emerge from their encounter. Because this encounter ended two months later in the dissolution of the Duma by the Tsar, too little attention has been paid to an alternative solution—the formation of a ministry supported by the Duma and approved by the Tsar. Yet, as it happened, this solution was explored in some detail by members of the bureaucracy and court and by leaders of the parties which dominated the Duma. These negotiations and their failure help to explain the basic political struggle between the bureaucracy, which was unwilling to relinquish its traditional privilege of governing in the name of the Tsar, and the Kadet party, which strove for the immediate introduction of responsibility of the executive to parliament, on the British model.

The crimean peninsula has been occupied by many races, nationalities, and religious groups in the course of history. In 114 B.C. it was placed under the protection of Mithridates, King of Pontus, who is supposed to have settled Jewish colonists from Asia Minor there. From inscriptions it is known that Hellenized Jews lived there as early as the first century A.D.

Gradually the settlements of the Crimea came under the political and cultural influence of Byzantium. The Khazars established themselves in large numbers in the Eastern Crimea in the vicinity of the straits of Kerch. The conversion of the Khazar royal house and part of the nobility to Judaism (about 740) disposed them to be friendly toward their co-religionists who sought shelter from Byzantine oppression in those regions of the Crimea which were controlled by the Khazars.

The story of the invention of the airplane and its first successful flights may be found in numerous encyclopedias, periodicals, and histories of aviation. In almost every account credit is apportioned among experimenters from several nations; while the Wright brothers may stand foremost to the average American, he realizes that the overall achievements of aviation have been attained only through the combined research of inventors in many countries. But during the past year and a half a new story has come out of the Soviet Union denying the usual credit given the Wright brothers and other non-Russian inventors and scientists. According to this story it was a Russian who invented and flew the first airplane and laid the foundation for later aerodynamics and all modern aircraft construction.