The C:N:P:S stoichiometry of soil organic matter

The formation and turnover of soil organic matter (SOM) includes the biogeochemical processing of the macronutrient elements nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S), which alters their stoichiometric relationships to carbon (C) and to each other. We sought patterns among soil organic C, N, P and S in data for c. 2000 globally distributed soil samples, covering all soil horizons. For non-peat soils, strong negative correlations (p < 0.001) were found between N:C, P:C and S:C ratios and % organic carbon (OC), showing that SOM of soils with low OC concentrations (high in mineral matter) is rich in N, P and S. The results can be described approximately with a simple mixing model in which nutrient-poor SOM (NPSOM) has N:C, P:C and S:C ratios of 0.039, 0.0011 and 0.0054, while nutrient-rich SOM (NRSOM) has corresponding ratios of 0.12, 0.016 and 0.016, so that P is especially enriched in NRSOM compared to NPSOM. The trends hold across a range of ecosystems, for topsoils, including O horizons, and subsoils, and across different soil classes. The major exception is that tropical soils tend to have low P:C ratios especially at low N:C. We suggest that NRSOM comprises compounds selected by their strong adsorption to mineral matter. The stoichiometric patterns established here offer a new quantitative framework for SOM classification and characterisation, and provide important constraints to dynamic soil and ecosystem models of carbon turnover and nutrient dynamics

Ideological Trends in the USSR

A survey of current Soviet trends in party and ideology may take as its starting point the political crisis which developed in the Soviet Union in the second half of the year 1964 and led to Khrushchev's downfall. The crisis was a rather complex affair with many issues, trends, and attitudes involved, and it did not lead to any clear-cut solutions. The situation which has developed since Khrushchev's downfall has remained as ambiguous as that which had preceded it. By disassociating itself from its leader, the Soviet ruling group acknowledged tacitly the fiasco of the Khrushchevite policies and ideological conceptions; but they refused to make the acknowledgment explicit or to draw conclusions. Their reticence was not accidental. It reflected the profound embarrassment with which Khrushchev's successors viewed the discomfiture of his policies. Khrushchevism, to put it in a nutshell, had proved itself unable to cope with the many issues posed in the process of de-Stalinization. To have posed those issues was Khrushchiev's historic merit: to leave them unsettled, unclarified and, in many cases, even aggravated was his sad destiny. The legacy of the Stalin era defeated him, and it still over-shadows the Soviet scene today

Roots of Bureaucracy

We are witnessing an obvious tendency towards the increasing bureaucratization of contemporary societies regardless of their social and political structures. Theorists in the West assure us that the momentum of bureaucratization is such that we now live under a managerial system which has, somewhat imperceptibly, come to replace capitalism. On the other hand, we have the huge, stupendous growth of bureaucracy in the post-capitalist societies of the Soviet bloc and especially in the Soviet Union. We are justified in attempting to elaborate some theory of bureaucracy which would be more comprehensive and more satisfying than the fashionable and to a large degree meaningless cliche: "managerial society". It is not, however, easy to come to grips with the problem of bureaucracy; in essence this problem is as old as civilization, although the intensity with which it has appeared before men's eyes has varied greatly over the epochs

De l'homme socialiste

Deutscher Isaac. De l'homme socialiste. In: L'Homme et la société, N. 7, 1968. numéro spécial 150° anniversaire de la mort de Karl Marx. pp. 83-97