The natural inclination of most “area” scholars—not to mention others—is to become preoccupied with the personalities, institutions, and achievements of the dominant culture, through the nationally aggregated values and norms. The justification for this approach is a belief in the supposedly inexorable process of the “homogenization” of the national culture and the inevitability of greater centralized control as a result of the technology of mass communications and organization. But it is increasingly apparent that even in “developed” countries, such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—let alone Italy, Nigeria, or Pakistan—some of the more insistent and intractable “national” problems turn out to be basically regional in origin and character. At least as important in the long run as conflict of ethnic or religious origin is the increasingly familiar deepening of regional inequalities in the richer nations as a result of more perfect interregional competition, diffusion of information, and the high potential mobility of educated and affluent populations. At first glance the Soviet Union, with its traditional practice of centralized control over the bodies and souls of its citizens and the all-pervading pressure toward national coherence and uniformity, might appear more appropriate than most countries for study as a national system with national character and goals. Yet here, too, some of the more interesting and thorny problems facing the Soviet leaders and planners concerning the health and general viability of their country resolve themselves into essentially regional ones.

In the wake of the rising interest in Soviet nationalities and the problems that the nationality phenomenon produces for the Soviet political and economic system, it is gratifying to read a geographer's discussion of regionalism in this huge Soviet state. The nationality question can be best elucidated by inter-disciplinary studies; logically it follows that the question of regionalism does not belong exclusively to the jurisdiction of geographers and economists. It is obvious, however, from reading Professor Hooson's article that geographers can make a considerable contribution to the understanding of the development and prospects of Soviet nationalities.

The connection between regionalism and nationalities is not artificial. Soviet regionalism, whether considered in geographical, historical, or other terms, is intertwined with the prospects of nationalities, because these groups provide much of the demographic matrix in which development occurs and to which the Kremlin's political decisions apply. The political aspect, furthermore, is especially pronounced in the Soviet case, because the large, compactly settled national groups live in regions adjacent to the borders of the Soviet state; theoretically their republics have the right to secede from the Soviet Union. The Soviet state itself was organized to accommodate these nationalities, and they are supposed to share in decision-making as well as in the benefits that the Soviet system can confer.

In discussing the contribution of the Polish “Formal” or “Integral” School to the development of literary research, one of the difficulties is whether to view it mainly as an echo of Russian Formalism or as a scholarly movement in its own right. There is no doubt that the often strikingly suggestive theoretical slogans and undeniable practical achievements of the Russian Formalists—such as Shklovsky's insights on the theory of the novel, V. I. Propp's Morphology of the Folktale, M. A. Petrovsky's Morphology of the Short Story, and the research of Boris Tomashevsky, Viktor Zhirmunsky, and Roman Jakobson in the field of poetry—all greatly attracted those Polish scholars who were looking for a coherent, strictly literary set of criteria, discouraged as they were by the inflation of biographism and psychologism in literary research. Yet the impact of Russian Formalism was limited in scope and in many respects rather indirect. On the one hand, the reaction against the one-sidedness of the psychological school came in Poland independently, and in some ways even earlier than in Russia. For this the Polish scholars did not need to go to Russia—they had both ancient (Aristotle) and more modern sources (German, Italian, French, and others). On the other hand, many of the Polish scholars did not even know the Russian language, though they knew some Western languages very well. (The scholar who was to become the foremost promoter of Formalism, Manfred Kridl, knew very little Russian when he came to teach at the University of Wilno. It was under the influence and with the help of a group of students that he became familiar with the writings of the Formalists.)

Encumbered by an accumulation of rhetorical devices, the panegyric ode seemed an unlikely vehicle for poetic innovation. Yet when Gavriil Derzhavin, after more than a decade of literary activity, turned once again to the celebration of that most illustrious of subjects, the Empress Catherine, he was rewarded with the immediate recognition of both his fellow writers and the monarch herself for his impressive success in the genre. Although odes previously written had given evidence of the poet's competency in working with this form, it was with “Felitsa” and “A Mirza's Vision” that he demonstrated his capacity for transcending its limitations. While seeming to accept the conventions of established genres, he subtly subverted them through recombinations which stressed the importance of a more subjective poetic vision.

Of particular significance was Derzhavin's introduction of both thematic and stylistic elements from the “oriental tale,” a prose genre which enjoyed considerable popularity throughout much of the eighteenth century. In terms of narrative stance, this provided the poet with an alternative to the traditionally anonymous role of the panegyrist. Clad in the disguise of the oriental moralist or mirza, he could address his sovereign in direct and uninhibited fashion and simultaneously create an impression of his own worth as a poet. In both odes it was the relationship between mirza and mistress or, more specifically, the poet's conception of his role in the service of the empress which lent much of the freshness to these works.

The intellectual debate which was taking place in Russia during the reign of Alexander I included a polemic which, although little known today, involved the most important Russian and Polish historians of the time, Karamzin and Lelewel, as well as other historians, writers, and journalists. Among the latter, the transplanted Pole, Tadeusz Bulharyn (Faddei V. Bulgarin), played a crucial part. The polemic developed into a controversy touching on the leading issues of the day, and it produced a sensation commanding the interest of the highest official and intellectual circles, including, reportedly, Alexander I himself. The polemic was largely provoked by the political views of Karamzin.

According to Marc Raeff, the political ideas of Nikolai M. Karamzin (1766-1826) are a subject by themselves—still needs investigation. A writer of immensely popular sentimental stories, an innovator in the area of the Russian language, and a member of the progressive literary circle “Arzamas,” Karamzin nevertheless had become the spokesman of the old-fashioned, conservative, serf-owning nobility. It seems that Karamzin's first conservative leanings were a reaction to the later, more radical, phase of the French Revolution. They were voiced, subsequently, in his historical novels. Later, the Napoleonic Wars on the one hand and Alexander's liberal aspirations on the other further strengthened Karamzin's conservative feelings, which were finally provoked, under the influence of the Grand Duchess Catherine, Alexander's ambitious sister, by current projects for the reorganization of Russia.

Since the establishment of socialist governments in Eastern Europe following World War II , Svetozar Marković has become the most celebrated figure of nineteenth-century Yugoslav history. Not only was Marković the first important socialist in the Balkans, but he received his education in Russian populism at its source in St. Petersburg, participated in the activities of the Russian Section of the First International in Switzerland, organized the first consumers' and workers' collectives in the Balkans, and edited Serbia's first socialist newspaper. An incisive critic of the Serbian bureaucracy, Marković hoped to avoid the pitfalls of modernization in Serbia by establishing a democratic system of local administration based on the traditional peasant commune. Even though he was not successful, his vigorous analyses of social problems, his faith in science, and his uncompromising idealism exerted a strong influence on his contemporaries, turning the politically inclined among them from liberalism to radicalism and the artistically inclined from romanticism to realism. Little wonder, therefore, that since World War II this unusual and brilliant man has become a cultural hero in Yugoslavia.

Every effort is being made to retain in the literature programs of the Soviet schools and universities all the best work of the Russian literary giants of the nineteenth century. There is even a trend in Soviet scholarship to place the best literary work of the Soviet period in the tradition of the nineteenth-century Russian classics. Lenin repeated time and again that it was necessary “to assimilate critically all that is valuable from the preceding culture.” Some Soviet scholars go even further and claim that socialist realism and its best representatives are continuing the literary traditions of the great nineteenth-century Russian writers. Konstantin Fedin is thought of as one who continues Turgenev's “traditions of intellectualism” and shares his ability to be “a chronicler of his epoch, a creator of unforgettable women characters,” and Sholokhov is regarded as a writer who further develops Tolstoy's style. Some Soviet critics even complain because there is no visible link in the educational programs to connect Mayakovsky with Pushkin and Lermontov.

In the economic literature one finds a plethora of propositions about the macro-economic determinants of the distribution of labor incomes. One of the theories is that as the level of economic development rises, labor incomes are bound to become more equalized. Another view is that the larger the nation, the greater will be the separation of labor markets and the greater the inequality of labor income. Unfortunately there is relatively little speculation in the West about the impact of the economic system on the distribution of labor incomes, and those propositions that can be found are quite contradictory. Some have argued that labor incomes should become more equal under socialism because of the more equal distribution of education and because the government is able to reduce the power of noncompeting labor groups to raise their incomes far above those of the average workers. Others have suggested that the government's power to manipulate wages between industrial sectors and branches in order to attract workers to priority sectors could lead to greater inequalities in labor incomes. Since all of these arguments are based on what a socialist government “could” or “should” do, rather than what they actually are doing, their validity can be established only through empirical investigation.

“The productive effort of society,” Communist mythology avers, “has as its goal the provision of increasingly abundant amounts of consumer goods. Moreover, that is the ultimate aim of all production. It should be noted that in a socialist economy, in contrast with systems based on private ownership of the means of production, it becomes a direct goal.” It is also said that “the aim of the socialist economy is full satisfaction of the needs of the population.” One would expect that the fulfillment of this aim would be accompanied by a substantial rise in real wages. The purpose of this note is to check whether that logical conclusion applies to changes in real wages in Poland, by comparing two recent independent estimates—one by W. Krencik, published in Gospodarka Planowa, the Polish economic journal devoted to problems of planning, and the other by the present writer, published in Soviet Studies.