Problems of Marxist Historiography 13 A Marxist historiography of socialism can be reconstructed on the basis of our comprehension of the various contradictions within socialism. The task can be eminently performed by historians of the socialist countries with direct access to archives and experience. But it is as crucial a task for Marxists outside the socialist countries. One would differ from Charles Bettelheim in the stand he takes, but the task of analysing the Soviet experience from a Marxist point of view, which he aims at in his Class Struggles in the USSR, is in principle an unexceptionable one. The gauntlet has been thrown to those who could do it with a different perception of the evolution of socialism. With socialism a reality for the last seventy years, the people's choice for it cannot be invoked on the basis of the inequities of capitalism alone. It is surely obligatory on us to frame our own independent analysis of the history of socialist societies in order to define the contours of the socialism that we aspire to build in India. (Text of the Second V.P. Chintan Memorial Lecture, Indian School of Social Sciences, Madras, September 1988)