SUMMARIES OF ARTICLES

A. I. DANILOV. S. D. Skazkin and Certain Aspects of Historiographical Analysis

The author examines the approach to historiographical problems manifested by Academician S. D. Skazkin - one of the founders of the Soviet school of research in the history of the Middle Ages. Whatever aspect of research we take-the historiography of the West-European peasantry, the feudal state, the transition from the period of antiquity to the Middle Ages, the historiography of the Renaissance or the problem of land ownership in the French countryside of the 18th century - it is characteristic of S. D. Skazkin invariably to display a profound class analysis of historical phenomena, making it possible to trace their essence. At the same time, S. D. Skazkin always emphasized the class limitation of bourgeois historiography which determines its methodological nature and inevitably leads to idealism in interpreting the substance of the historical process. The young generation of Soviet researchers in medieval history, the author notes, must learn from S. D. Skazkin to use all the achievements of historical knowledge in order to advance in science, to carry on a consistent struggle against every departure from the methodology of Marxism-Leninism and against all varieties and manifestations of bourgeois ideology.

F. A. KAREVSKY. The Activity of the Political Departments at the Machine and Tractor Stations in the Volga Country

In the two years of their existence (1933 - 1934) the political departments set up at the machine and tractor stations (MTS) carried out extensive and many-sided work to consolidate the MTS and the collective farms organizationally, economic-ally and politically. As is clearly shown in the article, the political departments played an active part in thoroughly restructuring and improving the work in the sphere of Party organization and political education of the masses in the collective farms and the MTS with a view to making them economically efficient, purging-them of the class enemies hostile to the people, training skilled, personnel for the collective farms and the MTS, and organizing the socialist emulation movement among the masses. All this played an important role in considerably heightening the labour activity and enthusiasm of collective farmers and machine operators, and largely contributed to carrying out agricultural production programmes and state plans for the delivery of farm produce, thereby laying a solid groundwork for effecting a substantial rise in collective-farm production.

V. I. NOVIKOV. The Leninist "Iskra" in the Struggle Against the Zubatov Stratagem

In the beginning of the 20th century the tsarist government, anxious to divert the broad massof working people from the revolutionary struggle, began to encourage the establishment of legal working-class organizations, whose activity was directed and stringently controlled by the Police Department. The policy of setting-up labour organizations of this type came to be called the Zubatov stratagem (by the name of Zubatov, the Chief of the Moscow Secret Police). The article highlights the struggle waged by the Leninist newspaper "Iskra" and by the revolutionary social-democrats against the Zubatov societies and organizations, showing how V. I. Lenin and the editorial board of the "Iskra" succeeded not only in exposing Zubatov's attempts to check the spread of the mass working-class movement with the aid of police-formed workers' organizations but in disclosing the sum and substance of the policy of "police socialism."

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V. L. YEGOROV. The Development of Centrifugal Tendencies Within the Golden Horde

The article examines the interrelations between the centralized power and the feudal lords within the Golden Horde in the 13th-14th centuries. Certain periods of its history are characterized by a strong centralized power which largely contributed to the development of the towns, handicrafts and trade. But side by side with this the author draws attention to the steady growth of the economic and political power of the big feudal owners who were openly beginning to conduct a separatist policy. A close analysis of the causes of this phenomenon testifies to the internal instability of the Golden Horde and its artificial character as a state organism. The mounting feudal strife undermined the power of the Golden Horde and accelerated the process of its disintegration into separate khanates.

Y. N. ROZALIEV. The Problems of State Capitalism in Developing Countries

The author makes an attempt to systematize and critically examine a number of works by Soviet scientists devoted to diverse aspects of the origin and development of state capitalism in developing countries, to trace its impact on the socio-economic transformations taking place in these countries, as well as on the shaping of their sociopolitical structure and their choice of the road of further development. The author examines the achievements of Soviet researchers specializing in the elaboration of the various aspects of state capitalism, the study of which has advanced from the investigation of one or another particular aspect of state capitalism, to broad generalizations, to tracing the interconnections and interdependence attending the development of state capitalism and other economic forms, the use of the state sector as a means of upholding the national independence of the emergent countries.

G. P. KUROPYATNIK. The Fight for Land in the U.S.A. During the Colonial Period

The factors connected with the struggle for land made a powerful impact on the socio-economic development of the British colonies in North America. The system of big feudal landholdings belonging to the rich feudal lords and the colonists' farms attached to their land signified an attempt to implant there the mode of production which was already departing from the historical scene in Europe, being gradually replaced by the capitalist mode of production. The greater the effort exerted by the big feudal lords to perpetuate the feudal relations of production, the more stubborn became the resistance put up by colonists who kept arriving from Europe in ever-increasing numbers. The uprisings flaring up in the struggle for "free land" ultimately led to the abolition of the power of the feudal lords and to the gradual transition of the vast majority of privately-owned colonies under the power of the Crown. Nevertheless, the big landed property of the feudal lords continued to remain intact; the system of fixed rent was fully preserved; the laws prohibiting the alienation or division of feudal manors continued to remain in force. All this greatly accentuated the importance and urgency of the land question in the further development of the class struggle which finally resulted in the outbreak of war launched by the American colonies for their independence.

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