A. K. VOROBYOVA. Frederick Engels and the Russian Revolutionary Movement

The author traces Engels' ties with the Russian revolutionary movement and its representatives, as well as his views on the character and prospects of the Russian revolution. In the course of fifty years Engels maintained contact with representatives of three generations of the Russian revolutionaries. The article shows his attitude to the activity of M. A. Bakunin and A. I. Herzen, highlighting his close contacts with representatives of the new generation of Russian revolutionaries - the disciples and followers of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, with the revolutionary Narodniks belonging to the "Narodnaya Volya" ("People's Will") organization. Considerable attention is devoted in the article to Engels' ties with the Russian revolutionary movement after the death of Karl Marx, primarily with the founders of the "Emancipation of Labour" group - the first Marxist organization in Russia - and other participants in the Social-Democratic movement of the 1890's. Engels' close contacts with prominent revolutionary and progressive social leaders of Russia, coupled with his knowledge of the Russian language, enabled him to draw on multivarious sources and make a profound study of the social and economic relationships obtaining in Russia following the abolition of serfdom, as a result of which Engels scientifically substantiated the inevitability of the Russian revolution and predicted its epoch-making significance.

V. L. MALKOV. Frederick Engels and the American Labour Movement (concerning the establishment of a third party in the U.S.A.)

The article brings out Engels' attitude to the problem of independent political activity by the American working class, its ability to act as the guiding and organizing social force standing opposed to capital. The author examines Engels' views on the nature and peculiarities of the complex and contradictory movement for the establishment of a mass workers' and farmers' party in the United States, analyzing the causes of the difficulties and obstacles in the way of founding such a party. Engels' views on this question are examined in close context with the concrete experience of struggle for the founding of a third party in the ranks of America's organized working-class movement in the 1930's. In conclusion the author graphically shows the utter groundlessness of the concepts put forward by bourgeois historical and political science, which depict the American labour movement as a unique phenomenon and try to allege that it is bound to remain forever in the toils of bourgeois ideology owing to the specific features of its genesis.

I. S. ZENUSHKINA. Soviet National Policy of 1917 - 1922 as Reflected in Contemporary Bourgeois Historiography of the U.S.A.

The article analyzes the bourgeois conception of the national policy pursued by the Soviet Communist Party in the early period of development and consolidation of the Soviet multinational state. The author shows the most widespread methods of research employed by bourgeois authors and examines the various historical sources extensively used by them.

Y. I. SEVASTYANOV. Moscow's Building Workers in the Great Patriotic War

The article analyzes certain aspects of the history of defence and civil engineering in Moscow and Moscow Region in the period 1941 - 1945. Notwithstanding the difficult wartime conditions, the construction workers of the Soviet capital displayed unprecedented

labour heroism in the process of erecting defense fortifications, putting up industrial enterprises, residential blocks and public buildings, and laying new subway lines. The author analyzes the fundamental changes in the nature of activity and the basic tasks facing the Moscow builders in the different stages of war, examines the centralization of building organizations and its significance, the introduction of progressive labour methods and techniques. The article highlights the role played by mass labour heroism and the socialist emulation movement in the successful fulfilment of production assignments.

P. A. RAPPOPORT. Defensive Works in Ancient Rus

A close study of the remnants of defensive works built in ancient Rus, notably the ruins of ancient towns, furnishes abundant material for elucidating the main peculiarities attending the development of military architecture. The article briefly surveys the history of the numerous defensive works built in ancient Rus from the 8th to the 15th centuries, describing the changes that occurred in the organization of fortifications in connection with the development pf the siege and defense tactics. This enables the author to trace the principal landmarks in the development of strategic principles applied in defending the territory of ancient Rus and of individual Russian principalities.

B. T. RUDENKO. Certain Historical Problems Attending the Formation of the Social Structure of Contemporary Mexican Society

The article examines certain historical problems connected with the formation of the class structure of contemporary Mexican society as a bourgeois society. The process of Mexico's transition from the pre-capitalist to the bourgeois stage of development, - in the author's opinion, began at the close of the 18th century and was completed in the main in the latter half of the 19th century. Mexico did not by-pass the general, law-governed paths of development characteristic of modern society. In the opening part of the 20th century bourgeois relationships already predominated in Mexico, with the bourgeoisie, the proletariat and the peasantry coming to the fore as the principal classes of Mexican society.

The article stresses that at the beginning of the 20th century the Mexican peasantry constituted a mass of landless peons, the form of whose exploitation represented a complex mixture of bourgeois and pre-capitalist methods. This circumstance determined the profoundly democratic character of the Mexican revolution of 1910 - 1917, which demonstrated the vast revolutionary potentialities of the peasantry, at the same time convincingly showing its inability to solve the revolutionary tasks of struggle against the capitalist system independently, without the leadership of the proletariat.

A. N. CHISTOZVONOV. Revaluation of the 14th - 15th and 17th-Century "Crises of Feudalism" Conceptions in Belgian and Netherlandian Historiography

The article analyzes a number of works by contemporary Belgian and Netherlandish historians containing a revaluation of the 14th-15th and 17th-century "crises of feudalism" conceptions which enjoyed much popularity in Western historiography of the fifties and early sixties. The works under review graphically show that the newly discovered facts, the improved methods and techniques of research and the close analysis of the sphere of production and the social structure of society coupled with all-round study of the sphere of exchange, made it possible to refute as groundless the assertions about the "general economic crises" which allegedly had taken place in Europe in the 14th - 15th and 17th centuries. The author also subjects to criticism the neo-Malthusian methods of interpreting factual material by the proponents of the "crises" conceptions, who often resorted to a simple statistical comparison of the movement of prices, wages and population, completely disregarding the sphere of production and the qualitative changes taking place in the social and economic spheres. In conclusion the author examines the work done by the Fourth Section of the 13th International Congress of Historical Sciences in Moscow, which discussed problems relating to the history of Europe in the 17th century.

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