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The end of the Intelligentsia ? Formation and Différenciation of the Soviet Intelligentsia. The small groups of Russian thinkers collectively referred to as the «intelligentsia » during the 1860's, have little in common with the million highly educated specialists who make up the social strata bearing the same name. If an analogy is to be made, the Soviet intelligentsia more closely resembles the « modernist » elite cultivated in Russia by Peter the Great ? an indispensable tool for the realization of a new social order ? animated by the ideal of public service and more or less faithful to the regime. The present article is devoted to the analysis of this socialist intelligentsia who, in the spirit of the regime leaders, born of the October Revolution, was to assure the social promotion of the underprivileged and to ascertain that mass education was being carried out in the Marxist and Leninist spirit. However, and as efficient as the measures adopted to achieve this double objective were, the new intelligentsia, once in place, was avid to affirm its authority by enlarging its field of action and by accumulating marks of distinction. During the past thirty years, it has successfully pursued its objective of differentiation according to a process which can be described as simultaneously horizontal and vertical. This evolution indicates a series of internal conflicts in the studied category. Today, these conflicts stem in part from a heterogeneous « perception of the world », induced by the different activities exercised; above all, they result from the differential perception of the roles that the intelligentsia is supposed to play in society. Finally, the third element of analysis introduced in the article results from the progressive and relative isolation of the Soviet intelligentsia. This can only reinforce the group's already marked tendency toward auto-reproduction.

Investment and Technical Progress. The Soviet planners have had difficulties in agreeing upon investment criteria, largely because the price system fails to reflect scarcities and priorities. However, many causes of inefficiency in this field seem to lie elsewhere. They relate to long delays in construction; design bureau and research establishments remote from the needs of production; obsolete equipment; a clumsy system of allocation of capital goods; a tendency for inbalance between the investment plan and the total ressources available. There are also deficiencies in the incentive system which affect both the diffusion of new technique and the production of new machinery. This is largely the result of diseconomies of scale: outside of a few priority areas, the centre cannot know what is required, and there are inevitable administrative overlaps and delays which are hard to correct without large changes in the system.

The Problem of Renewing Fixed Assets in Some of the Socialist Countries. An attempt is made to estimate average terms for capital utilization in such countries as the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the GDR, in comparison with the theoretical utilization periods, established in Western countries for assessing fixed capital stocks. Obviously comparisons between economic branches, or at an international level, present difficulties due to a lack of regularly available statistics, namely in Western countries. The authors, nevertheless, procède to analyse the data and estimations, to which they have access, presenting results country by country, in the above-mentioned order. The article terminates by a comparison of the estimations for different socialist economies, in an attempt to compare average utilization periods for fixed capital in the East and West.

Centralized Setting of Parametric Prices in Socialist Economy. In the first part, the author points out the advantages of centralized price- fixing aimed at achieving the aspirations of the society as a whole through orientation of the macro-economic processes. Centralized price-fixing in this framework can play three roles: that of initiating economic processes, of defending the buyers interest (consumers and producers) and of controlling the producers' financial results. It must guarantee the parametric character of the prices in the sphere of production and consumption goods, expecially when fixing the price of a new product, in order to avoid inflationary rises. The authors analyzes price-fixing as a process of communications before describing in detail the practice and procedures of price-fixing as related to different types of products. His description is mainly based on the Polish experiment, but he also presents examples taken from other socialist economies. The article ends with remarks about automation of the price-fixing process (the growing use of sophisticated techniques) and analyzes the possible deficiencies of the information system (difficulty in obtaining the information necessary to fix the prices and of transforming this information into prices).

Franco-Hungarian trade is first situated in its general framework and an analysis is made of present-day tendencies. The authors esteems that trade with countries in the Eastern block constitutes a dynamic and stabilizing factor in the foreign exchange of Western economies. This argument is backed-up by figures showing the recent evolution. The second part of the article is focused on Franco-Hungarian exchanges.. In spite of rapid growth, the French part in Hungarian foreign trade is still modest; in 1975 it represented only 1,1% of Hungarian exportations and 2,3% of the importations. This disequilibrium between Hungarian purchases and sales is the principal problem; however, a certain improvement in the structure of Hungarian exportations is to be noted (an increase in industrial products and machines). In conclusion, the author believes that there are vast possibilities for the development of Franco-Hungarian trade as a result of the ten year industrial and technical agreement signed by the two governments in November 1974, in Budapest.

Some Present-day Problems in North Korea. In view of real economic and diplomatic successes, optimism is rampant in the Peoples' Democratic Republic of Korea. However, the question arises as to whether it would not be wise to dampen official serenity with certain signs of alarm. First, there is today a problem of political succession. Following a number of deaths and resignations due to ill health, can the old anti-Japanese guard of the thirties, in power since the Liberation in 1945, assure political continuity? The debate is distorted by Kim Il-song's charisma. With regards to the economy, in spite of the fulfillment of the six years plan (1971-76) a year and four months ahead of time, numerous problems subsist ? those of increased productivity, diversified production, controlled waste and developed international exchanges. Finally, if the Peoples' Democratic Republic of Korea has made a place for itself in international organizations and succeeded in reaching bilateral agreements with nearly a hundred states, the question of an authentic dialogue with the Republic of Korea (South Korea) remains unsolved.