S. I. BEGLOV. Creative Development of the Leninist Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in the Works of N. S. Khrushchov

The article points out that in the course of the past decade the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has carried out extensive work in the field of creative development and practical implementation of the Leninist principles of peaceful coexistence of states with differing political systems. An outstanding personal contribution to the theoretical elaboration and practical application of these principles was made by N. S. Khrushchov, First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.

The author emphasizes that in our time the revolutionary content of the Leninist teaching on peaceful coexistence is manifested with particular clarity and its consistent practical application acquires especial significance for the destinies of the whole of mankind. Whereas in the initial period of the struggle for peaceful coexistence the principal task was to safeguard the security of the U.S.S.R. - the only socialist state in the world, in the contemporary epoch, when the close- knit community of the socialist states has become firmly established in the world and the alignment of forces has changed sharply in favour of the forces of peace and progress, the policy of peaceful coexistence is directed towards achievement of much broader tasks. Side by side with the deep-going changes in the sphere of social relations, the contemporary epoch has witnessed a veritable revolution in the methods and techniques of warfare. The deliverance of mankind from the threat of a devastating nuclear war has become for all Communists a task of no less importance than the complete abolition of exploitation and poverty.

The article brings out the fundamental significance of the thesis formulated by the Twentieth CPSU Congress that the altered balance of forces in the contemporary epoch means that war is no longer fatally inevitable. This thesis has been further developed and amplified in the 1957 Declaration and the 1960 Statement of the Moscow Conferences of Representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties, in the new CPSU Programme and in N. S. Khrushchov's numerous speeches and statements.

The policy of peaceful coexistence is becoming the chief instrument enabling socialism to accomplish its historic mission of ruling out for all time the possibility of any kind of war in the life of human society. At the same time it is precisely in conditions of peaceful coexistence that most favourable opportunities are created for the further powerful upsurge of the main currents of the world liberation movement in the resolute struggle against imperialism.

An important place is devoted in the article to highlighting N. S. Khrushchov's propositions and pronouncements which make it perfectly clear that the peaceful coexistence of states with differing social systems does not imply peaceful coexistence in the sphere of ideology but, on the contrary, presupposes further intensification of ideological struggle. The two mutually opposed systems reflect two diametrically opposite class ideologies, yet the controversy between them must be decided not by military means but through peaceful competition in the production of material and spiritual values. The author effectively refutes the spurious arguments trotted out by bourgeois and Left-wing opportunist critics of the peaceful coexistence policy.

The article briefly surveys the most important CPSU and Soviet government measures in the sphere of foreign policy aimed at practically implementing the principles of peaceful coexistence enunciated by Lenin. The author shows that these principles have gained universal recognition and are being applied on an ever-increasing scale in the foreign policy of other countries, in the practical activity of many international organizations and in major documents of international public and inter-governmental conferences.

A. V. GHULIGA. The Subject Matter of Historical Science

Every scientist adhering to Marxist positions regards the life and progressive development of mankind as a process of natural history. But the mere recording of this fact does not yet give a definition of the subject matter of history because the social process is studied by a number of sciences. What basic criteria should be applied to it from the viewpoint of history? The author makes an attempt to answer this question. He

dwells on the numerous discussions devoted to the problem of history that are now under way in the West, where the question of whether history shoud be considered a science has become the subject of a heated debate. It should be perfectly obvious to every Marxist that this argument is pointless, for history is a science which studies the development of human society, its laws and concrete manifestations relating to the past. Historical materialism is a philosophical science which studies society as an integral whole, as a system of organic connections that moves onward from the lower to the higher. The picture of society as a whole is reproduced by the sum- total of the humanities. History reflects past events in all their aspects. The past is an objective reality existing independently of man's consciousness. Hence, one is fully entitled to speak about the objective reality of the subject matter of historical science and of the reflective character of historical knowledge.

V. Y. LAVERYCHEV. The Russian Monopolists and the Kornilov Conspiracy

Drawing on archive materials, bourgeois newspapers and magazines for 1917 and articles published in the Whiteguard emigre press, V. Y. Laverychev examines the activity of different groups of the Russian imperialist bourgeoisie in organizing and financing the counter- revolutionary military forces headed by General Kornilov.

The author shows that after the Revolution of February 1917 the Russian monopolists established several counter-revolutionary centres which directed their efforts towards preventing the outbreak of a socialist revolution in Russia. To achieve this purpose they worked indefatigably to unite all counter-revolutionary forces and generously financed counter- revolutionary agitation and propaganda. The data contained in the article convincingly prove that the ultimate aims of the Russian Economic Regeneration Society founded by the biggest barrks of Petrograd, the Republican Centre patronized by the Siberian Bank, and the All-Russian Association of Commerce and Industry organized by the capitalists of Moscow, essentially coincided. All of them exerted every effort to strangle the revolutionary movement and establish a counter-revolutionary dictatorship However, there existed certain differences between these organizations concerning ways and forms of exercising that dictatorship. Another important distinctive feature was their unceasing struggle for power.

The author stresses that the struggle between Moscow's capitalists, who expressed first and foremost the interests of the national imperialist bourgeoisie, and the financial circles of Petrograd that were intimately associated with foreign capital, grew particularly acute on the eve of the Kornilov revolt. The rivalry and struggle for power between them ended in the "victory" for the Moscow commercial and industrial circles which pursued a more flexible policy and relied more actively on the support of diverse political parties and organizations. At the same time, entertaining no hope to prevent the socialist revolution by relying on their own forces, the Moscow capitalists increasingly counted on direct assistance from international imperialism.

The information cited in the article enabled the author to draw the conclusion that the rallying of the military forces of internal counter-revolution, which served as the shock force of Whiteguard counter-revolutionaries in the Civil War, began with the active participation of monopoly bourgeoisie prior to the Great October Socialist Revolution.

V. I. DULOV and V. G. TYUKAVKIN. The Paths of Capitalist Development in Siberia's Agriculture

The authors of this article graphically show that the development of capitalist relations in Siberia's agriculture proceeded in conformity with the same general laws as in Central Russia. But in contradistinction to the European part of Russia with its predominantly bourgeois evolution of the landlord type, the Siberian countryside was distinguished by certain specific features and peculiarities which determined the predominance there of the peasant-type bourgeois evolution. To these specific conditions the authors attribute, first and foremost, the existing forms of landownership and land-tenure as well as the absence of big landlord estates in Siberia. The article denies the existence in Siberia of a "system of state feudalism" in the second half of the 19th and the opening part of the 20th centuries. The Siberian system of landownership was based on land seizure which provided more favourable conditions and allowed more freedom for capital investment in agriculture, though at the beginning of the 20th century this form of landownership began to be regulated by the semi-feudal state (so-called "allotment of land" to a certain proportion of Siberia's peasant communities).

The article makes a point of stressing the feudal character of the policy followed by the tsarist autocracy in relation to the peasants of Siberia, which found expression in the onerous system of taxation, retention of the metayer system of farming and compulsory payments in kind, bureaucratic "regulation" of land-tenure, etc. But the tsarist government did not succeed in introducing large-scale capitalist-type farms in Siberia though attempts in this direction were made ail through the 19th century and continued in the

opening part of this century. This should be attributed primarily to the fact that the Siberian peasant, according to V. I. Lenin's definition, was far more independent than his Russian counterpart and was not accustomed to compulsory labour or coercion of any kind. The article notes that the Siberian peasants waged a persevering class struggle against the tsarist regime.

The authors cite extensive factual material graphically illustrating the development of capitalism in the Siberian countryside. The process of capitalist development in Siberia began to proceed at a particularly rapid pace after the construction of the Siberian Railway.

More liberal conditions for the development of capitalism and the rapid influx of peasant resettlers resulted in the tempestuous growth of the butter-making industry, extension of crop areas and grain production, wider application of agricultural implements and substantial expansion of the labour power market. The process of class differentiation among the peasantry was proceeding apace in Siberia. Parallel with the emergence of a sizable section of well-to-do kulak farmers there was a rapid increase in the ranks of poor peasants and farm labourers. This process of differentiation proceeded in Siberia much more intensively than in Central Russia. The authors cite examples of the kulak farms owning hundreds of dessiatins of land and employing scores and hundreds of hired hands. Side by side with these prosperous farms, most of the Siberian peasants, especially among the resettlers, lived in poverty, cultivating their tiny plots or working as farm hands on kulak estates.

In conclusion of the article the authors cite Lenin's characteristic of the Siberian peasantry. The Siberian peasants, according to Lenin, belong in the category of well-to-do peasants who did not know serfdom and were "corrupted" by capitalism. The article draws the conclusion that, owing to the specific conditions of historical development, the agrarian evolution in Siberia was predominantly of the American type, which is interpreted by the authors as bourgeois evolution of the peasant type.

A. Y. SHEVELENKO. G. Gurvitch's Micro-Sociology and French Bourgeois Historiography

The article shows how contemporary bourgeois historiography is being increasingly influenced by micro-sociology. Elements of the micro-sociological conception date back to the closing part of the 19th century, having originated in the polemics between G. Tarde and E. Durkheim. The ideas expounded by these two sociologists were subsequently developed by L. Levy-Bruh! who applied them in his study of primitive society. From Levy-Bruhl they were borrowed by G. Gurvitch who adapted them to his study of contemporary society. The appearance, in 1937, of G. Gurvitch's book "Morale theorique et science des moeurs" marked the beginning of the contemporary French micro-sociological school. Its methodology was elaborated by Gurvitch in the 1940's, while concrete methods of research were borrowed by him from representatives of the American sociometrical school headed by J. L. Moreno. Unjustifiably rejecting the scientific definition of the concept "class" formulated by the founders of Marxism, Gurvitch gives his own definition ("Le concept des classes sociales de Marx a nos jours." 1954) which will not hold water from the viewpoint of concrete history. That explains the failure of the attempts to use micro-methods for research in historical macro-phenomena and social macro-groups.

Nevertheless Gurvitch's conception had its impact on French bourgeois historiography. It led to the appearance of a school of "micro-historians"-the ideological successors of micro- sociologists. Within this school there emerged definite trends which, though it is still difficult to draw a sharp line of distinction between them, can already be characterized through their concrete representatives. P. Combe (1956) used micro-methods in his study of the French economy for the period 1860 - 1949 with the aim of finding ways and means to ensure France a prominent place in the ranks of the "European Federation." Resorting to the same methods, the authors of the book "Paysans d'Alsace" (1959) made a detailed analysis of the history of the Alsace economy from the 8th to the 20th centuries. J. Pataut (1956) comprehensively analyzed the election sociology in the Nievre Department for the period 1902 - 1951, giving a "micro- periodization" of local history. P. Boys (1960) endeavoured to provide scientific substantiation for the existence in the rural areas of the Sarthe Department of a "micro-ideology" substantially differing from the peasants' common ideology. L. Chevalier (1947) and H. Mendras (1953) made a comparative analysis of the rural micro-groups in different countries. Drawing on his close analysis of the position of persons with alternating forms of labour, Y. Le Balle (1958) tries to question individual pronouncements and statements of the founders of Marxism concerning the pattern of the future communist society.

In his book entitled "Dialectique et sociologie" (1962) Gurvitch makes an attempt to provide theoretical substantiation for the concrete results of the work done by micro-sociologists and micro-historians in the 1950's. Gurvitch maintains that he has invented a new dialectical method- "hyperempiricism"; actually, however, his new method turns out to be just another attempt to reduce dialectics to empiricism.

Despite all these negative aspects we must give due attention to certain positive elements of the research techniques employed by micro-historians.

G. V. FOKEYEV. The Collapse of British Colonial Policy in Central Africa

The policy of bringing African countries into imperialist-sponsored federations holds an important place in the system of the new forms and methods of colonial domination employed by Great Britain after the second world war. This policy found its most vivid embodiment in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Knocked together by Britain in 1953, this federation comprised three Central African territories of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

The economic aim of the federation policy, the author writes, was to unite individual colonies into an integrated economic complex and step up their exploitation on this basis, while the political purpose was artificially to bind some of the colonies to others- primarily to those that were regarded by the colonialists as the strongpoints of their domination. One of such strongpoints in Central Africa was Southern Rhodesia.

At that period national forces in Southern and Northern Rhodesias and Nyasaland did not yet possess sufficient strength and organizational unity to be able to prevent the colonialists from establishing a racialist federation.

The author emphasizes that in the second half of the fifties and the early sixties the Africans sharply intensified their struggle against the federation, demanding genuine national independence. In the member-countries of the federation there emerged strong African parties which assumed leadership of this struggle. At the same time the moral condemnation of colonialism expressed by the United Nations on the initiative of the Soviet Union, the appearance on the African Continent of more than a score of independent states firmly resolved to put an end to the disgraceful colonial system in every part of Africa-all these factors multiplied the strength of the national-liberation movement in Central Africa and determined the inevitability of its victory. Notwithstanding the stubborn resistance put up by the colonialists, the racialist federation fell apart and ceased to exist on December 31, 1963. Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, where national African governments have been formed, now stand on the threshold of independence.

The British colonialists are still trying to cling to the remnants of their influence in Central Africa by rendering support to the racialist government of Southern Rhodesia. Britain would probably like to enhance this influence by granting formal independence to Southern Rhodesia, while actually retaining there the old racialist regime. But in present-day international conditions, the author writes in conclusion, these attempts are doomed in advance.

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