Turgenev's acceptance of a fate that governs human existence found expression in the use of the supernatural in certain of his stories. In the past most critics tended to turn away from these stories, in distress at not being able to reconcile this trait with their interpretation of Turgenev the realist, who portrayed the Russian social byt of the nineteenth century. And yet, a total of ten stories (almost a third of his total output of stories) in which there is a touch of the supernatural and the irrational cannot be dismissed as mere caprice.

After three years of tense discussions and bruising internal disputes, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) emerged in 1921 as the largest constituent unit of the Communist International (Comintern) outside of Russia. Under the leadership of a former Social Democrat, Bohumir Šmeral, it stressed a specific Czechoslovak road to socialism and viewed the new Czechoslovak Republic as the culmination of modern Czech and Slovak history. Šmeral's essentially constructive political line inspired the majority of the party's members—numbering among its adherents a high proportion of former Social Democrats—until the fifth congress of the Comintern in 1924.

The largest metropolis in Galicia was known to its Austrian rulers as Lemberg. The Poles, who dominated the city after 1867, referred to it as Lwόw, while the Ukrainian minority called it L'viv. German, Polish, and Ukrainian-speaking inhabitants constituted the officially recognized national groups, but there also existed a large Jewish element, which in 1900 made up approximately 30 percent of the population. Appearing in Austrian and Polish statistics only as adherents of the Mosaic faith, the Jews differed from their neighbors in far more than religion. Though formally emancipated in 1868, Galician Jewry resembled in all other respects that of Russia. The combination of a very large Jewish minority and a very backward social and economic structure, in Galicia as in the Pale of Settlement, placed great obstacles in the path of cultural assimilation.

The meaning and value of Fet's poetry have provided food for debate for over a century, but its musicality has long stood beyond question. Whatever the decision about their ultimate worth, his melodic lyrics undoubtedly call up some of the sweetest sounds of nineteenth-century Russian verse. Just as there is hardly a Russian poet who has been more widely or successfully parodied, so scarcely is there one who has been more often set to music. As a mid-century poet he had serious rivals for the favors of composers and yet defeated them all—A. K. Tolstoy, Polonsky, Mei, Grigoriev, even the redoubtable Nekrasov. His whole poetic manner seemed to impinge so far upon music itself that the composer could see immediately how the music should be written and set to work at once with the enthusiasm of any expert who suddenly finds before him a small challenge which is right in his own field.

One of the most interesting and seminal figures in Soviet historiography is the historian M. N. Pokrovsky, whose influence has continued to be felt up to the present day. He was active in the 1917 Revolution in Russia, and in political and institutional developments during the first decade and a half of Soviet rule. He became what may be euphemistically called the "dean" of Marxist historians, yet after his death on April 10, 1932, he was ritually accused of being responsible for most of the "shortcomings" of Soviet historiography. Among the many accusations leveled against Pokrovsky the following have appeared with considerable regularity: (1) Because he was "dictator" of the historical front from 1928 to 1932, his interpretations of history were the "official" interpretations of that time and consequently had to be "reflected" by other Soviet historians.

One of the consequences of the revival of sociology as a distinct discipline in the Soviet Union has been the appearance of empirical studies of prevailing attitudes toward the major occupations in Soviet society. These studies have been accompanied by discussions in Soviet newspapers and in the educational and economics literature of the problems associated with the popular perception of various occupations, particularly among student youth.