V.V. PARKOSADZE. The Historic Role of the Transcaucasian Federation

The author paints a vivid picture of the rise and development of the Transcaucasian Federation incorporating the Soviet Republics of Georgia. Armenia and Azerbaijan. The article shows the historic role played by this Federation, stressing the mass, popular character of the movement for the establishment of the Federation which proceeded under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and V. I. Lenin. The merging of the three republics in a single federation proceeded in a tense struggle against naticnal-deviationist elements within the ranks of the Transcaucasian Bolsheviks.

The formation of the Transcaucasian Federation, the author points out, was an act of immense progressive significance for the Transcaucasian peoples, which greatly contributed to their economic, political and cultural development and to the promotion of friendship among the Transcaucasian peoples. V. V. Parkosadze devotes particular attention to the extensive assistance rendered by the peoples of the Russian Federation to the Transcaucasian nations in establishing and consolidating their Soviet statehood.

V.A. SIDOROV. Liquidation of the Kulaks as a Class

The author analyzes the socio-economic relations prevailing in the Soviet countryside on the eve of the mass collectivization, reveals the forms and methods of the kulaks' struggle against the economic measures effected by the Soviet state and shows the objective need for the Soviet government's transition to the policy of liquidating the kulaks as a class on the basis of all-round collectivization of agriculture.

By 1928 the rural bourgeoisie accumulated considerable forces, grew numerically stronger and openly began to circumvent the limitations and restrictions instituted by the Soviet government. The kulaks refused to sell grain to the state and intensified their terroristic activity. The number of counter-revolutionary organizations in the countryside was growing rapidly. The kulaks were actively supported by the church. The article discloses the covert forms and methods of struggle resorted to by the rural exploiters-their attempts to pose as middle peasants the sale of their means and instruments production, worming their way into collective farms, etc.

The article describes the measures taken by the Soviet government to enable the munist Party evolved effective methods and forms of liquidating the kulaks. The irreconcilable struggle waged by the kulaks against Soviet power and the collective farms, coupled with the growing danger presented to the U.S.S.R. by the hostile capitalist encirclement, compelled the Soviet government to adopt the policy of expropriating the kulaks.

The article describes the measures taken by the Soviet goverment to enable the expropriated kulaks and members of their families to work honestly and conscientiously for the benefit of society. As a result of these measures most of the former kulaks won the confidence of the working people and Soviet power by their devoted labour for the good of the country and gradually participated in the nation- wide effort of building a socialist society.

V.I. BUGANOV and E.V. CHISTYAKOVA. Certain Historical Aspects of the Second Peasant War in Russia

The authors define more precisely a number of questions pertaining to the history of the peasant war fought under the leadership of Stepan Razin, notably its chronology and geography. A close analysis of new sources brings them to the conclusion that the Second Peasant War passed through several stages in its development, that it cannot be limited exclusively to the events of the rising in the Middle Volga District and certain ether areas in 1670 - 1671, and that the events of 1667 - 1669 cannot be regarded merely as a campaign of plunder. The campaign from the upper reaches of the Don to the towns and villages lying deep in the Moscow Region launched under the leadership of Vasily Uss in the spring-summer 1666 should be regarded as the first stage of the Second Peasant War.

The second stage of the Peasant War is the Caspian or Persian campaign of 1667 - 1669 which, despite its clearly expressed elements of "robbery" that were also typical of many other movements in the medieval period, had a strongly pronounced anti- government character.

The Second Peasant War reacned its culmination point during the third stage (1670 - 1671), when the serf peasantry of the Volga Country, of Russia's southern and central areas, and the non-Russian nationalities inhabiting the Volga towns and villages became the main driving forces of the Peasant War.

The struggle and fall of the Astrakhan "republic" in November 1671 was the concluding stage of the Second Peasant War.

The geography of the Second Peasant War likewise requires further clarification. Apart from the Don and the Northern Donets, Lower and Middle Volga areas, territories east of the Volga, part of the Ukraine and a number of southern and southeastern districts, this movement at its different stages also embraced territories situated in the lower reaches of the Don with the town of Cherkassk, part of the North Caucasus and the plains on the banks of the Terek, the Kuma and the Manych, lands in the lower reaches of the Yaik, a number of districts in Central Russia and certain areas south of the Moscow Region (territories around Voronezh, Yelets, Tula, Kashira, Kolomna, Borovsk, neighbouring towns and districts), and some of the districts to the northeast of Moscow (Yuriev-Polsky, Yaroslavl, Vetluga, Totema, Ustyug).

Y.P. AVERKIEVA. L.H. Morgan and U. S. Ethnography

The article traces the new trends in modern appraisal of L. H. Morgan's contribution to the science of primitive man. In the ninety years since the publication of his famous book "Ancient Society" his ideas and conceptions underwent a complicated history of oblivion, severe criticism and attempts to rescue. In the recent U.S. publication of two new editions of that work the author sees vivid signs of American anthropologists' present gravitation towards Morgan. The prefaces to these editions brietly summarize the present-day controversy over Morgan's scientific achievements.

I.N. OSINOVSKY. Thomas More's "Utopia" and Its Critics

Sir Thomas More - the great English humanist and the founder of Utopian socialism- was one of the most prominent representatives of his time. He is known to the contemporary reader as the famous author of "Utopia" which to this day remains the object of heated polemics between scientists belonging to different political trends. Contemporary bourgeois historiographers regard "Utopia" as a controversial and mysterious work, on the basis of which it is allegedly difficult to determine the views of its author. Alongside the traditional bourgeois interpretation of "Utopia" as a specimen of "jeu d'esprit" which does not entitle any researcher to draw serious conclusions concerning Thomas More's world outlook, there has emerged in bourgeois historiography a reactionary tendency to utilize the criticism of "Utopia" as a weapon in the ideological struggle against contemporary socialism. The article examines these and other interpretations of "Utopia" which have become fairly widespread in bourgeois historical literature.

The keen ideological struggle that has been going on unabated since the Reformation period to our days has undoubtedly had its effect on the literary destiny of "Utopia." But the influence "Utopia" exerted on the whole subsequent history of socialist thought can be traced very clearly and definitely: through Campanella and 18th- century theories of Utopian communism, Thomas More's communist ideal essentially influenced the formation of the 19th-century system of Utopian socialism, which was used by Marx as an important source in evolving his theory of scientific communism.

M.N. ROSENKO. The Contemporary Epoch and Certain Problems of the Theory of Nations

The article continues the discussion on the theory of nations and national relations in connection with the new phenomena of social life which are determined by the character of the contemporary epoch and the level of economic and political development attained by society. The epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism determines the existence of two principal types of nations in contemporary society- bourgeois and socialist, and creates the objective and subjective conditions for transforming one type of nations into another, namely bourgeois nations into socialist ones. The article emphasizes the fundamentally new essence of socialist nations compared with bourgeois nations, the constant development and change of their content, and shows the conformity of this concept to the social meaning and content of the national community of men in conditions of socialism. At the same time, the present stage of social development has put on the order of the day the question of singling out a new type of nations emerging and developing in countries that are delivering themselves from the fetters of colonial and national oppression. The formation of nations in these countries has its specific features but there can be no doubt that the gen-

eral principles of the Marxist-Leninist theory of nations are fully applicable to an analysis of these processes.

The author makes an attempt to define the community of the economic life and psychic make-up of a nation and to apply these definitions to the development of contem-poriry socialist nations. Concretizing and specifying more precisely the basic content of individual indications of a nation, the author believes that there is absolutely no need to replace this concept by another one.

T.D. ZLATKOVSKAYA. The Forms of Explotation in European Early Class Societis

The article is devoted to a close study of the forms of exploitation prevailing in the Kingdom of Odrysa-one of the earliest state formations among the Thracian tribes in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula in the 6th-5th centuries B.C. A detailed investigation of a number of literary sources enables the author to draw the conclusion on the existence of many different forms of exploitation in Thracian early class society, which are represented most vividly by two diametrically opposite forms: first, exploitation of free peasants by the king, the aristocracy and high-ranking civil servants representing the state; this form of exploitation consisted in appropriating the surplus product in the shape of the land tax and, possibly, the corvee. The peasants' freedom was ensured by their belonging to the commune and the consequent possession of the means of production (the land) and instruments of production (farm implements). One must be able to discern the tendency towards the development of protofeudal relations in this form of exploitation; the second and most onerous form of exploitation is the slaveowning system. It was limited to an insignificant number of slaves (more often sold beyond the borders of Thrace) and the narrow sphere of employing their labour inside the country (chiefly as domestic servants of the nobility). These specific features of slaveownership continued to exist in the later (Roman) period. There were also certain other categories of bondsmen, of which only a few are known to us. The forms of non-economic compulsion applied in Thrace did not play a leading role in production relations, and agriculture - the main branch of the country's economy-was based on the labour of free members of the commune. Consequently, there are no sufficient grounds for regarding the Thrace of the period of the rise and development of early class relations as a state founded on the slaveowning mode of production. The state appeared in Thrace as an instrument of exploitation of free peasants by the king and the tribal aristocracy. Only the subsequent course of historical development, the incorporation of Thrace in the system of slaveowning empires enhanced the role and importance of the slave system.

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