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The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of Weber's city typology in relation to the Russian urban experience and to attempt to locate the Russian city within Weber's celebrated Oriental-Occidental dichotomy. The failure of various intellectual and revolutionary groups before and in 1917 to liberalize a traditionalistic societal system is correlated to the absence of a middle class in the Russian cultural context. Kiev, Novgorod, and Pskov existed long before the Mongol conquest of Russia in the thirteenth century and were exposed to certain Western influences due to the political connections with the neighboring Western countries. Unknown before the Mongols arrived, Moskva "still in the nineteenth century before the liberation of the peasants from slavery retained all the characteristics of a great Oriental city of about the time of Diocletian of the second century A.D." In addition to being the seat of the patrimonial ruler, Moskva was a "locality where rents from possessions in land and slaves as well as income from office holding were spent." Elsewhere Weber said that the cities in Russia "never arrived at freedom in the Western sense. Everywhere the military, judicial, and industrial authority was taken from the cities." This act of taking away autonomous-autocephalous authority is probably Weber's reference to the total destruction of Novgorod and Pskov by the Russian rulers as soon as they emerged from the shadow of Mongol dependence as well as to the Russian colonial conquest of the non-Russian cities and countries in the more recent centuries including the twentieth. Seven major characteristics basic to Weber's Oriental vs. Occidental typology of urban behavior, as tentatively modified in view of the needs and the contribution of recent research, will be utilized in examining the Russian experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author believes it was Clausewitz who observed that "peace is a continuation of war by diplomatic means." In the light of relations with Russia since World War II, it now seems more accurate to say that, at least from the Russian point of view, "peace seems to be a continuation of war by undiplomatic means." Here the author discusses one aspect of this phenomenon, which may call "psychocultural warfare" and to indicate its relationship to modern social science. One of the most disturbing aspects of American reaction to the tension or "cold war" with Russia was a widespread tendency to express a loss of faith in allies. This was a sequence possibly more than casually connected--if a newly developed and un-American tendency for Americans to suspect each other. A certain type of witch-hunting taught many simple souls that they should look with suspicion upon their neighbors. The older American tradition, the pattern of the colonies and the frontier, and of most of subsequent history was to look for and to bring out a fellow's good features and strong points.