Publication Details

Abstract

The author considers some of the methodological problems of historiography of the history of socialist society and communist parties that result from the new dimension of the historical development of socialist society, namely that the socialist society is created as a subject of the history-formative activity of its own. The preconditions of this subjectivity are the following: scientific theory of the whole of social motion (Marxism-Leninism) and the organizational expression of this theory for the realization of historical mission of the working class — the Marxist-Leninist party. These aspects of the history-formative subjectivity that have to be the object of historiography come to the fore: 1. the process of recognizing the social relations, the elaboration of the programme, of the strategy, the tactics, the resolutions and with it bound ideological struggle. 2. the aspect of realization, organization. Here belong also the process of the working people’s consciousness, their effort for the aims that have been pointed out. 3. the aspect of evaluation of how the intentions have been realized, an analysis of the objective situation that has been formed by this activity. Such an approach to historical events of the socialist society is an instruction, it inspires the thinking for recognizing the present and for designing the necessary future. Therefore in historiography the question “what would happen, if?“ is justified. It is an inevitable question for every subject of action. It is only the mechanistic conception of determinism that denies its importance, the idealistic historiography absolutized it idealistically, subjectively. The raison d´être of this question results from the real relation of the subject to its objective possibilities.