The first edition of Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism was highly acclaimed by the Soviet and international Communist press. A great many propagandists and teachers of Marxism acknowledged its value as a useful educational aid, easy to understand while being at the same time a competent scientific exposition of the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism as an integral science. The book was translated into many languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, etc.).
The present, second edition, while preserving the structure and main content of the first edition, has been enriched by the valuable new ideas of the most outstanding work of modern Marxist-Leninist thought—the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—and by the basic propositions of the other documents of the Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U. Account has also been taken of the very important conclusions and appraisals of the Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in 1960. To avoid increasing the size of the book many passages have had to be shortened although this was not otherwise required by the content of the previous text. During the work on the present edition attention has been paid to many suggestions contained in reviews of the book and also in letters from readers.
The main work of preparing the second edition has been carried out by O. V. Kuusinen (leader of the group of authors), Y. A. Arbatov, A. S. Belyakov, S. L. Vygodsky, A. G. Mileikovsky and L. M. Sheidin.
Work on the revision of individual chapters has also been carried out by F. M. Burlatsky, N. I. Ivanov, B. M. Leibzon, A. A. Makarovsky, and Y. P. Sitkovsky.