The image of the “Terrible Tsar” struck the imagination of his contemporaries with such force that it continued to tower in Russian consciousness until quite recent times. In chronicles and tales, folk songs and stories, and in historiography from Karamzin on, Ivan IV remained alive, more vivid even than Peter the Great. And the impact was not restricted to Russians; beginning with the Dutch, English, Italians, Danes, and Germans—adventurers, diplomats, merchants, prisoners, mercenaries— who visited the Russia of Ivan IV, the Tsar left an impression in West European minds such that today men who know nothing about Russia or its history will know the name of Ivan the Terrible.

Czechoslovak foreign trade is of special interest for several reasons: First, Czechoslovakia is the East European country most active in trade in terms of per capita exports and imports of goods and, with a few exceptions (for instance, Bulgaria), also in terms of the ratio of visible trade to national product. In 1965 exports per inhabitant amounted to $189, compared with $181 in East Germany, $150 in Hungary, $144 in Bulgaria, $71 in Poland, $58 in Rumania, and $35 in the USSR. In the same year per capita imports were $188 in Czechoslovakia, $151 in Hungary, $ 149 in East Germany, $144 in Bulgaria, and $35 in the USSR. As in other Communist countries (with the exception of Yugoslavia), the ratio of foreign trade to national product is difficult to determine, mainly because of the almost complete divorce between domestic and foreign trade prices. One can only very roughly estimate that in 1966 Czechoslovakia’s ratio of visible exports to gross national product, in terms of approximative factor cost, was one fifth and the ratio of imports to GNP only slightly less than one fifth. Thus, Czechoslovak economy is again as dependent on foreign trade as it was in 1937.

Men whom Hegel defines as world-historical figures because they shape the lives of generations by establishing systems of rule, law, or belief are sometimes called educators of their times. In such a general and figurative use of the term, the title educator is of course honorific and not bestowed for achievements specifically educational. This has happened to Lenin. When a historian attributes to him “an enormous pedagogical success,” he really means that Lenin managed to impose upon his party a style of rule in which expedient action is supported by ideological justification. The educator in this case is a master political strategist and might seem to be a more suitable subject of inquiry for the political scientist than for the historian of education. The metaphor, however, conceals a part of reality. It is true that Lenin wrote no treatise on education.

It is difficult to think of any writer of any century who has displayed such a wide range of verbal talent as Vladimir Nabokov. His flashing prose has earned him an important place both in American and in Russian literature. Original prose and poetry, translations of prose and poetry, meticulous scholarly criticism and commentary, devastating literary polemic—everything seems within his range. But Nabokov’s chameleonic transformations from Russian into English and English into Russian are particularly fascinating to watch. He has translated (or helped translate) his own Russian novels, including Priglashenie na kazn’, Zashchita Luzhina, and Dar, into English; he has translated English works including Pnin, Speak, Memory, and, most recently, Lolita into Russian. The metamorphosis of Otchaianie into Despair is a special case, because while translating the novel Nabokov made certain revisions.

The collapse of the Russian monarchy in February and the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October 1917 confronted Rumanian leaders with the prospect of a violent change in their own country. Rumania’s participation in the First World War on the side of the Entente had by February 1917 resulted in a succession of military defeats and the occupation of two-thirds of the country, including Bucharest, by German and Austro-Hungarian forces. The court and most of the leading politicians had taken refuge in Iasi, the chief city of Moldavia, located only a few miles from the Russian border. A Russian army of about a million men and a reorganized Rumanian field army of some eighteen divisions manned a newly stabilized front which stretched from Bukovina in the north along the eastern slopes of the Carpathians to southern Moldavia

In a recent review of Wasiolek’s work on Dostoevski’s major writings Joseph Frank criticized the idea of moral ambiguity as “unquestionably the most dubious“ in the book. Although he regards the idea as useful and relevant, Frank feels that Wasiolek makes the “ambiguity more radical than it really is.” What is this concept and how radical is it in Dostoevski’s work?

The notion is a more subtle and far-reaching version of the common view that things are not necessarily what they seem to be. It says that situations and actions are in themselves neutral and meaningless; any value or meaning is imposed by us. Expressed thus, moral ambiguity seems a rarefied concept, but in Dostoevski’s hands it becomes a vivid, if still confusing, reality. It is best illustrated at first by specific and limited incidents.