The inherent weakness of the Socialist movement of Poland was fully revealed at the outbreak of World War I. No single Marxist group could claim for itself a really large following. All of them realized this and it was reflected in their tendency to join forces with groups having similar programs. The Polish Socialist party, or the PPS, formed a confederation with the non-Socialist parties which aimed at restoring Polish statehood in alliance with the Central Powers. The left Marxist groups of Kongresówka formed a loose grouping to pursue in common their radical, international anti-war policy.

Thus the outbreak of the war consolidated the two rival camps within Polish Socialism: that of pacifist and internationalist revolutionaries on the one hand, and that of the “Social Patriots,” on the other.

During the nineteenth century a series of revolts took place in Albania. These revolts, although some of them were on a relatively large scale, were local in character and aimed neither at national autonomy nor independence. Their primary target was the taxes and the draft which the Ottoman Government, in accordance with its program of reforms—the so-called Tanzimat—was trying to impose upon the Albanian people. It was not until the Congress of Berlin that the movement began to take a different course.

When Russia defeated the Turks at the end of 1877, she imposed upon them the Treaty of San Stefano (March 3, 1878), which accorded to the Balkan Slavic nations large pieces of Albanian land. Serbia was allotted a strip of Albanian-inhabited territory in Old Serbia. Bulgaria and Montenegro were especially favored. The first country was to expand westward even into Albania, including the major part of the province of Korea (Koritza).

Probably no other writer in pre-Revolutionary Russian literature ever suffered so much at the hands of politically-minded critics as Nikolaj Leskov. He once said that the role of the writer is to struggle against the prevailing current of his time, and his own career illustrates both the application of that principle and its consequences. His independent attitude toward all intellectual fashions, whether nihilism in the 1860's or conservatism in the 1880's, led single-minded Russians of various political colors to suspect him of hypocrisy and duplicity. Doctrinaire Russian critics of the right and the left, accustomed to classifying all writers in such tidy categories as “religious reactionary” or “atheistic liberal,” were even more bewildered by Leskov's own kind of non-conformity than by the Christian anarchism of his great associate Tolstoy. Tolstoy, after all, had the virtue of pushing his convictions to their logical extreme, in the best tradition of Russian maximalism; whereas Leskov, though he acknowledged himself to be a devoted follower of Tolstoy, refused to become doctrinaire even in his Tolstoyanism.

It has often been stated that Gogol, the great writer, was an utter failure as a historian. But one must differentiate between a writer and teacher of history and a person endowed with the real qualities of a historian. Gogol was never a “trained” historian. He never attended any specifically devised history courses. But he read a great deal about history through secondary accounts, and he examined many original historical sources, although among these he was less attracted by chronicles and official accounts than by the oral tradition and folk-lore. To him, for instance, the songs and legends of the Ukraine were worth more than volumes of historical accounts about the land of his birth. Nevertheless, he had a true concept of history and of its implications for the life of man individually or in a community, and we cannot possibly discount him as a historian unless we can (or dare to) discount another great historian— Thomas Carlyle—who, I am happy to notice, is coming back into recognition.

Surely we may reckon as remarkable the English cultism for Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which reached a high level before traditionalism reasserted itself; but fully as remarkable were the ambassadors, now largely forgotten, who mediated between Russian and English cultures, and who, in part, were responsible for the popularity of several Russian novelists in Victorian England. As a footnote to history, this review of their accomplishments can be brief, but I believe it deserves to be appended somewhere in the still-continuing story of the assessment of values in comparative literature. In the belief that we may see best their mode of operation in terms of a specific individual, I have chosen a figure about whom relatively little has been written by English or American scholars during the last two decades: Maxim Gorky.

The splendid growth of Polish Romantic poetry in the second quarter of the nineteenth century almost overshadowed concurrent achievements in artistic prose, which are considerable and diverse.

It is true that the prose fiction of the period did not especially flourish. Nevertheless, Polish Romanticism brought forth one interesting and original prose genre, that of gawęda. Gawęda is a kind of short story which has as narrator an old, rather simple man, telling in a loose way and in colloquial language stories from old Polish life. It is true, the genre quickly degenerated into a stale traditionalism, but at its peak gawęda could boast a volume as noteworthy as Rzewuski's The Memoirs of Soplica. The realism of detail, vivid local color, humor, and raciness of this work command a high position for it in the history of Polish fiction.

Sometime in the late 1880's or early 1890's the following conversation took place between Emperor Alexander III and Countess Aleksandra Andreevna Tolstaja, the correspondent, confidante, and cousin of her illustrious namesake, Lev Nikolaevič Tolstoj:

The Emperor. Tell me who you think are the most remarkable and popular persons in Russia. I know how honest you are and I am sure you will tell me the truth. Of course you mustn't think of including me in the list.

Countess Tolstaja (smiling). I won't include you.

The Emperor. But just whom will you include? That's what interests me.

Countess Tolstaja. First of all, Lev Tolstoj.

The Emperor. I expected that. Who else?

Countess Tolstaja (thinking). I'll name you one more person.

The Emperor (impatiently). But who is it? Who is it?

Countess Tolstaja. Father Ioann of Kronstadt.

The Emperor (laughs). I had forgotten about him. But I agree with you.

The United States and bulgaria stood in opposing camps during World War I. Although at war with each other's allies, they nevertheless maintained normal diplomatic relations throughout the hostilities. The explanation of this anomaly lies in the fact that both countries were guided by expediency rather than principle in formulating their mutual policies. While the Bulgarian leaders hoped by maintaining relations with the United States and appealing to Wilsonian principles to insure Bulgaria against the consequences of a possible defeat, the American policy-makers viewed Bulgaria as the weakest link in the chain of Germany's allies whose removal from the Central Alliance might expedite victory.

When, on February 3, 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, President Woodrow Wilson was already formulating his famous political strategy of trying to drive a wedge between the German people and the German Government by expressing continued friendship for the former and deep hostility to the latter.

A summary of British and American evaluations of Anton Chekhov's writings affords an insight into the nature of international literary criticism. Chekhov's slow, steady climb to recognition shows the extent to which non-literary factors influence the formation of critical judgment. It also shows how a critical approach can slowly evolve until it is very useful in explaining novel literary effects.

As might be expected, Chekhov's works were known earlier in France and Germany than in England, and earlier in England than in America. As early as 1888, the year his collection of stories In Twilight received the Pushkin Prize from the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Chekhov began to be mentioned in the annual reviews of continental literature published in the Athenaeum. The first extended notice of Chekhov in England, however, came in 1891, when E. J. Dillon cited Chekhov as an example of the Russian writer whose works suffered because he was subjected to a number of fetters. As important as the rigid governmental censorship, and perhaps stemming ultimately from it, said Dillon, was the tyrannous yoke of a capricious and coarse-minded public, the cupidity of uneducated editors and publishers, and the narrow limits of self-appointed critics.

August 23, 1952 … To me it has a haunting sound, for it marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Michael Fokine, the last of those glorious masters of ballet—Noverre, Didelot, Perrot, St. Leon, Petipa—whose works created an era in the art of the dance far beyond the boundaries of the countries of their origin.

It was first as a thrilled spectator and later as an executive with the former Imperial Theaters of Petrograd that I witnessed all of Fokine's productions in the beautiful Maryinsky Theater. And since this brilliant period of the Russian ballet is gradually growing dim and soon may be completely forgotten, it is to this phase of Fokine's career that I dedicate these fragmentary memories, blended with a few excerpts from some of the letters he wrote me, which have no longer merely a personal but a public interest, now that he is gone.

The present article is intended to serve as an overview of the current holdings, facilities, and activities of the Library of Congress in the Slavic and East European area. It is offered in the hope that it will be of assistance to scholars specializing in this region, particularly those who have not had the opportunity of familiarizing themselves with the offerings of the Library at first hand. The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented expansion of Slavic and East European activities at the Library of Congress, culminating in the broad and varied program described in the following lines.

A description of the holdings of the Library in the area considered here is difficult and can only be attempted in the most general terms. It may, however, be affirmed that the Slavic collection, with over 300,000 volumes, represents the largest single collection of the Library of Congress, followed by the Chinese with more than 240,000 volumes, and the Hispanic collection with over 100,000 volumes. It is at the same time believed to be the largest collection of Russian books anywhere in the world outside the Soviet Union itself.

Many of the names that were used for the peasant during the centuries of Russian history tell much about the people to whom they were applied. To give just a few examples, three of the terms that were employed during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, starožilcy, “old dwellers,” novoporjadčiki, “new renters,” and polovniki, “sharers,” were descriptive of tenurial status. Earlier, during the Kievan era (ninth to thirteenth centuries), the mass of the free rural population was known as smerdy (the singular is smerd). This name, though less obvious, is actually more revealing of social position than the examples just given. Philologists have pointed out that in all probability it was derived from an ancient root meaning “man.” Once, they suggest, it may have been used to describe everyone. By the Kievan period, however, the word was used only for the lowest class of free men and had become associated with the verb smerdeti, “to stink.”