D. M. KUKIN. Glorious and Heroic History (Commenting on the Publication of the Second Revised and Enlarged Edition of the Textbook on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)

The article illustrates the immense significance of a new edition of the "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union," prepared in conformity with the Twentieth CPSU Congress decision and put out in 1959. This publication, the compilation of which required a good deal of scientific research, marked a turning point in scientific elaboration of the history of the Soviet Communist Party. Purged of incorrect and erroneous theses characteristic of the "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course" and directly attributable to the Stalin personality cult, the 1959 edition is based on new materials and documents highlighting the Communist Party's activity since 1938.

But just as all the other social sciences, the science of Party history is not immutable; it is constantly developing and enriching itself. In recent years, the author of the article writes, Soviet researchers have been provided with many new documents and materials, a substantial number of new works devoted to diverse aspects of Party history have been published and highly important developments have taken place in the life of our country and on the international arena. All this has given rise to the need of putting out another, second edition.

The article briefly examines the amendments and changes introduced in the new edition of the textbook. For example, the second edition gives a more comprehensive picture of V. I. Lenin's role as the Party leader and theoretician, analyzes in greater detail the question of the international significance of Lenin's theory of the socialist revolution and the further development of this theory in the new CPSU Programme, highlights the irreconcilable struggle waged by V. I. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party against the opportunists. The second edition of the textbook contains a more comprehensive description of the Party's policy on the national question, shows the international principle underlying the CPSU organizational structure, the essence of the new international relations evolved and practically implemented in the Soviet Union by the Communist Party, etc.

Considerable attention is devoted in the article to a detailed analysis of Stalin's mistakes, the majority of which have been disclosed in the past few years in the process of analyzing new archive materials. That explains why the first reference to these mistakes could be made only in the second edition.

V. S. ORLOV. V. I. Lenin and the Establishment of the Administrative Apparatus of the World's First Workers' and Peasants' Soviet Government

Drawing on archive materials, the author elucidates a highly important problem that has been inadequately elaborated in historical literature - V. I. Lenin's political activity in the early period following the establishment of Soviet power, when the Council of People's Commissars was functioning in Petrograd (October 1917-March 1918). The author's attention is concentrated on two major aspects: a) the establishment of the Council of People's Commissars and its working apparatus; b) the basic trends and principles of the many-sided activity carried on by the Council of People's Commissars.

The article analyzes in great detail the basic content of the Soviet government's work and reveals the truly titanic job of administering the state performed by V. I. Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. The author comprehensively examines the work done by the Secretariat, Managing Department and other principal administrative bodies of the Council of People's Commissars.

The article makes a point of stressing that in its practical activity the Council of People's Commissars embodied and implemented the basic principles underlying the entire activity of the Soviet state apparatus: the Communist Party's guidance, democratic centralism, collective leadership and strict personal responsibility devolving on each individual for the job entrusted to him, efficiency, stringent observance of revolutionary legality, all-round development of creative initiative, combating all manifestations of bureaucracy and the maintenance of close ties with the popular masses. All these distinctive features of the Leninist style of state administration began to assume definite shape

and form in the Petrograd period of the Soviet government's activity. Their viability and invincible force, the author writes in conclusion, have been confirmed by the practical work of building a communist society in the Soviet Union and by the experience of socialist construction in other countries.

L. P. BORISOV and A. N. SAKHAROV. Soviet Achievements in Space Exploration

The article points out that the Soviet Union's present-day achievements in space exploration are the result of the immense progress made by the Soviet people in' the building of socialism and communism. Vividly reflected in them are the sustained efforts of Soviet scientists, engineers and workers unfailingly encouraged and supported by the Communist Party and Soviet government from the very inception of the Soviet state. The authors vividly describe the consistent and persevering efforts made by Soviet researchers to penetrate the upper layers of the atmosphere with the help of high-altitude balloon flights which signified an important stage in the exploration of outer space; at the same time they trace the progress of scientific research in space exploration with the aid of rockets. The article acquaints the reader with the most important aspects of the theoretical and practical work done by Tsiolkovsky, Zander, Kondratyuk and other Soviet scientists and inventors who laid the foundations of rocket engineering. Particular emphasis in the article is laid on the keen interest shown by broad sections of the Soviet public in the theoretical and practical problems connected with the exploration of outer space and interplanetary travel.

The authors show how the successful fulfilment of the first five-year plan in the early 1930's created the necessary conditions for conducting scientific research at high altitudes, how side by side with the continued progress in the field of rocket engineering during that period Soviet scientists and engineers made their first attempts to design and build rockets and rocket engines.

It is stressed in the article that chief attention in that period was devoted to the testing of rockets. Practical research with the help of rockets was still in an embryonic state and could not yield important scientific results. Balloon flights continued to remain the chief method of scientific research in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

Towards the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War the Soviet Union already held a leading place among the world's biggest industrial powers. The building of socialism was successfully completed in the U.S.S.R. The Soviet people made vast progress in the economic, scientific and cultural spheres. These successes found their most striking manifestation in the outstanding achievements scored by Soviet scientists in the exploration of the stratosphere, the development of rocket engineering and the designing of jet engines.

The article vividly describes the launching of geophysical and meteorological rockets, the world's first artificial Earth satellite, Soviet cosmic rockets and spaceships.

The Soviet Union's remarkable successes in space exploration, the authors write in conclusion, strikingly testify to the vast potentialities latent in the socialist system and graphically demonstrate its superiority to the capitalist system. Vividly reflected in them are the epoch-making achievements gained by the U.S.S.R. in the field of economic, scientific and technical progress.

V. Y. LAVERYCHEV. State Regulation of the Russian Economy

The article devotes particular attention to the All-Russian Federation of Trade and Industry, which was established by Moscow's capitalists as a centre of internal counter-revolution. The author points out that the activity of this and other industrialists' organizations of Moscow in the sphere of state regulation of the economy was directed towards one basic aim, namely, the preservation and strengthening of the dominant position of the capitalist class. Drawing on extensive factual material, the author shows how they tried to achieve this aim by creating a system of "control" over production and consumption in which the role of democratic elements would be reduced to nought. Taking advantage of state regulation to further their own interests, the manufacturers tried to secure temporary stabilization of the capitalist economy by intensifying exploitation and aggravating the conditions of the working masses; losing all sense of reality, they clung to diverse reactionary-bureaucratic schemes and organs of control, which ran counter to the fundamental interests of the people and were bound to cause further dislocation of the entire national economy.

The author makes a point of stressing that in coming out against the extremely curtailed grain monopoly, which the Provisional Government was forced to proclaim in March 1917 as a result of the insistent and ever-growing demand of the labouring masses, the industrial bourgeoisie of Moscow endeavoured to seize key positions in the sphere of food supply. The existing reactionary-bureaucratic regulation of food supply

was gradually replaced by still more limited arch-reactionary plans. Thus, V. Y. Laverychev concludes, the bourgeoisie not only threatened the population with hunger but actually organized it. The article shows that the same basic trends characterized the Moscow capitalists' position with regard to supplying the population with manufactured goods. The author particularly stresses the fact that on the very eve of the Great October Socialist Revolution the capitalists' efforts to prevent the introduction of democratic principles in economic regulation were growing ever more persistent. They stubbornly tried to set up regulating bodies completely dependent on them and absolutely powerless to carry out any measures in the field of rational organization of the national economy.

The author's comprehensive analysis of extensive factual material enables him to draw the conclusion that the eight months of uncontrolled capitalist mismanagement brought the country to the brink of economic disaster. Only after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, V. Y. Laverychev emphasizes, the working class of Russia, guided by the Leninist Communist Party, began to introduce a genuinely comprehensive system of state economic regulation. However, this was done on a fundamentally new basis. The workers' control represented one of the most important factors in the great effort of rebuilding the entire national economy.

S. P. PEREGUDOV. The British Working People's Struggle for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (1957 - 1962)

The nuclear armaments race unleashed by Nato imperialist circles and open preparations for another world war are meeting with mounting resentment and resolute opposition from the labouring masses of Britain. In mid-1950's the country witnessed the rise and development of a mass movement demanding unilateral renunciation of nuclear weapons by Britain and abandonment of her suicidal nuclear strategy policy. The article traces the progress of this movement in 1957 - 1962, analyzes its slogans and the social composition of its participants. These years were marked by the founding of such world-famed organizations as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Committee of 100. The Aldermaston peace marches, whose ranks are being swelled by more and more participants with each passing year, have become extremely popular. Mass actions and manifestations have been organized during this period against the imperialists' concrete moves fraught with grave danger to universal peace or threatening the independence of individual countries. At the 1960 Labour Party Conference in Scarborough the peace champions secured the adoption of a resolution demanding that Britain renounce nuclear weapons and close all foreign nuclear bases.

The article shows how side by side with its growing scope the movement for unilateral nuclear disarmament was gaining in maturity and purposefulness. Starting with isolated actions against British nuclear tests and the British hydrogen bomb, it gradually adopted the path of direct struggle against the political course that gives rise to the nuclear threat. The demand that Britain withdraw from the aggressive Nato bloc and pursue a policy of positive neutrality has been the predominant and generally recognized slogan of the British peace movement since 1960. This should be largely attributed to the extensive explanatory and propaganda campaign carried on by the Communist Party of Great Britain, the British Peace Committee and other progressive forces of the country, both in the preceding period and during these years, with the aim of exposing the aggressive nature of Nato and its nuclear strategy.

The author shows how the fight for peace was accompanied by the establishment of closer cooperation between diverse sections of the peace movement. However, the achievement of genuine united action by all peace forces is seriously hampered by anti-Communist prejudices and bias shared by a number of leaders of the British peace movement, as well as by a fallacious theory current in their midst about "equal responsibility" devolving upon the two blocs for the armaments race and international strain. These erroneous views prevent the enlistment of the militant working-class masses in the general struggle for peace, hampering the conversion of this struggle into a genuinely all-embracing, nation-wide movement.

V. P. ZOLOTUKHIN. The Farmers' Position and the Government's Agrarian Policy in the U.S.A. (1945 - 1950)

The author of this article makes an attempt to examine the chief aspects of the farmers' position and of the government's agrarian policy in the U.S.A. in 1945 - 1950. Having briefly described the economic boom of the early postwar years, the author proceeds to illustrate the general situation in U.S. agriculture. His analysis of the development of production, the level of consumption of agricultural products, the dynamics of prices and the farmers' incomes enables the author to draw the

conclusion that the postwar overproduction crisis in U.S. agriculture set in in 1948. The article emphasizes that the monopolies' domination in agriculture was the most important factor responsible for the further deterioration of the farmers' position. The years 1945 - 1950 were marked by progressive class differentiation among the farmers, intensified concentration of agricultural production in the hands of the big farmers and the ruination of a great mass of small farmers. The majority of agricultural labourers were subjected to brutal exploitation and the position of migratory workers was really tragic.

The article contains a characteristic of the principal farmers' organizations and shows their attitude to the government's agrarian policy, which in the early postwar period was based on the agrarian laws adopted under Franklin D. Roosevelt. This legislation fully accorded with the interests of commercial farmers and was intended, first and foremost, to further the interests of big capitalist farmers. The Farm Security Administration, the only government organization founded in the period of New Deal to render assistance to small farmers, was abolished in 1946. The U.S. reactionary circles demanded a cardinal revision of the entire agricultural policy. In 1947 U.S. Congress drastically cut budget appropriations for agriculture. The 1947 - 1948 hearings before the Congressional committees clearly revealed that the big agricultural producers, while diverging on minor points, were essentially in favour of retaining the existing agrarian legislation. The agricultural law of 1948 introduced certain amendments in the price support program in accordance with the demands of big capitalist farmers. The agrarian crisis found its reflection in the polemic on the agrarian policy initiated during the election campaign of 1948 and influenced the results of the voting in the rural, areas. The Brannan plan put forward in the spring of 1949 set off a heated debate, at the bottom of which were the political interests of the Republican and Democratic parties. The plan failed to win mass support and had to be rejected. The agricultural law of 1949 merely duplicated the 1948 Bill, though in a slightly modified form necessitated by the first symptoms of the agrarian crisis. It was precisely this crisis that compelled U.S. Administration to revert in 1950 to its old policy of drastically curtailing -agricultural production. Summing up the chief results of this period in the history of American farming, the author writes in conclusion that in the economic sphere it was marked by a transition from the economic boom to the agrarian crisis. As to the government's agrarian policy, its proclaimed goal of attaining an "organized, sustained and realistic abundance" was destined to remain a pious wish owing to the insoluble contradictions of the capitalist economy. Another confirmation of this was furnished by the agrarian crisis and the measures taken by U.S. Administration to curtail agricultural production.

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