The CPSU Central Committee Decision on the Further Development of the Social Sciences and the Enhancement of Their Role in Communist Construction.

The full text of the CC CPSU decision is published in this issue of our journal.

E. G. GIMPELSON. How the Soviet Form of Government Took Shape in the Proletarian State

On the eve of the victory of the October Revolution, E. G. Gimpelson writes, the creative activity of the masses in the Soviets laid the foundation of the proletarian form of government. After the October Revolution the Soviets were taking shape and developing as the state organs of proletarian dictatorship. Brought into being by the creative activity of the masses, the various organizational forms of the Soviet system were legislatively consolidated following their practical implementation and testing. Essentially, the Soviet form of the proletarian state took shape in the acute class struggle, which developed, in the first six or eight months after the triumph of the October Revolution. The historic conditions attending the socialist revolution in Russia and the exceptional acuteness of the class struggle determined the specific features of the Soviet form of the socialist state and Soviet democracy characteristic of the period preceding the process of socialist construction (the system of the congresses of Soviets, a certain degree of inequality between workers and peasants in electing Congress delegates, disfranchisement of the exploiting elements, etc.). In conclusion the author points out that despite its peculiarities and specific features, the Soviet system of state power ensured genuine government by the people from the very inception of the Soviet Republic. Even in those early days of the Soviet state its democratism was incomparably higher and consistent than that of any bourgeois republic.

M. A. USIYEVICH and V. I. SHABUNINA. Certain Problems of Industrialization in the European Socialist Countries

The article examines both the common features attending the industrialization process in the socialist countries and the peculiarities of this process emerging from the experience of establishing a large-scale modern industry in individual countries and in the socialist world system as a whole. These peculiarities are attributable, above all, to the existence of the socialist world system and the requirements of the present-day scientific and technological revolution as well as to the concrete historical conditions attending the process of socialist construction in each individual country. Drawing on extensive factual material and making a close analysis of many different sources, the authors show that the scope of the tasks posed by industrialization and the concrete ways of accomplishing these tasks in individual countries are largely determined by the initial economic level.

The authors analyze the rates of industrial development in the period of socialist industrialization and the factors determining this development at different stages. Their study of the correlation of diverse growth factors enables the authors to draw the conclusion that the development of production in the socialist countries in the period under review was intensive in character. The prime requirement of the present stage of development of the socialist countries, the article emphasizes, is maximum intensification of production and the utmost enhancement of its efficiency. In conclusion the authors stress the importance of industrialization for the country's social and economic development and for effecting a steep rise in the national standard of living.

N. N. YAKOVLEV. The Hollowness of S. N. Kostic's Pseudo-Scientific Exercises

The article is written in reply to the publication in 1966 of a book by Yugoslav historian S. N. Kostic (Zagreb) entitled "Medunarodni obnosi i medunarodno pravo," which gives a highly tendentious and distorted interpretation of Sovet foreign policy. Professor N. N. Yakovlev shows the utter groundlessness of S. N. Kostic's assertions concerning the most important problems of the history of Soviet foreign policy and international relations examined in the book.

V. M. KURITSYN. The New Economic Policy and Revolutionary Legality

The article is devoted to the problem of interrelation between the economic policy of the socialist state and socialist legality in conditions of the New Economic Policy (NEP). The sharp turn from the military-administrative system of management to the economic methods connected with NEP was one of the most important causes necessitating far-reaching reforms in the sphere of legislation and the utmost enhancement of legal guarantees and legality. The article graphically shows that the drafting of Soviet legislation in the early twenties proceeded in the struggle both against the attempts of bourgeois elements to re-establish bourgeois legal institutions and against the Left elements within the Communist Party and the Soviet state apparatus, who denied the need of legality and legal regulation of the economy.

The article trenchantly criticizes the fairly widespread point of view that the legal reform and the enhancement of legality were connected exclusively with the need to combat the exploiting elements. The legal reform and the strengthening of legality, the author maintains, were connected primarily with the need to build up the socialist economy, consolidate the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, extend the social base of Soviet power and develop socialist democracy. In other words, the strengthening of legality followed from the very essence of socialist construction and constituted its inner law.

A. M. ZORINA. The Great October Socialist Revolution and the Working-Class Movement in Cuba

The article graphically shows that despite the rabid campaign of lies and slander against the Great October Socialist Revolution and the world s first proletarian state launched by the ruling circles of Cuba, the ideas of the October Revolution were spreading among the masses and contributing to the growth of the revolutionary movement in Cuba. The country was swept by a wave of strikes in industry and agriculture; the class consciousness of the Cuban workers and peasants was growing steadily; they were becoming increasingly confident of their strength. People sharing the Marxist views and inspired by the October Revolution were coming to play an increasingly prominent part in the working-class movement. There began an irreversible process of decline of the ideological influence hitherto wielded by anarchism and anarcho- syndicalism. Side by side with the struggle to improve their standard of living, the working people of Cuba resolutely demanded an end to American imperialist domination in their country. The new situation and the new balance of the class forces on the international scene and directly in Cuba, brought about by the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, dictated the need to determine new paths of development of the working-class movement on the island. On March 18, 1923, a Communist Association was founded in Havana under the guidance and with direct participation of J. A. Mella and C. Balinio - the prominent leaders of the revolutionary working-class and student movement. Communist groups were also organized in other major centres of Cuba. This paved the way for the establishment of the Communist Party. On August 25, 1925, the young Communist Party of Cuba ushered in a new stage in the development of the liberation and working-class movement on the island, helping to combine it with scientific socialism.

E. Y. LYAGUSHINA. Propaganda of Scientific Atheism in the Early Years of Soviet Power

The author points out that the propaganda of scientific atheism was launched immediately after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution and coincided in time with the years of the Civil War and foreign armed intervention, which largely determined its content and distinctive features. The author singles out two periods in the history of atheistic propaganda: the period beginning from 1918 and devoted to the propaganda of the Decree adopted on January 23, 1918, "On Disestablishment of the Church and the Separation of the School from the Church"; and the period 1918 - 1920, when atheistic propaganda was subordinated to the solution of the general tasks of political, educational and cultural development. The author analyzes diverse forms of atheistic propaganda, such as lectures, disputes and posters, devoting particular attention to the role played by the Party press and the "Revolution and the Church" magazine. In this connection E. Y. Lyagushina draws attention to the participation in atheistic propaganda in the early period of Soviet power of N. K. Krupskaya, V. D. Bonch-Bruyevich, P. A. Krasikov, A. V. Lunacharsky, I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov, Emelyan Yaroslavsky and other outstanding leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet state.

B. V. ANDRIANOV. Certain Aspects of the Formation of Nations and Nationalities in the African Countries

The article carries on the discussion on the theory of nations. The author points out that the anti- colonial revolutions in many African countries have laid the foundations for a single political national consciousness and distinctly outlined the contours of national-political entities - the future nations. The present period is marked by a fairly rapid development of the processes of formation of ethnic communities consisting of population groups possessing common linguistic and cultural traits, which can be called nationalities. These processes are manifested both in the form of consolidation of several nationalities (tribes, tribal groups) into one people, and in the form of assimilation. In Africa, the author stresses, there distinctly emerge four principal areas differing in the character of the ethnic processes: 1) the countries of North and, partly, Northeast Africa, where the ethnic composition of the population is more or less homogeneous; 2) the countries of Eastern, Central and Western Sudan, which are marked by the extremely complex ethnic composition of the population; 3) the countries of Equatorial Africa inhabited by nationalities belonging to the Bantu group; 4) South Africa, where the powerful anti-racial and anti-colonial movements largely contribute to the intermingling of different tribal groups. Research into the ethnic processes developing in present-day Africa is of great theoretical significance in view of the exceptionally broad range of "social-ethnic" categories existing on this continent: from small nomad groups of Bushmen - the primitive Kalahari hunters still laving under the tribal system, to big nationalities and multi-million nations.

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