Academician B. A. RYBAKOV. Heathenish World Outlook in Medieval Russia

The article elucidates the role of heathenism in the development of social thought in Russia during the period of medievalism. The romantic features of the old heathen rites, customs and traditions attracted the attention of pre-revolutionary historians but heathenism, as a system of world outlook was not subjected to any serious investigation. Soviet historians likewise have not studied this problem in its complex multiformity, focussing their attention merely on one or another particular aspect. In the article under review Academician B. A. Rybakov for the first time examines heathenism in its different aspects.

P. N. NAUMOV. Bringing Socialist Culture Within the Reach of the Small Nationalities Inhabiting the Northern Ob Territory

The article highlights the progress of the cultural revolution among the small nationalities inhabiting the Northern Ob territory in the 1920's and 1930's. Drawing on authentic documents kept in central and local archives, the author traces the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, demonstrating the practical embodiment of the cardinal principles underlying the Leninist national policy and the efforts to provide the necessary conditions enabling the small ethnic groups lagging in their development to catch up with the level of development attained by the other Soviet peoples and nationalities and to become full-fledged participants in the building of socialism (organization of the health services and of the public education system; the training of local national cadres; all-round assistance in promoting the cultural development of small nationalities). The results attained by the close of. The 1930's in promoting the cultural advancement of the national minority groups inhabiting the Northern Ob territory, the author writes in conclusion, fully corroborate the Marxist- Leninist proposition that with the aid of the working class of the advanced nations, the backward peoples can go over to socialism without having to pass through the capitalist stage of development.

V. I. BUGANOV. The Ideological Views Shared by the Participants in the Peasant Wars in Russia

The article is devoted to elucidating the ideological, social and political views shared by the participants in the peasant movements, first and foremost the peasant wars, in Russia during the period of feudalism and serfdom. Proceeding from the Marxist- Leninist teaching on ideology, the author notes the existence in antagonistic societies, feudal society included, of the ideology of the exploited classes and the ideology of the exploiters. The class ideology of the Russian peasants in the years of the peasant wars of the 17th - 18th centuries reflected their urgent and vital demands: the striving to liberate themselves from the bondage of serfdom, to gain possession of a plot of land, to destroy the rule of the feudal lords. Their views and demands were diametrically opposed to the ideology of the feudal landowners; in the periods of class battles there occurred a veritable clash of ideas representing two opposite class ideologies. Despite the fact that the ideology of the exploited masses was immature and largely Utopian in character (belief in a "good" tsar who would bestow favours on the poor peasant farmers) and religious in form, it exerted tangible influence on the ideology of the Russian liberation movement at the close of the 18th and in the 19th centuries.

V. S. SHILOV. The Establishment of the Democratic and Socialist Federation in France (1963 - 1967)

The establishment of the Democratic and Socialist Federation in France was a component part of the complex process of reorganizing the country's party system and political structure which, in its turn, was closely associated with the deep-going processes attending the development of French society. The Federation emerged as a result of the

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tense political struggle in the country over a whole number of internal and external political problems. The Left forces succeeded, though only for a brief period, in overcoming their differences and in forming a united front in 1965 in support of Francois Mitterrand. This was followed by the conclusion of an agreement between the Federation and the French Communist Party, and by the substantial gains made during the elections to the National Assembly in March 1967. The Federation became one of the major political groupings (it occupied third place after the Union for a New Republic and the French Communist Party) and played a prominent role in the political life of the country. The inconsistency and petty-bourgeois narrow- mindedness of the Federation's leaders led to its disintegration in 1968.

V. A. TISHKOV. Tracing the Origin of the National Question Among the French-Speaking Population of Canada

Drawing on archive materials and historical documents, the author traces the origin of the national question among French Canadians in connection with the British conquest of Canada. The article contains a critical analysis of the various trends existing in the bourgeois historiography of Canada, which give widely differing interpretations to this question. The author draws the conclusion that the origin of the national question in Canada should be directly attributed to the policy pursued by Britain and her colonial top crust in relation to the indigenous French-speaking population. He makes a point of stressing that from the very outset the national question in. Canada was distinguished by its class character, for it concerned relations between the privileged English minority and the ruthlessly exploited and disfranchised mass of colonists of French extraction.

G. M. IVANOV. Crisis of the Positivist Conception of Historical Sources and Benedetto Croce

The author examines the methodological aspects of the crisis of the positivist conception of historical sources and analyzes the historiographical views of Benedetto Croce who played a conspicuous part in the critique of positivist philosophy and in elaborating the theoretical principles of neo-idealistic conceptions of the nature of historical sources. Disclosing the methodological insolvency of both the positivist and Crocean conceptions on this question, the author emphasizes the idea that unconditional recognition of the objective reality of historical sources forms the underlying foundation of the Marxist conception of historical sources, the only theoretical basis that enables one to form a correct understanding of their connection with historical thinking which, for all its creative activity, always remains secondary in relation to historical sources as a social phenomenon existing independently of the historian's consciousness.

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