Perhaps the most mysterious and elusive figure in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is Afranius, a man who has been in Judea for fifteen years working in the Roman imperial service as chief of the procurator of Judea's secret police. He is present in all four Judean chapters of the novel (chapters 2, 16, 25, 26) as one of the myriad connecting links, though we really do not know who he is for certain until near the end of the third of these chapters, “How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Karioth.” We first meet him in chapter 2 (which is related by Woland and entitled “Pontius Pilate”) simply as “some man” (kakoi-to chelovek), face half-covered by a hood, in a darkened room in the palace of Herod the Great, having a brief whispered conversation with Pilate, who has just finished his fateful talk with Caiaphas (E, p. 39; R, pp. 50-51). Fourteen chapters later, in the chapter dreamed by Ivan Bezdomnyi and entitled “The Execution” (chapter 16), we meet him for the second time, now bringing up the rear of the convoy escorting the prisoners to Golgotha and identified only as “that same hooded man with whom Pilate had briefly conferred in a darkened room of the palace” (E, p. 170; R, p. 218). “The hooded man” attends the entire execution sitting in calm immobility on a three-legged stool, “occasionally out of boredom poking the sand with a stick” (E, p. 172; R, p. 220). When the Tribune of the Cohort arrives, presumably bearing Pilate's orders to terminate the execution, he (the Tribune) speaks first to Krysoboi (Muribellum), who goes to pass on the orders to the executioners, and then to “the man on the three-legged stool,” according to whose gestures the executioners arouse Yeshua from his stupor, offer him a drink which he avidly accepts, and then kill him by piercing him “gently” (tikhon'ko) through his heart with a spear.

On April 24, 1445, János Vitéz of Zredna, a well-known Hungarian humanist bishop, wrote to a friend about conditions existing in his homeland:

This was not merely humanist rhetoric; Vitéz's perceptions accurately described the Hungarian situation, where the powerful barons had become the controllers of the machinery of the state.

The Hungarian province of Transylvania (see p. 26), “the Land beyond the Forests,” in which the drama of 1437-38 was enacted, experienced a parallel development. During the fourteenth century, the barons in that province (as in the rest of Hungary) established seigneurial control over the peasant population. A system of feudal dues and obligations was imposed on the peasantry, and free movement from one estate to another was effectively curtailed. The tensions that this situation created in Transylvania were heightened by conflicts that were peculiarly Transylvanian in character.

With Bismarck's dismissal as head of the German and Prussian governments in 1890, a number of policies bearing his personal stamp were called into question, including his Polish policy. The chancellorship of General von Caprivi (1890-94) saw a perceptible twist in the long history of relations between the Prussian/German governments and their Polish subjects, causing both contemporaries and historians to speak of an “era of reconciliation” (Versöhnungsära). During this period, Polish leaders supported government legislation and offered to work to strengthen the German Empire, while the Caprivi administration indicated its desire for better relations with the Poles and made a number of concessions to them. The Era of Reconciliation did not last long, however, not even as long as Caprivi's own tenure; its net results were meager, and after 1894 the idea of German-Polish cooperation faded away.

Although this period has attracted the interest of some scholars of German-Polish relations, it has not received (perhaps because of its aberrant character) its fair share of attention in general works on German-Polish relations. Quite fundamental questions—for example, what prompted the milder Polish policies and why did they turn out so disappointingly—remain without adequate answers. In considering these questions, it is important to keep in mind that the Era of Reconciliation was a two-way street: a merger of government policy under Caprivi with a parallel trend toward “loyalism” within the Polish leadership.

During the quarter century from 1803 to 1828, the Russian imperial government followed an educational policy which ranged from practical to classical, democratic to class-oriented, progressive to conservative. The decrees, rescripts, and regulations may have been contradictory, but they are simply pieces of a puzzle which, in the end, provide the outline of a rather clear picture. This picture, as we shall see in more detail later, shows a movement, in the most elementary terms, from functional to classical, from open to restricted, from modern to traditional. In all respects, the law of 1828 opposed those of 1803 and 1804, but the line of march between the two points was straight and constant.

Another puzzle, however, is more difficult to solve: why did Russian educational policy follow this particular trend ? Among the possible solutions to this question, the activities of Count Joseph Marie de Maistre deserve more study. Maistre is remembered today as a theocratic political philosopher with an eloquent pen, but during his term in Russia (1803-17), as the diplomatic representative of the Sardinian king, he deeply involved himself in the internal questions facing the Russian government. Education particularly interested Maistre, and he turned his attention to this topic from June of 1810 until the end of the following year. During this eighteen-month period, he wrote four works dealing with the question of education in Russia, hoping to influence policy and bring about specific changes.

The woman question, which produced some of the best polemical writing of the nineteenth century, was an international phenomenon. In the 1850s, in Europe, essays on different sides of the question were written, published, translated, paraphrased, or reacted to, all in short order. Russia soon joined in the debate. The woman question, under different names, had existed previously in Russia, especially during the 1830s when some of the fiction published revealed women as victims of society. But, in the post-Crimean War period, what had been part of a more general preoccupation of Russian liberals, a striving toward general enlightenment, gave rise to a new civic sense of women's role in the general betterment of society and a debate on the education that would be necessary to fulfill that role.

Lenin's crucial role in formulating and laying the foundations of Soviet nationality policy is acknowledged by all. His nationality program—whether one views it as opportunist and pseudo-Marxist or as “the outstanding contribution to the treasure trove of creative Marxism”—is considered to be his most original and perhaps most successful policy. Lenin's lasting impact on the nationalities themselves is attested by the fact that national dissidents in the Soviet Union often call for a return to “Leninist” policy. One dissident writes, “It is difficult to find today anything more useful, noble and imperative than the restoration of Lenin's nationalities policy.”

According to most biographers, Lenin became involved with the nationality question only on the eve of World War I while living in exile in the multinational Austrian Empire. It was there that he recognized nationalism as a powerful force and began to devise a program that would harness it for the revolution. Opposing both the cultural autonomy scheme of the Austrian Marxists and the total scorn of nationalism by Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, in debates with fellow Marxists, formulated his own program.