Sharp conflict between Church and State has characterized the post-war years in Poland. Unlike the Orthodox Church in the USSR, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland has received no favors from the State, such as those acknowledged by Sergius, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. There has been no recognition by the State that the Church can be tolerated in Poland as it has come to be tolerated in the USSR. The attitude of the State toward the Polish Church has been quite different. It has been one of violent hostility.

The reason for this attitude of hostility can be found primarily in the fact that the Marxist State and the Roman Catholic Church represent two opposing ideologies and that neither of them is likely to give way when matters of principle are involved.

In a dismal village railway station, on November 7th, 1910, the rich life of Leo Tolstoy came to its melodramatic end. Several months later the Moscow Art Theater announced that rehearsals had begun on an unpublished play left by Tolstoy—“The Living Corpse,” better known in this country as “Redemption”.

At one time of my life I was connected with the Moscow Art Theater as executive assistant to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, cofounder with Stanislavsky and director of the Art Theater, and it is from my memory of the play's opening and from my conversations with Nemirovich-Danchenko that I am able to reconstruct this history of the origin and production of “The Living Corpse.”

The 1952 centenary of Nikolai Gogol's death was an occasion widely observed throughout the Soviet Union. Statues of the writer were erected in various cities, new productions of his plays were staged, and even a number of films made their appearance. More important, perhaps, was the publication of a great many biographical and critical studies of Gogol, together with over seven million copies of the author's own works. When this figure is compared with the roughly eighteen million copies published during the entire period since the 1917 Revolution, it provides a good quantitative indication of the importance now attached to Gogol by Soviet critics.

Officially the first Rumanian who came to the United States is considered to be George Pomutz from Transylvania. He took part in the American Civil War, settled down in Iowa, and became the American consul in St. Petersburg, Russia (February 16, 1866—September 30, 1870). Later he became the American consul general in St. Petersburg, Russia, and served the United States there from June 17, 1874, until his death on February 12, 1882.

There are, however, possible and strong indications of an earlier contact through another Rumanian from Transylvania as far back as the colonial times of North America. A reliable contemporary American source gives us a few details about the travels of a Transylvanian priest in the American colonies. This source is the famous American scholar, scientist and statesman, Benjamin Franklin.

Literary mystification is not a new phenomenon. The very use of a pseudonym is, to a certain degree, equivalent to perpetrating a literary hoax. But if an invented biography is added to an imaginary name, a mythical person is created with a life of his own and with a style associated with it. Often, but not necessarily, this style and consequently the whole character of the newly created mythical author acquires a more or less pronounced touch of parody. The preromantic and romantic periods saw a particularly large number of such mystifications.

In the December 1954 issue of The American Slavic and East European Review Paul W. Blackstock in an article entitled “The Occupation Fund Documents: a Reassessment of ‘a Crude and Ignorant Forgery’ ” replied to the present authors’ article, “The Occupation Fund Documents: a Diplomatic Forgery.” In his own words, Mr. Blackstock “examined and evaluated” the documents “as they might have been assessed by an intelligence analyst looking at them for the first time when the collection was acquired.” He also compared them with the Soviet publication, Adventures of Russian Tsarism in Bulgaria? Throughout his article he has applied the methods employed by government agencies to test the authenticity of contemporary documents of doubtful origin.

What do Soviet citizens think of the literary fare offered to them? The answer to this question may be guessed in part from accounts in the Soviet press. It is sometimes indicated that modern Soviet dramas have been largely unattended, while spectators have besieged theaters offering revivals of old favorites. Such indications from the official press are, however, no more than clues to the truth. Other hints are the annual lists of titles selected for publication together with the number of copies printed of each title. The real test, to be found in the freely expressed opinions of Soviet citizens, could not be made by outsiders. Now, at last, some suggestion of what such a test would indicate has been brought forward. It is to be found in the 329 interviews and 2718 questionnaires of Harvard University's Russian Research Center.