Abstract

The article deals with the textbook "History of the class struggle", authored by Belarusian historians Y. Rubin, Z. Hanutin and L. Holmshtok. The textbook was prepared and published at the time when such an academic subject as History was eliminated from schools. Instead, Social Science containing a historical component was introduced The textbook was divided into several major topics: European history of class struggle, Russian history of class struggle, Belarusian history of class struggle, history of class struggle of the Jews in Belarus. According to the textbook, the era of Feudalism was born and developed in the environment of the Germanic tribes. The authors considered that he driving force of the history were trade and trade capital, which explains the enslavement of the peasants, the allocation of the urban patricians, etc. The craft is considered to be a progressive phenomenon of the Feudal period. The authors regard relationships inside the craft between masters and apprentices through the lens of the class struggle. The textbook highlights the main manifestations of class struggle – rebellions, and talks about their cruel suppression. Great geographical discoveries are explained as the result of the trade crisis, which had promoted individual rulers of Europe to invest into the geographical discoveries.
 In the textbook the information is given schematically, practically there are no personalistics characters whose biographies would be framed into the context of the identified problems. The peculiarity of the textbook is the presence of some plots from sources and fiction related to the topic.
 Jakiv Rubiv was a well-known historian and teacher in Belarus in the interim between the wars. He worked at the Belarus Academy of Sciences and studied Jewish history and historiography. In the late 1930s he started work at the Belarus History Museum, where he researched the problems of feudalism. At the same time, he was teaching at higher educational institutions of Minsk. During the war, he was evacuated to Osh. After the war, he worked in Dnepropetrovs’k as head of the department of the world history.

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