One of the reasons for the debacle of Tsarism was its failure to counteract the elements of revolution by many methods more subtle than those of force. Not only were the radicals driven to revolution by the uncompromising policy of the government and not only was the landowning aristocracy alienated by being deprived of a share in the administration but, more important still, there was a complete failure on the part of the government to foster or to support the new antirevolutionary elements which had grown up among the intelligentsia as a reaction against the spread of terrorism. No effort was made to assist the body of social thought which grew up as a response to the extremism of the radicals during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The advent of an industrial labor force posed a formidable and, as it turned out in 1917, a fatal array of problems to the government of Imperial Russia. It had to find answers to a number of crucial questions. How was it to reduce the tensions at the factory and carry out its mandate as guardian of order and justice and the protector of the poor? How was the peasant-worker to be fitted into the traditional structure of Russian society? What was the place of industrial labor in the “Witte system”? And how could the government prevent the discontent of the peasant-worker from turning against autocracy itself?

Yet even Witte, who was perhaps more perceptive than his colleagues in regard to the various problems caused by industrialization, viewed “the labor question” with complete confidence.

In Russia, modern political thought made its appearance in the last third of the eighteenth century; the major stimulant for the debate was the “revolution” (Pushkin's definition) wrought by Peter the Great. Political thinking did not develop much earlier, except for an episodic manifestation in 1730, because it took educated Russian society almost half a century to assimilate the impact of Peter's reign. The “debate” of 1730 was not so much an expression of opposing ideas and concepts (there was an amazing degree of agreement on these), as an emotional reaction to a conflict in social interests. Of course, by the time of the last third of the eighteenth century, the “revolution” of Peter the Great had affected the entire country and created social and cultural conditions which in turn produced some very real problems that cried for solution.

A case study of the Danube Commission is particularly interesting because the documentation on the Commission is more complete than for any other Soviet-controlled international organ and because within its operation have been reflected most of the basic political problems of Soviet policy in Eastern Europe. Beginning with the Soviet maneuvers to eliminate all Western influence in the area, the Danube Commission was involved in the feud between Stalin and Tito, the reduction of intersatellite relations to a minimum, except those dictated directly from Moscow, and the Soviet disinterest in the economic development of Eastern Europe. In the post-Stalin period it was in the Commission that the first signs of rapprochement with Tito and an interest in multilateral cooperation and long range development of the Soviet sphere became apparent. Finally the present operation of the Commission shows the current character of Soviet bloc relations with Tito, condemned as a revisionist.

The Hungarian Communists placed great importance on higher education, especially in the years between 1948 and 1954. It was in the universities and other institutions of higher education that they hoped to train a new Communist intelligentsia and a body of technical experts. This group was to replace the old intelligentsia and play a key role in the building of socialism. Yet the university students took up arms against the regime in 1956. Does this imply a direct failure in Communist indoctrination or is it a more complex phenomenon?

Hungary has undergone a revolution in education in the past eleven years. After the nationalization of schools in 1948 and Communist control over the key university posts in the same year, the educational system became the servant of the state, or, more exactly, of the Communist Party.

Sologub is generally remembered, after his novel The Petty Demon, for the poetry of his middle period, the Symbolist era, but his last books of verse are his best, and they are of additional interest for their marked poetic conservatism compared with the earlier works. Sologub alone of the major Symbolists who stayed in the Soviet Union continued to mature in poetic ability and remained as productive as before 1917; unlike Blok, Belyj and Brjusov, he never accepted the revolution, and suffered no subsequent disillusionment. Sologub's verse was apparently little altered by the revolution and Soviet regime. Of the eight small books of verse which appeared between 1921 and 1923, most are on themes familiar from the prerevolutionary poetry; although two of the boks are on civic topics and contain revolutionary poems, most of the poems in them were written before 1917.

Modern readers and critics of Konrad Wallenrod have long been perplexed over the nature of the poem as an artistic entity, and over its essential meaning and possible allegorical significance. More than this, critics have encountered great difficulty in attempting to relate the poem to Mickiewicz' artistic, moral and political development. For example, those who read the poem strictly in ethico-political terms have become much exercized over the problem of its alleged immorality and have encountered great difficulty in relating this work to the development of Mickiewicz' political ideas and attitudes. For the literary historian, the problem of explaining why this work differs so radically from the other poetry written during the first two years of Mickiewicz' Russian exile remains the single most important issue.