Count M. M. Speranskij, undoubtedly one of the most brilliant statesmen tsarist Russia has ever produced, wrote in the Introduction to the Code of Laws of 1809, that the “Russian constitution will owe its existence not to the excitement of passions and the exigency of circumstances, but to the blessed inspiration of the Supreme Power…”. He was wrong. The “blessed” Supreme Power granted reforms to the Russian people only reluctantly and, with few exceptions, always under pressure of revolutionary impact.

Timothy Granovskij's opinions of and attitudes towards the United States have never been investigated in any adequate way. The fact is that, in company with many outstanding figures of the Russian intelligentsia of those times, the distinguished professor at Moscow University did display a marked interest in American affairs. He never presented such full and well-rounded views as did Herzen or Ĉernysevŝkij a little later, but sparse as were Granovskij's comments upon American life and institutions, they are of significance to us today. From the eyes of this enlightened Russian, we may derive fruitful perspectives upon certain aspects of the American past.

Relatively little primary source material has been published about the German occupation of the Ukraine in 1918 and the uncanny political relationship between Berlin and the “independent” Ukraine recognised at Brest-Litovsk. The volume of secret German documents, which appeared as a Soviet publication in 1936, has every indication of authenticity. But since the work was primarily published as a weapon in the Nazi-Soviet propaganda war at a time when Hitler was obviously eyeing the Ukraine, it is apparent that the documents were selected (1) to emphasize particularly German military domination and interference in civilian life, requisitioning of food and raw materials, and commercial rapacity, and (2) to castigate all those Ukrainians who did not resist the Central Powers or who participated in non-Communist activity for Ukrainian independence.

Since then, you absent, I have turned slow pages—
“Fire of Life,” “Windlands,” “Childbirth,” “Only Dreamscape,“
Down to the veined complexity of “Stray Leaves,“
Critics find baffling.
Rapt and plumed splendour of the risen spirit,
Staking its all on foreign revolution;
Blackest eclipse of promised land in exile,—
So run the rhythms.
White love and pangs of birth in ancient symbols,
Impulses, probings of the years of anguish,
Last, the terse wisdom, grateful for survival,
Knowing no conquest.
W. K. Matthews, “Candles.“