p Knowledge of the causal dependence of phenomena is extremely important in science and practice. By discovering the causes of useful phenomena man can facilitate their action and thereby accelerate the development of the useful phenomena and processes he needs. Knowing, for example, that good tillage, on-schedule sowing, irrigation, introduction of fertiliser, and other farming methods are the cause of high yields, we can considerably raise cropping capacity by constantly improving these methods.

p Knowledge of the causes of harmful phenomena enables man to eliminate these phenomena, restrict their action and thereby prevent the onset of effects undesirable for man.

p The ability to reveal the main causes of the given phenomenon is particularly important for practical activity. By discovering the main causes, people can understand the 141 origin and essence of a phenomenon, its place in relation to other phenomena, and the laws governing its’ development.

p The main cause is the one without which the given phenomenon could not arise; it determines the main features of this phenomenon.

p What, for example, was the main cause of the Soviet people’s victory over the Nazi invaders in the Second World War? This cause was the social and state system of the Soviet Union, the might of the Soviet Armed Forces, and not the vast territory or the rigorous Russian winter and similar claims put forward by bourgeois ideologists. The latter factors, although playing some part, were by no means the chief, determining causes.

p The Communist Party always looks for the chief, decisive causes. The ability to pick them out from the innumerable other causes makes it possible to find that particular, main link in the chain of events, which enables the Party and the people to cope with every task confronting them in any given period. Lenin maintained that the art of politics consists in finding this main link in the chain of social phenomena, grasping it firmly and thereby ensuring full success.

p The CPSU believes that the main, decisive foreign policy link which can ensure the best conditions for the growth and the successes of the world forces of peace, democracy, national liberation and socialism, and the progress of the whole of mankind, is the Leninist policy of peaceful coexistence of states with different socio-political systems, international detente, universal and complete disarmament, a policy of mutually beneficial, equal economic and cultural cooperation. This policy fully reflects the aspirations and vital interests of the peoples of the whole world and opens favourable prospects for the developing countries to solve their problems in conditions of peace. The foreign policy of the CPSU is designed to achieve the implementation of the Leninist principles of peaceful coexistence. Only by grasping this main and decisive link will the world’s peace-loving forces be able to solve all vital problems confronting mankind.

Causality is the most general, universal connection. But it does not exhaust all the many connections of reality and represents, as Lenin pointed out, only a small part of the world connections. Necessary and chance connections are 142 also very important in the intricate web of the world’s causal connections. We shall now examine them.