PREFACE
THESE lectures were delivered at Cambridge in August 1916, during the Summer Meeting arranged by the Local Examinations and Lectures Syndicate. The main subject of study at this meeting was "Russia and Poland," and, out of the many lectures that were then delivered, these have been chosen for publication, because each of the speakers is, in his own department, an unsurpassed authority.
Paul Milyoukov, a scholar and a statesman, was formerly a Professor at Sofia University, and has been one of the most prominent figures in the Duma ever since it was called into existence in October 1905. He was leader of the Constitutional Democrat party; he organised and now leads the Progressive Bloc, with equal courage and sagacity. No man living knows more of recent political history in Russia ; and few men have had better opportunities of following the tortuous course of Balkan politics.
Peter Struve is one of the most eminent of Russian economists and has written valuable works on Prices and Labour; he is now editor of an important periodical (Russian Thought) and occupies the Chair of Political Economy in the Polytechnic Institute of Petrograd. He also has had practical experience of politics : he sat formerly in the Duma as Member for Petrograd.
Alexander Lappo-Danilevsky, who here gives a general survey of the progress of learning in Russia, is a distinguished historian and a Fellow of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, the famous institution
