What sort of man was Paul Pestel, the unfortunate and influential Decembrist? What was the character of his mind, and what were the principles of the reforms for which he gave his life in 1826? The answers to these questions were long concealed. On the one hand, the Tsarist Government suppressed Pestel's writings and locked up the records of his mock trial until 1905; and on the other, admiration amounting to hero worship confused the minds of many students for whom any Decembrist was deemed to be a saintly martyr to the cause of freedom.

Alexander Herzen was most responsible for the hero worship. Herzen, at fourteen, was deeply moved by the execution of Pestel and four other Decembrists, and the event gave purpose to his whole life. Thirty years later, he wrote: “Before that altar [the gallows] defiled by bloody rites, I swore to avenge the murdered men, and dedicated myself to the struggle with that throne…. I have not avenged them … but for thirty years I have stood under that flag and have never once deserted it.”

Soviet law is the law of a society of a new type. That society is an ideocracy, or a society allegedly ruled not by men, but by an idea, the idea in question being, of course, Marxism in its Leninist-Stalinist interpretation. An ideocracy seems, however, to require as much enforcement as any other type of society. Nobody questions the fact that, in the Soviet Union, coercion, both on the legal and extralegal level, reaches high levels of intensity.

In so far as Soviet law expresses the ideocratic nature of Soviet society, it must be, and actually is, unique. But not all is unique in that law; there are also many elements in which Soviet law differs only slightly from pre-Revolutionary Russian law. Since Imperial Russian law belonged to the family of Western law (in contradistinction to the Chinese, Hindu, Islamic and other families of law) and more exactly, to the class called “civil law” (in contradistinction to the common law of the Anglo-Saxon countries), European jurists and even American jurists, though not so easily, can find in that law many traits with which they are familiar.

The Recent Publication by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR of the third and final volume of documents covering the famous trial of the Petraševcy is an important event for students of Russian history. Although the volume contains little that is novel and nothing that is surprising, it will probably remain the last collection of primary sources to throw light on M. V. Butaševič-Petraševskij and his circle. Unless some of the lost materials of the trial are found, or unless some other relevant documents unexpectedly turn up, our stock of basic information about the Petraševcy is not likely to increase appreciably, and our final judgment of this group will have to be based on the present limited number of sources.

Indeed such a final judgment has already been made in Soviet historical literature, both in the introduction to the third volume of the trial documents and especially in a review article by N. Sladkevič occasioned by the appearance of the volume.

When, in 1766, Catherine II summoned the Legislative Commission to convene in Petersburg, there were among the deputies representing the various provinces of the Russian empire delegates sent by the Moslem population of the Volga and Ural regions. In the memoranda which these delegates presented to the Commission and in the instructions received by them from their electors, there were embodied the main grievances of the Tatar people. These complaints concerned the difficult religious and economic situation of the Tatars, who, since conquest of the Kazan khanate by Ivan the Terrible, had been subjected to permanent persecution for there faith and had become severely restricted in their rights. The Tatar delegates asked for recognition of their faith, for the removal of limitations on their trade activity, and for restitution of the rights of the Tatar nobility.

There is general agreement in the historical literature devoted to the reign of Alexander I that Mikhail Speranskij was the most outstanding political figure of the period. But far less agreement is shown when it comes to an appraisal of his political career and to a critical analysis of the basic intent of his reform proposals.

Some historians, like M. N. Pokrovskij for example, see him merely as a puppet in the hands of economic and social forces, the editorial secretary whose job it was to put into legal form the demands of the growing Russian bourgeoisie. Others, with less of a dogmatic socio-economic approach to history, see in him an intelligent imitator and adapter of French or other Western administrative models. The dean of modern Russian historiography, V. Kljucevskij, though recognizing Speranskij's significance and the interest presented by his personality, views him as a theoretician and “idéologue,” very little interested in either the practical results of his plans or the individual welfare of the people, garnering his abstract conceptions indiscriminately from the most disparate sources. And the “cadet” historian of nineteenth century Russia, Aleksandr Kornilov, considers Speranskij a genuine liberal constitutionalist who aimed at replacing an obsolete and tyrannical political system with a limited monarchy whose major features were his own invention.

National deviation or, in Soviet parlance, “bourgeois nationalism” has figured prominently in the party literature since the establishment of the Stalinist regime. It is a conveniently generic heresy and has been applied to national groups which had hardly any bourgeoisie worthy of the name prior to the Revolution. It is a label which is applied to real or imagined, to actual or potential non-Russian opponents of the regime within the country in an effort to discredit them by associating them with real or imagined external enemies. In the pre-war period, as well as to a certain extent since the war, “bourgeois nationalists” were linked with the revolutionary national non-Russian governments of the 1917–1920 period which unsuccessfully resisted the Bolshevik onslaught. Those who were charged with national deviation in the 1930's were accused of having aided foreign intelligence services in an attempt to facilitate the return of the old order and of wanting to turn the Soviet Union into a colony of the capitalist states.

In the symphony that is Russian history, the muted trumpet of irony is often sounded. Russian Marxists have long argued that Russia entered upon the capitalist phase of its development with the emancipation reforms of the 1860's. Since the Bolshevik Revolution and the nationalization of Russian industry followed the reforms only by some fifty to sixty years, it would appear that, compared with other major European states, Russia experienced only a short period of capitalism. However, in the nineteenth century, it was not the Russian Marxists, but their antagonists, the Narodniks, who had contended that capitalism was alien to Russia and could not strike deep root there. In the first two decades of its existence (the last two decades of the nineteenth century), the Russian Marxist movement expended a major part of its energy in attacks upon and efforts to undermine the Narodnik outlook which for some time had held sway among the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia.

By common agreement among virtually all political complexions, Lenin's State and Revolution is accepted as the core of his doctrine of revolution and the proletarian dictatorship. A striking indication of the importance and contemporary relevance attributed to the work has been its use as evidence in the trials of the leaders of the American Communist party for conspiring to overthrow the government. And to the present Soviet commentator no less than to his bitterest adversary, State and Revolution sets up the premises from which the Soviet reality of today is considered to be the logical conclusion.

Yet this reasoning cannot be sustained on the basis of logic alone. State and Revolution is a work conforming neither to Lenin's previous thought nor to his subsequent practice. It stands as a monument to its author's intellectual deviation during the year of revolution, 1917.

Hardly was the stain of parricide cleansed from the hands of Alexander I when he wrote Prince Czartoryski to return posthaste from Italy to Russia. Scion of one of Poland's most distinguished noble families, Prince Adam George Czartoryski had been summoned as a hostage to the Russian Court following the last partition of Poland. Here the handsome, young, and cultured Polish nobleman became a friend and confidant of the impressionable Alexander, who was still only in his teens. The Prince's relations with the Grand Duchess Elizabeth were even more intimate and when she gave birth to a daughter bearing striking resemblance to the dark Polish nobleman, Emperor Paul ordered Czartoryski to leave the country immediately to serve as ambassador to the throneless King of Sardinia. The murder of Paul and the accession of Alexander brought to an end the brief diplomatic exile of Prince Adam, who returned from Italy to become one of the closest advisers of the new Tsar.

The first broadcast in Russian to the Soviet Union was sent out by the Voice of America on February 17, 1947. Following a surprising silence of almost two months, the first quasi-official public reaction of the Soviet regime came in the form of an article by Ilya Ehrenburg under the title "A False Voice," appearing significantly enough in Culture and Life, the newspaper of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Since that date there has been a modest but steady output of comments on the Voice of America in Soviet press and radio communications, and a survey of selected Soviet sources for the four-year period April 1, 1947, through March 31, 1951, yielded almost 1,000 references. This body of material provides a basis for analyzing the pattern of the Soviet reaction to the challenge posed by the Voice of America. Thus, it holds out the possibility of further insight into Soviet communications policy. In addition, the data provide a basis for a case study of international propaganda warfare, a phenomenon of growing importance in the relations of national states in modern times.

The year 1931 was marked in Soviet economic legislation by a somersault and fundamental change of line. On March fourth of that year the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the Union decreed the abolition of government agencies called “Arbitration Commissions” (Boards). This was done in order to foster the “strengthening of the unification of the judicial system” as well as “to develop economic discipline and to raise the responsibility of the economic units for their work.” Cases which had come under the jurisdiction of these boards were now placed under that of the civil courts

But on May third of the same year the Government reversed its policy in this respect, and decreed the re-creation of Government Arbitration in order to resolve all disputes arising between public, industrial, and commercial enterprises “with the aim of strengthening the discipline of contracts and plans as well as the settling of accounts among these enterprises.” This decree provides that the Arbitration Boards shall have jurisdiction over all disputes arising from contracts and deals among state-owned enterprises.

Local self-government holds an important, if not the most important, place both in the constitutional system of the new Yugoslavia and in the process of her formation and development. One of the starting points for the constitutional revision which has taken place by stages in Yugoslavia since 1950 is the reorganization of local self-government. This reorganization has been carried out under the General Law on People's Committees of April 1, 1952, and other republic laws enacted subsequently

In order to understand the organization and the activity of the system of local self-government, we must describe in general outline the course it has followed in its development. The organs of local self-government are called the “people's committees.” They were organized under the name of "National Liberation Committees" at the very outset of the struggle for national liberation, that is, in the early days of the uprising against the invader in August, 1941.

All modern countries are familiar with the practice of governmental or royal awards to military personnel for distinguished action. Traditionally, these awards have been of an honorary rather than a material nature, in keeping with the concept that such actions are not assessable in money terms and cannot be rewarded in them.

Moreover in a number of countries analogous procedures have developed in the civilian sphere, whereby grateful governments reward those who have rendered some signal service of a political, economic, scientific, or artistic nature. Great Britain has long had such a system, though it is only since the beginning of this century that its scope has been extended to more than a small segment of society; now there are honorary awards for coal miners as well as cabinet ministers, conferred personally by the sovereign.

The role of the army and administrative officials in establishing Soviet authority in the areas occupied by the USSR during the past war is dramatic, and therefore carefully studied by those who analyze Soviet techniques. Much less notoriety attaches to the work of the courts, yet Soviet leaders appear to place considerable reliance upon these agencies in remolding a society in their own image. It was the writer's fate as a member of the Law Faculty of Lvov University to supervise the students' practice in the civil courts of the city of Czernowitz during the first Soviet occupation in 1940-1941. The city, as the capital of the former Rumanian Province of Bukovina, was the heart of the economic and political life of a territory whose northern part was brought under Soviet domination during the period of Soviet-Nazi collaboration in the early stages of the war. As such it was destined to play a key part in the Sovietization of an important segment of Eastern Europe.

In the summer of 1892 the Bulgarian newspaper Svoboda (Freedom) published a large number of highly incriminating documents purporting to expose Russian policy in the Balkans, especially in Bulgaria, in the crucial decade of the eighteen-eighties. Subsequently, these and additional documents appeared in book form in the Russian language under the title Okkupacionnyj Fond (The Occupation Fund). In 1893 the collection was republished in Berlin in French translation by R. Leonoff and entitled, Documents secrets de la politique russe en orient, 1881–1890. The documents dealt primarily with the conspiratorial tactics employed by Russian representatives in the Balkans to carry through Russian foreign policy aims. Many episodes were covered, as, for example, the Russian role in the Bosnia-Hercegovina revolt of 1881–1882; the efforts to overthrow Alexander of Battenberg in 1884–1885; General Kaul'bar's mission of 1886, which sought to prevent the election of a successor to Alexander of Battenberg; the Russian plans for the occupation of Bulgarian ports in 1887; and the Novikov plot of 1887–1888, which aimed at the overthrow of Ferdinand of Coburg.

The cult of heroism in the USSR today lies at the very heart of the ideological patterns of justification, instruction, and inspiration advanced by the governors of that society. The model behavior of the new Soviet hero, as it is presented in literature, in the classroom, or in the press, is designed to drive men to the fulfillment of their public tasks and to regulate, as well, the organization of their private lives. The concept of the exemplary hero, taken as a quintessential and idealized statement of the Soviet view of human nature, touches on many currents of thought, most directly on the junction point of ethical and psychological theory, but beyond that, upon all the disciplines concerned with the condition of the Soviet individual in his society.

At an “International economic conference” held in Moscow in April, 1952, speakers from Soviet bloc countries presented summary figures on the volume of East-West trade which, as they claimed, could be achieved within the next two or three years on condition that “artificial barriers” (i.e., mainly Western security export controls) were removed. These figures were intended to document the contention that, in the absence of such barriers, the Soviet bloc would welcome expansion of East-West trade to a level high enough to produce most far-reaching and beneficial effects in the West in respect of relieving the dollar shortage, improving living standards, reducing unemployment, assisting the development of backward economies, and so on.

The speed of Soviet industrial expansion during the Five Year Plans as measured by the rate of growth of industrial output has evoked keen interest and much controversy among Western observers of Soviet affairs. Soviet industrial development has attracted attention from abroad for three main reasons: i) because of the accompanying rise of the Soviet Union as a great international power, 2) as an example of a centrally controlled and directed economy in action, and 3) as a possible model for the economic development of backward areas. The source of controversy has been the uncertain accuracy of the statistical descriptions of Soviet economic development and especially industrial growth.

Official Soviet measures of industrial output are suspect for reasons connected with the technique of their construction. Until 1950, published statistics on aggregate Soviet industrial output were expressed in prices nominally of the crop year 1926-27.

The mass migration of millions of minority peoples from their homelands during and after World War II was a surgeon's solution to a problem of long standing for many East European countries and especially for Hungary. As a result of this drastic attempt to eliminate completely the historic conflicts between national minority groups and the dominant people of the state in which they lived, the efforts of earlier regimes to reduce national friction may seem to have lost importance for the current politician. Such friction is admittedly no longer part of a live and sometimes sensitive problem, the more so since the states of Eastern Europe as they existed between the wars have ceased to exist, and since the domestic factors which gave rise to Hungarian policies of the time have changed radically. Yet, there may come a time again when the solutions of the present are subjected to review. An analysis of the policies and experience of the past may then be helpful in reaching conclusions. It is in this spirit that this study is presented by one who shared in the execution of some phases of the policy.