There is still another unsatisfied need in Slavic studies. The Western World, since the seventeenth century, for good or ill, has relegated religion, or the lack of it, to a subordinate place in modern history. While recognition is given both religious and non-religious authors and movements, nowhere have religious motives played the ultimate primary role. The contrary is true in the East European area, where religion, or opposition to it, plays the same role it did in medieval Europe. In Russian literature of the nineteenth century both Leo Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were absorbed in the world of the Orthodox Church and, in their reaction to it, were leaders of the westernizing intelligentsia. Neither’s influence can be understood without a consideration of the ethos of Russian Orthodoxy, but this is rarely treated as a serious subject, even though it furnishes the key to that Russian Messianistic dream which so frequently emerges in the stream of Russian culture. In a lesser degree, the same can be said of the more negative Messianism of Mickiewicz and other Polish writers, of the goals of Shevchenko and, above all, of the patriotic works of the Serb poet, Nyegosh. In addition, there is the almost completely unknown world of the Russian Old Believers, or Starovyery, who have left an imprint on many fields of Russian culture. Although rarely mentioned, they are far better known in the Russian revolutionary movement, particularly for their preservation of old Russian icons. Still another field for which material is available, is the history of the Slavs and Slavic culture in the Western World. Professor Jaroslav Rudnyckyj of the University of Manitoba has detailed changes of the Ukrainian language in Canada, and H. L. Mencken has provided startling information on Slavic languages in America, in his _The American Language_, but the full extent of these changes and the effect of American life on Slavic folklore and folk art, as well as the history of the settlements, has not yet been fully studied. At present, because of support given by foundations and the government, stress is laid upon present Slavic conditions and culture. This is only natural, but the present, and indeed the future, can only be understood by the past. There is much historical study to be done with the resources that the United States and Western Europe can furnish. Slavic history has been so consistently neglected, or studied in such narrow contexts, that its general lines of contact with the West and Asia have not yet been established with any degree of certainty, even in the Slavic countries. If interest has been shown in the relations between Kiev and the Scandinavians, it has not been extended to the contacts with Byzantium during all ages. Nor have scholars examined the Swedish-Polish relations from the viewpoint of both countries. The interplay of the Balkan Slavs with both Italy and the Ottomans is still veiled in darkness.