The years of the depression, in many ways, produced another period of marking time in Slavic studies. For the most part efforts of the Slavic groups to introduce their languages into the American educational system were retarded, while available finances were restricted to relief purposes. In other cases, as among the Czechs, the hardships were complicated by the death of such leaders as Reverend Vincent Pisek and Professor Michael Pupin who had been active in stimulating cooperation between the immigrant communities and the American educational system. Their deaths at a critical period disrupted much of the work. Further, the 1931 failure of the Bank of Europe Trust company in New York under conditions which almost completely reimbursed the depositors, nonetheless lessened the effectiveness of Thomas Capek, a leader in the work. Similar disasters in other Slavic groups had similar nation-wide effects and except for an effort to interest the Czech population in the Chicago area to establish courses at the University of Illinois, the period was destitute of that type of energetic development which, on the eve of the depression, promised to bear such rich fruits. In a lighter vein came the establishment of courses in Russian under the NRA. It had been hoped by some that it might be possible to give relief to at least some of the unemployed Russians by the establishment of free courses in the language. The attempt was almost completely a failure. The students lacked any serious desire to learn the language and the instructors were no more anxious to teach it. One very well educated Russian actually prepared a set of charts on Russian grammar which purported to show that there were no exceptions to any syntactical rule in Russian and he blandly presented to his class word forms that he knew never existed even in the speech of the most illiterate. When he was reprimanded, he calmly told the NRA supervisors that he knew that none of his students intended to learn Russian, he wanted his money, and so there was no reason to worry about what, or how he taught. In 1934, a new development emerged which was to prove exceedingly fruitful in later years. Largely under the influence of Professors Cross and Patrick, a small sum of money was secured to establish an intensive summer course in Russian for about 20 students. The course was held at Harvard University the first year and was directly under the control of Professor Patrick who had come from the University of California to conduct it with the aid of some assistants. The experiment was successful. In 1935, joint sessions were held at Columbia University and were to a certain degree independent of the regular summer school courses. Professor Patrick was assisted by Mrs. Mogilat of Columbia and Dr. Jack A. Posin of the University of California. After 1935, the course was held at the University of California, largely because of the increasing illness of Professor Patrick.