History

(1) Any process of development in nature and society. In this sense, one may speak, for example, of the history of the universe, the history of the earth, and the history of such sciences as physics, mathematics, and law.
(2) The science that studies the past of human society in all its concreteness and diversity with the aim of understanding society in the present as well as its future prospects. “We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable. The history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 3, p. 16, note). Marxist-Leninist historical science studies the development of human society as “a single process which, with all its immense variety and contradictoriness, is governed by definite laws” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 26, p. 58).
==The process of development of society==
The history of society is both a part and a continuation of the history of the earth and of nature. The history of society began with the appearance of man on earth, and it is therefore the history of people, whose historical creative work begins with the genesis of human society and is the content of history. Organized into groups, people, in satisfying their needs, create material and spiritual values, transform nature, and overcome the contradictions within society, in the process changing themselves and their social relationships. People live in different conditions, occupy different positions in the system of production and consumption, and have different levels of consciousness. The history of society encompasses all processes and events and all the concrete and diversified activities and acts of individuals, of groups of people, and of humanity as a whole.
From the fashioning of stone tools mankind gradually moved to the production and use of more complex and sophisticated implements of bronze, and later of iron. Man created mechanical devices for locomotion, then machines, and finally the systems of machines upon which present production is based. From submission to—and worship of—the forces of nature, mankind has progressed to the conscious transformation of nature and society, to the extent that it has come to know the laws of the development of nature and society. Simultaneously, and related to the development of material production and social relationships, there occurred the long and extremely complex process of transition from primitive groups, through class societies, to the association of people who have abolished the exploitation of man by man and who are building communism.
The process of the historical development of mankind is objective. The development of society is influenced by many factors in their complex, dialectical interaction, including the level of development of the forces of production, of the relations of production, and of the corresponding phenomena of the superstructure (the state, law); the geographic environment; the density and growth of population; the class struggle; and communications among peoples. Of all the factors in the development of society, the determining one, in the final analysis, is material production, that is, the creation of the means of subsistence necessary for the very existence of people and their activity.
The mode of production includes the forces of production as well as the relations of production into which people enter. The mode of production of a society’s material life conditions the social, political, and spiritual system of that society and determines the type of relations that predominate in it. The material life of society—the objective aspect of the historical process—is primary, and social consciousness is secondary. The life of society and its history are manifested in man’s conscious activity, which constitutes the subjective aspect of the historical process. The social consciousness of a given society and the elements of the superstructure characteristic of it reflect its social being, above all its dominant economic basis. Each generation is born and matures under a definite system of socioeconomic relations. These relations, inherited by the succeeding generation, are the initial factors that determine the character and conditions of the generation’s activity. For this reason society attempts only those tasks that are realizable in practice.
After coming into being, however, social ideas and the corresponding phenomena of the superstructure become relatively independent of the material relations that have engendered them. Social ideas and the phenomena of the superstructure, as a result of people’s activity along a course that has been set by these ideas and phenomena, actively influence the course of social development. Various elements of the superstructure—including the political forms of the class struggle, legal forms, political, juridical, and philosophical theories, and religious views—continually influence the historical development of the basis. In the history of society, the fundamental types of relations of production are the primitive communal, the slaveowning, the feudal, the capitalist, and the communist, each with its corresponding types of socioeconomic formations. The internal source of the development of society is the process of continually arising contradictions between mankind and nature and within society, which are continually being overcome. However, just as the mode of production is the main factor in the conditions determining the life of society, so the contradictions inherent in the mode of production and the process of overcoming these contradictions are the determining sources of social development.
A change in the development of the material forces of production, which come into contradiction with the existing relations of production, that is, a change in social reality, gives rise to new ideas. This contradiction provokes a struggle within society between the classes and groups that cling to old forms of ownership and to the political institutions that support them and the classes and groups that aim at establishing new forms of ownership and new political institutions, which, by resolving the conflict that has arisen, ensure the progress of the forces of production. In antagonistic formations, the lack of correspondence between the material forces of production of the society and the existing relations of production is manifested in class struggle. Changes in the forms of ownership and in political institutions always affect class interests and the contradictions within a society, which can be resolved only through class struggle. The highest manifestation of this struggle is social Revolution.
The main creators of history are the popular masses, who play a decisive role in the economic, political, and spiritual development of human society. Historical experience testifies to a continual growth in the role of the popular masses in history. This role becomes most active during the socialist Revolution and during the building of socialism and communism. The socialist Revolution radically changes the course of world history and marks the beginning of the transition to a new social era, to a fundamentally new social system, that is, a classless society. The criteria of social progress—along with the degree of development of the forces of production and the emancipation of the popular masses from the fetters of inequality and oppression—are the successes in the development of a culture common to all mankind and in the development of ethics and morals. The discoveries of the “secrets” of nature—the energy of fire, water, steam, and electricity and atomic energy—are landmarks of historical development in the gradual mastering of the forces of nature. Simultaneously, and closely linked with material progress, there occurred a progressive social development of human groups from a primitive herd, from clans and tribes to nationalities and nations (natsiia, nation in the historical sense) and from exploitative societies to a socialist society.
The development of human society also has a spatial aspect. From the centers of his original appearance, man gradually spread over the earth, opening up new and ever more extensive territories, a process that, to a certain extent, is continuing at the present time.
The path traveled by mankind testifies to the general acceleration of the rates of development of society. Although the primitive communal system existed for hundreds of thousands of years, society has been moving at accelerating rates in the succeeding stages of its development. Among different peoples and countries the historical process of mankind’s development is neither even nor identical. There are moments in history of relative stagnation and even of temporary regression, as well as moments of particularly intensive development. Historical development may occur unevenly during a particular epoch or in a single country. Some spheres of economic, political, or spiritual life may flourish and experience an upsurge, while others decline or stagnate. There are also differences among peoples and countries at the same stage of historical development. For example, the slavery of the classical world differs from Oriental slavery, and feudal and capitalist formations, as well as the construction of socialism in different countries, have their specific features. However, the general tendency of historical development is one of change in socioeconomic formations, although after the appearance of the first antagonistic formation in world history, several formations have coexisted at any given moment. Thus, at the present time, along with the two basic formations of socialism and capitalism, a feudal structure has been preserved in a number of African and Asian nations. Contemporary society has entered a new era of development—the era of the classless communist society, in which all major differences in the levels of development of the world’s peoples will be gradually overcome and in which the unity of the historical process will truly become worldwide.
==The study of the past of human society==
In the course of its development, historical science, like other sciences, absorbed the experience of many generations of mankind. Its content and subject matter were expanded and enriched, and an ever increasing accumulation of knowledge occurred. World history became the repository of the thousands of years of humanity’s experience in all spheres of material and spiritual life.
All the social sciences are historical in their method of cognition of social phenomena and processes. The totality of the social sciences, which from different viewpoints study various aspects of the history of society (including history, philosophy, sociology, political economy, jurisprudence, philology, aesthetics, and linguistics), is generally called, in contrast to the natural and exact sciences, the system of social sciences. Being separate and relatively autonomous, the social sciences are organically interrelated. Only in their totality are they capable of solving, in dialectical unity, their main task—that of acquiring knowledge about the past and contemporary condition of society in order to ascertain the society’s laws and to understand its present and the trends of its development. Each of the social sciences offers a part of the solution of the main problem facing history in the broad sense. The formulation of the general laws of the development of human society and of the moving forces of this development constitutes the subject of historical materialism.
In a narrower sense the science of history is an essential part of the social sciences, among which the place of history is conditioned by its subject and by its method of research. For a long time history bore a markedly descriptive character. Only later did the science of history attempt to reveal the elements, interconnections, and structure of human society and of the mechanism of the historical process. Socioeconomic history developed in the 19th century, under the influence of Marxism becoming the history of socioeconomic processes and relations. The concrete and varied life of society, in all its manifestations and in its historical continuity from the origin of human society to its contemporary condition, became the subject of historical science.
The chief subject of the science of history is the study of the concrete history of society on the basis of facts about the past and present that are obtained from historical sources. The collection of facts and their organization and analysis in relation to one another is the internal basis of the science of history. In this manner history, even at the primary stage of its development, gradually created a factographic picture of the development of society. With the accumulation of facts, history began to take note of the interconnections and interdependence of individual phenomena and of the typical nature of some of them. It was able to amass the knowledge about the development of society that was to become one of the prerequisites for the development of historical materialism.
The Marxist conception of the history of society requires the careful accumulation and study of facts. In this process, as Lenin pointed out, “we must take not individual facts, but the sum total of facts, without a single exception, relating to the question under discussion” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 30, p. 351). The gathering of facts about various events, phenomena, and processes is one aspect of history as a science. Therefore, narrative and description occupy an important place in history. However, as a science, history cannot merely retell events without striving to understand and explain them. On the basis of an analysis of the totality of facts, history grasps the essence of individual phenomena and processes in the life of society and discovers not only the specific laws of its development but also the characteristics of the historical development of individual countries and peoples, in comparison with other countries and peoples. History expresses all such discoveries in the form of theoretical generalizations. With Marx’ and Engels’ discovery of the fundamental laws of the historical development of society, history became a true science. The second aspect of history as a science is theoretical generalization and a recognition of the totality of amassed facts and partial conclusions, studied in relation to one another.
The unity of these two aspects of historical science is indestructible. The disruption of this unity inevitably leads in some measure to distortion of the process of understanding the history of society. The most extreme varieties of such distortion among inconsistent materialists include vulgar sociologism, by which the researcher deviates from or ignores concrete facts in order to create arbitrary sociological schemata, and empiricism, by which a scholar takes as his goal the collection of facts without attempting to interpret them or to discover definite laws. Some inconsistent materialists were supporters of vulgar materialism, elevating to an absolute the laws of natural science in a simplified, metaphysical-mechanistic form. Thus, vulgar materialists explained class differences as the result of heredity and ascribed colonial slavery to the natural living conditions, such as diet, of colonial peoples. Idealist historians most often regard history from the standpoint of voluntarism, proclaiming will to be the highest principle of being and opposing the principle of will to the objective laws of social development. Human will and individual behavior, mainly that of outstanding historical personalities such as princes, kings, or military leaders, are held by these historians to be the determining factors in the historical process.
The methodological unsoundness of the idealists as well as of the inconsistent materialists led either to a nihilistic rejection of all past historical experience of mankind or to a eulogy of the past, affirming that mankind can expect nothing new and that history itself is but a repetition of the past.
In the course of the development of the science of history the change in the conception of the subject and tasks of history was accompanied by a corresponding change in the method of understanding and interpreting historical phenomena. The scientific method of understanding the history of society was worked out gradually in all the social sciences. Until the middle of the 19th century historians employed methods that to a significant degree were metaphysical in nature; therefore, their conclusions could not be strictly scientific. Historians one-sidedly evaluated the place of particular factors in society, such as natural conditions, outstanding individuals, and social ideas. The absence of a genuinely scientific method caused the slow progress of the study of history.
Only the unification of dialectics with materialism—the appearance of Marxism—made possible the creation of a truly scientific method of understanding the complex and diverse history of society, which became one of the reasons for the rapid progress of the science of history that developed especially fruitfully in the USSR and other socialist countries.
In any social science historicism is a necessary condition for studying the facts and processes of social life. Historians of the ancient East and of the classical world, interpreting this principle in an oversimplified manner, attempted to give a description of historical events in chronological sequence. Later, the striving for historicism was expressed in attempts to reveal tendencies in the historical process. Only with the appearance of Marxism did historicism become the scientific method of understanding the laws of the historical process for the social sciences, including history.
Ignoring the principle of historicism leads to a distortion of historical reality, such as viewing the past in modern terms. History was and remains a party-minded (partiinyi) science. The party-mindedness of historians and their class approach to phenomena is expressed above all in their theoretical generalizations. Lenin pointed out that “there can be no ‘impartial’ social science in a society based on class struggle” (ibid., vol. 23, p. 40). Lenin wrote that “no living person can help taking the side of one class or another [once he has understood their interrelationships], can help rejoicing at the successes of that class and being disappointed by its failures, can help being angered by those who are hostile to that class, who hamper its development by disseminating backward views” (ibid., vol. 2, pp. 547–48).
The reactionary classes, who oppose the progressive tendencies of the historical development of society, hamper the development of truly scientific history. Many contemporary bourgeois historians deny the objective character of the historical process and attempt to replace the conception of the progressive development of society with such ideas as “social change” and the “cyclical nature” of history. These historians, including A. Toynbee, regard history as the sum of “civilizations” undergoing the same stages of origin, rise, and decline.
Bourgeois historians are not unanimous in their evaluation of the essence of history and of the tasks facing it. They consider history an art, or a combination of science and art, in no way resembling other forms of knowledge. On the other hand, revolutionary classes and parties and advanced social teachings and theories have always promoted and continue to promote the progress of the science of history. Marxism-Leninism—the ideology of the most advanced class in the history of mankind, the working class—having transformed history into a science, became the basis of the rapid progress of the study of history. The interests of the working class require objective historical knowledge, since it helps the workers to comprehend the world-historical task placed before them by the history of society’s development—that of bringing about the transition to communism—and assists the workers in their struggle to accomplish this task. Hence, the communist party-mindedness of history and its scientific objectivity are identical.
In history, as in all other sciences, specialization has inevitably occurred in the process of studying the history of society and continues at the present time. History has become a sphere of knowledge consisting of various sections and branches of science, as well as of auxiliary and specialized historical disciplines and sciences. The degree of specialization of the individual parts varies, permitting several groups to be distinguished.
The first group consists of individual sections and branches of the science of history, within which historians study the history of society as a whole (world history) and in parts. History is studied according to formations and periods, by geographic regions, or with respect to comprehensive themes or specific aspects and phenomena in the history of mankind. Thus, world history is subdivided into the history of primitive society, ancient history, the history of the Middle Ages, modern history, and contemporary history. Fields of study according to region include the history of large historically interconnected areas (such as the history of Europe and other continents and of particular regions, such as the Near East or Middle Asia) and the history of individual countries and peoples, such as the history of France, the USSR, and the Ukraine. An understanding of general and particular phenomena that groups of countries and peoples have experienced, such as the Renaissance and Reformation, requires research on comprehensive historical themes. In the study of individual aspects of the history of mankind, separate branches of the science of history came to be distinguished, such as economic history, political history, military history, the history of foreign relations, and the history of the workers’ movement. This division of history into different sections and branches is conventional. Certain related sciences closely approach several branches of the science of history, and it is sometimes difficult to give a precise demarcation between them.
The second group consists of auxiliary and specialized historical disciplines, including the study of sources, archaeography, paleography, diplomatics, chronology, historical metrology, sphragistics, genealogy, heraldry, and numismatics. The development of these auxiliary fields into scientific historical disciplines was necessitated by the need to work out a methodology of historical research. With this aim the auxiliary historical disciplines investigate the nature of sources and the degree to which they reflect the objective process of the development of society. These disciplines establish types of sources, as well as their number and state of preservation, and develop the methodology of research for various types of sources.
Two specialized historical sciences—archaeology and ethnology—occupy an independent position and are organic parts of history.
A number of related sciences, owing to the development of other sciences, have become separate disciplines. These include the history of a natural science and its branches (such as the history of physics and chemistry), the history of technology, the history of the state and law, the history of economic conceptions, and the history of the art of war. Historiography studies the history of the science of history itself.
History, as a science, fulfills an important social function. The value of history lies in its achievements in understanding the laws of the historical process, since only the experience of world history as a whole permits the separation of the general from the particular and of the necessary from the accidental. In general, formulation of the laws of development of society is possible only on the basis of the achievements of history. Therefore, the science of history, along with the other social sciences, plays an important role as the scientific basis for directing social life. Marxist historical science directly influences the communist education of the people. It creates documentary accounts of outstanding events of the past, of revolutionary battles of the oppressed against the oppressors, and of individual Revolutionaries, thinkers, and other heroes of history. The Marxist science of history fosters hatred for exploitation and exploiters and a feeling of socialist patriotism and proletarian internationalism.
Contemporary reactionary historiography plays quite another role, attempting to interpret historical material so as to inculcate ideas of anticommunism and of racial and national exclusiveness and to incite hatred among peoples.
In the USSR and other socialist countries Marxist-Leninist historiography has become firmly established and is developing rapidly. Through its knowledge of the laws of the development of society in the past and present, Marxist-Leninist historiography enables one to understand the inevitability as well as the path of mankind’s transition to a higher stage of social development, communism.
Various specialized scientific institutions are engaged in historical scholarship. These include historical scientific-research institutes, such as the Institute of the History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Institute of World History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Other institutions working in the field of history include universities, museums (including historical museums), archives, and historical societies, which exist in most countries. Along with the preparation of scholarly monographs, collaborative scholarly works, and educational literature, an important part of these institutions’ work is the publication of historical sources and journals. In the USSR the leading general historical journal is Voprosy istorii (Problems of History). The International Congresses of Historical Science, held every five years, promote the expansion of scholarly contacts among historians of different countries and the summing up of research.
===REFERENCES===
The founders of Marxism-Leninism
Marx, K., and F. Engels. “Nemetskaia ideologiia.” Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 3.Marx, K., and F. Engels. “Manifest Kommunisticheskoi partii.” Ibid., vol. 4.Marx, K. “K kritike politicheskoi ekonomii.” Ibid., vol. 13.Marx, K. Kapital. Ibid., vols. 23–25, parts 1–2.Marx, K. P. V. Annenkovu v Parizh, 28 dekabria 1846 g. (Letter.) Ibid., vol. 27.Engels, F. “Karl Marks, ‘K kritike politicheskoi ekonomii.’” Ibid., vol. 13.Engels, F. “Pokhorony Karla Marksa.” Ibid., vol. 19.Engels, F. Anti-Diihring. Ibid., vol. 20.Engels, F. “Dialektika prirody.” Ibid., vol. 20.Engels, F. “Proiskhozhdenie sem’i, chastnoi sobstvennosti i gosudarstva.” Ibid., vol. 21.Engels, F. “Liudvig Feierbakh i konets klassicheskoi nemetskoi filosofii.” Ibid, vol. 21.Engels, F. Iozefu Blokhu v Kenigsberg, 21(22) sentiabria 1890 g. (Letter.) Ibid., vol. 37.Lenin, V. I. “Chto takoe ‘druz’ia naroda’ i kak oni voiuiut protiv sotsial-demokratov?” Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 1.Lenin, V. I. “Ekonomicheskoe soderzhanie narodnichestva i kritika ego v knige g. Struve.” Ibid., vol. 1.Lenin, V. I. “Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossii.” Ibid., vol. 3.Lenin, V. I. “Tri istochnika i tri sostavnykh chasti marksizma.” Ibid., vol. 23.Lenin, V. I. “Karl Marx.” Ibid., vol. 26.Lenin, V. I. “Imperializm, kak vysshaia stadiia kapitalizma.” Ibid., vol. 27.Lenin, V. I. “Statistika i sotsiologiia.” Ibid., vol. 30.Lenin, V. I. “O gosudarstve.” Ibid., vol. 39.
General works
Vsemirnaia istoriia, vols. 1–10. Moscow, 1955–65.
Istoriia SSSR: S dremeishikh vremen do nashikh dnei (in two parts, 12 vols.), vols. 1–9. Moscow, 1966–71.
Ocherki istorii SSSR, vols. 1–8. Moscow, 1953–58.
Vseobshchaia istoriia s IV st. do nashego vremeni, vols., 1–8. Compiled by E. Lavisse and A. Rambaud. Moscow, 1897–1903. (Translated from French.)
Istoriia XIX v., 2nd ed., vols. 1–8. Edited by E. Lavisse and A. Rambaud. Moscow, 1938.
The Cambridge Ancient History, vols. 1–11. Cambridge, 1924–39. Third ed., vol. 1, parts 1–2; Cambridge, 1970.
The Cambridge Medieval History, vols. 1–8. Cambridge, 1913–36.
The Cambridge Modern History, 2nd ed., vols. 1–14. Cambridge, 1907–24.Plekhanov, G. V. “Materialisticheskoe ponimanie istorii.” Izbr. filo-sofskie proizvedeniia, vol. 2. Moscow, 1956.Kon, I. S. Filosofskii idealizm i krizis burzhuaznoi istoricheskoi mysli. Leningrad. 1959.Skazkin, S. D. Istoriia—uvlekatel’naia nauka. Moscow, 1961.Ivanov, G. M. “Svoeobrazie protsessa otrazheniia deistvitel’nosti v istoricheskoi nauke.” Voprosy istorii, 1962, no. 12.Danilov, A. I. “Marksistsko-leninskaia teoriia otrazheniia i istoricheskaia nauka.” In the collection Srednie veka, fasc. 24. Moscow, 1963.
Istoriia i sotsiologiia. Moscow, 1964.Gulyga, A. V. “O predmete istoricheskoi nauki.” Voprosy istorii, 1964, no. 4.Zhukov, E. M. “V. I. Lenin i metodologicheskie osnovy istoricheskoi nauki.” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, 1970, no. 2.
Filosofskie problemy istoricheskoi nauki. Moscow, 1969. (Bibliography.)Konrad, N. I. “O smysle istorii.” In Zapad i vostok, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1972.Iribadzhakov, N. Klio pered sudom burzhuaznoi filosofii. Moscow, 1972. (Translated from Bulgarian.)Langlois, C. V., and C. Seignobos. Vvedenie v izuchenie istorii. St. Petersburg, 1899. (Translated from French.)Bloch, M. L. B. Apologie pour I’histoire ou metier d’historien, 5th ed. Paris, 1964.Febvre, L. Combats pour I’histoire. Paris, 1953.Droysen, J. G. Hislorik, 5th ed. Berlin, 1967.
L ‘Histoire et ses methodes, sous la direction de Ch. Samaran. Paris, 1967.
Einfiihrung in das Stadium der Geschichte. Berlin 1966.
Encyclopedias and reference books
Sovetskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia, vols. 1–13—. Moscow, 1961—71—.
Vsemirnaia istoriia: Daty i sobytiia: Epokha perekhoda ot kapitalizma k kommunizmu. [Moscow, 1968.]
Weltgeschichte in Daten. Berlin, 1965.
Bibliographies
Istoriia SSSR: Ukazatel’ sovetskoi Hteratury za 1917–1967gg., vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1956–71.
Istoriia istoricheskoi nauki v SSSR: Dooktiabr’skiiperiod. Moscow, 1965.
Spravochniki po istorii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii: Bibliografiia. Moscow, 1971.
Istoriia sovetskogo obshchestva: Rekomendatel’nyi ukazatel’ Hteratury dlia uchitelei. Moscow, 1971.Kandel’, B. L. Istoriia zarubezhnykh stran: Bibliografiia russkikh bibliografii (published from 1857 to 1965). Moscow, 1966.Pochepko, G. P., and I. I. Frolova. Istoriia zarubezhnykh stran (Evropa, Amerika, Avstraliia): Bibliografiia inostrannykh bibliografii. Moscow, ’1967.
International Bibliography of Historical Sciences, vols. 1–34. Washington, 1930–68—.Hepworth, P. How to Find Out in History: A Guide to Sources of Information for All. Oxford, 1966.V. I. BUGANOV, M. IA. VOLKOV, and M. I. KUZNETSOV
Category:History
Category:Social Science