Although many Western scholars believe that 5 million Soviet peasants died as a result of forced collectivization, this inference is not firmly supported by official prewar census statistics. Official statistics suggest that there may have been as many as 9.2 million excess deaths between 1927 and 1939, a figure more than ample to cover hypothesized collectivization fatalities, but Frank Lorimer has argued that half of this discrepancy may be explained by a 27 percent underestimation of the mortality rate in the census of 1926. The possibility that standard Western estimates substantially exaggerate estimated collectivization fatalities therefore cannot be dismissed, even before allowance is made for victims of the famine of 1933-1934, Gulag forced labor, and the terror.

The plausibility of the hypothesis that collectivization claimed millions of lives is diminished further by Gosplan's estimate of the Soviet population in 1933, 165.7 million, a figure consistent with demographic trends of the late 1920s. Assuming that Gosplan had access to the relevant data when this estimate was made in 1937, it appears to follow that all excess deaths calculated from the census of 1939 occurred after rather than before 1933.

One expanding area of research in the well-established Soviet field of scholarship known as knigovedenie (book studies) is that of the history of readership. Its newness is indicated by the fact that not until 1974 was a separate section for materials on the history of reading established in the annual surveys of book studies that appear in the basic journal Kniga: issledovaniia i materialy. As far as the early nineteenth century is concerned, the Decembrists have perhaps attracted most attention, and the one monograph broad enough to be considered a general study (Al'tshuller and Martynov) follows that trend by discussing a panorama of readers who have in common their reading of Decembrist literature. But early in the book one encounters a keynote statement which sets the study in a wider context and expresses a view increasingly held by scholars irrespective of their geographic interests: “One very important aspect of … [Decembrist poetry] has escaped attention.

Petr Chaadaev's First Philosophic Letter (Pervoe filosoficheskoe pis'mo) was published in September (Old Style) 1836, in the fifteenth issue of Teleskop, the mediocre magazine owned and edited by Nikolai Nadezhdin. The Letter, probably the most celebrated article in the country's history, dispraised Russia in her past and present as an exception to the universal laws of humanity, despaired of her future, deplored her Orthodoxy, described her as a pariah among the nations of both East and West, and denied that she possessed a true civilization; the essay had a strong providentialist, chiliastic, and Catholic flavor.

Chaadaev thus defined the terrain, the terms, and even the tone for the public debate—the first of its kind in Russia—between Slavophiles and Westernizers in the 1830s and 1840s, and he can be said to have inaugurated that debate. Chaadaev opened the discussion of the destiny of Russia on a note of attack.