E. M. STAYERMAN. Recurrence in History

The article shows the significant part played in contemporary Western historico- philosophical and historical literature by the concepts of cyclism and identification of events which occurred at different stages of historical development, notably in the ancient and modern world. Various constructions of this kind are often distinguished by their extremely reactionary character. The founders of Marxism-Leninism, E. M. Stayerman stresses, never denied the comparability of individual phenomena and processes taking place both in the basis and superstructure of different formations, making this conditional, however, on the strictest possible account of the entire historical situation which often determined the diametrically opposite results produced by analogical processes. The author considers that recurrence in different antagonistic formations may be caused by: (1) similarity of the processes caused by analogical phenomena, for example, the development of the money economy; (2) similarity of the phenomena peculiar to a definite stage in the development of one or another formation; (3) the existence in the super-systems constituted by different historical formations of systems which either comprise or do not comprise their basic, organically integrated elements, as, for instance, slavery under the slave-owning and capitalist mode of production; (4) the law of negation of the negation, which determines the recurrence on a new basis of certain elements typical of the early stages of development at its higher and more advanced stages. The article emphasizes that a sufficiently reasoned out and carefully substantiated utilization of the comparative data furnished by similar phenomena and processes in different socio- economic formations may contribute to an understanding of a number of law- governed phenomena inherent in them and reveal the causes of the ultimate dissimilarity of their results.

A. S. KUDLAI. The Soviet Peoples' Fraternal Assistance in Rehabilitating the Ukrainian National Economy After the Great Patriotic War

The author brings out the significance of the fraternal friendship of the Soviet peoples and of their assistance in rehabilitating the Ukrainian national economy in the postwar years of 1945 - 1950. The article shows the formidable difficulties the Ukrainian people had to contend with after the Great Patriotic War and vividly describes their titanic efforts to overcome these difficulties under the leadership of the Communist Party and with the assistance of the Soviet peoples. The article contains numerous examples illustrating the all-round assistance rendered by the Russian and other Soviet peoples in rehabilitating the Republic's war-ravaged industry and agriculture. Considerable attention is devoted in the article to the close cooperation of the Ukrainian working people with the other Soviet nations in the field of exchanging progressive experience and popularizing the most advanced and efficient labour methods. The author reveals the inestimable significance of the Soviet peoples' assistance for the speediest possible elimination of the grievous consequences of the war and for the restoration of the Republic's national economy on a new technical basis. The author highlights the Soviet people's devoted labour effort, the tireless activity of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of its militant detachment- the Ukrainian Communist Party in guiding the work of national economic rehabilitation and promoting closer friendship among the peoples of the Soviet country.

V. V. GARMIZA. How the Socialist-Revolutionaries Betrayed Their Agrarian Programme

The article traces the evolution of the Socialist-Revolutionaries' agrarian programme. The author shows the insolvency of this programme from the viewpoint of scientific socialism, at the same time bringing out its objectively progressive content in conditions of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

The article shows how in the process of the bourgeois-democratic revolution growing over into the socialist revolution the Socialist-Revolutionaries betrayed their previous land socialization programme, substituting it by insignificant and ineffective half- measures and partial "reforms" which did not affect the system of private landownership. In this way they betrayed the fundamental interests of the peasantry and, after the October Revolution, followed a policy of re-establishing kulak and landlord ownership of land in the areas seized by the Whiteguard forces.

V. D. TIKHOMIROV. Socialist Transformation of Agriculture in the Korean People's Democratic Republic

The author vividly describes the carrying out of the agrarian reform and the transition of individual peasant farming to large-scale collective farming on the basis of Lenin's cooperative plan in the Korean People's Democratic Republic under the leadership of the Korean Party of Labour. The article reveals the most important distinguishing features attending the development of the cooperation movement, showing the creative application of progressive experience gained by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. The author makes a point of stressing the significance of the firm alliance between the working class and the peasantry and of the urban population's fraternal assistance to the countryside in the development and consolidation of agricultural cooperatives.

The author describes the notable successes achieved by Korea's collectivized peasantry in raising grain-crop and rice yields, in developing a diversified economy and in technically reconstructing the Korean countryside. The article highlights the organizational and economic measures effected by the Korean Party of Labour and the people's government with the aim of strengthening the agricultural cooperatives and raising the material and cultural standards of the peasant masses.

A. V. BERYOZKIN. The Peace of Brest-Litovsk and the U. S. Position

The article convincingly shows that the U. S. ruling circles were in the front ranks of the world imperialist forces which had launched on anti-Soviet aggressive actions from the very first days of the October Revolution. A. V. Beryozkin stresses that the U. S. ruling element decided to prevent the establishment of peaceful relations with the Land of Soviets, adopting instead a policy of assisting the reactionary forces in liquidating the Bolshevik power, supporting the counter-revolutionary forces headed by tsarist generals and financing the counter-revolution together with their allies. When the sinister plans of thwarting the policy of Brest-Litovsk and strangling the young Soviet Republic with the aid of German imperialism's war machine had failed, the author writes, the American ruling circles and their British and French allies decided to launch armed intervention against Soviet Russia by dispatching their armed forces to the young Soviet Republic. This marked the beginning of the imperialists' anti-Soviet armed intervention.

A. M. ANFIMOV. The Prussian Path of Capitalist Development in Agriculture and Its Specific Features in Russia

In the opening part of the article the author characterizes the Prussian path of capitalist development in agriculture. The peasant reform of 1861 predetermined the development of agrarian Russia along the Prussian path. But it is well known that the historical destinies of both countries, Russia and Germany, shaped out very differently. Without laying claim to an exhaustive solution of the question concerning the causes responsible for these distinctions, the author makes a comparative historical analysis of capitalist development in the agriculture of both countries. He attaches considerable importance to the fact that the emancipation of the peasants in Germany took place much earlier than in Russia and, moreover, under conditions much more favourable for the development of large-scale peasant farming.

Notwithstanding the existence of common typological features of development, writes A. M. Anfimov, the concrete historical peculiarities of the 1861 reform played a very conspicuous part. The survivals of serfdom in Russia proved far more tenacious than in Germany. The most important of these survivals was the corvee system prevailing on the landlord estates of Russia, which was not typical of German farming. The rural population in Germany, the author shows, was decreasing both absolutely and relatively compared with the urban population, whereas in Russia, where the situation was marked by an insignificant relative decrease of the rural population, it was growing rapidly in absolute

numbers. In Germany capitalism was in a position, by following the "Prussian" path, to transform the country's agrarian system into the capitalist system, thereby removing the agrarian question as the main question of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, whereas Russian capitalism proved incapable of coping with this task.

Academician M. P. ALEXEYEV. Russia and the Russians in Shakespeare's Works

In the rich variety of works produced by Shakespeare during his creative career there are about a dozen references to "Muscovy" and "Muscovites" or the people of Russia. Such references can be found in "Love's Labour's Lost," "Measure for Measure," "Henry V," "Macbeth" and "The Winter's Tale." All these references should be linked with the activization of diplomatic and trade relations between London and Moscow at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.

Analyzing these references against the historical and literary background, the author subjects to a detailed examination those of them which, though least of all investigated, are nevertheless of the greatest interest for the history of Anglo-Russian literary relations. Thus, he manifests a new approach in analyzing the second scene from Act V of Shakespeare's early comedy "Love's Labour's Lost," which depicts a masquerade improvisation of national Russian attires and recreates in one's mind the old and long-forgotten research by S. Lee (1880), in which this scene is connected with Moscow Ambassador F. Pisemsky's visit to England (1582) and his attempt to arrange a match between Tsar Ivan the Terrible and Maria Hastings, Queen Elizabeth's "niece." Of considerable interest to Russian historians is a new research work devoted to the first performance of Shakespeare's comedy "Twelfth Night" (see L. Hotson, "The First of Twelfth Night," 1961), in which the date of this performance, the reference to which was discovered in the travel impressions made by Russian Ambassador G. Mikulin during his visit to London, is analyzed on the basis of many other diplomatic documents and letters directly related to the Anglo-Russian relations of that period. The author also examines in great detail the reference to the "Russian Emperor" in "The Winter's Tale" (Act III, Scene 2) and its probable sources, and draws attention to the forgotten page from a book published in 1605 (Sir Thomas Smithes Voiage and Entertainment in Russia, London, 1605), containing an appeal by an anonymous author, the English playwrights (Shakespeare included) to dramatize in a separate play the history of Boris Godunov and the false Demetrius.

S. M. STAM. The Basic Contradictions in the Development of the Medieval City

The history of the medieval city is distinguished by its extremely contradictory character, by the whimsical combination of feudal and anti-feudal tendencies. Was the city an anti-feudal or purely feudal phenomenon? What is the nature of the contradiction between the medieval city and the feudal agrarian system? How are we to explain the fact that the city became the arena of the communal movement-the earliest known popular struggle in conditions of a mature feudal society?

The author seeks answers to these questions in his analysis of free handicrafts-the specific economic basis of the early city (llth-13th centuries). Despite the existence of certain similarities with the economy of the dependent peasant, the city handicrafts radically differed from it: they had a clearly expressed commodity character, were based on the producer's ownership of means of production, the artisan's productive labour and the merchant's income did not depend on the land and its owner. Although the contradiction between freely-developing primitive commodity production and feudalism was relative and non-antagonistic in character, it was precisely this contradiction that determined the historic role of the city in the social process during the period of classic medievalism. In the coutryside too the development of commodity production conflicted with the system of feudal exploitation, but here the dependence of peasant farming on feudal landownership retarded the development of these tendencies.

The emergence of free handicrafts in the city represented an historically limited form of resolving the antagonism resulting from the agrarian pattern of the feudal estate. The contradiction between the new economic system and the prevailing feudal system of exploitation was, essentially, a continuation and development of the basic economic contradiction of feudalism.

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