Writing from Italy in the summer of 1904, the noted jurist V. D. Spasowicz lamented the assassination of the minister of interior V. K. Pleve: “The news of the catastrophe with Pleve has reached us … I regard it … as a pity because at least under him the Polish question could be raised.“Spasowicz spoke with authority on the Polish question. Himself a Pole, he had closely observed the painful evolution of the issue for fifty years. It was not only a difficult issue to raise, but defenders of Poland in Russian society were rare. The same was true of the Russian press where few publications were willing to support the Poles. The prominent liberal journalVestnik Evropy,for which Spasowicz himself wrote, was an exception. After 1871 it emerged as a critic of the government's program of Russification in the Congress Kingdom.

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The introduction describes the origins of a scholarly collaboration that has led to the articles that follow. The purpose of this issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies is to address critical issues in Soviet politics of the 1920s, to offer new perspectives on those issues, and to showcase work in progress. The introduction also provides an overview of the contributions.