A.V. GULIGA. Concept and Image In Historical Science

In this article devoted to a characteristic of the cognitive means applied in historical research, the author examines the methods and limits of abstraction determined by the exceptional complexity of historical phenomena. The multiformity of the latter, coupled with the dialectical intertwining of their interconnections and interdependences, restricts the possibilities of the degree of abstraction required for the broadest possible application of mathematical methods in history.

Analyzing typology as a method of abstraction in history and expounding the Marxist-Leninist principles of typology, the author subjects to criticism M. Weber's theory of ideal types. Emphasizing the relative nature of the concepts "concrete" and "abstract" in historical science, the author shows the inseverable connection existing between the tasks of recreating the individual portrait of the epoch and bringing out its social content, which implies a certain degree of generalization. Historical concept constitutes the logical form reflecting the unity of the universal and the particular, of necessity and chance. Characterizing the criteria applied in the selection of historical facts and the very concept of "historical fact," the author expresses the opinion that historical facts should be interpreted to mean those events which are related to the laws governing the process of historical development, facilitating or impeding the latter.

Particular attention is devoted in the article to the figurative means of historical cognition. The author discloses the esthetic structure of historical research and interprets the concept of historical image.

M.S. SELEZNEV and M.N. CHERNOMORSKY. Certain Questions of Establishing a Source Research Basis on the History of Soviet Society

The authors examine a number of theoretical and practical questions pertaining to the systematization, arrangement and safekeeping of archive materials and establishing the authenticity of documents, expressing certain considerations on these questions. A detailed analysis is made of the so-called theory of absorption and reflection of documentary materials. The article graphically shows that complete absorption and reflection of original documents in summarized materials (reports, speeches, etc.) is a comparatively rare phenomenon. That is why more attention should be devoted to the safekeeping of original documentation. It is necessary, in the authors' opinion, to modify the existing procedure of settling questions connected with the assessment of the scientific and practical value of correspondence. The same applies to personnel materials containing information on age, education, party affiliation, record of work and other questions. The chief merit of personnel materials is that they are sources of mass origin, which makes it possible to classify them by applying the method of statistical processing.

The methods of assessing the value of documents stand in need of substantial improvement and perfection. In the authors' opinion, one can hardly accept the method of determining the value of documents by the lists compiled by diverse institutions, with documents from individual industrial establishments of local significance serving as archive "specimens." The archives should accept documents from all institutions whose juridical or factual status makes them either independent or autonomous in their activity, irrespective of whether they are vested with broad or limited functions. The article makes a critical analysis of a fairly widespread bourgeois theory, according to which the archive records should be based on selective documents.

In conclusion the authors put forward a number of concrete proposals, notably on the need to set up a Scientific Council on archive-keeping and document verification.

V.V. ZELENIN. Soviet-Yugoslav Comradeship-in-Arms During World War II

The article graphically shows how the bonds of fraternal friendship between the Soviet and Yugoslav peoples were further cemented in the years of World War II. Though separated by vast spaces of the nazi-occupied territory in the early period of the

war, the Yugoslav partisans and the Red Army forces jointly fought their common enemy. In those grim days of severe hardship and ordeal their friendship was vividly manifested in the similar aims pursued in the war, in the desire to render each other all possible assistance and support, in directing every effort towards the speediest possible defeat of nazi Germany and her satellites. In the subsequent period, the author writes, with the gradual extension of the military operations and the radical change in the course of the war marked by the passage of strategic initiative into the hands of the Red Army and by the formation and growth of the National-Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, the military cooperation of the two fighting peoples and their armies increased substantially. The dispatch of a Soviet military mission to Yugoslavia in the opening months of 1944 largely contributed to this. The Soviet Union began to render all-round assistance to the National- Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, supplying it with weapons and ammunition, medicaments, aircraft, etc.; Soviet doctors were sent to Yugoslavia and Yugoslav flyers and tankmen underwent training in the U.S.S.R. The Soviet-Yugoslav military cooperation was sealed with the blood shed by thousands of the finest sons of the Soviet and Yugoslav peoples in hard-fought battles for the liberation of Belgrade in October 1944.

G.M. LIFSHITS and K.G. LYASHENKO. How the Programme of the Second "Land and Freedom" Organization Was Drawn Up

The article is devoted to the problem of the ideological development of the "Zemlya i Volya" ("Land and Freedom") Narodnik organization in the 1870's. According to one of the views still persisting in historical literature, at the turn of 1877 the founders of this organization formulated only brief theses, which were developed into a detailed and extensive platform in the spring of 1878. The authors express an entirely different point of view. Drawing on a wide range of sources, notably the hitherto unknown correspondence between the Narodniks and P. A. Kropotkin, the authors convincingly show that already in the autumn of 1876 this organization formulated a broad platform which is still known as the first draft of the 1878 programme. The so-called "Land and Freedom" theses, the authors of the article write, actually represented the theses of diverse Narodnik groups for P. A. Kropotkin's speech at the International Socialist Congress in Ghent and expressed the specific tasks and distinctive features of the Russian revolutionary movement as they were understood not only by the members of the "Land and Freedom" organization but also by the Narodnik groups of different shades.

A.N. SAKHAROV. Evolution of the Peasant Categories in the 17th Century

The author of this article affirms that the various categories of the Russian peasantry did not remain invariable through the ages but underwent a process of evolution under the influence of the social- economic development of the country.

The author arrives at the conclusion that any attempt to regard the categories of the peasantry chiefly from the juridical viewpoint, in the light of the development of serfdom, invariably results in a static analysis of these categories. Only a close analysis of these categories (poor peasants owning no land, "peasant children," newcomers) both from the legal and socio-economic viewpoint can give an authentic picture of the development of the Russian peasantry. Approaching the question from this angle, A.N. Sakharov shows how the peasants' legal status changed under the influence of the various forms of exploitation - the corvee system, money rent, etc. With the spread of the money rent among the Russian peasantry, some of the categories, whose definition gave rise to heated debates in historical science both in pre-revolutionary Russia and in the Soviet period, merged with the general mass of the Russian tenant-farmers paying quit-rent.

Analyzing concrete material furnished by the vast patrimony of the Moscow patriarchs in the course of his polemics with historians, the author raises a broader question of the simultaneous spread in Russia of the corvee, money-rent and quit-rent systems of exploitation, which had a powerful impact on the genesis of Russian capitalism in the 17th century.

V.V. KARGALOV. Feudal Rus in the Struggle Against the Polovtsi

The article is devoted to an important stage in the history of the struggle waged by feudal Rus against the devastating incursions made by the Polovtsi - a nomad Turkic race from Asia - from the second half of the 11th to the beginning of the 13th centuries. This struggle was a protracted and costly one. Between 1061 and 1210 the Polovtsi undertook 46 major campaigns against the Russian lands and numerous minor incursions in the border areas.

The invasions of the Poloytsi had ruinous consequences for the Land of Rus. They led to the wholesale devastation of the Russian lands along the Southern frontier. The nomads drove the Russian population from the fertile black-earth steppes, thus forcing the Russian peasants to clear for agricultural production the wooded tracts in the Northeastern parts of the country by dint of titanic effort. The construction of defence fortifications at the steppe frontiers and the maintenance of military garrisons in them required huge outlays.

It should be pointed out, however, that the incursions made by the Polovtsi radically differed in character from the invasion of the Mongol-Tatar hordes: the Polovtsi were not conquerors but restless neighbours who could not even dream of conquering Russia, though their devastating raids caused serious damage to the Land of Rus and its population. The Russian princes successfully repulsed the attacks launched by the Polovtsi. They undertook a number of victorious campaigns, penetrating deep into the land of the Polovtsi.

During the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Eastern Europe the "Polovtsi Steppe" was conquered by Khan Batu. Many of the Polovtsi perished, a sizable proportion of them fled westward and the rest submitted to the conquerors.

A.F. SHULGOVSKY. Communal Landownership and Agrarian Reform in Mexico

The author points out that the advent to power of the Cardenas government enjoying the solid support of the broad sections of the working people created favourable conditions for the carrying out of an agrarian reform and other social transformations in Mexico. Analyzing diverse aspects of the agrarian reform, the author emphasizes that the Cardenas government stimulated the movement for joint cultivation of the land in different forms (the establishment of agricultural producers' cooperatives, encouragement and strengthening of the collective principles in the communes, etc.) and rendered state assistance to the peasant farms. However, a whole complex of objective and subjective factors prevented the conversion of reorganized agriculture into a base for the country's non-capitalist development. The revolutionary democrats' hope that the country would embark on the non-capitalist path failed to materialize. The bourgeoisie took advantage of the agrarian reform to strengthen its positions in town and country by gradually ousting representatives of petty- bourgeois democracy from power.

Notwithstanding its highly contradictory character, the agrarian reform of the 1930's was of great positive significance for the country's development. It helped to demolish the idea that the system of private ownership is "eternal and unshakable." That is why the progressive forces of Mexico defend from reactionary attacks all the finest and genuinely democratic features embodied in the policy of the Cardenas government.

V.L. MALKOV. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Labour Policy (1933 - 1940)

Drawing on new materials from the U.S. national archives, the author makes an attempt to reveal the real connections and correlation between the American workers' class struggle and bourgeois reformism as embodied in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policy. Analyzing the historical conditions in which Roosevelt carried out his labour policy and bringing out the class essence of that policy, the author convincingly shows that the chief contributing factor which set in motion the programme of social reforms was precisely the mounting democratic movement, notably the intensified working-class struggle.

The article contains a special chapter in which the author shows the Administration's role and initiative in implanting a "new" pattern of production relations in industrial enterprises, representing an important stage in the introduction of a special system of measures in the American industry with the aim of exerting a powerful psychological influence on the working masses and educating them in the spirit of "class collaboration" by converting the trade unions into mere appendages of the social and economic structure of state-monopoly capitalism. The author comes to the conclusion that from the viewpoint of the interests of the labour movement Roosevelt's bourgeois reforms were designed to achieve the following chief objectives: aimed at weakening the struggle of the masses, they sowed the illusion in their minds that it was possible to eliminate all social evils within the framework of bourgeois democracy; at the same time they provided favourable opportunities for extending the struggle for social progress. In the New Deal period the labour movement continued to forge ahead, relying on the gains and achievements already won. The war interrupted that process.

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