One of the most important and most generally espoused interpretations in Russian history is the existence of a crisis in Russian agriculture toward the close of the nineteenth century. A discussion of this crisis or agrarian problem is found in contemporary, in Soviet, and in the Western scholarly works. Statements such as “the economic condition of the peasantry kept deteriorating,” or “famine conditions, epidemics, increased mortality, decrease in the number of livestock, … this is the spectacle of the growing destitution of a faminestricken Russian village,” are commonplace. In fact, “to numerous observers of Russian rural conditions, the growing destitution of the village seemed so evident that it required no special demonstration.” The purpose of this paper is to examine the indexes used to support the crisis interpretation, and to show that this interpretation is not only arguable, but probably fallacious.

On March 27, 1941 a coup d'état in Belgrade overthrew the Yugoslav government which only two days previously had signed the Tripartite Pact in Vienna. In its place was installed a new government headed by General Simović, chief of the Air Staff, while the regent, Prince Paul, was replaced by the young King Peter II. It was widely expected that the Simović government would renounce the Pact and align itself firmly with Britain against Germany. Although this expectation was to be disappointed, the anti-German and pro-British intent of the coup was accepted by both Churchill and Hitler. Churchill declared that the Yugoslav nation had “found its soul,” and in his postwar memoirs described the coup as “one tangible result of our desperate efforts to form an Allied front in the Balkans and prevent all falling piecemeal into Hitler’s power.” Hitler, convinced that Britain had “pulled the strings,” ordered the Yugoslav invasion for April 6.

Anyone familiar with Soviet history can identify A. I. Rykov: Lenin’s successor as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, a major leader of Right Communism, a victim of Stalin’s purges. But this tells us very little. Because of Rykov’s predilection for practical as opposed to ideological-literary work, his relative colorlessness in comparison with the other Bolshevik luminaries, and a lack of material, he has not been attractive to scholars. Yet Rykov looms large within the Bolshevik movement; he was prominent long before the revolution as well as after 1917. Furthermore, the seeds of Rykov’s positions of the 1920s—which clearly had an impact on the policies and politics of those years—were definitely sown before 1917.

It is commonly reported in the West that the representation of women in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is far below their representation in the population at large, and that although there are slightly increasing rates of admission, continuation of the large disparity seems to constitute a relatively permanent feature of central recruitment policy and procedures. In 1970, for example, women formed 53.9 percent of the general population and 22.2 percent of the CPSU. However, that aggregate figure masks a considerable degree of regional variation. Publication of data from several regional party archives provides the opportunity to examine more closely the process of female mobility within the party and to advance more precise notions about determinants of that process than had previously been possible.

When “Bezhin Meadow” first appeared in Sovremennik in 1851, Turgenev’s friend Feoktistov wrote to him that while the story had “produced an enormous effect on the public in Moscow,” he found it lacked a “general impression,” a “general thread,” that would unify its fragmentary parts and give the reader a clue to its general significance. Well might Feoktistov have been puzzled, for the censor had omitted the story’s ending! The ending was soon available to the reader in the edition of A Hunter’s Notes published in Moscow in 1852: “With sorrow I must add that Pavel died before the year was out. He was not drowned, but killed by a fall from a horse. A pity, he was a splendid lad !“ While indicating a “general thread,” the theme of mortality, the lines produce what may at first appear to be a facile irony.

It is customary in Soviet criticism of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin (1873–1954) to speak of the unique blend of fact and fantasy, of science and art in his work. In fact, this view is not restricted to Soviet discussions of the writer’s art. It is a reasonable view, if cautiously considered as no more than a convenient generality. Something of the same generalizing nature operates in discussions of the literary forms which Prishvin most often employed in his narrative art: the ocherk, the rasskaz, and, less frequently, the povestf. Scholars and critics speak of the writer’s inimitable mastery of these forms, but rarely in definitive terms. Briefly summarized, Prishvin’s preferred forms are the halfsketch and half-tale, or the novelette-sketch; his pieces represent an amalgam of fact and fiction. They are, above all, lyrical and poetic, but they are also “scientific.” They are the one and the other, but their specificity seems almost too elusive to capture and define.

The stated purpose of the encyclopedia being reviewed here, Marxism, Communism and Western Society: A Comparative Encyclopedia is to present a comprehensive comparative portrait of two worlds, one called “Communism,“ the other, “Western Society,” including their institutions and self-images, the images they have of each other, and their entire views of the cosmos; the range of topics covered is extremely wide. Several aims might be fulfilled by such a work. One of them is to serve as a reference book for students of Marxism and Communist societies, especially the Soviet Union, and not for specialists only but also for anyone interested in selected aspects of these topics. On the whole, the Encyclopedia serves this purpose very well. The relevant articles tend to be competent and thorough, even though I can understand why one of the anonymous referees of this essay found them “tinged with Germanic pedantry, dry and often verbose, with a penchant for abstraction, reifications, and fine distinctions.“

Thirteen years ago the present writer undertook a similar survey of the works of Nikita Khrushchev. Appearing within a few weeks of that Soviet leader’s well-celebrated seventieth birthday, the article assumed (as Khrushchev probably did) that there was some connection between the ornaments of power and its reality. Yet by the end of the year Khrushchev had been hustled into retirement by the Central Committee, an act that, incidentally, allowed the review article to stand as a definitive one in the sense that no additional books by that particular author could appear in’ the USSR. It seems doubtful that the present survey will be able to make the same claim. Despite the close parallel in the timing of their collected works in the lives of the two septuagenarian leaders, it does not seem that Brezhnev’s administration will end before more volumes will be added to those listed here.