If the contemporary Soviet philosopher were asked to give a brief answer to the question, what is art, his reply would probably be that art is a reflection of reality, a reality that is largely social. What does he mean by this reply? First of all, that the subject matter of art is to a great extent made up of the social life of man, which is like a cornucopia whence flow situations, problems, themes, materials, conflicts, and struggles with which the artist deals. These things cannot help but be “reflected” in his work. It is not meant, however, that this reflection is in the nature of an inert and passive image which exercises no influence on what it reflects. As we shall see, the influence which it exerts, directly and indirectly, is very important.

Of all the questions to which Chernyshevski's tireless pen devoted itself in regard to the United States, the issues of Negro slavery and the American Civil War assumed the greatest magnitude. This was so because to Chernyshevski the American slave system was the one serious blot upon an otherwise unspotted record of democratic achievement. If this blot were removed, European radicals might then look to America with no reservations as source of inspiration for their own democratic (if not socialist) goals. Such an attitude towards American slavery was merely the boldest expression of views typical of many Russian radicals in this period.

THE LAST two weeks that Emperor Alexander spent in Taganrog before his official death have been recorded in the diaries of Empress Elisabeth, Prince Peter Volkonski, Sir James Wyllie, Bt., Doctor Dimitri Tarasov, and in an unsigned manuscript entitled "Official History of the Illness and Death of Emperor Alexander I." We possess also the recollections of some of the Emperor's servants, especially those of his valets Anisimov and Fedorov, but they do not contain a day-by-day record of events and very often give way to the temptation of recalling stories based upon hearsay and therefore of no historical value. Prince Peter Volkonski kept a day-by-day record and his description is the most complete if not always the most accurate. However, as a whole, the four principal witnesses have left us four different stories full of the most obvious contradictions. This state of affairs can be explained only by two suppositions: that they had to write something about Alexander's illness in view of the Emperor's determination to use it as a means of escape and, obviously, did not arrange among themselves all the details of their narratives; and (2) that some of these diaries, and especially Volkonsky's were written post factum.

The recent siege and heroic defence of Leningrad have refocused the world's attention on this remarkable city; attention that, from the architectural point of view at least, it has always merited, for Leningrad (the old St. Petersburg), even with its northern setting and its Russian background, is probably the most perfect classical city since ancient Rome. It owes this to a wise succession of rulers, each of whom, though building to his personal taste, followed the basic pattern established by Peter the Great, founder of the city.

In 1703, Peter, having captured the mouth of the Neva from the Swedes, decided to build a new capital that would be in closer contact with western Europe.

The absence of any brief but inclusive treatment of the chief works of pre-revolutionary Russian painting has suggested the preparation of this summary, based on repeated visits to the great Soviet collections (especially the Russian Museum in Leningrad and the Tretyakov Galley at Moscow) and on the following standard or detailed historical and critical works: L. Réau, L'art russe de Pierre le Grand à nos jours (Paris, 1922); O. Wulff, Die neurussiscke Kunst (Vienna, 1932); I. Grabar, Istoriya russkogo iskusstva, esp. vols, i, iv (St. Petersburg, 1909-1914); V. Nikolskil, Istoriya russkogo iskusstva (Berlin, 1923); A. Benois, Istoriya žvopisi v XIX veke: russkaya Zivopis’ (St. Petersburg, 1901); N. Kovalevskaya, Istoriya russkogo iskusstva XVIII veka (Moscow, 1940); O. Lyaskovskaya, Karl Bryullpv (Moscow, 1940); I. Grabar, Repin (Moscow, 1933); I. Grabar, Ilya Efimovich Repin, 2 vols.

In the summer of 1812, through the efforts of Bettine Brentano, a meeting took place in Teplitz between Beethoven and Goethe. Beethoven describes it in a letter to Bettine:

Liebe gute Bettine! Könige und Füirsten können wohl Professoren machen und Geheimeräthe &. und Titel und Ordensbänder umhängen, aber groβe Menschen können sie nicht machen, Geister, die über das Weltgeschmeib hervorragen, das müssen sie wohl bleiben lassen zu machen, und damit muβ man sie in Respect halten; wenn so zwei zusammen kommen, wie ich und der Goethe, da müssen auch grobe Herren merken, was bei unser Einem als groβ gelten kann.

What are the relations between parents and children in the USSR? What is the Soviet policy towards parental authority? The importance of these two questions reaches beyond the family itself because they can be used as political and social barometers.

Certain differences between two successive generations are a fairly normal phenomenon; the progress of civilization and of social life over a twenty-five year period — the average length of time separating parents and children — makes these discrepancies quite comprehensible. But if these differences in viewpoint become violent conflicts, it is proof that the social life of the country is in a state of ferment. The official attitude in such cases is characteristic of the regime.

To Her Supreme Highness
The Gracious Lady
Marya Alekseyevna Narishkina

Although the years immediately following the Revolution of 1917 were unfavorable to the development of scientific research in Russia, the importance of such work was recognized by Lenin shortly after he took power. In a memorandum written in April, 1918, he outlined a plan for reorganization of the Academy of Sciences; but the political struggle and the Civil War left him little occasion to effect any practical steps in this direction.

During the NEP, the so-called Restoration Period (1921-1928), the Soviet Government undertook measures designed to maintain a certain number of scientific activities. But conditions of work were unstable and research was ineffectively organized. In 1929 the highest scientific body, the Academy of Sciences, was drastically reorganized, deprived of its traditional autonomy, and forced to adjust its work to the practical needs of the new reconstruction of industry and agriculture. At the outset “pure science” was frowned upon, neglected, and even suppressed. But subsequently its great importance was recognized, and the reversal in governmental policy was marked by the establishment of new institutes devoted to fundamental research in such fields as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

Autumn
List'ya v pole poželteli,
I kruiatsya i letyat …
Across the meadows whirling blow
The yellow leaves of fall;
No verdure in the woodlands now,
The dark green pine is all.
Beneath the boulder's hanging crest,
No more on beds of flowers
The ploughboy seeks his midday rest
From hot laborious hours.
Sadly the wild wood creatures go
To hidden coverts deep;
The moon is dim; the meadows glow
In silver mists asleep.

No one searching for a link uniting the English-speaking world with the world of Malczewski will have to look either far or long. For both Antoni Malczewski himself and his stirring ballad Marja have often touched our English-American milieu.

To be noted first of all was Malczewski's own meeting face to face with Byron, at Venice in 1818. The conversation the two poets had at that time related to the theme Byron was to employ soon after, in part perhaps as a result of this very conversation, in Mazeppa, a tale of Malczewski's own Borderland. There was also the circumstance of Marja's being the first work in Polish to be printed in the original in England, an event which took place in 1836 when one of the leading Panslavists of the day, Jan Marcin Bansemer (1802–1840), brought out an edition of the poem in an odd, Czechified Polish orthography.

Each Lithuanian surname appears in three different forms, one masculine and two feminine. The masculine form (Klìmas, Vābalas, Žukáuskas, Varkalà, Antanáitis, Variakōjis, Gudāvičius, etc.) is used for all male members of a family without regard of age or marital status. The surname of married women ends always in -ienė ﹛Klìmiene, Vabalíenė, Žukáuskiene, Varkalienė, Antanáitienė, Variakojiene, Gudāvičienė, etc.), while the feminine form of several diminutive suffixes (-aitė, -ytė, -utė, -utė) is used to form the surnames of little girls and unmarried women (Klimáitė,. Vabaláitė, Žukauskiátė, Varkaláitė, Antanaitytė, Variakōjýtė, Gudavičiutė, etc.). In Lithuania these three forms are legally established and it would be unthinkable and utterly ridičulous to use them otherwise than here described.

The Nazi attempt to draw philosophers and artists, who are not able to protect themselves for the simple reason that they are dead, into the orbit of their own brand of philosophy is not surprising. Their basic insecurity forced them to look for support from all quarters. Nietzsche, Stefan George, and Dostoevski are but a few outstanding examples. Most extraordinary is the Nazi claim that Dostoevski was a precursor of Fascism. Now, after complete military victory over Germany, this task is still ahead of us: to detect and destroy the subtly-penetrating lies which Nazism has built up.

It is not too difficult an enterprise to prove that Dostoevski was reactionary, hyper-nationalistic and anti-revolutionary. His political and ethical views were as contradictory and dualistic as the emotional life of his heroes.

At the outbreak of World War Two the most startling shortage revealed by our country was of linguists — people who could handle with ease and fluency the numerous tongues required by our war needs. The Intensive Language Program of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Army Specialized Training Program were the solution of the problem, but it was a solution which was not extremely efficient and, above all, anything but prompt.

For the normal, everyday requirements of a global post-war world, as well as for a possible recurrence of the emergency, America needs language specialists. This means not merely people who can handle the four western European languages of the normal high school and college curriculum, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

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.

In the study of American population it is necessary to distinguish two separate scientific concepts:

1. (1) The American of Polish origin,

2. (2) The Polish-American (Polono-Amerykanin)

Individuals of the first category — Americans of “Polish blood” — make up the Polish “Statistical Group.” This group is represented, but only partly and with a high coefficient of error, in the pertinent section of the American census.

Individuals of the second category, which includes the great majority of Americans of Polish origin, are not represented as such in any official statistics. They comprise the Polish “Sociological Group.“ This is the group that calls itself in Polish Polonia.

Ekaterina Konstantinova Breshko-Breshkovskaya, nee Verigo, was born in 1844 in the Vitebsk District and brought up on a large estate in the Chernigov District. Her father was the scion of an aristocratic Polish family and her mother was a member of the Russian aristocracy. Madame Breshkovskaya grew up in wealth and comfort with an assured social position. Her parents were liberally inclined, and she explained her own liberalism as being founded upon her father's teachings and influence. However, Madame Breshkovskaya went far to the left of her father's mild liberalism.

As a girl in her late teens, Madame Breshkovskaya went to St. Petersburg, where she at once became an active member of the liberal and revolutionary groups which centered around the University. Like others of her class among the intelligentsia, she was driven to the left by conviction and by a mysterious compulsion to expiate the sins of her peers.

Of the Balkan peoples who regained independent national life during the nineteenth century, the Bulgarians were least favorably situated. Cut off geographically from the fertilizing ideas of the West, economically and politically under closer subjection to Constantinople, and religiously and intellectually exploited by the Greeks, the Bulgarians had in addition to cope with the contradictory interests of the great powers and the jealousy and ambition of their politically more fortunate neighbors. But because of these obstacles, the resurrection of Bulgaria furnishes examples of the workings of modern nationalism and of the impact of foreign influences on backward native conditions. Among such influences, the Serbian was one of the most significant.

To be sure, Bulgarian national feeling never completely died out, any more than Bulgaria entirely disappeared from the political map or vocabulary of Europe.

The great interest in the study of the Russian language which has brought a wave of students to our universities is, in a large measure, due to the achievements of science and technology in the Soviet Union. It is these achievements that created an industry capable of supporting a highly mechanized warfare and successfully trained the personnel for it. It is the recognition now accorded to Russian scientists that is responsible for the fact that scientists all over the world are displaying much interest in the Russian scientific publications, which had been largely neglected previously, and are eager to read them.