Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence takes the Freudian concept of an oedipal relationship between father and son as a model for the relationship that exists when one artist, the father figure (or precursor, as Bloom calls him), influences another artist (the ephebe, in Bloom's terminology). Bloom's work provides a desirable redefinition of standard treatments of influence and stylistic change in that it offers a dynamic, rather than a static, paradigm, and denies any simplistic dissociation of the artist as historical figure from the poet as poet. Furthermore, it denies that literary influences can occur as purely verbal processes, and it affirms that the creative process is emotionally charged, like so many other important human experiences.

In Anxiety of Influence Bloom states, in typically absolute terms, “Poetic Influence—when it involves two strong, authentic poets,—always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation.“

For a little more than a decade following the Revolution of 1917, Russia experienced an unparalleled social transformation. Hardly any area of daily existence was left untouched by this juggernaut of change, from social mobility in the villages to the nature of the fine arts in the cities. If the term had not been appropriated by Stalin to describe the process of proletarianization in a somewhat later period, it would perhaps be more accurate to describe the decade of the 1920s in the Soviet Union as a genuine “cultural revolution.” Parallel and independent efforts were made in many areas—politics, economics, philosophy, science, literature, painting, health care—to reconceptualize society in a socialist context.

The Grass of Oblivion, a novel by Valentin Kataev, is a tribute to the Russian writers who were forced to choose their path during the revolution and the civil war. The theme may seem outdated, but the approach to the theme and its literary treatment are amazingly original and modern. In all of Soviet literature it would be difficult to find tragic images comparable to the two poets in this narrative (Bunin and Maiakovskii) who are compelled, finally and irrevocably, either to accept or reject the role offered to them by the new social order. Yet these images are outlined with such grace and elegance, and so tempered with irony, that an ambivalence, an almost diabolic duality is etched into the characters and events. Even the character of the narrator appears split, further complicating the multileveled narrative structure of the novel in which reality is so densely interwoven with fantasy that a third, synthesizing plane of meaning emerges.

In the 1860s the Russian government carried out a series of major reforms that had important consequences for key dimensions of Russian society—its economy, judiciary, local administration, army, censorship, and education. Historians have generally agreed that these reforms exerted a profound influence upon Russian historical development, but they have not arrived at an analogous consensus on how the reforms of the 1860s affected the general development of the country as a whole or the peasantry in particular. In this article I seek to analyze the immediate effect of the reforms of the 1860s on the fundamental institution of the peasantry—the commune. I shall employ a sociological approach, a mode of analysis for which the specialized literature is both rich and diverse, in an attempt to determine the underlying structural principles of the commune and to construct an analytical model for the functions and the development of the repartitional land commune.

In Poland the writing and teaching of history is not merely an academic discipline. In times of adversity history has served as an affirmation of national values. It is therefore not at all surprising that in the fall of 1980, when the movement for free association swept the country from Gdańsk, the liberation of history and historians from political constraints became an integral part of the efforts for renovation. For some thirty-five years the recasting and rewriting of Polish history had been central to the process of imposing and legitimizing Communist rule. Reform of the system in 1980 required, among other things, a coming to grips with the mendacious political mythology the system had spawned in striving to create the appropriate historical antecedents for a People's Poland.

The story of Polish historiography since 1945 demonstrates the tenacity of cultural patterns and habits of mind that have made it impossible to impose an interpretation alien to the national sense of identity and a methodology at odds with the canons of objective scholarship. And the regime failed to reshape the traditional interpretations despite the seemingly overwhelming advantages it enjoyed in terms of power, institutions, and funds.

Prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons has long been a theme of the Soviet! Union's declaratory arms control policy. It has also found concrete expression in Moscow's endorsement of the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America of 1967 (Treaty of Tlatelolco), the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968, and, since 1958, in the stringent nuclear export policy of the Soviet Union. Although much of Moscow's nonproliferation rhetoric and elements of its nonproliferation behavior can be explained in terms of narrow self-interest (namely, prevention of access to nuclear weapons by traditional adversaries), the range and consistency of its nonproliferation efforts, as well as certain specific actions, indicate that the Soviet leadership appreciates the dangers posed by the diffusion of nuclear weapons.

The Western ideal of journalistic objectivity, influenced by liberal principles of the rulers' accountability to the ruled and the empirical skepticism of science, developed as an occupational response by journalists to marketplace competition among commercially or politically motivated suppliers of information and came to define the journalist's professional ethic of impartiality and independence. At the same time the term professionalism must be used advisedly. Journalism is a field with some but not all of the attributes of a profession. By the usual tests of the freedom of the practitioners to govern entry and exit from the field, to possess an exclusive right to carry on their trade, and to set the standards of performance, journalists are not as autonomous as, for example, physicians and attorneys. If they sought to close the shop to outsiders or to set standards of writing and reporting, they would be infringing upon the prerogatives of “management”—editors and publishers.

Spurious documents may not change the course of history. But they do have their consequences—as the history of imperial and Soviet Russia vividly demonstrates. The most notorious modern forgeries spring to mind: “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” “The Sisson Documents,” “The Zinov'ev Letter,” “The Litvinov Journal,” and the oldest and most perdurable of them all, “The 'Testament' of Peter the Great,” his supposed grand plan for Russia to win world domination through conquest of the Near and Middle East. All of these forgeries have had their day and then passed into the lumber room of history—all, that is, except the “Protocols” and the “Testament.” Despite their notoriety, these two forgeries still find proponents today. But it is the most marginal, disreputable, and genocidal elements or states that pass off the “Protocols” as genuine, while some of our most respected officials, scholars, and journalists give credence to the “Testament.”

The autumn of 1830, which Pushkin spent in Boldino, was the most fruitful season in his creative life. After his return to Moscow he reported to Pletnev, “In Boldino I wrote as I have not written for a long time,” and presented his friend with a lengthy catalogue of his newest accomplishments. It included the last two chapters of Evgenii Onegin, “The Little House in Kolomna,” the four ”Little Tragedies,” and some thirty poems. The list was followed by Pushkin's “secret confession”: “That is still not all…. I have written five prose tales which are making Baratynskii hee-haw and kick about (“ot kotorykh Baratynskii rzhet i b'etsia”)—and which we shall also publish Anonyme.”

Among the problematic works of great writers, Pushkin's Boris Godunov occupies a special place. This strange hybrid of history, drama, narrative poetry, and prose Pushkin called a “romantic tragedy,” and he considered it his masterpiece. Yet the play's publication in 1831 was met with surprise and dismay. By consensus of a baffled public, Boris Godunov was a failure—neither romantic, nor feasible on the tragic stage.

Since that time, generations of critics, playwrights, and producers have tried to come to terms with this troublesome text. Tolstoi's famous comment—that all great nineteenth-century Russian works defy clear generic classification1—has been invoked in defense of many irregular texts, but not this one. Boris remains stubbornly, inexplicably “undramatic.” Criticism has in fact tended to redefine the play rather than to investigate it. Boundaries are routinely blurred between the historical Tsar Boris, the historical period when his tale is retold, and the world of the fictional creation itself.