Comparisons of Russia with the “West” have been a staple of historians and of contemporary observers for a very long time, and no end is in sight. A recent appraisal of Soviet developments in the decade after the death of Stalin was devoted in part to a consideration of the prospects for “a gradual convergence of the social and/or political systems of the West and the Soviet Union.” The variety of the contributors’ responses—“ very likely,” “necessarily uncertain,” “unlikely any meaningful convergence,” “highly improbable,” “depends on what is meant by ‘gradual’ “—suggests an ample range of disagreement, both in expectations for the future and in the characterization of the contrasts underlying these expectations.

1Survey: A Journal of Soviet and East European Studies, No. 47 (Apr., 1963), pp. 37-42.

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3 “Russia,” of course, comprised numerous nationalities, and the term has occasioned much debate. In this piece, however, I shall not attempt to deal with this problem. By Russia I mean the Russian state or the culture and society of its Great Russian inhabitants only.

4Pritsak,Omeljan andReshetar,John S.Jr.,“The Ukraine and the Dialectics of Nation-Building,”Slavic Review,XXII, No.2 (June,1963),224–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9Visoianu,Constantin, in the introduction toCaptive Rumania, ed.Cretzianu,Alexandre (New York:Praeger,1956), p.xvi.Google Scholar

10 Happily, the question of what the Russiansare if they are not Western is beyond the scope of this paper. I am informed that a discussion of Russia and the East has been prepared for the preceding issue of this journal.

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14 In hisImperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution.

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18 SeeImmanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1933), pp. 537-49.

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