During the past ten years Russian area students have directed increasing attention to comparing aspects of their specialty with those of other social systems. That this interest was so late in developing has caused some of them to be defensive, if not apologetic. Often, however, both practitioners and the critics of Russian area studies have failed to realize that from its inception the field has been devoted to an implicit comparison, not between geographically distinct social systems but between successive periods in the region we have commonly designated “Russia.” The failure to note, or at least to stress, this- comparative aspect of Russian area studies has many causes, but two stand out. For area specialists, the relation between the Soviet and the prerevolutionary periods was so obvious it scarcely needed emphasis. For general empirical theorists, on the other hand, the problem of temporal boundaries of social systems has rarely been salient.