Very close ties exist between Soviet belles-lettres and the official “line” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The organizations of Soviet writers are important connecting links between individual authors and Party authorities; before a literary work is submitted for final approval to the Glavlit, the official Government censorship, it is frequently discussed by the relevant committee of the Union of Soviet Writers.

The propaganda value attached to literature by the Soviet leaders was once eloquently expressed by Karl Radek, who said that although the pen cannot replace the rifle, it can mobilize and multiply these rifles. Perhaps some such sentiment, rather than aesthetic insight, was behind the statement generally attributed to Stalin, in which a writer is called “an engineer of the human soul.”

One of the most widespread and well-accepted assertions about Eastern Europe after World War II, was, and still is, that feudalistic vestiges had prevailed in this region as a whole until 1944, and that the “bold” new land reforms were aimed at sweeping aside these hampering pre-capitalist remnants. Actually, at the date considered, on the one hand, the structure of land tenure and ownership presented not a unique characteristic for the area as a whole, but a substantial diversity from one region (or country) to the next. On the other hand, the land reforms had quite different aims and impacts from one country to another.

In recent years polish historians have become increasingly interested in the history of the Polish socialist movement. This interest, though undoubtedly stimulated by the political and economic changes which have taken place in their country since the last war, has been shared alike by opponents and supporters of the present regime. So far, however, the main emphasis has been placed on the later stages of the movement's development. The history of the first Polish socialist organization, Lud Polski (The Polish People), founded in 18 3 5 by a group of emigre peasant soldiers in the English seacoast town of Portsmouth, has not hitherto received adequate treatment.

The theories of this organization were, indeed, based on the peasantry and were concerned almost exclusively with the organization of agriculture, for Poland still had a predominantly agrarian structure. With industry only in its infancy, “the people” for these early Polish socialists, as for Herzen and the Russian narodniki of the seventies, could in fact mean only the peasantry.

Professor Lutosławski, Poland's greatest living authority on Plato and exponent of Polish Messianism, observed his ninetieth birthday June 6, 1953, confident of the ultimate triumph of unseen forces of the human spirit over the drift to world chaos and death. He has undergirded the hope of immortality and given a definitive form to Messianism.

An old Polish legend has it that an ancient king and his knights sleep on Mount Giewont. When the time is ripe, and the Polish people renewed in their chivalric faith, the king and knights will awaken and lead them to their own.

The origin of the seventeenth-century Russian narrative poem, the Tale of Misery and III Fortune (Povest' o Gore i Zločastii) is one of the most vexing problems in the whole field of Old Russian literature. Though one ultimate source for the Tale can be found in the story of the prodigal son, for example, no immediate source has been discovered either in Old Russian written literature or in any foreign literature. More surprising (since the Tale may be a relatively original work, after all) is that the poem is unique in its own genre. Other Russian seventeenth-century tales are in prose, and are stylistically quite different.

Although Rilke was born and grew up in Prague, and although he was in immediate contact with the Czech language for twenty years, he never acquired enough Czech to be able to do without an interpreter. One of his interpreters was Valerie David, niece of the Czech poet Julius Zeyer, with whom Rilke was in contact from the beginning of 1893 until the end of 1895, and thus at the time when his first volume of poetry, Leben und Lieder came out, and his second volume Larenopfer was in preparation. Valerie David, a young lady of noble birth from Rhonfeld, is, in fact, the “Vally von R.” to whom Rilke's first book is dedicated. Rilke's frequent correspondence with Valerie David gives several direct and indirect testimonies concerning Rilke's attitude to the Czech language. Among these an especially eloquent witness is to be seen in Rilke's comments on a resolution from the Town Council in Prague IX, answering in Czech, a request by Rilke, written in German, for admission to the Public Gardens on 2izka Hill.

The articles on the literature of the Soviet peoples form only a part of the vast materials collected in the two editions of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Yet, like a microcosm, they reflect the characteristics of the whole and bear the impress of changing policy and interpretation. A comparison of these articles in the first edition and in those volumes of the second that have already been printed may, therefore, be of interest.

In line with the official policy of national linguistic autonomy, the first edition of the Encyclopedia contained both general accounts of the literature of the various national groups and accounts of individual authors. Most important among the groups discussed were the Abkhazians, Adygeyans, Bashkirs, the Buryat-Mongols, Udmurts, and the Tatars. The material in the volumes of the second edition that were available for examination appears at first glance to be much richer. The literature of twenty-nine Soviet nationalities is discussed: all of them possess their own written languages and can point to certain literary achievements. The treatment of the literature of the Avars is completely new to the second edition and the treatment of individual writers of other national groups much more detailed.

During the middle ages, England and Hungary represented the two extreme ends of the Christian world, and the scholarly ties connecting the two countries were rather incidental for many centuries. At that time, the University of Paris was the furthest destination of Hungarian students and only a few of them crossed the Channel.

Humanists, however, enhanced the number and range of wandering scholars. They overcame many a geographical barrier and established connections between countries which heretofore had been isolated in the primitive conditions of medieval times.

“Our hero's origin was humble and obscure.” The study of Slavic languages began in America in 1885 when Oberlin College started offering courses in Czech to prepare ministers for clerical activities in Czechoslovakia. However, the first attempt at a comprehensive program of Slavic studies was made at Harvard University in 1896, when, through the efforts of Professor A. Coolidge, Leo Wiener was engaged to present courses in Russian, Polish, and Church Slavic. Professor Coolidge previously had presented courses in Slavic history. In 1899 courses in Slavic literature were added to Harvard's schedule. The next step was made at the University of California in 1901, where George R. Noyes, a student of Professor Wiener, instituted the study of Russian and Polish. Of course, the role of Father R. H. Lord at Harvard and of R. T. Kerner at California should not be forgotten.