Russia Never Renounced its rights and the Soviet Government never gave anyone its authorization to dispose of territories discovered by Russian seamen.” These words were uttered during the 1949 meeting of the All-Union Geographic Society of the USSR by its president, L. S. Berg, a prominent geographer and historian of Russian discoveries in the Pacific. He spoke in connection with the extensive claims to the Antarctic which were voiced at that meeting and which were based on the explorations and discoveries of the Russian Bellingshausen expedition of 1819–1821.

It seems to have become the fashion in the USSR to claim for its own citizens of present and bygone days more and more of the inventions and discoveries of Western civilization. Meant chiefly for home consumption, such claims probably are not very important or dangerous to the non-Soviet world, except as they point toward a systematic building up of a national superiority complex and consequent aggressiveness.

Professor Halecki's article, “Imperialism in Slavic and East European History,” published in a recent issue of this journal was written as the first contribution to a projected scholarly discussion, among students in the field, of the relationship between Soviet expansion and the Russian past. It is my purpose to follow the distinguished historian of Poland in considering certain aspects of this significant question. In particular, I should like to do two things: sketch very briefly some important developments in the history of Russia and Eastern Europe and then comment not only on the possible implications of those developments but also on the larger issue of the background and motivation of the Soviet foreign policy of today. The first part of my article will be a companion piece to Professor Halecki's analytical outline of the history of the same area; the second will refer to some basic problems involved in our attempts to understand tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, or, for that matter, any other society or nation. Throughout I should like to emphasize, to use Professor Halecki's felicitous expression, the need to adhere as strictly as possible to “the methods of historical science.”

From the Dawn of history all Slavic peoples and in general the peoples of Eastern Europe have suffered more than any others from aggressive imperialism. It was against them that the notorious Drang nach Osten of the Germans was directed, particularly dangerous when backed by one of the successive Reichs. It was Eastern Europe with its predominantly Slavic populations which always was the first and sometimes the only victim of a long series of Asiatic invasions through the open gate between the Urals and the Caucasus. And though the Ottoman Turks at the height of their power reached as far as German and even Italian borderlands, they conquered exclusively and threatened chiefly Slavic and East European countries. Finally, these same countries used to be the first affected when Venice or Sweden played the part of great powers.

Since World War II a great number and variety of books, pamphlets, and articles devoted in whole or in part to international law have appeared in the Soviet Union. Not all of these publications are available in the United States. The articles are too numerous to be listed here. Substantial contributions have appeared not only in the central legal periodicals such as Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo (Soviet State and Law) and Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR, Otdelenie Èkonomiki i Prava (News of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Section of Economics and Law), but also in the publications of institutions of higher learning and research in the provinces as well as in Moscow and Leningrad. The books include general texts, specialized monographs, collections of documents, and dictionaries. Popular lectures touching on problems of international law have been recorded and distributed in pamphlet form. This extensive literature may help outsiders to understand the Soviet conception of international law, its role in Soviet policy, and its value in predicting future Soviet actions and attitudes.

The Recent Publication of Journey for Our Time; the Journals of the Marquis de Custine, has served the purpose of reawakening interest in the conflict between East and West which existed a century ago. In some respects, a comparison with the present “cold war” is in place. Thus Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, in the introduction, points to certain similarities in the status of the Tsarist Empire around 1839, as reported by de Custine, and the Russia of our times.

Separately considered, the journals of the Marquis de Custine perhaps give an impression of uniqueness which is not warranted. The French nobleman was not the first in his own generation to point to a supposed Russian threat. Nor was he an isolated prophet in a wilderness, calling for some sort of European unity or alliance against the Muscovite menace, personified in the glacial figure of the Russian autocrat, Nicholas I.

At the Close of 1918, after the end of hostilities and the disarmament of the German and Austrian troops, the economic and social conditions of Poland were highly upset. In November, 1918, only the Dąbrowa coal basin employed more workers than before the war. The metal and textile industries sank to a very low level and were almost at a standstill because of lack of raw materials and the removal of machinery to Germany. With the cessation of hostilities many industries were suddenly closed down, throwing huge masses of unemployed and discontented workers on the market. On the other hand, agriculture, although it suffered bitterly both from lack of machinery and fertilizers, was relatively better off and its production did not suffer as much as that of industry. Owing to the favorable prices on one hand, and devaluation of the currency on the other, it was able to reduce its debts and mortgages. The high prices of food products made agriculture a relatively good business. Inflation sent the prices sky-high, especially for food. Profiteering and black market were rampant.

Can Communism and democracy coexist? Only future historians can answer this question with any pretense of success. Contemporaries will often confuse the prerequisites for a sane, rational future with the ugly facts of the present. Yet a present answer to this question is important as a guide to further political action.

Several alternatives have been suggested by those who have been concerned with the possibility of the coexistence of democracy and Communism. Many theorists have been motivated by the hope of seeing either one or the other system destroyed in order to assure to a chaotic world peace based upon at least a minimum of uniformity. There have been some who, on the contrary, have discovered positive values in a bipolarized world, hoping, no doubt, that the world as a whole would benefit from ideological competition. There have been others, and their number is constantly declining, who feared the inherent dangers of bipolarization and who had hoped that coexistence would take the form of reconciliation.

Nearly a century ago, there was found among the posthumous papers of Ioann Batonishvili, son of Giorgi XII, the last king of Georgia, an apparently incomplete manuscript treatise, containing articles in dialogue form on all kinds of topics, and interspersed with lively episodes from Georgian life. This treatise, which became known as the “Kalmasoba,” at once aroused interest, and sections of it were published by the historian D. Bak‘radze in 1862. Only the first part was known to Bak‘radze, however, as the manuscript had been divided into two portions after Ioann's death in 1830: the first portion passed to Ioann's brother-in-law, Grigol Tseret‘eli, the other to his grandson Prince Ivan Gruzinskij and from his collection to the St. Petersburg Public Library. The latter part was long thought in Georgia to be lost, and it was only after the 1917 Revolution, when some of the Georgian manuscripts from Russian collections were transferred to the new University of Tiflis, that the complete text could be reconstituted.

Soviet Periodicals Proclaim the dawn of a new day for the apartment dweller of the USSR. Yet after thirty-four years of experimentation based upon an entirely new concept of housing relationships, the urban housing problem in the USSR seems to have become even more acute than it was at the outbreak of the Revolution. It is true that in pre-revolutionary Russia, with its economic backwardness and underdeveloped urban life and economy, there was a great lag in housing construction. No compiled data exist, however, from which it would be possible to construct a completely accurate picture of the housing conditions of the 24,700,000 persons who made up the urban population of pre-revolutionary Russia. It has been estimated that the average space available to the individual in 1912–1914 was 6.6 square yards.

Premier Klement Gottwald and the late Jan Masaryk, as Foreign Minister, headed a Czechoslovak delegation to Moscow during the summer of 1946 to consider various matters, including the negotiation of an aviation agreement. It was my lot at the time to be Minister-Counselor of the Czechoslovak Embassy in Moscow. In that capacity I participated in the events leading up to the signature of the treaty. The account of what occurred may add to the growing lore on the subject of negotiating with the Soviet Government.

Talks had been initiated with Soviet representatives considerably before the delegation left Prague. The negotiations followed the pattern which is now commonplace in the preparation of aviation agreements. A text was prepared which followed the general plan of the standard type established by the International Civil Aviation Organization. In accordance with this pattern each state customarily extends to the other contracting party the right to fly over its territory and to land.

Intercultural Relations are only now becoming the concern of foreign offices and other governmental bodies in the new world. In Central Europe they have long played a part, and especially so for the Hungarians. Lying as they do on the strategic divide between the Slavonic and Teutonic worlds, yet being neither Germanic nor Slavic, their problem has been one of national survival amidst two great conflicting currents. Further, Hungary's policies have been influenced by the conversion of her people to Rome instead of Byzantium in the tenth century. This fact has caused her to adhere traditionally to the civilization of Western Christianity and to claim membership in this cultural area. While the motivating forces in Hungary's intercultural efforts may have varied from time to time, their origin may ultimately be traced to these two main sources.

It was my lot to work as a lawyer in the Ukraine in 1943. The year might be characterized as falling within the “second phase” of the war with Germany, for the majority of the population had become bitterly hostile to the occupiers. When the Germans crossed the frontiers, many Ukrainians hoped that the German armies would become “liberators” from the bolshevist system, for the Bolshevik dictatorship's social and economic policy had led many citizens of the Ukraine to adopt a defeatist attitude. The population was quickly disillusioned by German conduct during the first phase of the war. Even the man in the street saw clearly that the occupied provinces were the first to suffer the intolerable exploitation of the German military machine.

In the parish register of one of Moscow's churches the entry was made of the death, on February 21, 1852 (March 4, new style), of retired collegiate assessor Nikolaj Vasiljevič Gogol, aged fortythree.

Collegiate assessor Gogol outranked the hero of “The Overcoat,” Akakij Akakievič Bašmačkin, a mere titular councilor. Titular councilor was a rank of the ninth class; collegiate assessors ranked one class above.

“The Overcoat” is traditionally associated with a story which, according to the reminiscences of Gogol's friend Annenkov, was once told in his presence: the story of a poor government clerk who after months of privation and overtime work, saved enough money on his meager salary to buy a shotgun, which he lost, however, the very first time he went hunting with the weapon. Unlike “The Overcoat,” the story had a happy ending: a new gun was offered by his colleagues to the luckless Nimrod who lay in bed, sick with grief.

When Rumanians are asked, “Are there any great comic writers in Rumanian literature?” there can be no question that most of them think first of Caragiale. If I were asked, “Who is the most original of Rumanian writers?” I should be tempted to answer likewise: “Caragiale!” Perhaps what I should really mean is that his writing is exceptionally vivid and vital, so that through him Rumania, and especially Bucharest, of the late nineteenth century lives in the imagination with an intensity and individuality such as that, for example, with which another great comic writer, Mark Twain, has endowed the Mississippi Valley of a slightly earlier period.

Ion Luca Caragiale was born on January 29,1852, in a Wallachian village not far from Ploesti. His father was one of three brothers who were all connected with the theater, but had left the stage years before, divorcing his actress wife and marrying a country woman. While I. L. Caragiale was still a small boy, the family moved into Ploesti, and it was there that he went to school.

The centenary of the birth of the distinguished Spanish writer Emilia Pardo-Bazán is being celebrated in Spain and abroad with abundant references to her remarkable creative work as a writer of novels and short stories. Little attention has been paid to her work as a critic and scholar, and nothing has been said of her important role as the great pioneer of Russian studies in Spanish-speaking countries. Her influence in this regard was not confined to these countries, since her major study of Russia was translated into English by Fanny Hale Gardiner and published three years after the Spanish edition under the title Russia, Its People and Its Literature. This translation was important in arousing American interest in Russian studies.

Receipt from Australia of a volume of new translations of Pushkin's lyrics suggests some observations on the problems of translating poetry. Mr. Morrison, the author of the book, begins his prefatory note by quoting one of the wise and charming remarks of Don Quixote: “Translation from one language into another … is like looking at Flemish tapestries on the wrong side; for though the figures are visible, they are full of threads that make them indistinct, and they do not show with the smoothness and brightness of the right side.” I think that Mr. Morrison had a good idea in protecting himself with Don Quixote's Flemish tapestry. Traduttore-traditore is an old slogan. It is a known fact that there is nothing more difficult than a poetic translation. Leibniz went even farther; he maintained that in general it is impossible for one language to reproduce another with equal force and adequate expression. Very close to this idealistic conception of language is Croce in his Aesthetics, based on the absolute unity of form and content.