Although the complex role of language in structuring experience and behavior is now widely recognized as a central element of historical understanding, the multiple problems of “representation” as they relate to late imperial and early Soviet politics remain a source of confusion and controversy. In particular, the role of nonworkers in organizing and leading “workers’ parties” has raised appropriate doubts about the very integrity of labor politics in these years, as well as the ways both Soviet and western historians have conceived them. Impressive new efforts have consequently been made, stimulated as well by advances in European labor history, to locate “authentic” worker voices and movements, and to contrast this socially grounded authenticity either directly or by implication with the abstracted idealizations of putative worker leaderships.

The complex politics that convulsed Turkestan in 1917 remains one of the least understood aspects of the Russian revolution. A structure of dual power emerged along the familiar liberal-radical divide, but in Turkestan both sides represented the small European (largely Russian) settler population and both were united in an attempt to exclude the indigenous population from participation in the revolutionary process. Parallel political movements developed among the local population, but the axes of division were quite different than those among the settler population. The two political movements interacted in numerous ways throughout the year, producing a pattern of conflict that was in many ways unique in the Russian empire. Western scholarship, hamstrung by lack of access to primary materials, has generally paid little attention to the topic. The slim literature that does exist either attempts to find patterns common to the revolutionary process in the capitals (here visible only among the Russian settler population), and thus to affirm the universality of the revolutionary process; or to understand revolutionary Turkestan through analogy with other borderlands and, not finding patterns deemed normative for the borderlands (for example, a strong assertion of nationalism), is content to stress their absence, taking this as proof of the backwardness of Central Asia. Whether they be William Chamberlin's “primitive Asiatic tribesmen,” or Richard Pierce's “natives” who “stood apart from the revolutionary events,” Central Asians are usually written out of the story of 1917.

In 1953, just after Stalin's death, the Soviet state machine tool publishing house released A. A. Kanaev's From the Water Wheel to the Atomic Engine (Ot vodianoi mel'nitsy do atomnogo dvigateli). Like other books and articles published in the popular and scientific press in the USSR in this period, From the Water Wheel to the Atomic Engine explored the political, economic, and cultural significance of an incipient “atomic century” and touted the nearly limitless applications of the power of the atom in agriculture, medicine, and industry. Indeed, there was little doubt among scientists, engineers, economic planners, and party officials that the Soviet Union would soon enter the stage of “communist construction”: communism would be achieved within their lifetimes, owing to the omniscient leadership of the Communist Party and on the basis of the achievements of science and technology. By the end of the decade, the average Soviet citizen, too, came to believe that the glorious future had arrived. Many people wrote letters to prominent physicists with suggestions on how to tame the power of the atom to improve the quality of life. For citizens, scientists, and officials alike, successes in atomic energy provided undeniable confirmation that at long last society had embarked on the final leg of the long journey to communism.

Since the heady, early days of the Gorbachev reform period, the Russian people have become not only subjects of historical transformation but also, increasingly, objects of opinion surveys. Western researchers, new Russian commercial operations, and local academics recently freed from the restrictions of stagnation (zastoi) have been asking Russians much more probing questions than they were previously able to. Rather than provide a detailed description of how they spend their leisure time, Russian citizens have been asked to evaluate their political leaders, to project their nation's future, and to offer opinions on emerging democratic and market systems. Many Russians have responded to this barrage of questions with “I don't know.” For instance, in a 1992 survey headed by Richard Rose, when Russians were asked whether the words Marxism-Leninism evoked positive or negative feelings, 46 percent answered “I find it hard to say.” An identical percentage declined to evaluate the word capitalism.

A significant factor in the history—and one of the bones of contention in the historiography—of the Slovene minority in the Austrian province of Carinthia is what is known as the Windischentheorie. This pseudoacademic “theory“ was developed, on the basis of popular beliefs, during the interwar years and promulgated by those with fascist, later Nazi, sympathies and was an apparently very effective weapon in the Germanization process. The Windischentheorie changed over time; according to what may be called its “canonical” version, the language of the Carinthian Slovenes was quite different from Standard Slovene and the Carinthian Slovenes themselves were therefore ethnically distinct from Slovenes in Slovenia. Other versions of the “theory” are described below. The meaning of the word Windisch, which had been used by German speakers to mean “Slav” for many centuries, was thereby changed radically and with important political effect.

In his discussion of The Double,Joseph Frank remarks that Dostoevskii's decision to change the original subtitle from The Adventures of Mr. Goliadkin (Prikliucheniia Gospodina Goliadkina) to A Petersburg Poem (Peterburgskaia poema) had, among other things, the “advantage of correctly assigning The Double its place in the Russian literary tradition initiated by The Bronze Horseman.“ If The Double is truly in the Petersburg tradition of The Bronze Horseman, it is curious that no one has studied the relationship between these works, each of which features a minor civil servant (chinovnik) who goes mad. The few comparative analyses of the Petersburg theme in Pushkin and Dostoevskii have invariably focused on the more obvious relationships between The Queen of Spades and Crime and Punishment. Scholars have often compared The Double with other works—for example, the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Gogol'’s “Notes of a Madman,” “The Nose,” and Dead Souls but not with those of Pushkin.