S. Z. LEVIOVA. The Struggle Waged by Marx and Engels in the 1840's for the Establishment of a Political Working-Class Party

The author shows how Marx and Engels altered their tactics in adaptation to the concrete tasks of the working-class movement. Among the chief factors which paved the way for the establishment of the Communist League-the first proletarian party - was Marx's and Engels's rapprochement with the League of the Just and the activity of the Communist correspondence committees in 1846 - 1847. The outbreak of the 1848 revolution in Germany ushered in a new phase in the struggle for the creation of a proletarian party. In April 1848 the Communists made their first attempt to set up an all -German organization uniting the labour unions. Marx and Engels formulated the tactics of the proletariat in the German revolution, proving the need for the proletariat to fight at the extreme left flank of the democratic movement. A conspicuous part in organizing and directing the mass revolutionary movement was played by the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung published by Marx and Engels. The next stage in the struggle for a proletarian party began in the spring of 1849, when Marx and Engels energetically applied themselves to the task of uniting the labour unions on a scale embracing the whole of Germany. The article repudiates the conceptions of bourgeois historiography aimed at misrepresenting and reducing to nought the role of the Communist League in 1848. The falsification of Marx's teaching on the proletarian party, the author points out, is chiefly manifested in the persistent attempts to vulgarize the concept of the party and to deny the Communists' leading role in the history of the working-class movement. The historic peculiarity of the Communist League consists in the fact that, being the first international proletarian organization, it was still unable to develop into a mass political party of the working class. But despite its small membership and illegal status, it exerted a tremendous revolutionizing influence on the working-class movement. The Communist League was the first historical form of the proletarian party founded on the principles of scientific communism, which laid the beginning for the process of combining socialism with the working-class movement.

D. V. KUKHARCHUK. The Vulgar Conception of Equalitarian Communism and Its Criticism by Karl Marx

The author examines the historical significance of Utopian socialism of the 16th- 18th and the first three decades of the 19th centuries, showing that its historical immaturity was directly determined by the immaturity and insufficient class organization of the proletariat during that period. The article vividly describes the struggle waged by Karl Marx for overcoming the survivals of utopianism in the consciousness of the labouring masses, in the practice of the working-class movement and primarily in the theory guiding this practice. Particularly trenchant was Marx's criticism of the vulgar theories of equalitarian, barrack-type communism with its intrinsic sectarianism, resolute opposition to the political struggle of the proletariat, conspiratorial tactics and political adventurism. The author makes a point of stressing the importance of the historical experience of Marx's struggle against the vulgar conception of equalitarian communism for the contemporary struggle against the vulgarization of Marxism- Leninism, against present-day dogmatism and sectarianism.

E. B. STRUKOVA. Maria Ulyanova (in commemoration of the 90th birhday)

The article vividly portrays the life and revolutionary activity of the prominent Communist Party leader Maria Ulyanova - V. I. Lenin's sister and close associate.

M. A. VYLTSAN. The Fight for Bread on the Eve of the War

The article is devoted to an important stage in the development of socialist agriculture - the effort to solve the grain problem on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. The article highlights the state of production, procurement and distribution of cereals. A close analysis of abundant statistical data and documentary materials enables the author to draw the conclusion that, for all its acuteness, the grain problem was in the main solved in the U.S.S.R. on the eve of the Great Patriotic War.

M. S. LAZAREV. Liquidation of the Old Army's General Staff - the Rallying Centre of the Russian Counter-Revolutionary Forces

The author shows how after the victory of the armed uprising in Petrograd and the establishment of Soviet government all the counter-revolutionary forces of Russia began to rally around the old army's General Staff in Moghilev with the aim of turning it into another Versailles. The General Headquarters of the Commander-in- Chief at Moghilev became the rallying centre of the Russian counter-revolutionary forces. Relying on reactionary generals and officers, on the support of the Russian counterrevolutionary parties and the governments of a number of imperialist countries, the General Headquarters organized a revolt against Soviet power and tried to overthrow it by armed force.

The article vividly tells how the Communist Party headed by V. I. Lenin disclosed to the people and soldiers the counter-revolutionary actions of the General Headquarters and organized the revolutionary forces for its liquidation. The Communist Party and the Soviet government succeeded in crashing the General Headquarters' counterrevolutionary revolt with comparative ease because the overwhelming mass of the soldiers supported the Bolsheviks' policy. The Communists who formed the core of the revolutionary detachments participating in the operation of stamping out this seat of the counter-revolution displayed exemplary courage, self-sacrifice and boundless devotion to the lofty ideals of communism.

S. B. OKUN. The Historism of Olga Forsh

Olga Forsh's novel "Stone-Clad" (1924 - 1925) in the first historico-revolutionary work in Soviet literature which paved the way to the new genre of Soviet historical novel. It also strongly influenced the thinking of a number of scientists, thereby becoming a notable event in the sphere of scientific historiography. What are the underlying principles on which this work by Olga Forsh is based? The chief source is P. E. Shche-golev's article "The Mysterious Prisoner" (1919) devoted to Mikhail Beideman, a revolutionary of the 186C"s incarcerated in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. But Olga Forsh abandoned the historical biography genre forming the basis of this article and created a broad canvas vividly portraying the revolutionaries of the sixties in general. Besides Beideman, her novel reproduces the life-stories of several other revolutionaries languishing in prison. To give her novel a contemporary ring, Olga Forsh introduced a number of chronologically alternating episodes from the 1920's. For the purpose of presenting exposed traitors-a very popular theme in the early post-revolution period, the novel is written in the form of a confession by Beideman's "friend" the fictitious traitor Rusanin. Lastly, to portray Beideman as a typical revolutionary of the 1860's the author ascribes to him the views of D. V. Karakozov, a terrorist executed in 1866 for his attempt on the life of Emperor Alexander II. In actual fact, Beideman was opposed to individual terroristic acts. Being a follower of N. P. Ogarev, he was in favour of a broad peasant revolution. The chief merit of the novel lies in the fact that it is not confined to the personal tragedy of an individual revolutionary but depicts a whole historical period.

TRAN HI LIEU. The Vietnam Revolution and Vietnamese-Soviet Friendship

The article shows the influence exerted by the Great October Socialist Revolution and the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R. on the development of the revolutionary movement in Indo-China. The author emphasizes the significance of the principles of proletarian internationalism on which the relations between two fraternal parties - the CPSU and the Communist Party of Indo-China - were founded, and which subsequently determined the fraternal character of political relations between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Soviet Union. The article stresses the vast importance of the unfailing assistance and support rendered by the Soviet Union to the Vietnamese people

both in the period of their fight for independence and at the present time, when the heroic people of Vietnam are staunchly repelling the aggression launched by American imperialism.

I. G. SENKEVICH. Skanderbeg-The Outstanding Leader of the Albanian People's Liberation Struggle in the 15th Century

This January marked the 500th anniversary since the death of George Castriota, the Albanian people's national hero who is generally known by the name of Skanderbeg. Drawing on numerous historical and literary sources, the author paints a vivid picture of the heroic struggle waged by the Albanian people for 25 years to smash the chains of alien oppression and achieve national independence. At the end of the 14th and in the early part of the 15th centuries Albania, disunited and split into small feudal principalities, was threatened with the danger of finding itself under the domination of Venice and with the incursion of Ottoman conquerors. In 1443, one of the Albanian princes, George Castriota (1405 - 1468), assumed leadership of the Albanian people's struggle against alien oppressors. In his efforts to unite the national military forces, Skanderbeg, a talented military leader, politician and diplomat, founded a League of Albanian Principalities at Lesh in March 1444, In the forties and fifties of the 15th century Skanderbeg waged a stubborn struggle against Ottoman and Venetian troops for Albania's territorial integrity and independence. The Albanian people's struggle under Skanderbeg's leadership was of major international significance, for it checked the Turkish army's further advance to Italy and other European countries.

I. F. DROZDOV. Can Traditions Be Regarded as an Indication of a Nation?

The article continues the discussion on the theoretical definition of a nation launched in the pages of our journal. The problem of defining the concept of nation is examined from the viewpoint of the possibility of including in it the traditions of national life, culture and liberation struggle. The author subjects to a detailed examination the views and opinions expressed on this question by other participants in the discussion. Proceeding from his analysis of a number of research works by philosophers, historians, ethnographers and lawyers on the problem of traditions, the author proposes his own definition, according to which a tradition is an historically evolved stable form of manifestation of the recurring element of social relations within the limits of a specific community of men.

I. F. Drozdov maintains that, proceeding from the sphere of manifestation, traditions can be divided into national, revolutionary, scientific, labour, ethical, religious, professional, etc. Particular attention is devoted in the article to examining national traditions, which are characterized as a complex set of historically evolved recurrent elements of social relations, customs, psychological traits typical of each individual nation. The author draws the conclusion that traditions form a component part of the psychological make-up of a nation, which is particularly vividly manifested and firmly preserved precisely in national traditions.

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