Intellectuals and Communism

first para: Grappling with the relationship between intellectuals and communism after 1917 calls to mind two topics long treated as almost entirely distinct. The first concerns non-Soviet, generally noncommunist intellectuals around the world and, in particular, intense twentieth-century debates over the pro-Soviet “fellow travelers” in the decades after 1917. The second concerns the role and place of intellectuals living and working under communism itself as a new, postrevolutionary intelligentsia emerged. The two topics have been divorced from one another not only because they were studied by historians in separated fields, but because the differences between them seemed obvious. Foreign intellectuals, wooed as sympathizers or potential allies by the organs of Soviet cultural diplomacy, parts of the Comintern, and the party-state, were outsiders not infrequently distant from the workings of the secretive Soviet system. Under Stalinism, the most pro-Soviet of them – known as fellow travelers abroad and “friends of the Soviet Union” at home – were celebrated rather than repressed. “Domestic” intellectuals, by contrast, were directly enmeshed in the political, cultural, scientific, and ideological dimensions of Soviet power during a period when the intelligentsia and culture were drastically remade. In the most hackneyed, Cold War-era renditions of these two topics, foreign fellow travelers were naive dupes or “useful idiots” (an apocryphal phase attributed to Lenin), while the Soviet intellectuals were either dissident martyrs or “hacks.

The Leader and the System

First para: Do new biographies of the dictator provoke deeper analysis of the Soviet system? Will the life of Stalin open up new ways of understanding Stalinism? Past experience, it has to be said, raises doubts. Of all the biographies of Stalin, few have integrated, much less altered, the state of the art in Soviet history.1 The main reason for this fact also explains why so many Stalin biographies get written: they sell. The temptation is perennial for semilearned amateurs to pen sensationalist blockbusters. More sober-minded academic biographies, when written by those focused on the leader more than the system, tend to elide the much more difficult conceptual questions of how Stalin shaped— and, crucially, was shaped by—first revolutionary Russia and then the broader Soviet political system, culture, and ideology

The Implications of Transnationalism

first para: When Kritika published a special issue in 2001 on the state of the field ten years after the end of communism, it was logical to include a reassessment of the October Revolution and two pieces on the rapidly developing investigation of the Stalin period. Transnational history went unmentioned, along with international and comparative approaches, for they did not yet appear crucial to the state of the field. If “culture” was “everywhere” in the Russian history of the 1990s, talk of the transnational became ubiquitous in the 2000s. In retrospect, however, the first post-Soviet decade laid the groundwork for the proliferation of cross-border and cross-cultural approaches by furthering a closely related phenomenon: intensive investigation of comparative dimensions to Russian and Soviet history

Russian-­‐Soviet Modernity: None, Shared, Alternative, or Entangled?

Orig. English version of NLO article translated and published in Russian translation as: “Modernost’ v Rossii i SSSR: otsutstvuiushchaia, obshchaia, al’ternativnaia, perepletennaia?”

Stratospheric Data Analysis System (STRATAN)

A state of the art stratospheric analyses using a coupled stratosphere/troposphere data assimilation system is produced. These analyses can be applied to stratospheric studies of all types. Of importance to this effort is the application of the Stratospheric Data Analysis System (STRATAN) to constituent transport and chemistry problems

A programme for risk assessment and minimisation of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy developed for vedolizumab clinical trials

Introduction Over the past decade, the potential for drug-associated progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) has become an increasingly important consideration in certain drug development programmes, particularly those of immunomodulatory biologics. Whether the risk of PML with an investigational agent is proven (e.g. extrapolated from relevant experience, such as a class effect) or merely theoretical, the serious consequences of acquiring PML require careful risk minimisation and assessment. No single standard for such risk minimisation exists. Vedolizumab is a recently developed monoclonal antibody to α4β7 integrin. Its clinical development necessitated a dedicated PML risk minimisation assessment as part of a global preapproval regulatory requirement. Objective The aim of this study was to describe the multiple risk minimisation elements that were incorporated in vedolizumab clinical trials in inflammatory bowel disease patients as part of the risk assessment and minimisation of PML programme for vedolizumab. Methods A case evaluation algorithm was developed for sequential screening and diagnostic evaluation of subjects who met criteria that indicated a clinical suspicion of PML. An Independent Adjudication Committee provided an independent, unbiased opinion regarding the likelihood of PML. Results Although no cases were detected, all suspected PML events were thoroughly reviewed and successfully adjudicated, making it unlikely that cases were missed. Conclusion We suggest that this programme could serve as a model for pragmatic screening for PML during the clinical development of new drugs

Mutations in the E2 glycoprotein and the 3\u27 untranslated region enhance chikungunya virus virulence in mice

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-transmitted alphavirus that causes debilitating musculoskeletal pain and inflammation and can persist for months to years after acute infection. Although studies of humans and experimentally infected animals suggest that CHIKV infection persists in musculoskeletal tissues, the mechanisms for this remain poorly understood. To evaluate this further, we isolated CHIKV from the serum of persistently infected Rag1 -/- mice at day 28. When inoculated into naive wild-type (WT) mice, this persistently circulating CHIKV strain displayed a capacity for earlier dissemination and greater pathogenicity than the parental virus. Sequence analysis revealed a nonsynonymous mutation in the E2 glycoprotein (E2 K200R) and a deletion within the 3' untranslated region (3'-UTR). The introduction of these changes into the parental virus conferred enhanced virulence in mice, although primary tropism for musculoskeletal tissues was maintained. The E2 K200R mutation was largely responsible for enhanced viral dissemination and pathogenicity, although these effects were augmented by the 3'- UTR deletion. Finally, studies with Irf3/Irf7 -/- and Ifnar1 -/- mice suggest that the E2 K200R mutation enhances viral dissemination from the site of inoculation independently of interferon regulatory factor 3 (IRF3)-, IRF7-, and IFNAR1-mediated responses. As our findings reveal viral determinants of CHIKV dissemination and pathogenicity, their further study should help to elucidate host-virus interactions that determine acute and chronic CHIKV infection

Rosetta-Alice Observations of Exospheric Hydrogen and Oxygen on Mars

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, en route to a 2014 encounter with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, made a gravity assist swing-by of Mars on 25 February 2007, closest approach being at 01:54UT. The Alice instrument on board Rosetta, a lightweight far-ultraviolet imaging spectrograph optimized for in situ cometary spectroscopy in the 750-2000 A spectral band, was used to study the daytime Mars upper atmosphere including emissions from exospheric hydrogen and oxygen. Offset pointing, obtained five hours before closest approach, enabled us to detect and map the HI Lyman-alpha and Lyman-beta emissions from exospheric hydrogen out beyond 30,000 km from the planet's center. These data are fit with a Chamberlain exospheric model from which we derive the hydrogen density at the 200 km exobase and the H escape flux. The results are comparable to those found from the the Ultraviolet Spectrometer experiment on the Mariner 6 and 7 fly-bys of Mars in 1969. Atomic oxygen emission at 1304 A is detected at altitudes of 400 to 1000 km above the limb during limb scans shortly after closest approach. However, the derived oxygen scale height is not consistent with recent models of oxygen escape based on the production of suprathermal oxygen atoms by the dissociative recombination of O2+.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Icaru