«Too much ideological bitterness has been added to this issue»: V. N. Andreev’s correspondence with M. Finley

The Value of Multiple Approaches: The Early Years of Artificial Heart Research.

The historical simultaneity of cinema's emergence as a mass medium and the Bolshevik revolution virtually determined that the new regime would appropriate film as a key weapon of mass persuasion. Lenin's famous dictum that us the most important of all arts is the captures the ambition to appropriate all means available, especially modern ones, to effect a programme of sociopolitical engineering. It does not, however, ipso facto mean that Bolshevism played a pioneering and unique role in manipulation of the moving picture. Lenin made rather a confession of faith, by itself entirely derivative and unexceptional, in the power of film to inform and persuade. His statement actually betrayed Russia's relative backwardness, for he projected for Bolshevism what had already been demonstrated under capitalism. Equally noteworthy is that he, no less than Stalin, who later intervened systematically in film production, had almost no appreciation of cinema as art, that is, as a medium of creative expression. Both viewed it in purely utilitarian terms, the former having scant sensibility for the fictional feature film and the latter preoccupied with word more than image and increasingly unwilling or unable to distinguish fictional constructions from reality. Their belief in cinema's enormous public power was expressed primarily, especially in the latter case, through mania for control.(1) Since Soviet cinema, even more than that of Nazi Germany, arguably provides a case sui generis for state domination of the medium, its historiography has been periodized and heavily contoured by political developments. The relative ideological and economic freedom of the 1920s supported a pluralistic film culture, remembered for the avant-garde and classics of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko et al. After the first Party Conference on Cinema in 1928 the film industry suffered progressive economic and artistic decline, being consigned by the tenets of Socialist Realism (reality envisioned in terms of its revolutionary development) and the Stalin-cult of servility and artistic banality until the 1950s. A quantitative and qualitative revival began under Khrushchev and continued through the late 1960s. The conservatism of the Brezhnev era, while not as suffocating as Stalinism, meant general stagnation as the state prevented release of the more enterprising artistic projects. Only with glasnost in the 1980s did cinema again enjoy freedom comparable to that of the 1920s. The institutional and aesthetic form of Soviet cinema, as well as its ideological thrust, cannot be understood without reference to politics, especially the ambitions of Lenin and Stalin. Yet the medium also respected other dictates, some artistic and theoretical, some economic and some technical. It is in exploration of these that the recent spate of publications on Soviet cinema proves most illuminating and challenges aspects of the conventional historiography. Even before the dramatic changes leading to the dissolution of the former Soviet Union stimulated rethinking of the Soviet experience, new methodologies in social and cultural history prompted revisionism. Interdisciplinary interest in film, drawing attention to marketing strategies, popular as well as critical reception, international trade patterns, motion picture financing, the paradigms of genre cinema and the studio system, began to chip away at traditional interpretations. In conjunction with the recent opening of archives and unprecedented dialogue between former Soviet scholars and the west, these approaches are generating fresh perspectives on Soviet cinema. Three of the five books considered here, two of which belong to a new series from Routledge, bring together papers read to international and interdisciplinary conferences at which former Soviet scholars were represented. Historians, political scientists, art historians, filmmakers, and scholars of literature and film theory present topics ranging from detailed formal analyses of specific motion pictures to interpretive readings of periods and genres. …

In the 1920s, competing interpretations of the Decembrists’ legacy could still coexist. The Decembrists’ image remained in flux during the 1925 centennial celebration, though attempts were made at a standard interpretation. Some Soviet scholars still spoke of foreign influences upon the Decembrists and followed in the footsteps of pre revolutionary historians, emphasizing the Decembrists’ liberal leanings rather than taking a strictly Marxist-Leninist approach. During the Stalin era, Russian history was rewritten to conform to the political demands of an increasingly controlling regime. Limitations were imposed upon all sectors of culture, corresponding to the demands placed upon ideologists for a single, unified genealogy of the Bolsheviks’ pre revolutionary precursors. Though this process initially coincided with the cultural revolution in the late 1920s, it came to full fruition by 1937, a pivotal year in the formation of Soviet cultural iconography and historiography. Events taking place on the cultural and political fronts would permanently shape Soviet thinking about the relationship of present to past. For scholars and ideologists, two important moments would be the centennial of Pushkin’s death in February 1937 and the publication of the definitive Short Course on the History of the USSR (Kratkii kurs istorii SSSR) in November 1937.

Anatomy is essential to the health and medical professions: by learning anatomy, medical students learn about the structure of the human body, providing them with the basic tools needed for understanding pathology and clinical problems. In the past century, dissection and lectures formed the basis of anatomy education worldwide. More recently, traditional anatomy education based on topographical structural anatomy taught in lectures and in gross dissection classes, has been replaced by a multiple range of study modules, including problem-based learning, plastic models and/or computer-assisted learning and curricula integration (Louw et al. 2009). The anatomy field is strongly confident that donated bodies can still benefit new medical students significantly, and that dissection and pro-section procedures cannot be underestimated in a modern medical curriculum (Louw et al. 2009). Nevertheless, dissection and light microscopy are not problem-free. Storing human bodies is expensive, and other issues such as preservation and reduced suitability for dissection due to illness, age or obesity could be a problem; moreover, careful dissection is time-consuming and microscopy equipment can be expensive. Aside from biological and methodological matters, dissection and prosection have also issues concerning ethical convictions and legal restrictions or simply logistical problems due to lack of space, funds, recruitment, or proper furniture and equipment. Considerable variations in the legal and ethical frameworks concerning body bequests for anatomical examination exist worldwide based on cultural and religious variations as well as different legal and constitutional backgrounds. For instance, there are different views concerning the ‘‘ownership’’ of cadavers or the acceptability of using unclaimed bodies that have not given informed consent (McHanwell et al. 2008). In addition to known methods such as plastination and Thiel method embalming, a new three-dimensional printing system (3D printing) has been developed recently—an innovative approach that could become a valuable resource in anatomy education. 3D printing (also known as additive manufacturing or rapid prototyping) has existed since the late 1980s but has seen rapid advancements more recently because of decreased cost, computer engineering, and expanding applications. Rapid prototyping involves creating a physical 3D model from a computerised mould. The technology has been used in industrial processes to create forerunners of intended final products; models can be also analysed and modified before production is planned (Gibson et al. 2010). Basically, the principle of rapid prototyping is to use 3D computer models for the reconstruction of a 3D physical model by the addition of material layers (Gibson et al. 2010). With additive fabrication, the machine reads in data from a CAD drawing and lays down successive layers of liquid, powder, or other sheet material, and in this way builds up the model from a series of cross sections. These M. Vaccarezza (&) V. Papa Department of Human, Social and Health Sciences, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Campus Folcara, via S. Angelo in Theodice, 03043 Cassino, FR, Italy e-mail: m.vaccarezza@uq.edu.au; m.vaccarezza@unicas.it

In the late 1990s, when the current Russian opioid epidemic began, illicit opioids used in Russia consisted almost exclusively of heroin. The type of opioids used has evolved in the early 21st Century. The objective of this study was to describe the evolution of illicit opioid use among people living with HIV (PLWH) reporting recent opioid use in St Petersburg, Russia. We examined baseline data from four research studies conducted in the period 2004-2015 that included PLWH who used opioids [Partnership to Reduce the Epidemic Via Engagement in Narcology Treatment (PREVENT; 2004-2005; n=17), HIV Evolution in Russia-Mitigating Infection Transmission and Alcoholism in a Growing Epidemic (HERMITAGE; 2007-2010; n=281), Linking Infectious and Narcology Care (LINC; 2013-2014; n=119) and Russia Alcohol Research Collaboration on HIV/AIDS (Russia ARCH; 2012-2015; n=121)] and reported recent use of heroin and other opioids. Although these studies spanned more than a decade, the participants represented similar birth cohorts; the mean age was 24.5years in 2004 and 33.3 years in 2014. The use of opioid types, however, evolved across cohorts, with the use of any illicit drug other than heroin increasing from 6% [95% confidence interval (CI) 000.2, 29%] in PREVENT (2004-2005) to 30% (95% CI 25, 36%) in HERMITAGE (2007-2010) to 70% (95% CI 61, 78%) in LINC (2013-2014) to 77% (95% CI 68, 84%) in ARCH (2012-2015). Any heroin use consistently decreased over the 10-year period in the cohorts, from 100% (95% CI 80, 100%) in 2004-2005 to 54% (95% CI 44, 63%) in 2012-2015. Among PLWH who use opioids in St Petersburg, Russia, illicit use of opioids other than heroin appears to be more common than heroin use.

Reviewed by: Turkey, Kemalism, and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation by Vahram Ter-Matevosyan Naira Sahakyan (bio) Vahram Ter-Matevosyan, Turkey, Kemalism, and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation (New York; London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 279 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-3-319-97403-3. Comparative studies of the Russian and Ottoman Empires have become fairly common in historiography. Surprisingly, interest in comparing the two countries does not extend to the successor states of the two empires, the USSR and the Republic of Turkey, and their ideological systems, Bolshevism and Kemalism, respectively. This is all the more conspicuous given the significant mutual interest of scholars in both countries. Soviet historians produced an impressive number of works on Turkey in general and on Kemalism in particular. Arguably, the lack of comparative studies of the Bolshevik and Kemalist regimes could be explained by the lack of command of the Russian language among Turkish and Western historians and by severe ideological contraints imposed on Soviet scholars. The book by Vahram Ter-Matevosyan aims to fill this lacuna. After presenting the formation and development of the Kemalist regime and its perception by contemporaries (in chapters 1–6), in the final two chapters the author discusses Soviet perceptions of the Kemalist revolution and Kemal's ideas and reforms, and brings together the fragmented international historiography of Kemalism. In reconstructing Soviet attitudes to Kemalism, Ter-Matevosyan goes beyond a narrow focus on Soviet-Turkish relations and explores the broader political context of bilateral contacts, such as World War II. The author approaches "Kemalism as a specifically republican phenomenon with strong and vivid characteristics inherited from the Ottoman past" (P. 9). Ter-Matevosyan sets two goals in his study: (1) examining the evolution and internal dynamics of Kemalism, and (2) examining existing problems and gaps in the study of Kemalism (Pp. 2–3). A salient feature of the book is its broad time frame, which covers the 1920s to the 1970s and encompasses three main topics: problems of defining and interpreting Kemalism (covered by chapters 1 and 6), a chronological account of the main stages of Kemalism's formation and transformation (chapters 2–4), and Soviet interpretations of Kemalism and their historical context (chapters 7 and 8). In chapter 1, Ter-Matevosyan outlines the main trends and problems in the international historiography of Kemalism, and shows that even the definition of Kemalism and [End Page 214] its periodization remain contested topics. For example, he writes, "Before the late 1980s, most existing accounts of Kemalism failed to see Kemalist reforms and ideas as stemming from the Ottoman era" (P. 13). Transcending traditional historiographic boundaries, Ter-Matevosyan brings into the discussion the Soviet historiography of Kemalism, which he groups into several phases: the 1920s to the mid-1930s, the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, and the post-Stalin era. This periodization is dicussed at length in the book's final two chapters, while also systematically referring to Soviet studies and perceptions of Kemalism throughout the text. Chapter 2 covers the political turning points of the 1920s and 1930s, from the foundation of the Republic of Turkey until the death of Atatürk in 1938. The author begins with an examination of the political consolidation of the 1920s, then turns to the first attempts of the ideological conceptualization of the new political regime – the development of the principles of the Republican People's Party (RPP) as the core of Kemalism. Ter-Matevosyan concludes that the Nine Principles elaborated by Mustafa Kemal on April 8, 1923, were more of a short-term policy platform rather than a strategic ideological vision (P. 45). These principles were elaborated in the wake of the RPP's Great Congress, where Mustafa Kemal delivered his "Six-Day Speech," known as "Nutuk." The first party statute adopted at the congress "for the first time … mentioned the party's republican (cümhuriyetçi), populist (halkçı), and nationalist (milliyetçi) nature" (P. 46). The Soviet emissaries present at the congress, Ol'ga Kameneva and Ziya Feridov, viewed "the cultural and educational reforms of the Kemalist regime as superficial and urban-centered" (P. 47). Already at the beginning of the 1930s...

The article analyzes the process of social and musical communication formation in Russia from the historical perspective. In practical and theoretical aspects the first attempts to manage social and musical life of the country are considered. Since 30s–40s of the XIXth century, concert societies of a communicative orientation are created in Russia. The first years of the second half of the XIXth century, associated with the development of democratic principles, are marked by a surge in the attention of professional musicians to social and communication processes in music and art in general. The emergence of new trends in the concert life of Russian cities stimulated the renewal of forms of social and musical communication, which required the training of specialists in the field of music education and enlightenment. The opening of conservatories in Saint Petersburg and Moscow created the necessary prerequisites for the formation of a unified musical communication system in society. At the beginning of the XXth century Russian National Conservatories played their role in the overall process as one of the effective models of the educational movement and as an example of practical implementation of the tasks of purposeful socio-cultural design in the sphere of functioning of musical art of high spiritual tradition. In parallel with the empirical search for effective ways and methods of managing the musical life of society, the creation of its theoretical basis was intensively pursued. At the late 60s – early 70s musicology was enriched by the first fundamental works on this subject.

Our achievement motivation study data were obtained in the late 1990s from a population who began their schooling in Soviet times and whose childhoods will have differed greatly from preceding or subsequent generations. From the securities and certainties of the Soviet system they must now confront an unpredictable and, for many, daunting future. Perusal of the contemporary Russian social science literature provides a stark image of a society where there is immense anxiety about changing values and behaviour on the part of the country’s young people; for many social commentators, the situation is critical. The long-term impact upon youngsters of the sudden and dramatic social change across much of Eastern Europe during the 1990s is still unclear although there is some evidence to suggest that the effects upon children varied according to relatively small differences in age (Van Hoorn et al., 2000). Given such rapid change, the views and perspectives reported in this book may not wholly reflect those of the current generation of school children in St Petersburg. Certainly, it would appear that our studies took place at a transitional period when schooling was seen as a means of maintaining some sense of order and stability (Alexander, 2000; O’Brien, 2000), yet also was beginning to become challenged by shifting goals and values.

The twenty‐first century marked the beginning of rapid health improvements in Russia. In the late 2000s and the 2010s, there was already a moderate decrease in inter‐oblast mortality disparities, with the exception of the growing life expectancy (LE) advantage of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. We have used newly available data to explore LE changes from 2003–2005 to 2015–2017 and determinants of LE differences across settlements of different types and population sizes. We distinguished between three major segments of the LE distribution: Moscow and Saint Petersburg at the top, large‐ and medium‐sized cities in the middle, and smaller urban and rural areas lagging behind. The LE differences among these three groups increased, but the within‐group differences decreased. The gaps between bigger cities and the “periphery” within oblasts grew, and this part of the total dispersion had increased substantially by 2015–2017. Education, together with population size, explained 62 percent (for females) and 67 percent (for males) of LE variation across 292 geographic units in 2015–2017. Our results suggest that slower health progress in small urban and rural areas is an important obstacle to further mortality reduction at the national level and is a matter of public health concern.

This conversation with the philosopher and translator Natalia Avtonomova deals with how Michel Foucault’s seminal work the Order of things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences came to be translated into Russian and published in 1977. Those who backed its publication, the officials who were involved with it, and the editors of the book are all singled out. Ms. Avtonomova emphasizes how exceptional this publication was as an intellectual and editorial feat. Even though the text was skeptical about Marxism (e.g. asserting that Marxism is “like a fish in water” in the context of 19th century thought but “has nothing to breathe” in any other environment), the book was published completely unabridged, albeit with editorial notes commenting on sensitive passages. Moreover, the book appeared during the period of stagnation when Russian translations of works by modern Western philosophers, especially those with an ideological ax to grind, simply did not exist as part of the Soviet intellectual scene. The interview further tackles the reception of French structuralism by Soviet scholars in structure and systems studies. Natalia Avtonomova also discusses her book Philosophical Issues of Structural Analysis in the Humanities that was published at the same time as the translation of Foucault, recounts the difficulties in getting it published, and describes the status of the translator in Soviet Russia. Another topic is her correspondence with Foucault in the late 1970s that turned mostly on his attitude toward the events of May 1968. The interview also sheds light on some distinctive features in the current Russian attitude toward Foucault’s work and on the prospects for a new revised edition of the Order of things in Russian

The article discusses the features of the genesis and functioning of a special type of historical narrative in Soviet scholarship, which gained particular strength in the 1930s and gradually exhausted by the late 1940s. For convenience of characterization, the author focuses on Soviet works about ancient history and analyzes the main attitudes of their authors (“old” Marxists, scholars who coverted to Marxism, and the Soviet generation of historians), and the reasons and features of their appeal to the genre of historical and journalistic narratives about the past eras. This type of narrative is therefore associated with the formation and flowering of the Stalinist regime. The changes of the 1930s are all the more remarkable as we can compare the style of historians who wrote before and after this time. Using the examples of A. Tyumenev or B. Bogaevsky, the reader can see how respectful and loyal attitude to foreign scholarship was replaced by loud criticism of the limitations of “bourgeois” historians, in whose works Soviet historians certainly found features of “reactionary”. On the example of the books by N.I. Nedelsky and A.V. Mishulin, the author shows how historians who did not engage in scholarship before the revolution took the same path. In conclusion, the author gives the general characteristics of the genre, as well as an explanation of why it was doomed to gradual self-exhaustion, not only because it depended on external (political) but also because it was influenced by internal reasons.

John Cage's music was little known in the Soviet Union until the late 1960s, as official communist cultural policy would not allow his music to be performed or researched. This makes it all the more surprising that the only visit by the composer to Soviet Russia had become possible by 1988. The Soviet officials were planning a large festival of contemporary music in St Petersburg in 1988. With the changing climate Tikhon Khrennikov, the secretary of the All Soviet Union League of Composers, appointed by Stalin in 1948, was keen to be seen as a progressive at the time of Gorbachev's perestroika, and he approved the invitation for Cage to be present at the performances of his works in St Petersburg. This article includes interviews with the composer conducted by the author in 1987–1989, as well as recollections of the meetings with Cage at his home in New York City and in Moscow.

The Literary Lorgnette: Opera in Imperial Russia. By Julie A. Buckler. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. [vii, 294 p. ISBN 0-8047-3247-7. $45.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. Julie A. Buckler's The Literary Lorgnette: Opera in Imperial Russia is a valuable addition to our understanding of development of Russian culture during nineteenth century. The central thrust of her argument is that western opera-including its plots, characters, and performers-was an extremely important component of Russian culture far beyond confines of opera house. What has sometimes been seen as a zero-sum contest between western European and Russian homegrown culture is shown to be developmcnl of a triumphant Russian culture which incorporates both streams. Buckler's book succeeds in showing how that assimilation took place in area of opera as musical genre, literary topic, and social activity; she shows how opera in all its facets was experienced by audiences and incorporated into realist literature of nineteenth century. For music historians, this study is a worthy addition to that of Robert Ridenour, Nationalism, Modernism, and Personal Rivalry in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981) and more recent Ital'yanshchina chapter in Richard Taruskin's Defining Russia Musically (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). Each of three studies addresses a different aspect of mid-nineteenth-century Russian musical culture, although some of Buckler's ideas can be seen in embryo in Taruskin's chapter. A fourth book, Murray Filme's The St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters: Stage and State in Revolutionary Russia 1900-1920 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000) while treating a later period, has a pertinent introduction, including historiography of Imperial Theater. In each of her seven chapters Buckler analyzes historical accounts of Russian social and cultural through techniques of literary criticism, including new historicism, feminist criticism, and semiotics. She takes on a formidable task and arrives at a valid overall picture. As always, though, devil is in details. In general, her application of techniques of literary criticism to Russian social and cultural landscape, still old regime during period under examination, does not take enough account of significant differences between Russia and bourgeois society of western Europe. Given that audience for this book is not likely to have much acquaintance with autocracy under Nicholas I, Alexander II and III, or with social struture of a society still comprised of a small elite and an enormous underclass, some of her phrases-for example the vast and inclusive space of cultural life (p. 1), ordinary citizens (p. 16), and middle classes (p. 44)-require mapping onto a social template that differs significantly from that of contemporaneous western Europe. The book makes somewhat mysterious society of Russia seem quite understandable, but this may be an illusion that should be dispelled or at least qualified. The chapter that will interest historians of theaters and audiences particularly is chapter 2, Attending Opera. Here Buckler begins with a concise account of choppy narrative of structures built, reconstructed, renamed, and consumed by fire (p. 17). But description of theaters and theater troupes of capital-the Bolshoi, Malyi, Aleksandrinskii, Mikhailovskii, and Mariinskii-useful as it is, does not satisfy desire for a clear longitudinal account of repertory, social custom, and class makeup of specific theaters, which changed greatly over century (as did Russian cities themselves). The author has included descriptions of opera performances and audiences in Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev, and Odessa through eyes of memoirists, letter writers, and Soviet scholars (among them Zotov [1860], Losskii [latter part of nineteenth century], Skal'kovskii [1899], Grossman [1926], and Nikolaeva [1984], all cited in Buckler's bibliography). …

REVIEWS 731 Levitan’s approving comments on Chekhov’s verbal landscapes. Thus the story ‘The Grasshopper’ (chapter 6) is extensively analysed as a reflection of Levitan’s affair with one of their mutual friends Sophia Kuvshinnikova. The Seagull is explored less (pp. 146–56; & passim): focus is on reference to the extra-marital pregnancy of another friend, Lidiia Mizinova (Lika), Levitan’s involvement with both a mother and daughter, the Turchaninovs, and his attempted suicide. Significantly enough, Gregory finds it difficult to trace Chekhov in Levitan’s painting, and relies on comment from Levitan’s letters. The attempt leads to his prime differentiation between the two artists: Gregory points to Chekhov as ‘an artist with a penetrating cold heart’ (p. 218) which enabled him to remain at a distance, while Levitan was ever responsive, concerned, often angry or judgemental, and frequently in despair over his own abilities. They both eventually found nature indifferent to human affairs but reacted differently. For Levitan, nature’s indifference emphasized his isolation, feeding into bouts of depression but forming his more troubled landscapes; for Chekhov, it cemented his personal detachment in his creative work. There is rich material in this study. Gregory was right to unpick this relationship. From the point of view of Chekhov studies, Levitan is too often neglected. From the point of view of Levitan studies, this is an artist whose position astride the two most significant movements in Russian painting of the late nineteenth century, ‘The Itinerants’ and the World of Art, is ripe for investigation and appreciation. Gregory is perhaps too modest in his ambitions. A full biography of Levitan and catalogue of his works in English would cement this artist’s international reputation. They would build on the key foundation provided by the Soviet scholar, A. A. Fedorov-Davydov (Moscow, 1976; in English, Leningrad, 1981) and complement the solid work done in English by Averil King (Woodbridge, 2011). Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies Cynthia Marsh University of Nottingham Kleberg, Lars and Semenenko, Aleksei (eds). Aksenov and the Environs. Södertörn Academic Studies, 52. Södertörns högskola, Huddinge, 2012. 242 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographies. SK195.00 (paperback). Aksenov and the Environs, edited by Lars Kleberg and Aleksei Semenenko, originated from a major international conference held in Sweden in 2008. The volumefocusesonthesomewhatlesser-knownRussianavant-gardepersonality, Ivan Aleksandrovich Aksenov (1884–1935), an experimental Russian poet and prominent critic who was also active as a translator, and who worked both in SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 732 the theatre and in the early Soviet cultural administration. He was born into a family of high Russian gentry and trained as a junior military officer in Kiev and St Petersburg, but eventually was forced to quit the service. In 1910 he was a groom at Gumilev and Akhmatova’s ‘solemn’ marriage ceremony in Kiev. He made a brief but critical acquaintance with Pablo Picasso in Paris during his travels to France during 1915 and his book, entitled Picasso and the Environs, published in Moscow by Tsentrifuga in 1917, is here used as an intertextual source for the playful name of Kleberg and Semenenko’s volume. Aksenov’s book was one of the first theoretical studies dedicated to Picasso, being also an analytical rumination on Cubism as a ground-breaking artistic movement. Vladimir Markov’s colleague, Victor Terras, would later define this work as ‘an original and insightful book of criticism’. It was printed in an edition of 1,000 copies with an original cover design by a prominent Russian avant-garde ‘Amazon’, Aleksandra Ekster. Aksenov was among the founding members of the Tsentrifuga (semi-Futurist) publishing project, overseeing the 1917 printing of Boris Pasternak’s seminal collection, Over the Barriers, which contained the poet’s early verses dating from 1914–16. During the First World War, Aksenov served as a Russian imperial officer. In 1917, he was arrested by the Romanian authorities and turned over to the Red Army, and eventually ended up collaborating with early Soviet military institutions, including the infamous Cheka. His cooperation with the Reds culminated in his obtaining a high administrative post at the Commissariat of Education (Narkompros), and then the deanship at Vsevolod Meierkhol´d’s directing...

Ever since humans transitioned from foraging to farming in what is now China about 9,000 or 10,000 years ago, soil has been the basis for food production and later for the state’s tax revenues. Throughout Chinese history, environmental, social, cultural, and political conditions fostered the development of a variety of specific regional forms of land use and agriculture and gave rise to a deeper knowledge of different soils and their properties. The earliest classifications of soils are found in ancient Chinese sources such as the Zhouli周禮 (Rites of the Zhou), the Lüshi chunqiu呂氏春秋 (Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals), and the Guanzi管子 (Master Guan) and remained fundamental throughout imperial China. These classifications were based on the physical properties of the soil, such as color, texture, density, temperature, or consistency. Agronomists paid particular attention to these properties, according to which appropriate tillage methods, fertilizers, and crops had to be selected. The growing knowledge of soil chemistry that developed in the West in the nineteenth century was brought to China by missionaries toward the end of the century. Slowly, the traditional understanding of soil was replaced by modern soil science. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Western scientists, together with their Chinese colleagues, conducted the first detailed nationwide soil surveys, which led to a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of Chinese soils and contributed to the development of soil sciences (turangxue土壤學) as a modern academic discipline in China. Throughout Chinese history, soil sciences have always been closely related to agriculture, and modern soil studies are also often aimed at finding the right methods to improve the soil’s output and maintain the productivity of agricultural land. With about one-fifth of the world’s population being fed by only 7 percent of the world’s arable land, soil degradation has become an increasing problem in modern China, and the government has begun to make efforts to prevent further loss of arable land and to develop strategies and methods for soil conservation.