Peasant uprisings directed against the landowners and the state have always been a matter of interest to Marxists. This interest can be traced back from Stalin to Lenin, who attached special significance to the historic role of the peasantry, and further back to Engels, who published a separate study of the peasant war in Germany. In many respects this work of Engels became a model of research for Marxist scholars, who for a long time imitated it and frequently repeated its conclusions word for word. This applied both to his discussion of the causes of a "peasant war" and to his explanation of its failure.

Although Russia is a "civil law" country, her legal history presents a pattern of development quite different from the continental countries of the "Roman law" tradition. Russia did not share in the Reception of Roman law after the eleventh century, which is the common tradition of western European jurisprudence. The institutions and philosophy of the Reception remained foreign—indeed almost unknown— to the Russians. Yet the Russian jurists have been studying the Roman law since the eighteenth century, and even today it is a required subject for Soviet law students.

If the passion with which Russia's intelligentsia once debated the fate of capitalism in Russia has long since subsided, the fascination the problem evoked has been transmitted with little diminution to the student of intellectual history who peruses the dispute at one remove. Hardly a year goes by when some article on this theme does not find its way into the periodical literature. Among the more recent contributions to the discussion have been the essays of Professor Von Laue in these pages and in the Review of Politics on the narodnik and Marxist sides of the controversy respectively. In the latter piece, he concentrates attention upon legal Marxism, a rather neglected episode which, coming at the climax of the great debate, is of obvious significance.

During the past three years the USSR and Eastern Europe have embarked upon a credit and technical assistance program in several underdeveloped countries in the Free World. These activities are not an aid program in the Western sense. Rather, they consist, except for a few small gifts and a token $1,400,000 contribution, through the United Nations, entirely of loans with specific repayment terms. The significance of the Soviet and East European program lies in its economic nature and its dual—economic and political—motivation and effect.

Soviet interest in Sinkiang is a legacy of Tsarist Russia. Although the new Soviet government formally renounced, in 1917, all claims to the Russian spheres of influence in China, it soon reasserted its interest in Sinkiang, and by the mid-thirties, after the construction of the Turksib Railway, it held a virtual economic monopoly there. Soviet attempts to work out a permanent agreement for the "joint" exploitation of Sinkiang's mineral resources date back to October, 1931, and at various times at least four or five agreements were concluded or proposed by Moscow. None, however, ever became fully operative; most of them were short-lived and were concluded without the knowledge of Nanking.

To a world in which free men and men striving to be free are threatened by Communist expansion, it has become increasingly important to understand how and why in other times and places the Communists have been able to seize power. The classic example would seem to be the Soviet Union itself; and yet, although more than thirty-five years have elapsed since the "February" and "October Days," the actual course of the revolution in vast areas of the Soviet Union has not been adequately studied. One such area is that formed by the former Trans-Baikal, Amur and Maritime Territories— a broad tract of land more than 600,000 square miles in area, larger than Outer Mongolia or Manchuria, lying on the shores of the Amur River, in the heart of the Russian Far East.

Remembered today mainly as a reactionary propagandist and as a writer of colorful and exotic though not especially significant novels, Konstantin Leont'ev also wrote highly original and provocative criticism of Russian literature. Departing radically from the standard doctrine that Russia's literary "golden age," having begun with Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol, continued until the end of the nineteenth century, Leont'ev attempted to show that Pushkin and his contemporaries represented the end of great Russian literary development, and that all who came afterwards were victims or symbols of decline.

The decision to terminate the NEP and to introduce rapid collectivization in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1920's brought the problem of social classes into sharp focus. Although the role of the kulaks had been encouraged under the NEP, it was now decided to move against them and to expropriate them. In pursuance of the instructions of the Fifteenth Party Congress, which opened on December 2, 1927, "the Party launched a determined offensive against the kulaks, putting into effect the slogan: rely firmly on the poor peasantry, strengthen the alliance with the middle peasantry, and wage a resolute struggle against the kulaks."

This article is based on data assembled during a thirty-two day visit to Russia in June and July, 1956. Occasionally I supplemented my personal observations by material gleaned from other travelers, and I used data from the Soviet press when this seemed appropriate, to place my personal observations in context.

I was interested in studying "cultural exchange" between Communist Russia and the West. My point of view was that of a proponent of the "open society," anxious to participate in any exchange of ideas that might contribute, despite Communist suspicion, to a beneficial interaction between the two "camps" into which our world is divided. Perhaps this statement seems pretentious.

An acutely significant episode in the history of Soviet Russia, rendered no less important by the perspective of recent events, is the development of the organizational machinery of the Communist Party in the years immediately following the civil war. It was this period which witnessed the true realization of Lenin's prerevolutionary ideal of the monolithic party, despite the paradox that the model of conspiratorial discipline was designed for the accomplishment of the revolution, not the organization of the post-revolutionary society.

At noon on Saturday, October 26, 1918, as World War I drew to its agonizing close, the courtyard behind stately Independence Hall in Philadelphia witnessed one of the dramatic episodes of its long and colorful history. From a platform Professor Thomas G. Masaryk, soon to be President-designate of Czechoslovakia, read out a "Declaration of Common Aims" of the newly created Mid- European Union. Flanking the venerable philosopher-statesman from Prague were representatives of European nationalities who had just signed the "Declaration," eminent citizens of Philadelphia, and delegates of American patriotic societies and political parties.

Four different conceptions of the role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union can be discerned as having had an influence upon its recruitment policy at different periods. One or the other of these conceptions has dominated in each phase of the Party's growth, with the exception of the Civil War years and the period of World War II. In those two turbulent times a relatively open door policy prevailed, and devoted war service seems to have been the main criterion of suitability for membership.

During the winter of 1912-1913 Lenin studied the problem of nationalism with all his famous powers of concentration. Such a study was long overdue. Two great multinational states—the Austro- Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire—had been steadily disintegrating; a third multinational state—the Russian Empire— was full of latent national hostilities; and so far the Russian Bolsheviks had failed to come to grips with the issue of nationalism. During this winter Lenin asked two of his disciples, Josip Dzhugashvili, a Georgian, and Stepan Shahoumian (Shaumian), an Armenian, to formulate their ideas on the nationality problem. He probably chose these men because they were natives of the Caucasus, an area of especially complex nationality problems.

With Malenkov's demotion and Bulganin's accession to the Premiership in February, 1955, the post-Stalin era in the land of the Soviets entered what seems to be its second stage. Marked by a greatly risen ascendancy of Khrushchev, it has thus far been a stage full of conspicuous and often bewildering happenings. Heavy industry has resumed its position of absolute dominance and to advocate an emphasis upon light industry, as was fashionable in the days of Malenkov's Premiership, again amounts to "right-wing deviationism." "Judas" Tito has become acceptable. The 1943 Teheran atmosphere has been taken out of cold storage and refurbished as the "Geneva spirit."

On April 21, 1957, the "Slogans of the CK KPSS for May 1, 1957" appeared on the front page of Pravda. This was the ninth list of Central Committee slogans to be issued following the death of Stalin. Its principal significance was the indication it gave that at long last Soviet slogan-makers had made an effort to face up to the moribund state into which the slogans had fallen. Under Stalin the slogas devolved into a formula-ridden repetition of stock words and phrases, ever growing more long-winded and dull. Gone were the brief, pungent slogans in the classic manner: "Who does not work— does not eat."

It is twenty years since the death of T. G. Masaryk, the first President of the Czechoslovak Republic. Only a few years ago, the Communist government in Czechoslovakia celebrated Masaryk's birthday with the whole nation. This was done because of recognition by the Communists of Masaryk's influence on the people of Czechoslovakia. It was not because of a failure of the Communist Party to discern his uncompromising anticommunist views and activities. It was to their advantage in winning favor to be identified early with the strength of Masaryk.

This article presents a general survey of the metallurgical industry of Poland based on recent statistics, some of which are still unpublished. The information on efficiency, raw material shortages, and costs is designed to throw light on the industry's comparative advantage position and on the economic rationality of its investments.

In 1955, Poland produced 4,400,000 tons of crude steel, a little less than one-tenth as much as the Soviet Union and seven percent of the steel output of the entire Soviet bloc including Communist China. By 1960, the output of steel is scheduled to reach around 250 kilograms per head (which may be compared with 291 kgs in France and 113 kgs in Italy in 1955). Poland is now in process of overtaking Czechoslovakia in overall level of steel production though still lagging far behind in output per head.

The Mass Emigration of people from the various European states was not a haphazard chapter of history. Emigration represented a natural outcome of those social problems which beset many European countries for long periods. Grave social problems determined those ultimate motives which prompted large masses to leave behind the well-known boundaries of their native land to try their luck in a strange country. In the case of Hungary, too, the social and economic background makes emigration comprehensible. Such a background explains that strange turn of social history which suddenly transformed Hungary from a country of immigration into a country of emigration.

"Understanding any foreign system of law is difficult"; "Cases have different value in different systems, but in all systems a student who wants to understand the system must refer to cases."

These two statements borrowed from an interesting article by Prof. J. N. Hazard indicate the point at issue in the following discussion. In the United States Professors H. Berman, V. Gsovski, G. Guins, J. Hazard, and H. Kelsen have devoted special works to the study of Soviet law, not to mention a number of valuable articles written by various competent jurists.

On October 17, 1905, the tsar published a decree establishing freedom of speech and of the press in Russia. Very soon, however, restrictions were again imposed: even preliminary censorship quickly returned. That brief period in the fall of 1905 remains important in the political and literary history of Russia; a moment when two great movements collided over the crucial issue of freedom.

The most vital and most imaginative political group in Russia at that time was Lenin's Social Democratic Party. The most vital and imaginative literary group was the Symbolists, whose activities more or less centered in the magazine Vesy (The Balance).