Among the publications prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute appears now, in English, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question by Joseph Stalin, being a collection of articles, reports, and speeches, ranging in date from 1913 to 1935, on the subject—one may say—of Stalin's most distinctive interest and experience. A rather central thread appears throughout, though in the Marxian vein, yet in a certain judicious adjustment of the objectives of proletarian dictatorship with those "rights of nationalities" which, on the whole, have found in Stalin a consistent champion. The working class interest must come first. But the Great-Russian Communists, again and again, are charged with failure, in their party work, to reckon with the peculiarities of historical background of the lesser nationalities. War must be waged against Great-Russian chauvinism. On the other hand, the Native Communists, haunted still by the horrors of the period of national oppression, tend to exaggerate the importance of national peculiarities, and so to deviate toward bourgeois-democratic nationalism. This tendency, in the eastern regions, assumes at times the form of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism. So, historical context, whether within or without the Soviet Union, may require a varying assertion or denial of the national idea. Essentially, the Union today may be thought of as consistently socialist in content, while varying and national in form. Outside, particularly in the Far East, which represents the "heavy reserves of our revolution," it is necessary continually—though always on guard against premature emphasis—to encourage the nationalism in states dependent upon imperialist powers. But there is no one formula for all things. This caution, persistent and in the spirit of true science, is not, to be sure, without paradoxical consequence. Stalin accepts paradox. Stalin, however, is less the philosopher than the effective controversialist steeped in history. There is convincing evidence of a tenacious, informed, forceful use of the historical argument; testimony, too, particularly in the living presence of extemporaneous speech and its proximity to events, to a personality greater than may have appeared to distant observers. The more popular of the speeches offer, now and again, a pedantic and tiresome classification of categories. But whether in the polemical or the more expository vein, always, without Caesar-pose, it is the persuasive and the orderly mind at work. Also, it is an orderly and attractive arrangement of the principal materials, appendices, and explanatory notes that has been made available.