Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost has resulted in an astounding flood of hitherto forbidden foreign classics. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories, and James Joyce's Ulysses were all published during 1988-1989, and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Saul Bellow's Herzog, and the poetry of Ezra Pound, Chaim Nachum Bialik, and Czeslaw Milosz have all been promised for 1990.' It is as if permission were given, a list of forbidden books were consulted, translations were commissioned, and the books were published. In the case of Joyce, for example, Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and Ulysses was published in 1989. Surely, it would seem, the Russian Ulysses was a child of glasnost.

Recent literature on interwar Soviet society is changing the way we view the "Revolution from Above." Instead of focusing on high politics, the authors of this literature have cast their analytical nets more widely and have revealed a remarkably dynamic society that was anything but clay in the hands of Kremlin potters.' The history of the massive automotive complex at Nizhnii-Novgorod adds weight to the conclusions growing out of this scholarship and sheds light on the origins and implementation of the larger plan to industrialize the Soviet economy; it shows in microcosm the many problems that often bedeviled and sometimes defeated the grand designs dreamed up in Moscow.

Chingiz Aitmatov has long been a powerful figure in Soviet literature, but few critics in the west or the Soviet Union have treated him as a serious writer. Many of the reasons why Aitmatov's reputation is not commensurate with his achievement are clear enough; the few westerners who have bothered with Aitmatov tend to agree that he offers "a somewhat new mix from the old patterns of Soviet literature with an admixture of Central Asian lore, but the game he is playing is as old as socialist realism itself.

Ukrainian peasant women of the postemancipation Russian Empire, like their Russian counterparts, faced an oppressive patriarchal system in both family and village. Over the ages peasants strictly delineated tasks and functions according to gender and age in order to meet the demands of a predominantly agricultural economy. The precariousness of subsistence agriculture and the peasantry's burdensome obligations to family, community, and state reinforced inflexible and oppressive power relations in the village. Ukrainian peasants feared that any departure from the subordination of woman to man, child to parent, young to old, and weak to strong would threaten the existence of their society and culture.

Russian socialists often used the slogan "vroz' idti, vmeste bit'," which signified that socialists should maintain separate party identities (march apart), but, if revolution approached, join together to deliver the coup de grace. Even in ordinary times, in tsarist Russia "marching apart" was a luxury revolutionaries could rarely afford. Of course, various parties and factions did not completely sacrifice their independence, but at all levels they informally coordinated activities and, at key times, resorted to official interparty arrangements. Although some histories have mentioned left bloc tactics during the 1905 Revolution and in elections to the duma, the full extent of socialist cooperation has hitherto escaped note.

While it is never wise to read the Vitae sanctorum as strictly historical accounts, we must be cognizant of the medieval hagiographers' frequent efforts to transform political history into theological and spiritual history. Thus did the authors and redactors of the vaiious texts concerning saints Boris and Gleb seek to project a piously viable and ideologically useful Christian argument for the sanctity of these princes who had perished in the course of the protracted civil war following the death of Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich of Kiev (d. 1015).

How deep and how long-lasting Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms will be remains an open question. Obstacles to the realization of some of his goals may be built into Soviet life. Soviet resources may limit economic development; industrial managers (however willing they may be) may lack the knowledge and skills necessary to operate in a market environment and continuing state orders may absorb the productive capacity of the factories and may limit the extent to which they can respond to market forces.