Samuelson in Soviet Russia: A Report.

This paper deals with those difficulties in three sections: (1) the problems of translation, (2) the editorial comments, and (3) the censorship, i.e., the excisions to which parts of the text of the book were subject. Both the comments and the excisions reflect the sensitivity, aggressiveness, and fears that pervade the intellectual atmosphere in the Soviet Union, and their treatment here should present a picture of the nature of those sentiments. Apparently, the decision to publish the translation of the eminently successful text was conjoined by the wish to protect the Russian readers from its poisonous influence. The resulting situation is well depicted by the popular (and "dialectical'') German proverb: "Wasch mir den Pelz, aber math' ihn nicht nass" (Do wash my fur, but don't make it wet). As the title page and its reverse side say, the book was destined for "scientific libraries" (the size of the edition, usually given in Soviet books on the last page is shrouded in silence in this volume) and was designed for qualified readers--"instruetors, scholarly workers, and 'aspirants' [graduate students]." In other words, what is an undergraduate text in the United States becomes a "post-graduate text" in Soviet Russia. What had to be protected were the innocent minds of the three categories just mentioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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