Bob Hayden is the unusual kind of scholar who makes us confront our darker side. Our choice examples of civic culture and democratic functioning seem to emerge less shining as a consequence of his exposition. When put into a perspective that includes contemporary ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, both Steven Spielberg's Hollywoodized Oskar Schindler and Vaclav Klaus's Czech Republic lose some of their luster.

Relatively little primary source material has been published about the German occupation of the Ukraine in 1918 and the uncanny political relationship between Berlin and the “independent” Ukraine recognised at Brest-Litovsk. The volume of secret German documents, which appeared as a Soviet publication in 1936, has every indication of authenticity. But since the work was primarily published as a weapon in the Nazi-Soviet propaganda war at a time when Hitler was obviously eyeing the Ukraine, it is apparent that the documents were selected (1) to emphasize particularly German military domination and interference in civilian life, requisitioning of food and raw materials, and commercial rapacity, and (2) to castigate all those Ukrainians who did not resist the Central Powers or who participated in non-Communist activity for Ukrainian independence.

All modern countries are familiar with the practice of governmental or royal awards to military personnel for distinguished action. Traditionally, these awards have been of an honorary rather than a material nature, in keeping with the concept that such actions are not assessable in money terms and cannot be rewarded in them.

Moreover in a number of countries analogous procedures have developed in the civilian sphere, whereby grateful governments reward those who have rendered some signal service of a political, economic, scientific, or artistic nature. Great Britain has long had such a system, though it is only since the beginning of this century that its scope has been extended to more than a small segment of society; now there are honorary awards for coal miners as well as cabinet ministers, conferred personally by the sovereign.

Some years ago the American-Russian Institute organized in New York a series of symposia on various phases of Soviet life and civilization — among them a round-table discussion on the nature and tendencies of Soviet literature. This round-table was notable as a friendly meeting of various writers, critics, and scholars, of whom by no means all could have been called favorable to the Soviet system either politically or socially. Yet most of those present had at least some first-hand acquaintance with Soviet letters, and were amply qualified to express a reasoned opinion upon the aims and the spirit which they reflect.

At this conference, the discussion eventually narrowed down to an effort at denning the nature of socialist realism — a definition which, it must be admitted, proved singularly elusive. By one speaker, socialist realism was termed merely a method difficult of exact characterization. Maxim Gorki was quoted as having said that bourgeois realism is only partially critical, while socialist realism is critical throughout. Other speakers saw the essence of socialist realism in its positive or optimistic spirit, or alleged that, where bourgeois realism deals with the individual, the socialist brand is primarily concerned with the mass. In other words, a Soviet critic would hold that bourgeois realism is interested in isolated personages, while socialist realism portrays the individual in his relations to the society of which he is a part.

Vladimir Mayakovsky, who journeyed extensively during his lifetime and inserted many themes, sights, and sounds from abroad into his poetry, was a decidedly unsentimental traveller. Although at times he may have shed tears, they were not evoked by the same type of spectacle which would have activated the lachrymal glands of the illustrious Laurence Sterne, a man less acutely conscious of social injustice than Mayakovsky. Even before the Soviet poet commenced his actual travels he had been fascinated by foreign countries and had set forth the fancies which he wove about them in his poetry, notably in 150,000,000. The poems and prose sketches written as a direct result of his journeys abroad comprise perhaps one-tenth of his total literary output: the two twelve-volume editions of his work published in 1935-37 and in 1939-49 each reserved one volume for za granitsa.

Naturalism in literature is a phenomenon peculiar to the nineteenth century. To be sure, there have always been realistic movements in literature; but realism in the extreme form in which it manifested itself towards the end of the nineteenth century, in the theories and the works of the naturalists, is inconceivable either earlier or later. It is a consistent and logical derivative of ninteenth-century culture.

One outstanding feature of this culture is the predominance of natural science. Owing to the tremendous development which natural science underwent in this period, its prestige and its influence gradually came to be felt farther and farther afield.

The impact of natural science on nineteenth-century culture was two-fold. First was its influence on thought.

Planning and centralized direction have led inevitably to great dependence on accounting in the Soviet economy. The Soviet leaders have found that detailed accounting is an indispensable instrument of control in directing the activities of their extended hierarchy of manager-bureaucrats. The effectiveness of accounting as an instrument of control in the Soviet economy has been greatly hampered, however, by its primitive technological level. Throughout the Soviet economy, with only rare exceptions, the bookkeeper has traditionally done his work with pen and ink, with no mechanical aids other than the schëty or an occasional arithmometer.

For foreign students seeking the facts on the Russian economy, even small items of information in Russian sources may be noteworthy. Given the established Soviet secrecy policy, such items often clarify important but otherwise obscure aspects.

In reference to various Soviet issues, particularly the recurring question of inequality, the figures below on the royalty incomes of creative workers (authors, playwrights, composers, etc.) in the Soviet Russian Republic perhaps are properly considered a case in point:

During the spring and summer months of 1825, Aleksandr Pushkin intensified his efforts to end his exile in Mikhailovskoe. Though his friends urged him to produce work that might influence imperial opinion in his favor, Pushkin doubted that his poems could win him freedom. His writings increasingly were concerned with what the function of poetry should be. Pushkin's “crisis” in 1825 turned not only on political issues (the Decembrist revolt at the end of the year upset him greatly) but also on literary decisions. Politics and poetry are intertwined in one of the most problematic poems of that year, “André Chénier.” A poem now virtually forgotten, “André Chénier” shows Pushkin working out a formula for asserting his independence as a poet which was to organize his poetics for years to come.

The French poet André Chénier (1762–1794) was seen in the 1820s as an impassioned champion of political liberty who had been martyred for his ideals during the French Revolution. His poetry has strong formal and thematic ties to the classical tradition. Critics then as now have wavered between calling Chénier a neoclassical poet and the first romantic poet. Pushkin and his contemporaries were struck by the fresh diction and large sweep of Chénier's poems. Because Chénier's poetry was suppressed after his death, the publication in 1819 of the first collection of his verse made him seem suddenly contemporary, all the more so since his ideas were consonant with those of free-thinking Russian aristocratic circles of the time.