V. A. Kozlov, Cultural Development of Soviet Pre-Collective-Farm Peasantry (on the Materials of Agrarian Statistics of the 1920s).

An attempt to analyse cultural development of various socio-economic groups of peasantry, socio-political and socio-economic factors behind it, show how small-scale agricultural production hampered cultural progress of the countryside. The conclusion is drawn that collectivisation was the only way for solving cultural problems facing the Soviet village in the mid-1920s.

Q. A. Gerasimenko. Aggravation of Struggle in the Countryside in the Years of the Stolypin Reform.

The article deals with peasant movement in the period between the first and the second bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia. The data cited testify to the broad scale and great importance of the struggle among the peasants caused by tsarist agrarian policy. The conflict was between peasants who quitted the community and started their own economies and those adhering to it. Tension in the countryside on the eve of the 1917 revolutionary events was created, according to the author, by an active intervention of the autocracy into the struggle among the peasants.

N. S. Kinyapina, Tsarist Administration of the Caucasus and Central Asia in the 19th Century.

The author takes as her subject the genera! principles of management of the Caucasus and Central Asia in the 19th century and demonstrates their similarity in respect to both regions. To facilitate control over these outlying areas they were turned into special administrative units. The tendency was, however, to make them part of the empire, so gradually the all-Russia system of administration was introduced there with due consideration of local features.

S. M. Khenkin. Elimination of the Franco Dictatorship in Spain.

The author analyses the prerequisites, course and stages of consolidation of the bourgeois- democratic system in Spain and the motive forces behing it. The decisive role in it belonged to the working class and its allies. The pressure they exerted made the reformist part of Spanish bourgeoisie to embark upon the road of liberalisation of the political system. It was a limited process which left the socio-economic structure and part of political superstructure intact. More favourable perspectives for complete elimination of the remnants of the Franco regime opened before the Spanish progressive forces after the Spanish Socialist Labour Party came to power in 1982.

K. V. Khvostova. Quantitative Methods in Historical Research.

The author discusses the place quantitative methods hold in the study of socio-economic phenomena of the past, the possibilies offered by quantitative analysis in comparative studies of social phenomena in different regions contemporaneous in terms of their social development. Modelling of developmental trends is used when necessary information cannot be obtained from historical sources. The specific features of quantitative analysis as applied to history are conditioned by historical sources and the multiformity of historical phenomena. The author underlines the importance of the problem of the correlation between some notions elaborated at the level of historical studies proper and at the level of quantitative analysis.

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