Dostoevsky, having lived in the area of central Petersburg around Sennaia Ploshchad' (Haymarket) for several years, was well acquainted with the problems (prevalent in this section) created by the rapid, unplanned growth of the city. In a little-noted passage in Crime and Punishment which recounts Raskolnikov’s thoughts just before the murder (part 1, chapter 6), Dostoevsky connects these urban changes to Raskolnikov’s thoughts and subsequent actions. Raskolnikov imagines a reconstruction of Petersburg aimed especially at the improvement of the wretched, crowded Sennaia area. This passage reveals important facets of the character of Raskolnikov and of the thematics of the novel. The city has two forms, both of which have a powerful psychological influence on Raskolnikov: his motive and rationale for the murder draw support from both the squalor of Sennaia Ploshchad' and the model of Napoleon III’s reconstructed Paris. For Dostoevsky, however, the reality of Sennaia undermines the rational, utilitarian schemes of Napoleon and Raskolnikov and, by extension, Raskolnikov’s whole intellectual rationale for the murder.

A close look at Russian peasant art yields two divergent impressions. The profusion of styles and techniques is amazing, testimony to the ready creativity of peasant craftsmen. But throughout this wealth of invention, a constant tone prevails: the images portrayed are few and everywhere much the same.

Two images predominate: the sun, at times accompanied by flowers, birds, and animals; and a flowering tree (drevo zhizni) or a woman raising her arms, with two figures, often armed men on horseback, at either side. Most designs in peasant art involve one of these persistent images. The concern of the present paper is to explore what they may have meant.

The history of the Rumanian socialists of Hungary in the decade before the outbreak of the First World War and during the final crisis of the Dual Monarchy in 1918 offers a striking illustration of the importance of national feeling in socialist and working-class movements of peoples who had not yet achieved their national-political emancipation and who were still overwhelmingly agrarian. In seeking support, Rumanian socialists had to compete with the middle-class Rumanian National Party, which was well established as a staunch defender of Rumanian rights against the aggressive nationality policies of the Hungarian government, and the church, which maintained a strong hold over a devout and traditional peasantry. They were hampered also by having only a modest constituency of their own. Not only was the Rumanian working class small, but in those places where Rumanian factory workers had congregated in significant numbers—Budapest, Arad, Timisoara—they were swallowed up in the greater masses of Magyar and German workers.and were in danger of losing their national identity. They provided only a fragile base for an independent socialist party. Until the First World War, Rumanian socialists developed their activities under the aegis of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP). In time, they found ideological and financial subordination to the MSZDP to be a serious handicap in efforts to recruit new members. At a time of growing national tension, they were hard put to explain how a party dominated by Magyars, even socialists, could benefit Rumanians. Yet, in spite of their protestations of socialist internationalism and their open disdain for nationalistic impulses, they could not ignore nationality. Indeed, the idea of nationality lent their movement a distinctiveness that set it apart from the other socialist movements of Hungary and, in the end, gave it its reason for being.

The policy of “using non-communist hands in the building of communism,” almost as old as the Soviet government itself, came to an end at the outset of the First Five-Year Plan. In the early 1920s the Communist Party had come to accept the realities of a socialist regime confined to an underdeveloped country. Consequently, during the years of the New Economic Policy (1921- 28), the party sought to guide numerous institutions in which its members and supporters were a minority. To this end, the Communist Party created a network of scholarly institutions staffed by Marxist scholars which paralleled the traditional institutions staffed and led primarily by non-Marxist scholars. The purpose of this essay is to recount some of the conflicts between Marxist and non-Marxist historians and to make some suggestions about connections between these conflicts and ongoing political changes.