Thanks must go, first and foremost, to Michel Vale, a colleague and friend of many years, who helped me to initially organize this project and gave me intellectual encouragement to learn Russian and to make a proper study of the Soviet Union, and Preobrazhensky in particular. Without his further practical assistance in editing some of the translations when my time was short, I do not think this book would ever have been finished. Thanks also to Hillel Ticktin, editor of the journal Critique, who, in addition to providing important theoretical guidance in the course of supervising my Ph.D. thesis at the University of Glasgow, also helped iron out some of the thornier terminological problems in the texts. Despite the intellectual debt I owe to both these people, it goes without saying that they bear none of the responsibility for whatever shortcomings remain in this volume.
Finally, acknowledgement is due to Alec Nove and Alexander Erlich for helpful criticisms and comments on the Introduction and notes to this collection, or on my Ph.D. thesis, that directly or indirectly found their way into the present volume.