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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]

This article explores tentatively the utility of sociological insight for analyzing conflict between large social systems. Since a main concern of sociology is the institutional frame of a society, it seems reasonable to look to a sociologist for a realistic conceptual focus of economic, political, and other aspects of international conflict. As a step toward this goal, the Soviet Union-U.S. case is outlined. Generalized laws explaining stress and change in social systems must await much research by teams of social scientists. A political aspect of Soviet-U.S. conflict is the relatively extreme readjustment in the international balance of power. Polarization, a second facet of Soviet-U.S. politics, seems to deepen the conflict. Alliances with other major powers are no longer possible for the rivals, satellites can hardly offer the security of the pre-war ententes. Soviet-U.S. conflict operates in the historical context of the industrializing process, proceeding so rapidly and pervasively in many peasant societies as to constitute a social revolution. Without a sense of the historical context and direction of change, understanding conflict between social systems is impossible. This particular conflict can be viewed as one between an earlier phase and a later emergence of industrialism.