N. A. MOKHOV, B. M. KOLKER and V. I. TSARANOV. The History of Moldavia as Reflected in Contemporary Bourgeois Historiography

The article is devoted to the critical analysis of works by bourgeois authors on certain important aspects of Moldavia?s history. Drawing on concrete historical material, the author reveals the distinctive features of Moldavia?s social and economic development, exposes the pseudo-scientific disquisitions of bourgeois authors concerning the influence exerted on this development by German colonists, as well as the assessment of the role played by the bourgeois-nationalist Territorial Council and the revolutionary events in Bessarabia in 1918. The article also examines certain aspects of Soviet-Rumanian relations prior to Hitler Germany?s perfidious attack on the Soviet Union and exposes the slanderous fabrications concocted by bourgeois authors with regard to the formation of Soviet national statehood in Moldavia and the striking achievements registered by the Moldavian people in the Soviet period in the sphere of industrial and agricultural development and in the promotion of national culture.

A. V. LEPETYUK. Cultural Development in Kamchatka

The article examines the process of cultural development in Kamchatka in the years of Soviet government. In the shortest possible historical period the Communist Party solved the extremely difficult problem of switching the backward population of this remote borderland of Russia from the patriarchal forms of economy and culture to the path of socialism. The data cited in the article enable one to see the peculiar way in which the cultural development in Kamchatka followed the main principles constituting the sum and substance of the cultural revolution in the U.S.S.R. At the same time, the rich variety of solutions did not prevent the attainment of the principal aim common to the whole country. All the benefits of material and spiritual culture became the property of the entire people. Together with all Soviet people the working masses of Kamchatka became the architects of the most progressive and advanced culture in the world.

K. A. GAFUROVA. Documents Indict

Soviet researchers have discovered in India?s National Archive a hitherto unknown account by the notorious British intelligence agent Colonel Frederick Bailey disclosing his activity on the territory of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1918 - 1920. In 1946 Bailey published a book in which his visit to Soviet Turkestan is presented as an innocent pleasure trip undertaken with the purpose of "sounding out the situation." Drawing on materials now received from India and on special research works by Soviet historians, the author reveals that Bailey?s "mission" in Soviet Turkestan was chiefly connected with espionage and subversion. Among other things, the author establishes the exact period of Bailey?s stay on the territory of Soviet Turkestan and exposes his clandestine activity aimed at engineering anti-Soviet conspiracies and inciting the White-

guards and the Basmachi to counter-revolutionary revolts. The article also traces the direct connection which existed between Bailey?s arrival in Tashkent and the British interventionists? entry into the trans-Caspian territory. It is graphically demonstrated that the withdrawal of British troops from Soviet Turkestan and Bailey?s inglorious flight abroad were directly attributable to the consolidation of Soviet power and to the growing prestige it enjoyed among the working people inhabiting the outlying national districts of the former tsarist empire. Bailey?s account is presented by the author as part of a broad picture of historical events which unfolded in Turkestan during that period.

I. G. ROZNER. Anti-Feudal State Formations in Russia and the Ukraine in the 16th - 18th Centuries

The article is devoted to the genesis of anti-feudal state formations in Western and Eastern Europe in the period of feudalism. At a certain stage of development of the feudal system, the author writes, the lower, underprivileged and disfranchised classes and social estates develop a striving towards organizing their own political institutions which can help them to fight the oppressors. Such institutions, which were set up, as a rule, on the initiative and with the participation of the propertied sections of underprivileged social estates and which often took the form of state or semi-state republican-type organizations possessing certain democratic features, at the same time expressed and protected the objective interests of much broader segments of the population. True, the degree of maturity of these anti-feudal institutions should not be overestimated. The free Cossack "republics" formed by the fugitive serf peasants in the 16th-17th centuries on the banks of the Don and the Yaik and in Zaporozhye areas provide a graphic example of such anti-feudal organizations in Russia.

B. M. KOSAREV. Employment of Slave Labour on the American Plantations in the First Half of the 19th Century and Its Role in the Genesis of Capitalism

The article stresses that the intensive development of the system of slavery in America?s Southern States undoubtedly presented a serious obstacle to the social, economic, political and cultural progress in this part of the country. At the same time the enslaved Negro people played an immense part in the creation of material values, in laying the groundwork for the rapid industrial development of the U.S.A., Britain and, to a certain extent, of a number of other countries. In the case of Britain, for instance, Negro slavery, up to the outbreak of the civil war in the U.S.A., was the mainstay of the cotton industry and an important source of profits.

On the United States itself Negro slavery exerted a multiform and contradictory influence. From the economic point of view, as a "method of enrichment" and capital accumulation, it was an important prerequisite of the industrial revolution. But no one will deny that slavery exerted a negative influence on the country?s political and ideological life, on the shaping of certain traits typical of the North American nation. With the beginning of a swift transition from manufacture to factory production in the mid-19th century, slavery as a whole became a formidable obstacle to the further progress of the country and was bound to quit the historical scene.

V. D. KOROLYUK. Vladimir Ivanovich Picheta (a creative portrait)

Academician Vladimir Ivanovich Picheta (1878 - 1947) - one of the leading Soviet historians specializing in the feudal history of the Ukraine, Byelorussia and Lithuania - came forward at the close of the thirties and in early forties with the initiative of reviving Soviet research in Slavonic history, philology and literature. In 1939 he headed Moscow University?s department studying the history of the Western and Southern Slavs and the department of Slavonic research at the Institute of History of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Side by side with Vladimir Picheta an important contribution to the revival of research into Slavonic history, philology and literature was made by Academicians

B. D. Grekov and Zdenek Nejedly, the latter being evacuated from Czechoslovakia to the U.S.S.R. after the Munich compact. Subsequently Academician Grekov headed the Institute of Slavonic Research founded in 1946 by the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, and Vladimir Picheta was appointed Deputy Director of that same institute.

Having given a brief characteristic of Vladimir Picheta?s creative path as an historian, the author of the article (who is one of Picheta?s pupils) dwells in detail on the last period of Picheta?s life, when Slavonic research became his main scientific trend. Much attention was devoted by Picheta to the training of young specialists in Slavonic history and to the formulation of long-term problems and subjects to be tackled by Slavonic historians. The author analyzes the activity of his late teacher in the sphere of organization of science and tries to paint his creative portrait, to characterize him as a scientist, teacher and man.

Summing Up the Discussion Devoted to Certain Problems of the Theory of a Nation

The article briefly summarizes the different views and opinions expressed by a number of scientists during the discussion of certain problems of the theory of a nation in the pages of our journal between 1966 and 1968.

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