ABSTRACT
Soviet society is restructuring. We have already crossed the boundary beyond which a simplified understanding of our past, ready maxims and prescriptions, attempts to act "in a carbon-copy manner," using as a pattern a "model" of socialism "ossified" at the 1930–40 level, have shown themselves to be unsound. Processes are gaining momentum that are carrying us ever farther into new terrain. The place their discipline will occupy in resolving the pressing social tasks advanced by the April (1985) Plenum of the. Central Committee of the Twenty-seventh Congress of the CPSU today depends on historians themselves: will this discipline only record events or will it significantly enrich social practice by rethinking historical experience in a topical way? Will it satisfy modern man's need for knowledge of the past and present or will he turn for historical knowledge and explanations to belles-lettres and public-affairs writing? Will the historian succeed in bringing to the general reader a sense of the concrete historical laws of social development or will the historian remain only a purveyor of clearly illustrated factual material?
