Moscow and St. Petersburg, Prague, Paris: three stations along the route taken in the development of structuralist thought. The actual word "structuralism', however, did not appear until later; that is, not until the occasion when, in Prague in 1935, The Prague Circle met to distinguish its activities from earlier Russian formalism, and to focus clearer attention on the basic concept of "structure'. The limits, within which the cultural-historical continuum of structuralist thought is set, coincide chronologically with the present century, and spatially with the European cities mentioned above.