Colirmlms Dynamic Archive of Russian History and Culture 3 3

xAlexander Herzen, has been similarly enriched through the services
of the Russian Archive. .A rebel against absolutism and serfdom,
Herzen inspired the liberal and peasantophile struggles of the Rus¬
sian intelligentsia during several decades of the mid-nineteenth
century. Several years ago a large collection of his unpublished
letters was donated by his great-granddaughter, Madame Charles
Rist, to the Archive, and has now been published. The letters, rich
in Hcrzen's comments on Russia's own problems and prospects,
also throw much new light on his alternating feelings of attraction
and repulsion for the freer countries of the West.*

Among the Archive's unique collections are also the letters of
Count Leo Tolstoy to his principal English translator and literary
interpreter, Aylmer Maude. Throwing light, as they do, on Tol¬
stoy's wide-ranging thought and his methods of creative work,
this correspondence, when deciphered, annotated and published,
will be a valuable contribution by Columbia to the study of Russia's
greatest novelist.

The Theatre in Soviet Russia (Columbia Uni\-ersity Press, 1957)
by Nikolai A. Gorehakov, has been hailed by Brooks .Atkinson
and others as the most important study of the rise and decline of the
Russian theatre over the last sixty years. Until his flight from the
Soviet Union Mr. Gorehakov was a direct participant in the strug¬
gle for a free theater, and he speaks with unequalled authority as
its leading chronicler today. The complete manuscript of his study,
which is twice as long as the published book, has been deposited
with the Columbia Archive, for the benefit of later scholars.j"

* lo be published in 1958 as a single volume, following serial publication in
Tile AViy Reviev:. Herzen's difficult handwriting and multilingual st\'le were
deciphered by Professor L. L. Domherr, who also prepared careful commentaries.
The editing and publication of Unpiiblislied Letters of A. 1. Herziti to .V. /. and
T. A. Astml^ov (in Russian) were made possible bv the assistance of rhe Research
Program on the U.S.S.R. (Fast European Fund, Inc.).

t The preparation, translation and publication of this book, translated bv Edgar
l.ehrman, were assisted by grants from rhe Rockefeller Foundation ro Columbia's
Department of Slavic Languages and ro rhe Russian Institute, b\- the (x^mmittce
for the Promotion of Advanced Slavic Cultural Studies, Inc.. and by rhe insrirute
for the Study of the U.S.S.R., Munich. The projcer was iniriared and super\ised
by Professor Ernest J. Simmons.