D.M. KUKIN. V.I. Lenin - the Great Continuer of Marx's Cause

The article briefly describes the activity of Karl Marx - the founder of scientific communism, the leader and teacher of the world proletariat. The author graphically shows the inestimable service to mankind rendered by V.I. Lenin - the greatest revolutionary and scientist of the new epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions - in continuing the cause of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. V.I. Lenin comprehensively developed and raised to a new and higher stage all the component parts of Marxism-the theory of scientific communism, Marxist political economy, dialectical and historical materialism. He founded the Communist Party-the proletarian party of a new type. Under his leadership the Russian proletariat in alliance with the poorest sections of the peasantry carried out the Great October Socialist Revolution, which blazed the road to socialism for the whole of mankind. In conclusion D.M. Kukin highlights the development of Marxist-Leninist theory in the contemporary epoch.

V.S. VYGODSKY. Marx's Economic Teaching and the Materialist Conception of History

The development of Marx's economic theory was closely connected with elaboration of the materialist conception of the historical process. The creation of historical materialism signified the establishment of methodological foundations for the future economic theory. And conversely, Marx's elaboration of his economic teaching signified a decisive substantiation and further development of the materialist conception of history. The materialist conception of history was first expounded-by Marx and Engels in 1845 - 1846 in "The German Ideology" as a hypothesis which permitted to pose and solve the question of the objective laws governing the process of social development. The materialist conception of history brought into being an integral and harmonious theory of scientific communism. The emergence of Marx's economic teaching transformed the materialist conception of history from a hypothesis into a scientifically substantiated doctrine. Political, juridical and other social forms were deduced by Marx from the system of production relations. He investigated all the major aspects of bourgeois society, analyzing the conditions required for its destruction and replacement by a higher social system- the communist formation. Regarding the economic development of a social formation as a natural-historical process, Marx at the same time showed that the objective economic laws of capitalism are realized in the process of the class struggle, which represents a cardinal factor influencing the operation of these laws. By disclosing the mechanism of capitalist exploitation and substantiating the inevitability of the socialist revolution Marx convincingly proved that the materialist conception of history gives a correct interpretation of the process of transition from one social formation to another.

V.E. KUNINA. From the History of Marx's Struggle Against Reformism

The author examines an important question connected with Marx's struggle against the reformist world outlook of the labour aristocracy. The article is confined to an analysis of a number of statements and appraisals by Marx and Engels dating back to the late 1860's and early 1870's. The numerous facts which have become widely known only in the recent period thanks to the painstaking research carried out by a number of British historians, have made it possible to gain a deeper knowledge of that stage of Marx's struggle against reformism in the First International and to trace the concrete historical material which enabled Marx and Engels to draw their conclusions on the emergence in het early 1870's of a stratum among the labour aristocracy, which they characterized as "professional liberal politicians."

A.K. VOROBYOVA. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels on the Revolutionary Movement and Revolutionaries of Russia

The article examines the main direction of Marx's and Engels' research in the "Russian theme" - establishing the prerequisites, character and prospects of the Russian revolution and its connection with the liberation struggle of the international proletariat. Proceeding from V.I. Lenin's characterization of three generations of the Russian revolutionaries in his article "In Memory of Herzen," the author analyzes the contacts maintained by Marx and Engels with representatives of these three generations. The article traces the attitude of the founders of Marxism to the activity of M. A. Bakunin and A.I. Herzen, the close contacts maintained by the great leaders of the international proletariat with Russia's commoner-intellectual revolutionaries, the disciples and followers of N. G. Chernyshevsky and N.A. Dobrolyubov, the revolutionary members of the "Narodnaya Volya": ("People's Will") organization and, later, with the revolutionary Narodniks who gradually assimilated the fundamental principles of scientific communism and founded the first Marxist group in Russia-the "Emancipation of Labour." Their close ties with the Russian revolutionaries and progressive social leaders coupled with their knowledge of the Russian language enabled Marx and Engels to draw extensively on Russian sources in their profound study of the social and economic relations that had taken shape in Russia after the abolition of serfdom and proceeding from their analysis, to substantiate scientifically that the revolution in Russia was inevitable. The author particularly stresses the importance and value of Marx's and Engels' works wholly devoted to Russia and addressed directly to the Russian reader.

K.V. SOLOVYOVA. Karl Marx and the Russian Section of the First International

In March 1870 a group of Russian political emigres consisting of N.I. Utin, A.D. Trusov, V.I. Bartenev, E.G. Barzheneva and E.L. Tomanovskaya (Dmitrieva) founded the Russian Section of the First International in Geneva. The article briefly surveys the history of this Section and highlights the relations of its members, who shared the views of N.G. Chernyshevsky and N.A. Dobrolyubov, with Karl Marx.

In a letter addressed to Marx on March 12, 1870, the Committee of the Russian Section asked for permission to represent the Section in the General Council of the International Working Men's Association. On March 22, 1870, the Russian Section, was admitted to the International and Marx voluntarily assumed the function of a corresponding secretary for Russia in the General Council.

The materials and documents which appeared for the first time in a collection entitled "Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Revolutionary Russia" (Moscow, 1967), enabled the author to provide additional information on the functioning of the Russian Section under Marx's leadership.

The Russian Section played a conspicuous part in the struggle against M.A. Bakunin and his tendency to split the international working-class movement. K.V. Solovyova points out that the members of the Russian Section actively participated in the work of the international proletarian organization. They succeeded in establishing contacts with a number of revolutionary underground organizations of Russia and in exerting a marked influence on the spread of Marxism in Russia. They made an attempt to transfer to Russia "the most important and progressive specific form of European organization," namely, the International.

G.A. BELOV. The Problems Involved in the Impletion of Soviet State Archives

The author sets forth the basic theoretical principles of estimating the value of documentary materials, examines the present-day methods of complementing state archives and sums up certain preliminary results of the discussion on the development of archive-keeping in the U.S.S.R. launched in the pages of our journal.

In the fifty years of Soviet archive-keeping, writes G.A. Belov, the work of complementing and examining archive documents and records has traversed a long and tortuous path. The progress in this field was hampered by the fact that the process of complementing was artificially divorced from the process of examination. Examination was chiefly concerned with purging the archives of unnecessary and superfluous records, while the task of complementing was reduced to mechanical reception and arrangement of the remaining documents. The archive-keepers did not concentrate their efforts on duly preserving and safekeeping the documents and records of the most important institutions, as a result of which many valuable historical sources often remained outside the state archives.

In the mid-1950's there set in a new period in Soviet archive-keeping - a period marked by the critical reappraisal of the existing practice and methods, by the extension and deepening of scientific research in the sphere of archive examination and impletion. In the first place, the tasks of examination were changed. One of its principal objects became the selection of documents for the state archives in conformity with the principle of historism. Soviet archivists made an important contribution to the establishment of a firm documentary base on the history' of the world's first socialist state. This base will be annually complemented with new valuable documents and records.

A.Y. GUREVICH. The Problem of Landownership in Pre-Feudal and Early Feudal West- European Societies

The article continues the discussion on early class societies launched by our journal.

Direct personal relations free of commodity fetishism were the prevailing and determining type of social relations between people in early class societies. The same applies to land property relations. The article examines the essential nature of land property in barbarian and early feudal societies. Land property in these societies cannot be regarded as private property. It is important to stress that the attitude to the land as to a simple object was utterly alien to the barbarians, for in that remote period man did not yet separate himself from his natural environment to such an extent as to be able to realize his opposition to it and saw in the land a continuation of his own personality, an integral and inalienable part of himself. This attitude persisted for a long time in the Middle Ages. Even after its passage from the possession of a big family to the hereditary possession of an individual ("small") family, the allod, like other kindred forms of landownership (the old English form of folkland, the old Norwegian form of odal), was not converted into freely alienated property. The transition to feudalism did not consist in expropriating the possessions of free peasants but in the appropriation of the latter together with the land on which they continued to conduet their economy under the rule of the feudal lord. Feudal ownership consisted primarily in the personal relation between the seigneur and the vassal or between the feudal lord and the tenant. This relation was essentially based on domination and subjection, on power and submission. Strictly speaking, private ownership of land in the proper sense of this term took its final shape and form only in the period of the genesis of capitalism. Commodity production of the capitalist type transforms land into a commodity; it abolishes personal relations based on domination and subordination and replaces them with material relations.

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