Y.A. POLYAKOV. Communist Education and History
Illustrating the immense significance of history in the shaping-of a scientific world outlook, the author of this article emphasizes that a correct understanding of history alone can provide a firm foundation for an integral and harmonious system of philosophical, economic and socio-political views formulated in the CPSU Programme and for a consistent, all-round struggle against bourgeois ideology.
The author stresses the outstanding role played by history in asserting Communist ethics which expresses the interests and ideals of the whole labouring humanity. Communist ethics is of an historical character. It came into being in the process of social development and embraces the basic general moral standards evolved in the process of the unceasing struggle waged by the popular masses for many long centuries against social oppression and moral vices. The article stresses particular importance of the Communist Party's and the Soviet people's revolutionary traditions for tne shaping of a genuinely scientific world outlook and for the triumph of Communist ethics.
The author points out that the heroic past and present are inseparably linked. The builders of Communism are the heirs and continuers of the great cause of the October Revolution. A correct understanding of the historical path traversed by our country, the desire to be worthy of the heroic achievements won by the Party and people help the Soviet men and women in their efforts to build a Communist society.
The article contains a detailed description of diverse forms and methods of disseminating historical knowledge, paying particular attention to the important role of museums, scientific lectures, popular books, pamphlets and articles on historical subjects. Much attention is devoted to the activity of amateur historians in diverse fields, including the establishment of museums and clubs of revolutionary and labour glory functioning on public principles, publication of books on the history of factories, mills and collective farms, arrangement of meetings and rallies with the participation of veterans of the revolution and war, labour heroes, etc. The vast educational potentialities latent in history should be used on a broader scale, the author writes in conclusion.
S.L. TITARENKO. Historical Significance of the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party
The article is written in connection with the 60th anniversary of the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (R.S.D.L.P.). Characterizing the significance of the Congress, the author writes that it marked a turning point in the Russian and international working-class movement by laying the foundations for a new-type proletarian party-the Party of Bolsheviks. The author describes the general situation on the eve and during the Congress, emphasizing that the need fox the creation of a militant proletarian party was dictated by the whole course of social development, by the fact that Russia was becoming an international centre of the revolutionary movement, by the entry of capitalism into the imperialist stage of development (the maturing of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia).
The article describes the Congress proceedings and analyzes its decisions, S.L. Titarenko reveals the momentous historical significance of the struggle waged by the revolutionary section of the Congress against the opportunists on programmatic and organizational questions, particularly stressing the outstanding role played by V.I. Lenin in upholding the ideological and organizational principles worked out by the newspaper "Iskra," which subsequently served as the basis for the creation of the proletarian party. The author also shows the Bolsheviks' struggle against the Mensheviks on the organizational question after the Second Congress and the attitude of the leaders of the Second International to this struggle. The article points out that the support given by Karl Kautsky and other West-European Social-Democratic leaders to the Mensheviks was by no means accidental: the Mensheviks' views fully coincided with the theoretical and practical concepts prevailing in the parties of the Second International with regard to Party organization and role in the working-class movement. Like the Western Social-Democratic leaders, the Mensheviks did not recognize the vital necessity of organizing a militant centralized party, the party of social revolution and proletarian dictatorship, which
was championed by the Bolsheviks led by V.I. Lenin. The author criticizes bourgeois and reformist historiography which falsifies and distorts the history of Bolshevism.
The article is based on V.I. Lenin's works, materials and documents of the Second R.S.D.L.P. Congress, memoirs and the Social-Democratic press of that period.
V.M. SELUNSKAYA. Lenin's Co-operative Plan and Its Further Development in the New CPSU Programme
Lenin's co-operative plan is described in the article as a component part of the programme for the building of communism, which indicates the main stages, laws and principles of the peasants' transition from small-commodity economy to the planned communist economy. The author criticizes the manifestly inadequate treatment of the content and significance of the cooperative plan, which became rather widespread in historical and economic literature of the 1940's and early 1950's, stressing the fundamental significance for historical research of the exact appraisal of this plan given by the Twenty-Second CPSU Congress. The article shows that the scientific substantiation of the programme for the peasants' transition to communism required extensive preliminary work in the field of purging the agrarian theory from many serious mistakes committed during the Stalin personality cult, a profound study of the processes taking place in everyday life and full appreciation of the immense significance of Lenin's theoretical heritage for the practice of communist construction.
Particular attention in the article is devoted to the following fundamental theses of V.I. Lenin's co-operative plan which have been further developed in the CPSU programme: concretization of the socialist character of co-operative property and defining the most effective forms and methods of further raising the level of its socialization and subsequent transition to publicly-owned, communist property; determining the pattern of relations between the state of the whole people and the collective farms, as well as the forms of agricultural enterprises which will bring the countryside to communism; further development and extension of democratic principles and public self-government in the collective farms as a school of communism for the peasantry.
A.N. ATSARKIN. The Bolshevik Party-The Educator of Proletarian Youth (1903 - 1917)
Proceeding from the Marxist-Leninist principles of educating revolutionary youth and drawing on extensive archive materials, memoirs, the Bolshevik press, official statistical data and other sources, the author shows how the Party rallied and educated the younger generation of the working class in the difficult conditions of tsarist Russia.
The article analyzes the objective and subjective factors which largely contributed to the active participation of the younger generation of the Russian proletariat in the class struggle. A.N. Atsarkin makes a point of stressing that revolutionary education of the youth was based on combining a profound study of the Marxist-Leninist theory with the revolutionary struggle for the vital interests of the proletariat. The forms and methods of Party work among the youth varied depending on concrete historical conditions obtaining in different historical periods, but the spirit of the Party's revolutionary traditions always predominated in educational and organizational work.
A.N. Atsarkin also illustrates the role of the Bolshevik Party as an organizer and leader of the proletarian youth movement which developed after the revolution of February 1917. Drawing on a wealth of factual material, the author shows the decisive role played by the Bolsheviks in organizing and uniting the proletarian youth leagues in 1917.
The Bolshevik Party's concern, assistance and guidance, coupled with its irreconcilable struggle against the attempts of the bourgeoisie and its reformist and nationalist agents to divert the youth from the path of revolutionary class struggle, enabled the working youth leagues to grow in strength and scope, to develop into genuine militant internationalist organizations of the working class, which subsequently formed the core of the Leninist Young Communist League. Guided by the Bolshevik Party, the younger generation of the Russian proletariat took an active part in the struggle against the autocracy and capitalism and greatly contributed to the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. It was this guidance that ensured the indestructible unity and succession of the older and younger generations of the Russian working class.
V.G. TRUKHANOVSKY. The Peaceful Co-existence Principle and Its Bourgeois Critics
The basic ideas of this article were set forth by the author in his report delivered at the General Meeting of the History Department of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences in May 1961...
The article is devoted to the history of the peaceful co-existence principle-the underlying principle of Soviet foreign policy, which was elaborated by V. I. Lenin and further
developed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Proceeding from the theory that the victory of socialism was possible first in several countries or even in one country, taken singly, V.I. Lenin theoretically substantiated his thesis on the possibility and necessity of the peaceful co-existence of states with differing social systems. The principle of peaceful co-existence was proclaimed by the Communist Party as its guiding foreign policy principle immediately after its advent to power in November 1917. Ever since that time the Soviet Union has consistently and undeviatingly adhered to this principle in its relations with capitalist countries.
The author singles out and examines in detail individual stages in the history of the peaceful co-existence principle. During the period of imperialist intervention against the Soviet Republic the Soviet government made consistent efforts in behaff of peaceful co-existence with the capitalist world. It is not Soviet power but international imperialism that is to blame for the fact that relations between the Soviet and bourgeois states were not based on the principle of peaceful co-existence. During the subsequent protracted period of the Soviet Union "peacefully existing side by side" with the capitalist countries (1921 - 1941), Soviet foreign policy was invariably based on the Leninist principle of peaceful co-existence. Moreover, this cardinal principle was further elaborated in the decisions of all the Party Congresses held during this twenty-year period, as well as in a number of other important Party and government documents. The establishment of normal diplomatic relations with the capitalist countries, the conclusion of allied treaties and agreements with some of them, the Soviet Union's consistent struggle for disarmament and for the establishment of a reliable system of collective security, the strengthening of economic and cultural ties with many bourgeois countries-such were the Soviet government's foreign-policy acts aimed at practically implementing the principle of peaceful co-existence. The distinctive features in the operation of the peaceful co-existence principle during the second world war found their expression in the fact that the U.S.S.R., while waging its grim struggle against the fascist countries, was not only able to maintain relations based on the peaceful co-existence principle with the greater part of the capitalist world, but also succeeded in considerably strengthening and extending these relations. The Soviet Union's fight for peace, for broad co-operation with the capitalist countries in the political, economic and cultural spheres, and the imperialist powers' policy of atomic blackmail, of forming aggressive blocs and unleashing a cold war against the countries of the socialist camp-such are the two diametrically opposed tendencies in the development of international relations during the postwar period. The present stage in the history of the peaceful co-existence principle chronologically coincides with the third phase of the general crisis of capitalism. This stage is marked by the further creative development of the principle of peaceful co-existence in the decisions of the Twentieth and Twenty-Second Party Congresses, in the new CPSU Programme and in N.S. Khrushchov's statements.
The author points out that for many years the Party had to wage a determined struggle against diverse anti-Party groupings-beginning with the "Left Communists" and ending with the anti-Party group of Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and others- for the practical implementation of the peaceful co-existence principle. The Stalin personality cult did not, and could not, alter the general line of Soviet foreign policy, though it played a definite negative role in the struggle of the Party and people for peaceful co-existence.
The author emphasizes that it would be absolutely wrong to regard the principle of peaceful co-existence merely as a struggle for peace. The concept is much broader. Constituting an objective necessity in the period following the October Revolution, whose main content lies in the abolition of capitalism and the building of socialism and communism, the principle of peaceful co-existence presupposes not only renunciation of war as a means of settling international disputes, but also provides for extensive cooperation of the socialist and capitalist states in the political, economic, scientific, technical and cultural spheres. V.I. Lenin attached particular importance to international trade, regarding it as a major contributing factor in the promotion of peace and peaceful co-existence.
At the same time it would be incorrect to reduce the concept of co-existence merely to certain elements of co-operation. Co-existence also presupposes diverse forms of struggle between co-existing states, with the exception of military conflict. Co-existence dialectically combines both co-operation and struggle. The latter represents a class struggle between the antagonistic systems, a manifestation of the main contradiction of contemporary epoch-the contradiction between socialism and capitalism.
The author also stresses that the policy of peaceful co-existence rules out reconciliation of socialist and bourgeois ideologies; on the contrary, it presupposes an unflagging ideological struggle between the two systems. The ideological enemies of socialism attach great importance to the problem of peaceful co-existence and use it in their ideological struggle against the U.S.S.R. In many works devoted to peaceful co-existence of the two systems the reactionary bourgeois historians and journalists deliberately distort historical truth with the aim of justifying the cold war and anti-communism. Drawing on extensive theoretical material and numerous historical facts, the author convincingly shows the utter insolvency of many anti-scientific conceptions advanced by bourgeois historiography with regard to the foreign policy of the Soviet state. At
the same time the author singles out and carefully analyzes many works in which conscientious bourgeois historians draw the only correct conclusion, namely, that peaceful co-existence between the socialist and capitalist countries is an absolute and imperative necessity.
F.I. PANKEVICH. The Uprising of the Ruhr Proletariat in March 1920
The article analyzes the revolutionary events in Germany in March 1920 caused by the attempt of the ruling circles to carry out a counter-revolutionary putsch and establish a military dictatorship with the help of the reactionary militarist element. The author convincingly shows that, far from taking any measures against the offensive launched by the bourgeoisie and the Junkers on the vital interests of the working people, the Right-wing Social-Democratic leaders who headed the Weimar coalition government actually concluded an agreement with the militarists providing for the joint struggle against the working class and the Communist Party, thereby helping the putschists to carry out a counter-revolutionary coup. The article highlights the struggle waged by the working class of Germany against the putschists, describing the powerful strike involving 12 million workers, mass demonstrations and street fighting against the counter-revolutionaries in all parts of Germany. F. I. Pankevich devotes particular attention to the events in the Ruhr, where the Communistled general strike developed into an armed uprising directed not only against the militarists but against the entire regime of the Weimar coalition (the establishment of a united workers' front for combating counter-revolution, the arming of the workers, the formation of a 100,000-strong Red Army and its military operations in Rhineland and Westphalia).
The author analyzes the nature of the Soviet movement in the Ruhr during the uprising, laying, particular emphasis on the formation of the "action committees" at industrial enterprises as the embryo of the local organs of workers' rule. The article exposes the perfidious role played by the Right-wing Social-Democratic leaders who, after the failure of the counter-revolutionary putsch, exerted every effort to split the workers' united front and make it easier for the government to institute a reign of terror and drown the workers' movement in blood.
The concluding part of the article reveals the historical significance and the object-lessons of the uprising.
The article is based on numerous monographic researches devoted to the history of the uprising and published in Weimar Germany and the German Democratic Republic.
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