N. P. KONSTANTINOVA, O. V. STAKANOVA, O. I. SHKARATAN. Changes in the Social Make-Up of the Working People in the Era of Developed Socialism

The article analyzes the changes that have taken place in the social structure and make-up of the Soviet working class over the past twelve years - from 1965 to 1977. The authors draw on the available statistical data and the results of sociological research based on public opinion polls carried out at a number of industrial enterprises in Leningrad in 1965, 1970 and 1976 according to similar programs. The data obtained from these investigations graphically show that the steady and rapid growth of the workers general-education level, professional training and industrial skill, their heightened social activity and cultural advancement are based on the development of the socialist productive forces and relations of production. Significant changes are also occurring in the workers' mode of life; a new type of worker is gradually being moulded.

V. K. KISELEV. The Role Played by Byelorussia's Partisans and Members of Underground Organizations in Thwarting the Nazis' Sinister Plans of Launching Chemical Warfare Against the U.S.S.R.

The author makes an attempt to disclose the role played by Byelorussia's partisans and members of underground organizations in collecting intelligence data about the nazis' criminal plans of launching chemical warfare against the U.S.S.R. The article briefly describes the basic trends of activity carried on by the intelligence service of Byelorussia's partisan units and underground organizations in exposing the nazis' sinister designs to launch chemical warfare at the different stages of the second world war, elucidates the question concerning their plans to use war gases at the battlefronts and in the struggle against the partisans. The article also shows the objective conditions which counteracted the nazi plans to launch chemical warfare.

V. V. ZHURAVLEV. The Initial Stage of Solving the Housing Problem m the U.S.S.R.

The article contains a brief analysis of the legislative and practical activity of the Soviet state in the sphere of solving the housing question in the first year of the dictatorship of the proletariat. An important place is assigned by the author to the decree passed by the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on August 20, 1918, abrogating the right of private ownership of real estate in the urban communities. The article shows how the principles, forms and methods of nationalizing the immovable property in possession of the urban buorgeoisie were gradually taking shape, how the revolutionary redivision of the housing facilities belonging to the big landlords in fovour of the working people was practically effected. It was these measures that laid the foundations and mapped out the main directions of solving the housing question in the U.S.S.R.

L. P. KOLODNIKOVA. Soviet-Czechoslovak Economic Relations in the Early Postwar Years

The author attaches prime importance to the economic aspect of Soviet-Czechoslovak relations in 1945 - 1948. In the very first days following the liberation of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union set about rendering all-round assistance to that country in restoring its national-economy and providing its population with foodstuffs and basic essentials. Developing at first on the basis of short-term agreements on reciprocal commodity deliveries, these relations in the subsequent period assumed the form of long-term economic cooperation. The long-term trade and economic agreements between the two countries became an expression of new equal and mutually beneficial relations which began to take shape between the U.S.S.R. and the people's democratic states at the close of the 1940's.

B. M. KOSAREV. The Genesis of the Slaveownmg Plantation System in the U. S. A.

The author investigates the rise and development of the slaveowning plantation system in the U.S.A. In the 17th-18th centuries the markets for the sale of tobacco and other export crops grown by the Labour of Negro slaves were extremely unstable. The develop-

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ment of the plantation system in Britain's North American colonies proceeded at a relatively slow rate. The system of slavery which existed there constituted one of the economic forms. By the end of the 18th century the industrial revolution in the cotton production of England, which subsequently spread to a number of other European countries and to North America, led to the emergence of a steadily expanding market for the sale of cotton-the chief product of slave labour; in the 19th century the slaveholding economy in the South of the U.S.A. became transformed into the plantation system proper.

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