Academician A. L. NAROCHNITSKY. The Teaching of Historiography in Higher Schools

Soviet historiography, the author writes, is a comparatively young branch of historical knowledge and an entirely new subject in the curricula of higher schools. The article reviews the experience of teaching historiography in the country's higher educational establishments, sums up certain results, pinpoints the existing shortcomings, outlines ways and means of improving this work and focusses attention on the new tasks. The teaching of historiography, which is indissolubly linked with scientific elaboration of the history of historical science and reflects the level of its development, is examined by the author in inseparable connection with the results and problems of research in this sphere. There are now ample grounds for asserting, the article notes, that historiographical research has developed into a distinct and fastgrowing trend of Soviet historical science which systematically yields important results. This makes it possible to concentrate attention on the question of raising the level of teaching historiography in the Soviet Union's institutions of higher learning.

V. M. GRIDNEV. The Struggle Waged by the Soviet Peasantry Against the Nazi Invaders in 1941 - 1944

The article highlights such inadequately studied forms of the Soviet peasants mass struggle against the nazi occupation regime as sabotaging diverse measures, orders and instructions of the occupation authorities, offering resistance to the hitlerites agrarian policy, evading deportation to Germany and service in the nazi police, refusal to work on projects of strategic importance to the enemy, and thwarting the nazi campaigns to recruit policemen and village elders among the population of the Soviet countryside. The author has drawn extensively on archive materials, notably on authentic documents of the occupation authorities, as well as on published sources. The collectivefarm peasantry in the nazioccupied. areas remained loyal to the Soviet socialist system. The overwhelming majority of the peasants carried on an irreconcilable struggle against the aggressor from the very beginning of the occupation, thwarting the enemy plans to utilize the manpower and raw material resources in the occupied regions and rendering all possible support and assistance to Red Army units and partisan detachments.

M. P. IVANOV and A. I. NABERUKHIN. The Collapse of National- Bourgeois Reformism in Kalmykia (1917 - 1920)

The authors arrive at the conclusion that in a situation marked by the bourgeois- democratic revolution developing into the socialist revolution and by the rising revolutionary activity of the working masses, the reformist policy in the national question based on collusion between the Russian bourgeoisie and the local exploiting classes was bound to suffer a fiasco. The article critically analyzes the experiment in "cultural-national autonomy" carried out in one of the nomadic settlements in the steppelands of Kalmykia. The failure of this experiment brilliantly confirmed Lenin's assessment of the "cultural-national autonomy" programme and graphically demonstrated that the latter was utterly untenable from the political point of view.

D. K. SHELESTOV. Dmitry Furmanov and the Istpart

The Istpart is an abbreviated name of the Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which in 1920 - 1928 played an important part in initiating the Marxist-Leninist elaboration of problems relating to

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the history of the Soviet era (the October Revolution and Civil War periods). Creative contact with the Istpart was of immense significance for the outstanding Soviet author Dmitry Furmanov. All his major works ("The Red Landing Force," "Chapayev," "The Mutiny") were produced in close contact with this research institution specializing in the history of the Party. "I wrote historical, scientifically studied works, rendering them in the form of fiction," Furmanov pointed out. This fact underscores the importance of conducting an historiographic study of the works produced by numerous representatives of Soviet literature and art and devoted to the history of the October Revolution and the Civil War.

R. G. SKRYNNIKOV. Concerning the Authenticity of Prince Kurbsky's Correspondence with Ivan the Terrible

The article is written in reply to Professor Edward L. Keenan of Harvard University, who alleges in his book recently published in the U.S.A. that the correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Prince Kurbsky was fabricated in the 17th century. Professor Keenan refutes the traditional attribution of Kurbsky's first letter to the tsar by means of textologically comparing this letter with Monk Isaiah's message. However, certain archive sources which remained unknown to Professor Keenan clearly indicate that the date he proposes for Isaiah's message is erroneous. An analysis of archive materials and published sources shows that Professor Keenan's conclusions are devoid of any serious scientific substantiation.

V. D. KULBAKIN. The 1932 Election Campaigns in Germany

The 1932 events examined by the author-re-election of the President of the Weimar Republic and the Prussian Landtag elections-are important links of Germany's history in the period preceding the establishment of the fascist dictatorship. The article subjects to criticism a number of works by West-German historians which present authentic historical facts in a distorted light and deliberately misrepresent the position and role of diverse social classes and social groups in the period of the preparation and carrying out of the 1932 election campaigns. Steeped in their anticommunist prejudices and adhering to the spurious "lesser evil" conception, the Social- Democratic Party leaders rejected the proposal for united action repeatedly advanced by the German Communist Party, thereby enabling Hindenburg to gain the upper hand in the presidential elections and facilitating the nazi victory in the elections to the Prussian Landtag. The experience of the 1932 elections in Germany underscores the importance of rallying all the democratic forces of society for the struggle against reaction.

A. I. SIZONENKO. Soviet Russia and Latin America (1917 - 1924)

The article sheds light on the little-studied question concerning Soviet Russia's relations with Latin America in the early period following the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Much attention is devoted by the author to analyzing the attitude to Russia on the part of Brazil and Argentina - the two biggest Latin American countries. Undeviatingly adhering to Lenin's foreign policy principles, the Soviet government from the very outset pronounced in favour of normalizing relations with the Latin American countries and positively responded to all their proposals in this direction. In this connection the article subjects to well - argumented criticism the assertions of certain bourgeois historians which distort the essence of Soviet foreign policy in relation to Latin America.

L. A. KORNEYEV, N. A. RODOPULO. An Important Stage of the National- Liberation Movement in Madagascar

The article highlights the problems of contemporary socioeconomic development of the Malagasy Republic (Madagascar). The authors closely examine the processes which precipitated the collapse of Philibert Tsiranana's proimperialist regime in 1972 and brought to power the military government headed by General Gabriel Ramanantsoa. Their searching analysis brings the authors to the conclusion that the political developments of 1972 - 1973 in Madagascar represent a new important stage in the development of the Malagasy people's movement for national liberation.

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