22 SOCIAL SCIENTIST foundation has been highlighted without which the significance of his theory cannot be properly appreciated. It may however be mentioned that this constitutes a part, albeit a very small part, of his political economy which runs into nearly two thousand printed pages in his Sochinenie (collected works). In the second part an attempt has been made to develop a thesis of historical expediency on the basis of Marx's own formulation in which Chernyshevskii's ideas figure prominently. For this purpose, Marx's observations in his correspondence and elsewhere have been examined. Finally, the implication of the theory under discussion has been hinted at as a brief concluding remark. Chernyshevskii and the Russian Mir The political economy of Chernyshevskii emerged as an intellectual response to the concrete socio-economic conditions in Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century on the one hand, and to the dominant ideology of bourgeois political economy which kept the interest of the 'concrete' man on the sideline and championed the cause of the prosperity of 'nation', an abstract concept, on the other. The contradiction between 'natsia9 (nation) and 'narod9 (people) was the starting point of his political economy. The main tenets of the doctrine enunciated by Chernyshevskii were: (1) If there were different variants of a model of economic development in Russia, the one which ensured more 'national well-being' or 'well-being of the people' and 'equality' was to be accepted in preference to others even if implementation of the latter might guarantee more prosperity or development of the 'nation' in the sense of classical political economy. The conceptual error in the outlook of the latter lay in treating men as abstract, i e, non-real entities. (2) In the development of institutions and economic forms in society there are distinct phases, each following the other in a regular and logical pattern. It does not however necessarily follow that in every country these have to traverse a necessitarian path to reach a later stage of development. There are logical moments (Jogicheskie momenty) of a decisive character in the general process of development but a society could bypass (minovat) a particular logical moment if the circumstances were favourable. (3) In Russia, in spite of its primitive character in terms of technology and methods of production, a positive feature was the existence of the village commune ('obshchma'), or 'mfr', an economic organisation based on equalitarian principles. Therefore, the necessary condition for bypassing capitalism was present to avoid substitution of exploitation by the 'dvonanstvo' (the class of landlords) by that of the capitalist class. The sufficient condition, however,_ was the capacity of the commune to undergo a transformation without