p Each specific object, as we know, appears, develops and, finally, disappears to give place to the new. In other words, an object has its history. Celestial bodies, plants and animals, all have their history. Mankind also has a long history of development in the course of which it moved from the primitive to the socialist system. The history of mankind in its turn includes the histories of different socio-economic formations, continents and countries.

p History is a maze of innumerable events: general and individual, necessary and accidental, major and secondary, etc. Historical processes are studied from different viewpoints and with the help of the different methods. One of them is a detailed study of history, of all its events. This is the historical method of investigation. Another method, the logical method is the study of the general, of what is repeated in the historical process. In essence the logical is the same as historical, but purged of the mass of details, of all that is accidental. Logical study, Engels wrote, is “nothing else but the reflection of the historical course in abstract and theoretically consistent form”.  [175•* 

The historical and logical methods are a unity, for they are used to study the appearance and development of one and the same object. Neglect of one and absolutisation of the other lead to serious errors in theory and practice. Disregard for the historical method causes a researcher to lapse into subjectivism, pointless theorisation and elaboration of logical constructions not connected with the actual historical process. A researcher who ignores the logical method interprets the historical process as a conglomeration of empirical facts devoid of unity and inner links. Being the logic of scientific cognition, Marxist dialectics examines 176 phenomena and processes in their connection with other phenomena and processes, in their unity with concrete historical experience.