E.N. GORODETSKY. Lenin's Laboratory of Research into the History of Soviet Society

V. I. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, was at the same time the first historian of the new society created by the socialist revolution in Russia. Lenin wrote many generalizing works. He was the first scholar in the history of science to base his research upon sources reflecting the movement of the revolutionary masses, their struggle and creative endeavour. Analyzing the totality of facts relating to the processes of the rise and development of Soviet society, V.I. Lenin emphasized the principal, decisive fact corresponding to the central link in the structure of a given phenomenon or event. Attaching vast importance to statistical materials, to diverse mass sources of the revolutionary era, V.I. Lenin exerted immense influence on the process of their formation, on the organization of state statistics founded on scientific principles, on statistical records and accounts submitted by the central and local state bodies, on the comparative analysis and generalization of these materials. Lenin resorted to the method of conducting public opinion polls and sociological surveys, of studying the character and composition of the country's political, economic and military apparatus. The method of compiling charts and diagrams was used by Lenin as an instrument for cognition and graphic reflection of the past and the present. Much space in the Leninist methods of historical research is devoted to the elaboration of an exact artistic image as a form expressing complex scientific concepts and processes. A close study of Lenin's laboratory, of his systematization methods, ihe techniques of arranging materials enable one to gain a deeper understanding of Lenin's principles of class analysis and their concrete connection with the general methodology of research in the history of Soviet society.

P.V. VOLOBUYEV AND I.M. PUSHKAREVA. The Basic Scientific Results of Compiling a Six-Volume Academic Edition of Russian and Soviet History

The article sums up some of the general scientific and organizational results of work involved in the publication of the first series of a twelve-volume edition of the "History of the U.S.S.R. from Ancient Times to Our Days" (the first series covers a period from the primitive-communal system to the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution of February 1917). Defining the place and significance of the six-volume edition in historiography, the authors of the article dwell on a number of still unsolved problems pertaining to Russia's social, economic and political history and cultural development.

The authors believe that the work of compiling the six-volume edition has brought together researchers specializing in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, who demonstrated their growing creative possibilities Their joint effort produced a clear picture of the long and tortuous path traversed by Soviet historians, and improved the general conception of the historical process of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.

I.I. SHINKAREV. The Formation of Czechoslovak Units in the U.S.S.R. in the Years of the Great Patriotic War

The article shows how in the most adverse conditions obtaining in the initial period of the Great Patriotic War, when the Soviet Union temporarily experienced an acute shortage of the latest weapons of war and material resources, there began the formation of Czechoslovak military units on the territory of the U.S.S.R. The author traces the main stages of their formation from the Separate Unfantry Battalion to the Army Corps and highlights the participation of these troops in military operations on ihe Soviet-German Front against the nazi invader. Citing concrete examples, the author discloses the work carried out by the Moscow Bureau of the Czechoslovak Communist Parly's Central Committee (Klement Gottwald, J. Sverma, Antonin Zapotocky and others) in the newly-formed contingents, aimed at introducing democratic principles, overcoming the bourgeois world outlook and giving them adequate moral and ideological training for conducting active

military operations jointly with the Red Army. Much space is devoted in the article to examining the policies of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London, which envisaged the possibility of using the Czechoslovak units formed in the Soviet Union, after expelling the nazis from Czechoslovak territory, in the interests of maintaining capitalist and landlord rule in the country. The author cites new archive materials illustrating the fraternal and disinterested all-round assistance rendered by the Soviet Union in establishing Czechoslovak military units which subsequently formed the core of the Czechoslovak People's Army.

A.L. SHAPIRO. The Nature of Feudal Landownership

The author of the article substantiates his thesis that the first general indication of any system of feudal landownership-irrespective of whether the reference is to the early, developed or late period of feudalism, to a landed estate or patrimony, regardless of the owner's social-estate status, regardless of whether the owner appears in the shape of an individual feudal lord, a feudal corporation or a feudal state-is that this ownership guarantees the landlord adequate revenue in the form of labour, natural or money rent. The tennant's possession of a plot of land or the whole land from which its owner receives feudal rent should be regarded as another indication of feudal landownership. Feudal relations of production cannot exist unless the property of the recipient of rent is combined with the peasant's holding.

Typical of the period of feudal disunity was the hierarchic form of landownership. It was dictated by the need to protect the property and other rights of the feudal lords, and to force the peasants to perform feudal services. But the relations taking shape in the process of production between the class of producers and the class of exploiters were not determined by the hierarchic form of ownership. Apart from this, even in the period of feudal disunity the hierarchic form did not extend to the entire system of landownership. When the economic prerequisites began to emerge for the formation of a regular army of the feudal state, the hierarchic system of landownership gradually ceased to exist. In the author's opinion, a characteristic of the general obligatory and particular non-obligatory indications of feudal ownership of the land must be taken into account when examining a number of concrete questions relating to the history of feudal relationships in Russia and other countries.

N.N. BOLKHOVITINOV. America's War of Independence and Contemporary U. S. Historiography

The article examines the fundamental problems of the American 18th-century revolution with due account to the struggle between a number of new trends in U.S. historiography. Particular attention is devoted by the author to Lenin's appraisal of the War of Independence not only as a movement for national liberation but also as a social revolution. The article examines the chief social results of the War of Independence, primarily the solution of the agrarian problem (nationalization of western lands, elimination of the remanants of feudalism in agriculture, etc.). The author subjects to a critical analysis a number of works by the "new conservatives" (R. Brown, G. Burstin, L. Hartz, C. Rossiter and others), the theory of "harmonious interests" and "continuity" and several works produced by representatives of the New Left (S. Lind, D. Lemish). The article cites the assessments of the War of Independence by prominent Marxist historians in the United States (W. Z. Foster, Herbert Aptheker) and stresses the need for Soviet scholars to continue and extend their research in America's 18th-century revolution.

E. ALEXIN. The Art of Propaganda in the Ancient World

The methods and techniques of ideologico-psychological indoctrination of the whole of society in the interests of an individual group of people acquired a permanent character with the formation of the class society and the emergence of the state. Extensive use was made of monumental art, external attributes of the monarch's powers, religion, physical extermination of non-conformists, glorification of military victories, dissemination of intentional rumours, patriotic poetry, historical works, speeches by famous orators, philosophical treatises, theatrical performances, mass festivals and public entertainments, state laws and school instruction to achieve this purpose. The author traces the gradual extension in the scope of propaganda and the specific forms it assumed with the progressive advancement of human civilization. He examines the concrete methods of propaganda in ancient times in the countries of the Near and Middle East, India, China, Greece and Rome and puts forward certain propositions based on numerous examples from the activity of Egyptian pharaohs, Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian kings, Chinese emperors, as well as autstand-ing historical personalities like Cautilla, Tung Chung-shu, Sun Tzu, Homer, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Pericles, Themistocles, Pisistratus, Alexander the Great, Diogenes, Hannibal, Cato the Elder, Scipio Africanus Minor, Caesar, Cicero, Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Augustus, and many others.

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