Notes from the Outside

Recent moves in Romania away from Soviet domination and toward a more neutral position in the Sino-Soviet rift may have fallen beneath the attention of the world's press, but are extremely obvious to students in that country.

Russian is no longer a compulsory language for elementary school children, and there is talk that it will be made optional for high school students in the near future also.

The Maxim Gorky Institute of Russian Language and Literature, long a center of Soviet influence in Romania, has been absorbed into the Department of Slavic Languages at Bucharest University.