THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR
measure with any degree of accuracy the effects of the World War
itself upon the economic and social life of the country. Those effects
were so distorted by the forces let loose in the post-war years and so
confused with the disturbances of the revolutionary era that the attempt
 to isolate the phenomena of the War from the data of civil
war and to analyze the former according to the plan followed in the
other national series of this collection has been a task of unparalleled
difficulty. Over and above the intricacies of the problem and its illusive
 character, the authors of the Russian monographs have had to
work under the most discouraging circumstances and with inadequate
 implements of research. For those who know the scarcity of
the documentary material available, it will be a matter of no little
surprise to find, in the pages of this Russian Series, narratives and
substantiating data which measure up so well in comparison with
those prepared by the collaborators in other countries. The achievement
 of the Russian Division of the History is, all things considered,
the most remarkable section of the entire collection. This is due, in
the first place, to the fact that the authors, all of them exiles who
live in foreign lands, have brought to this task not only the scientific
disciplines of their own special fields but also an expert knowledge
drawn from personal experience which in several instances reached
to the highest offices of State.
While these volumes in the Russian History constitute so very
considerable an achievement, they cannot in the very nature of the
case cover with adequate statistical or other specific data many of
the problems with which they deal. No one is more conscious of their
shortcomings in this regard than the authors themselves. Nevertheless,
 with inadequate material and under hampering circumstances
they have prepared a body of text and a record which, if admittedly
incomplete as history, contains at least one element that would otherwise
 be lost for the future understanding of this great crisis in human
 affairs, an element which no other generation working from
Russian archives could ever supply. We have here the mature comment
 upon events by contemporaries capable of passing judgment
and appraising values, so that over and above the survey of phenomena
 there is presented a perspective and an organization of material
 which will be a contribution to history hardly less important
than the substance of the monographs.

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