Soviet discussions of what is meant by “socialist in content, national in form” in literature invariably approach the second half of the slogan by saying, “First of all, of course, the language” a work is created in. Beyond this point there is often less agreement, but there is no questioning the validity of having a person who writes in Chechen called a “Chechen writer.” Biographical notes on Soviet writers generally follow such an identifying procedure, except in apparently touchy cases, like that of Wanda Wasilewska, whose description consistently reads: “Soviet writer. Writes in Polish.” No such problems beset writers working in most of the other “languages of the peoples of the USSR.” The second edition of the Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (BSE; 1949-58) everywhere uses national qualifiers on the order of: Panch—“Ukrainian Soviet writer“; Aibek —“Soviet Uzbek writer“; and Gafurov—“Lak Soviet poet.“