M. P. KIM. Corresponding Member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, and V. P. SHERSTOBITOV. The Soviet People as a New Historical Community of Men

The Soviet people constitute an historical community of a new type. In contradistinction to bourgeois communities where harmony between different classes occupying diametrically opposite positions in social life, having their own ideology and furthering their own aims is inconceivable, the Soviet people constitute a community of men whose moral, political and spiritual complexion embraces such common traits as devotion to the cause of communism, socialist patriotism and internationalism, a high level of socio-political and labour activity, irreconcilable attitude to all exploiters and all forms of oppression, to national and race prejudices, and class solidarity with the working people of all countries. The main prerequisite for the emergence of the Soviet people as a distinct community was the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. In the process of socialist and communist construction in the U.S.S.R. there arose and developed the social, class and international community of men based on all-round cooperation of classes, social groups, nations and nationalities. The moulding of the Soviet people as a new historical community of men proceeded under the leadership of the Communist Party. The Soviet Communist Party also directs the process of perfecting this community in our time under the conditions of developed socialism and the building of communism.

Y. P. PETROV. The Communist Party as the Motive Force in Organizing Victory in the Years of Military Intervention and Civil War (1918 - 1920)

The article highlights the activity of the Soviet Communist Party in repulsing the first onslaught of the imperialist forces on the young Soviet Republic, its military policy in 1918 - 1920. In conditions of the commencing war against the external and internal counter revolutionary forces it was necessary to convert the country into an armed camp, to muster every ounce of the nation's strength and resources. One of the most important tasks of extreme urgency for the Party was the need to organize prompt, resolute and effective military resistance. In pursuance of this major objective the Party reorganized itself accordingly. This found expression in the enhancement of organizational centralism, speedy solution of all questions posed by war, strict, unswerving fulfilment by all Party organizations of the Party's military decisions, more stringent and exacting demands made by the Party on all its members, redistribution of Party cadres in furtherance of wartime interests. In the prevailing war conditions the Communist Party successfully solved the extremely complex problem of building up the armed forces of the socialist state capable of beating back the onslaught of the combined forces of external and domestic counterrevolution. The effective solution of this problem was largely predetermined by the fact that more than 260,000 Communists were dispatched to replenish the ranks of the Red Army and to take an active part in armed struggle on the battlefronts. The article closely examines the system of Party leadership of the war: the Party exercised day-to-day military-strategic leadership and effectively guided the war economy. All this enabled the Soviet people to inflict a crushing defeat on the superior forces of the class enemy, to uphold the very existence of the world's first socialist state.

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Y. A. TIKHONOV. Feudal Rent in Central Russia (end of the 16th - first half of the 17th centuries)

The views and opinions expressed in scientific literature on the question examined in this article are highly contradictory owing to the absence of reliable sources. The author has succeeded in discovering, in the records kept by the Landed Property Department, valuable.data on the total amount of compulsory feudal services and fealty due from feudal tenants to the landlords, embracing sixteen landed estates in Russia's central districts. These materials helped to establish the average size of corvee and quitrent imposed on each peasant household. The statistical data contained in them permitted to estimate both the average and precise figures showing the amount of a taxes and duties exacted by the landlords from every peasant farmhold. A careful comparison of the average amount of taxes and duties imposed on the rural communities in and around the Troitse-Sergiev Monastery in the 1590's with similar data available for landed estates over a period from the twenties to the forties of the 17th century enables the author to draw the conclusion that in the period under review two forms of rent were widespread in Central Russia: the corvee system and money rent, though neither of these still predominated. The size of rent did not change substantially. The lessons taught by the peasant war of the early 17th century tended to restrain the landowners' appetites. The processes attending the rise and development of corvee and serfdom in Russia were going forward in close interconnection. The spread of labour rent resulted in the appearance of new laws intended to perpetuate the system of feudal oppression. On the other hand, the peasants' growing personal dependence on the landlords was an important precondition for the rise and development of the corvee system.

G. K. WAGNER. The Formation in Historical Problems in Russian Art in the 10th - 13th Centuries

One of the greatest achievements of medieval art was the conception of a single historical process. Although distinguished for its Providentialist character, this conception nevertheless proved instrumental in delivering art from its mythological circle and providing the groundwork for the development of historical genres. The first historical conceptions in Russian art became possible with the spread of the legendary-religious genre of Byzantine art embracing history from "the creation of the world." This type of historicism was naturally marked by its legendary character, but it did not preclude interest in real history. The development of feudal relations, for its part, could not but give rise to the need of art conceptions consolidating these relations, and this tended to impregnate the legendary-religious genre with real historical motifs and "elements of. realism" in style. The onward movement to historicism is represented by mural paintings depicting scenes from court life, pictures on religious themes, portraits of royal persons and, first and foremost, by illustrations drawn for religious and historical books. By the beginning of the 13th century they attained a high degree of complexity. The accumulation of national elements in them proceeded much faster than in other genres of art. This process, which can be compared with Italian 13th-century art, was sharply decelerated by the Tatar-Mongol invasion.

B. S. NIKIFOROV. The 1952 Military Coup in Cuba

The military coup of March 10, 1952, seriously aggravated the political and economic crisis of the whole system prevailing in bourgeois Cuba. The usual version widespread in bourgeois literature as to the causes of the coup, which allegedly should be attributed to Batista's personal ambitions, does not reflect the real substance of developments. The facts cited in the article graphically show that behind the events of March 10, 1952, loomed very influential reactionary forces both outside Cuba (represented by a number of powerful U. S. monopolies) and inside the country (the commercial and landowning interests connected with these American monopolies). The developments of March 10, 1952, testified to the political bankruptcy of Cuba's bourgeois parties. New forces representing the vast majority of the Cuban people-the working class, the peasantry and the urban middle classes-rose to fight the dictatorship. Their hard and persevering struggle finally brought about the downfall of the bourgeois system in Cuba.

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B. M. KOSAREV. Slave Traffic as a Source of Negro Slavery in the U.S.A.

For a long time the plantations in the Southern slaveowning states of North America, which raised cotton and other export crops, were supplied with manpower at the expense of slaves brought in from Africa. Statistical data and other sources convincingly show that notwithstanding the ban imposed in 1808 on trafficking in African slaves, the number of slaves imported in the U.S.A. kept steadily increasing. Slave trade assumed particularly wide proportions in the 1850's. The American government did its utmost to encourage this sinister business. However, this source of manpower supply could not fully meet the needs of the slaveowning South. In the course of several decades preceding the civil war, the main cotton-growing states in the South-West of the country were provided with slaves coming chiefly from the frontier states of North America, where slave traffic became especially widespread in connection with the exhaustion of the soil. The article characterizes the internal trade in Negro slaves in the 19th century and analyzes the basic trends and scale of its development.

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