In November 1917, the Bolshevik Party came to power in Russia with a foreign policy based on “proletarian internationalism” and the aim of spreading the socialist revolution to all parts of Europe. Developed by V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky this policy sought to take advantage of the disruption of European society caused by World War I to transform that conflict of state against state into a vast international civil war of class against class. Believing that the peoples of Europe were weary of war and ripe for revolution the Bolsheviks called for the negotiation of a “just and democratic peace” based on the principles of no annexations, no indemnifications and the liberation of all colonial, dependent and oppressed nations. The Bolsheviks hoped that bourgeois governments would be unable to accept these principles and that their failure to do so would generate sufficient popular unrest to ignite revolution everywhere in Europe.

Prior to the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1933, American military intelligence on the Red Army was limited to what it could glean from foreign military sources and travelers who had observed the Red Army inside the Soviet state. Thus, from 1920, the end of the period of Russian Civil War and Allied Intervention, to 1933, information on the Soviet military establishment was gathered by American military attachés from European diplomatic and military officials in Riga, Berlin, and Warsaw. To a lesser extent, intelligence on the Red Army was also available in London, Paris, Vienna, Stockholm, Tokyo, and Peking. American military intelligence dispatches and reports during the period reflected the heavy reliance upon secondary and indirect sources, although the information was often remarkably accurate. But with the American diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union and the opening of an American embassy in Moscow, American military intelligence gained the opportunity to supplement information received from foreign military sources with data received directly from the American military attaché.

The concessions embodied in the Manifesto of October 30, 1905 were wrung from the Russian autocracy by an opposition united as it had never been before. For once all the forces of Russian society which stood for change were focused on a common goal, the acquisition of a constitution and political rights. This remarkable consensus was largely the achievement of a group of Russian liberals, the osvobozhdentsy or “liberationists” inspired by the émigré newspaper Osvobozhdenie and guided by the Union of Liberation [Soiuz Osvobozhdeniia] inside Russia. The idea of a national front against autocracy did not, however, originate with the “liberationists.” Tendencies towards union within the ranks of the Russian opposition can be perceived over a decade before the appearance of the first issue of Osvobozhdenie. In the 1890s these tendencies were strengthened and national front tactics popularized by the work of the Russian Free Press Fund [Fond Vol'noi Russkoi Pressy] in London.

The acceptance of prerevolutionary cultural values in the Soviet Union has been constrained by the development of official interpretation of Marxist-Leninist dogma and its application to the changing historical and political conditions and issues of the day. The evolution of the official Soviet approach to nineteenth-century Russian classical writers thus has been a process influenced by ideological and political considerations. At each stage of development of the Soviet state, Soviet officials devise the necessary literary policy and literary theory with which the values most pertinent to Soviet society at a given stage of its historical development can be extracted from a work of art created in a bourgeois society by an artist alien to the cause of the revolution.

Studies of political reform in the Russian Empire during the first decade of Alexander I's rule have focused largely on the emperor and his most prominent advisers: the unofficial committee of four close friends who counseled him in secret during the first two years of his reign; powerful court factions, particularly those nobles who sought to augment the status and political power of the Senate; and, finally, high state officials such as Michael Speransky. The nature of reformist thought emanating from sources less directly involved in the actual preparation of legislation has been unduly neglected. There were, for instance, a number of minor writers who sought to influence state policy by submitting their ideas to Alexander. A study of the kind of society they hoped to create and the ways in which they thought social change achievable can enhance our appreciation of the variety of reformist thought in Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

During the initial years of her reign, Catherine II had to contend with political criticism and expectation of reform among nobles such as Denis Fonvizin and Ippolit Bogdanovich. Many Soviet scholars, particularly Makogonenko, Gukovskii and Pigarev, argue that the political writings of these critics can be interpreted as the initial evidence of a “constitutional” movement in Russia similar to those of mid-seventeenth century England and late eighteenth century France. The goal was to force Catherine to share political power by accepting “fundamental laws” or a “constitution.” Convinced of the need for such reforms, Fonvizin, Bogdanovich, and several other lesser known writers tried unsuccessfully in 1762 to win Catherine's approval of their projects. Failing to gain Catherine's support, the nobles became her political opponents —consistently and insistently advocating their political principles. This interpretation is valuable for its focus on the question of sovereignty and the individual's relation to the ruler as well as appealing for its attempt to integrate Russian events into a broader, European framework. Yet Soviet historians do not adequately specify and evaluate the theoretical origins of this “constitutional“ opposition. General references to contemporary European thinkers (British, French or German political philosophers) obscure their differences and assume the transfer of western European political ideas into Russia intact and unaltered in content or understanding. It is necessary, therefore, to investigate carefully the theoretical origins of the Russian writers' political ideals, their own version of these ideals, and the implications these opinions had for the writers' relationship to the ruler during the early 1760s.