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Marx and Engels on the nature of a workers’ state |
In the last chapter the main facts of the social and economic relations in Russia were described. In this chapter we shall deal with the political aspects – the state and the party.
Marx and Engels used that rather ominous sounding and widely misunderstood term, “dictatorship of the proletariat”, to denote the content, not the form, of the state which would replace the capitalist state, that is to say, to define the ruling class. To them, in this context, dictatorship simply meant class rule, and, therefore, the Athenian city state, the Roman Empire, Napoleon’s rule, British parliamentary government, Bismarck’s Germany and the Paris Commune were all dictatorships because, in all of them, a class or number of classes, were under the rule of another class. In Marx and Engels’ writings the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat is conceived of as a very full democracy. For instance, in the Communist Manifesto it is stated that: “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” [1] More than forty years later, Engels wrote: “If one thing is certain it is that our Party and the working class can only come to power under the form of the democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the great French Revolution has shown.” [2]
The ideas of Marx and Engels regarding the democratic form of the dictatorship of the proletariat were realised in the Paris Commune of 1871. The latter wrote: “Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” [3] And Marx pointed out that: “The first decree of the Commune ... was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution of it for the armed people.” And then: “The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class ... Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police were at once stripped of their political attributes, and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable agents of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the Administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen’s wages. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves ... The judicial functionaries were to be divested of sham independence ... Like the rest of the public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible and revocable.” [4]
To quote Engels once more: “Against this transformation of the State and the organs of the State from servants of Society into the masters of Society – a process which had been inevitable in all previous States – the Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In the first place, it filled all posts – administrative, judicial and educational – by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of these electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the imperative mandated to delegated to representative bodies which were also added in profusion.” [5]
Marx declared that with its universal suffrage, the right of recall of every civil servant, workmen’s wages for all officials, maximum local self-government, and the absence of armed forces elevated above the people and oppressing them, the Paris Commune constituted workers’ democracy.
The antithesis of the workers’ state was the monstrous bureaucracy and army of the capitalist states, which, in Engels’ words, “threaten to devour the whole of society”. [6]
This, briefly, is Marx’s and Engels’ conception of a workers’ state, a consistent, extreme democracy.
To this conception, let us now counterpose the reality of the Russian Stalinist state.
The main factor in the state is the armed forces. To use Lenin’s formulation, the state “consists of special bodies of armed men which have prisons, etc., at their disposal.” [7] Therefore, the starting point of any analysis of the present Russian state apparatus, especially from the standpoint of Marxism, must be the structure of the armed forces. As Trotsky so aptly wrote: “The army is a copy of society and suffers from all its diseases, usually at a higher temperature.” [8]
The formation of a people’s militia was traditionally demanded by socialist parties. [A] Accordingly, one of the first acts of the Bolshevik leaders, on taking power, was to issue a decree which included the following clauses:
2. Full power within any army unit and combination of units is to be in the hands of its soldiers’ committees and soviets.
4. The elective principle for army commanders is hereby introduced. All commanders up to the regimental commander are to be elected by a general vote of [the different units] ... Commanders higher than regimental commanders, including the commander-in-chief, are to be elected by a congress ... of committees of the army units [for which the commander is being elected]. [10]
Next day a further decree added:
In fulfilment of the will of the revolutionary people which is concerned with the immediate and decisive eradication of every inequality, the Council of People’s Commissar’s hereby decrees:
1. To abolish all ranks and title from the rank of corporal to that of general ...
2. To abolish all privileges and the external marks formerly connected with the different ranks and titles;
3. To abolish all saluting;
4. To abolish all decorations and other signs of distinction;
5. To abolish all officers’ organisations ...
6. To abolish the institution of batmen in the army. [11]
But the Bolsheviks’ desire for a real democratisation of the army, for its transformation into a people’s militia, met with disaster on the rocks of objective reality.
In the early days, after the October Revolution, the revolutionary armed forced consisted of small groups of volunteers. The masses of the people were sick and tired of war and were not ready to volunteer for the new revolutionary armed forces. In order to meet the challenge of the White Armies which were backed by powerful foreign powers, the Bolsheviks were forced to replace voluntary principle by conscription. In addition, lacking experienced commanders, they were forced to recruit tens of thousands of officers of the former Tsarist army. This clearly made it necessary to abandon the elective principle in the choice of army commanders: one could hardly expect the peasants and workers in uniform to elect to their command those officers whom they so hated as representatives of the old regime. The needs of battle also made it imperative to abandon the ideal of an army built on a territorial basis – of arming the people – and to return to the barracks.
The Bolshevik leaders never denied for a moment that these measured constituted a deviation from the socialist programme. (See, for instance, the resolution of the Eighth Party Congress, March, 1919. [12]) Moreover, they strongly opposed any attempt to render them permanent. Thus, for instance, when a former general of the Tsarist army, who fought with the Bolsheviks during the civil war, stated that the army of a socialist country should not be based on a militia, but on the old, established barrack system, the People’s Commissar of War, Trotsky, sternly replied: “the Communist Party did not come to power in order to replace the tricolour barracks by red ones.” [13] The Bolsheviks frequently reiterated their intention to introduce the militia system as early as possible. Thus, for instance, at the Seventh Congress of the Soviets, held in December 1919, Trotsky declared: “It is necessary to begin a transition to the realisation of the militia system of arming the Soviet Republic.” [14]
The Ninth Party Congress decided to concretise this intention by building units of a workers’ militia side by side with the regular army, and it was hoped to develop these gradually until they should replace the latter entirely. [15]
But this resolution was never carried out. Any plan to introduce a people’s militia was inhibited by objective realities – Russia’s backward productive forces, the low cultural level of the people, the fact that the proletariat was a small minority of the population. This was explained clearly by I. Smilga, a leading Bolshevik in the army, who said in 1921:
The militia system, whose basic characteristic is the territorial principle, is faced with an insuperable political obstacle in the path of its introduction in Russia. Given the numerically weak proletariat in Russia, we are not able to ensure proletarian guidance in the territorial militia units ... Even greater difficulties in the path of the introduction of the militia system arise from the viewpoint of strategy. With the weakness of our railroad system, we should not be able, in case of war, to concentrate forces in the threatened directions ... Furthermore, the experience of the Civil War has incontrovertibly shown that territorial formations were entirely unsuitable, the soldiers deserting and not wishing to leave their villages during offensive as well as retreat. Therefore, the return to this form of organisation would be a crude, wholly unjustifiable error. [16]
The backwardness of the productive forces, and, connected with it, the peasant nature of the country, were the two decisive factors in making the Red Army a regular army and not a militia (although many elements of democracy and equalitarianism not normally associated with regular armed forces were built into the structure of the Red Army). The economic level of a given country is, after all, the decisive historical factor. As Marx said: “Our theory that the organisation of labour is conditioned by the means of production, is, it seems, nowhere as brilliantly corroborated as in the ‘human slaughter industry’.” [17]
The material and cultural backwardness of Russia revealed itself also in the relations between soldiers and officers.
From the beginning the Bolsheviks found it an unavoidable necessity to appoint ex-Tsarist officers, notwithstanding their previous agitation for the substitution of all appointed officers by those elected by the officers. It was impossible to wage the war against the White Armies without tried commanders, and if the choice were left to the officers they would not have elected ex-Tsarist officers.
From the beginning there was a struggle between the political commissars on the one hand, and the Party collective in the army on the other. This conflict converged with another between centralist and decentralist tendencies. Out of these two struggles the political commissars emerged victorious over the Party collectives, and the Centre overcame the guerrilla tendencies. The convergence of these two struggles reflected a strengthening bureaucratic tendency in the army.
It was not long before the ex-Tsarist officers began to influence the new commanders of proletarian origin. The Bolshevik, Petrovsky, stated: “Within the walls of the military school we encountered the old regime view of the peasant about the role of the officer with respect to the mass of the private soldiers. We had also noticed a certain trend to the upper class traditions of the cadets of the czarist military schools ... Professionalism in the scourge which lashed morally officers of all times and in all countries ... They [the Red Army Commanders] became members of the new officers’ group, and no agitation whatsoever, nor beautiful speeches about the necessity of contact with the masses, would be of any avail. The conditions of existence are stronger than kind wishes.” [18]
The commanders, the political commissars, and others with authority in the Red Army, began to use their positions to gain advantage for themselves. Trotsky took them severely to task for this, such as on the occasion (31 October 1920) when he wrote to the Revolutionary Military Councils of Fronts and Armies condemning the use of government cars by those in authority for “gay parties right before the eyes of the tired Red Army soldiers”. He spoke angrily of “commanders [who] dress with extreme elegance while the fighters go half-naked”, and attacked the drinking bouts indulged in by commanders and political commissars. And he concluded: “such facts cannot but provoke exasperation and discontent among the Red Army soldiers.” In the same letter he expounds his aim: “Without setting the impossible goal of immediate elimination of all and sundry privileges in the army, to endeavour to reduce these systematically to the actually necessary minimum.” [19] His realistic revolutionary conception clearly reveals the immense difficulties of the situation.
In spite of these abuses, however, the existence of the Bolshevik Party with cells throughout the army, together with the revolutionary enthusiasm and self-sacrifice of the common soldiers and the presence of Trotsky at its head. ensured the maintenance of the proletarian character of the Red Army during the civil war.
With the partial victory of the bureaucracy in 1923, arrogance and a dictatorial attitude towards their troops became the rule among the officers rather than the exception. The key positions in the Party cells within the army were gradually taken over by the commanders themselves until, in 1926, it was noted by the Political Department of the army that two-thirds of all positions in the Party apparatus in the army were in the hands of commanders. [20] In other words, the officers became the political leaders who were supposed to defend the soldiers against the officers!
Even so, this was still not a completely independent officer caste. For one thing, the living conditions of the commanders were hard and not very different from those of the soldiers. According to White: “In 1925 only 30 per cent of the commanding personnel were housed in a manner regarded by Frunze [People’s Commissar of War] at all as tolerable. Seventy per cent had housing facilities below that level. Frunze spoke of various localities where several commanders with their families had only one room among them. In other words, each family had only part of a room at its disposal. The reserve commanders, when called for re-training outside of the ranks of the army, were remunerated for the work on a basis which could not look attractive to a Chinese coolie. Those employed or belonging to the peasantry were paid five kopeks per hour, which the unemployed among them were paid nine kopeks an hour, for the time they were engaged in their studies.” [21]
Wollenberg, who was himself a commander in the Red Army, gives these facts:
In 1924 the pay of a corps-commander was 150 roubles a month, corresponding roughly to that earned by a well-paid metal worker. It was thus 25 roubles a month below the “Party maximum”, i.e., the largest monthly salary that a Party member was allowed to accept in those days ... There was at that time no special officers’ mess. The meals of officers and men were prepared in the same kitchens. Communist officers seldom wore the badges of their rank when off duty, and frequently dispensed with them even when on duty. At that time the Red Army acknowledged a relationship of superior and subordinate only during the performance of a military duty, and in any case every soldier knew his commanding officer with or without badges of rank.
Officers’ servants were abolished. [22]
Furthermore, soldiers were allowed to, and did in fact, complain about their officers to the Military Prosecutor’s Office. There were on average 1,892 complaints per month during 1925, 1,923 monthly during 1926, and 2,082 monthly during 1927. Until 1931-33 “natural and easy relations between officers and men” [23] existed.
White puts the turning point to the consolidation of the officer caste a little earlier – the Army Statutes of 1928, which he describes as “the real dividing line”, and what followed as “the development of a trend already well established”. [24] By these statutes a life career was opened to army officers, and White describes them, with ample justification, as the “Magna Carta of the commanding personnel”, as “something closely akin to the Patrine Table of Ranks”. [25]
In 1929 the “gradual transformation of Red Army Houses into Officers’ Clubs” [26] began. Although soldiers’ pay remained very low, officers’ salaries began to rise, as the following table shows [27]:
|
Increase in officers’ monthly allowances |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
1934 |
1939 |
Increase |
|
Platoon commander |
260 |
625 |
240 |
|
Company commander |
285 |
750 |
263 |
|
Battalion commander |
335 |
850 |
254 |
|
Regimental commander |
400 |
1,200 |
300 |
|
Divisional commander |
475 |
1,600 |
377 |
|
Corps commander |
550 |
2,000 |
364 |
It has been estimated that in 1937 the average annual pay of privates and non-commissioned officers taken together amounted to 150 roubles, and of officers to 8,000 roubles. [28] During the second world war, privates in the Soviet Army received an allowance of 10 roubles a month, lieutenants, 1,000, and colonels, 2,400. In sharp contrast to this wide differentiation – we do not quote this approvingly but only for comparison – privates in the United States Army received 50 dollars a month, lieutenants, 150, and colonels, 333 dollars. [29]
Although the value of the rouble declines very sharply during the last two or three decades, this has affected officers much less than civilians, for they have been able to take advantage of the Voentorg, an exclusive co-operative organisation which runs shops, restaurants, laundries, and tailoring and boot-making establishments. Special houses with all conveniences are built for them. They and their families travel free on railways, buses, ships, etc. (The ordinary soldiers get none of these advantages; the only concession made to them is free postage for their outgoing letters and for their families’ letters coming to them. [30])
A decree of 22 September 1935, introduced the following ranks into the army and air force: lieutenant, senior lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, brigadier, commander of division, commander of army corps, army commander of the second rank, army commander of the first rank, and, lastly, marshal of the Soviet Union. [31] Similar ranks were introduced into the navy. Additional ones were given to the military technical services. [32] On 7 May 1940, more ranks were introduced into the army and air forces: major-general, lieutenant-general, colonel-general, general of the army; and into the navy: rear-admiral, vice-admiral, admiral, admiral of the fleet. [33] Finally, on 26 June 1945, the rank of generalissimo of the Soviet Union was introduced. [34]
On 3 September 1940, badges of rank on the old Tsarist pattern, such as gold braid epaulettes, and gold, platinum and diamond star emblems (worn by Marshals) were restored. [35] This was a far cry from the days of the civil war when the Whites were dubbed “gold braid epauletters”. A volume of the Small Soviet Encyclopaedia published in 1930 stated that epaulettes “were abolished by the November, 1917, Revolution as symbols of class oppression in the army.” [36] In sharp contrast to this, the Red Army paper wrote in 1943, after the introduction of the epaulettes: “The introduction of the traditional soldiers’ and officers’ epaulettes ... emphasises and symbolises the continuity of the glory of Russian arms throughout the history of Russia right down to our times.” [37]
Fraternisation between officers and soldiers was prohibited. [38] Even reservists are divided into the same ranks as the army and they have the right to wear their military uniforms at any time.
“Nowadays,” wrote John Gibbons, the Daily Worker correspondent in Moscow, “privates, and NCOs travelling in a bus, tube or train, must give up their seats to men of superior rank, should they be standing.” [39]
In order to keep up the appearance of superior breeding, officers are not permitted to carry large parcels in the street, not to wear felt boots when visiting a theatre. High officers are not allowed to travel by underground or tramcar. [40] There are special officers’ messes and officers’ clubs. Even on leave, an officer is not allowed to sit at a table with other ranks in public. Every officer has his permanent batman. Special schools have been established for officers’ children, from kindergarten onwards. A former count and officer of the Tsarist bodyguard, lieutenant-general Aleksei Ignatiev, has in effect become the director of manners and etiquette in Stalin’s army. Dancing lessons are compulsory at the Military College.
It is doubtful whether the officers of any other army in history dispose of greater disciplinary powers than do the Russian officers. Statutes introduced on 12 October 1940, stated that: “In case of insubordination, the commander has the right to apply all measures of coercion up to and including the application of force and firearms. The commander bears no responsibility for the consequence in case he finds it necessary to apply force and firearms in order to compel an insubordinate to fulfil a command and to restore discipline and order ... The commander who does not in such instances apply all necessary measures to fulfil an order is remitted to trial before court martial.” [41]
V. Ulrich, who presided over the Moscow Trials, comments on these statues thus: “The disciplinary statues considerably extend the right of commanders as regards the use of force and firearms ... Comradely relations between soldiers and officers are no more ... The hail-fellow-well-met spirit in the relationships between a commander and a subordinate can have no place in the Red Army. Discussion of any kind is absolutely prohibited among subordinates.” [42]
An article in Pravda of the same period sheds light on yet another aspect of these statues: “Grievances may be introduced only personally and individually. Submission of group grievances for others is prohibited. No more group declarations, no more joint discussions – whether concerning an order, bad food, or any other topic – all this comes under the heading of ‘insubordination’ and for it a soldier may be shot on the spot without so much as a court-martial, hearing or investigation, if a superior officer solely and personally so decides.” [43]
Thus the officers have developed into as clearly defined a military hierarchy as ever existed in any society in history.
Officially, the institutions in which sovereignty resides in the USSR are the Soviets, headed by the Supreme Soviet (until 1937, by the Congress of Soviets). There are numerous indications that for many years these bodies have been little else but rubber-stamping organs, real power resting elsewhere.
In the early days, things were different. In 1918, for example, Congress met five times. Between 1919 and 1922, it met once a year, but since then the intervals between meetings have lengthened considerably. In 1923 other units joined the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) constituting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The first Congress of Soviets of USSR took place in December 1922; the second in January-February 1924; the third in May 1925, and then once every two years until 1931. The seventh Congress took place in January-February 1935, four years after the previous one. There has been no improvement since (although the war emergencies doubtless serves as an excuse, albeit a feeble one, to postpone sessions). This Soviet “parliament” sat for only 104 days in the years 1918-36, or less than six days a year. [44] The figure for later years in even lower, and it is significant that no congress at all was convoked during 1931-35, the period of the greatest and quickest transformation of Russia. Many major steps, such as the Five-Year Plan, collectivisation and industrialisation were decided upon without consulting the ‘highest authority’ in the land.
During the period 1917-36 the power of making laws was formally vested in the hands of the Congress of Soviets and its elected Central Executive Committee. Since the victory of Stalin, however, meetings of the Central Executive Committee have averaged not more than ten days a year.
Russia has travelled far since the time when the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee could say: “The Central Executive Committee, as the supreme organ of the Soviet Republic ... lays down the policy ... for the Soviet of People’s Commissars to carry out.” [45]
As regards the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, it is not known when it is convened, nor what is discussed at its sessions, for no reports of its proceedings ever appear.
Since the end of the twenties every decision made by the Congress of Soviets and afterwards, by the Supreme Soviet, has been carried out unanimously. Not only has no vote ever been cast against any proposal put forward but there has never been a single abstention, nor a proposal for amendment, nor even a speech in opposition.
The merely ceremonial nature of the Supreme Soviet is clearly shown up by the character of its deliberations. Thus, for instance, when that major switch in foreign policy took place, from alliance with France and England to collaboration with Hitler, the Supreme Soviet decided that there was no need to discuss the problem “because of the clarity and consistency of the foreign policy of the Soviet Government.” [46]
The annual budget is sometimes brought to the notice of the Supreme Soviet many months after its measures are already operating. Thus, for instance, the annual budget of 1952, effective from 1 January that year, was announced by the Minister of Finance, Zverev, only on 6 March 1952. [47] The budget for 1954 was “deliberated” on 11 April. [48] Similarly one finds that while the First Five-Year Plan came into operation on 1 October 1928, it was approved only in April 1929. The Second Five-Year Plan come into operation on 1 January 1933, but was not officially approved until twenty-two months later, on 17 November 1934. The corresponding dates for the Third Five-Year Plan were 1 January 1939 and March 1939; for the Fourth, 1 January 1946, and March 1946; and for the Fifth, 1 January 1951, and October 1952.
In the light of these facts, the following statement by the Dean of Canterbury, Dr Hewlett Johnson, can only be called preposterous nonsense: “the Executive [is] subordinate to the Supreme Soviet ... All sections of the Executive must be ratified by the Supreme Soviet: ‘The highest organ of the state’, runs Article 30, ‘is the Supreme Soviet.’ The significance of the enforcement of this law will be apparent at once to those who see with alarm precisely the opposite tendency here, as for example, when the British Cabinet takes action without consulting Parliament or without seeking immediate and speedy ratification of its action by Parliament. More significant still is the determination that the Supreme Soviet shall control the Budget. Those who hold the pursestrings hold the ultimate power.” [49] The chapter heading in which this passage occurs is entitled: The Most Democratic Constitution in the World!
On the eve of the 1937 general elections, Stalin declared: “Never before – no, really never – has the world ever seen elections so completely free, and so truly democratic! History has recorded no other example of the kind.” [50] And one enthusiastic American supporter of Stalin’s regime states: “with secret balloting, without fear or favour, he [the Soviet citizen] can vote for the person or policy that he really wants.” [51]
Yet in these “completely free, and so truly democratic” elections there is never more than one candidate for the electors to choose in each constituency. Also, never in any single one of the hundreds of constituencies has the percentage of voters ever been less than 98 per cent. The poll has nearly always been 99.9 per cent, and one candidate actually polled more than 100 per cent! It was Stalin who polled 2,122 votes in the elections to the local Soviets that took place on 21 December 1947, despite the fact that the constituency that “elected” him had only 1,617 voters! The sheer idiocy of this incident is only exceeded by the outrageous explanation offered by Pravda next day. It reads: “The extra ballot papers were put into the urns by citizens of neighbouring constituencies anxious to seize the opportunity to express their gratitude to their leaders.” [52]
Usually, of course, matters are arranged with more care, and, consequently, very little evidence of the jerrymandering exists. Nevertheless there are other cases on record. Such a one was the referendum in Lithuania, on 12 July 1940, to settle the matter of the proposed amalgamation of Lithuania with the USSR. The Tass agency in Moscow was not informed that the local authorities had decided to extend the referendum over two days, and so Moscow announced the results after the first day of the referendum, although the votes were not actually counted till the next day. By “accident”, the results turned out to be exactly as forecast: “It was an unfortunate slip by which a London newspaper published the official results from a Russian news agency twenty-four hours before the polls were officially closed.” [53]
The Election Regulations stipulated that any interference with the electoral rights of citizens will be punished. Yet, for example, between the nomination of candidates and the actual results to the Supreme Soviet in December 1937, thirty-seven candidates – among them two members of the Political Bureau, Kassior and Chubar – disappeared and were replaced by others. No explanation was offered to the electors, and no one, it would seem, considered it healthy to enquire into the matter.
Fifteen days before the same elections, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times cabled to his paper a forecast as to the composition and personnel of the next Supreme Soviet. He stated that it would consist of 246 high Party officials, 365 civil and military officials, 78 representatives of the intelligentsia, 131 workmen and 223 kolkhoz members, and give their names. [54] Except for the 37 arrested at the last minute, his forecast exactly corresponded to the results in every detail. How could that conceivably happen in any election that was not rigged?
Since the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is a state party, analysis of its structure, composition and functioning must also be an analysis of the state machine.
Before analysing the working of the Party from the time Stalin came to the helm, it is important to counterpose to its present monolithic and totalitarian character the actual democratic working of the Party in the period prior to the rise of the bureaucracy.
The Bolshevik had never been a monolithic or totalitarian party. Far from it. Internal democracy had always been of the utmost importance in Party life, but for one reason or another, this factor has been glossed over in most of the literature dealing with the subject.
It will therefore be worth while to digress somewhat and devote some space to setting out a number of cases which illustrate inner Party democracy in the pre-Stalinist years.
We shall begin with a few examples from the period prior to the October Revolution.
In 1907, after the final defeat of the revolution, the Party suffered a crisis over the question of what attitude to take to the elections to the Tsarist Duma. At the Third Conference of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (held in July 1907), in which Bolsheviks as well as Mensheviks were represented, a curious situation arose: all the Bolshevik delegates, with the sole exception of Lenin, voted in favour of boycotting the elections to the Duma; Lenin voted with the Mensheviks. [55] Three years later, a plenum of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks passed a resolution calling for unity with the Mensheviks; again the only dissentient voice was Lenin’s. [56]
When the 1914-18 was broke out, not one of the Party’s branches adopted the revolutionary defeatist position which Lenin advocated [57]; and at a trial of some Bolshevik leaders in 1915, Kamenev and two Bolshevik Duma delegates repudiated Lenin’s revolutionary defeatist position. [58]
After the February revolution one finds that the large majority of the Party leaders were not for a revolutionary Soviet government, but for support of the coalition provisional government. The Bolshevik faction had forty members in the Petrograd Soviet on 2 March 1917, but when the resolution to transfer power to the bourgeois coalition government was put to the vote, only nineteen voted against. [59] At a meeting of the Petrograd Committee of the Party (5 March 1917), a resolution for a revolutionary Soviet government received only one vote. [60] Pravda, edited by Stalin at that time, had a position which can in no way be called revolutionary. It decisively declared its support for the Provisional Government “in so far as it struggles against reaction or counter-revolution”. [61]
Again, when Lenin came to Russia on 3 April 1917, and issued his famous April Theses – a light guiding the Party to the October Revolution – he was for a time in a small minority in his own Party. Pravda’s comment on the April Theses was that it was “Lenin’s personal opinion”, and “quite unacceptable”. [62] At a meeting of the Petrograd Committee of the Party, held on 8 April 1917, the Theses received only two votes, while thirteen voted against it and one abstained. [63] However, at the Conference of the Party held 14-22 April the Theses gained a majority: 71 for, 39 against and 8 abstentions. [64] The same conference defeated Lenin on another important question, viz., whether the Party should participate in the proposed Stockholm Conference of the Socialist Parties. Against his views, it decided in favour of full participation. [65]
Again, on 14 September, Kerensky convened a “Democratic Conference” and Lenin spoke strongly in favour of boycotting it. The Central Committee decided by 9 votes to 8 to boycott it, but as the vote was so nearly equal, the final decision was left to the Party conference, which was to be constituted out of the Bolshevik faction in the “Democratic Conference”. This meeting decided by 77 votes to 50 not to boycott it. [66]
When the most important question of all, the question of the October insurrection, was on the order of the day, the leadership again was found to be sharply divided: a strong faction led by Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Piatakov, Miliutin and Nogin, opposed the uprising. Nevertheless, when the Political Bureau was elected by the Central Committee, neither Zinoviev not Kamenev were excluded.
After taking power, the differences in the Party leadership continued to be as sharp as before. A few days after the revolution, a number of Party leaders came out with a demand for a coalition with other socialist parties. Those insisting on this included Rykov, the People’s Commissar of the Interior, Miliutin, the People’s Commissar of Agriculture, Nogin, the People’s Commissar of Industry and Trade, Lunacharsky, the People’s Commissar of Education, Shliapnikov, the People’s Commissar of Labour, Kamenev, the President of the Republic, and Zinoviev. They went as far as resigning from the government, this compelling Lenin and his supporters to open negotiations with the other parties. [67] (The negotiations broke down because the Mensheviks insisted on the exclusion of Lenin and Trotsky from the coalition government. [68])
Again, on the question of holding or postponing the elections to the Constituent Assembly (in December 1917), Lenin found himself in a minority in the Central Committee, and against his advice, the elections were held. [69] A little later he was again defeated on the question of the peace negotiations with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. He was for an immediate peace. But at a meeting of the Central Committee and active workers, held on 21 January 1918, his motion received only 15 votes against Bukharin’s motion for “revolutionary war”, which received 32 votes, and Trotsky’s, for “neither peace nor war”, which received 16. [70] At a session of the Central Committee next day, Lenin was again defeated. But at last he succeeded, under the pressure of events, in convincing the majority of members of the Central Committee of his point of view, and at its session on 24 January, his motion for peace gained 7 votes, while 4 voted against and another 4 abstained. [71]
The atmosphere of monolithism which has been imputed so assiduously to the Bolshevik party both before and immediately after the Revolution, lifts when faced with the facts. This atmosphere, however, became a reality later.
For a long time the most important body in the Party was the Congress. Lenin, for instance, declared: “The Congress ... [is] the most responsible assembly of the Party and the Republic.” [72] But with the rise of power of the bureaucracy, it progressively lost its importance. The 1919, 1922 and 1925 Party Rules (Rules 20, 20, 21 respectively) stipulated that Congresses were to be held annually [73], and until the Fourteenth Congress (in 1925) this was adhered to. But after that they were held more and more infrequently. The next Congress took place two years later; between that one and the Sixteenth Congress (in 1930), two-and-a-half years elapsed, and between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth (in 1934), three-and-a-half years. This latter Congress promulgated new rules by which Congress was to be convened “not less than once in three years” (Rule 27). [74]
But even thus was not observed. Five years elapsed between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Congress (1939), and then, between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congress (1952), there was a long gap of over thirteen years.
According to the Party Rules, the Central Committee must convene Party Conferences between Congresses, and, under the regulations adopted at the Eighteenth Congress and still officially in force these must be held “not less than once a year”. Since 1919, Conferences have been held in 1919, 1920, 1921 (twice), 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1929, 1932, 1934, and most recently in 1941.
Congress elects the Central Committee, the leading body of the Party. Formally the Central Committee is accountable to the Party Congress, but, when the latter is not convened for more than thirteen years, this provision can hardly be other than a dead letter.
Formally the Central Committee elects the Political Bureau, and therefore the latter should be accountable to the former. In actual fact, however, the Central Committee is entirely subordinate to the Political Bureau.
If the Central Committee really exercised supreme authority in the Party, it would have been impossible for a majority – over three-quarters in fact – of its members to have been expelled and persecuted as “enemies of the people”, as happened between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Congresses. Only 16 out of the 71 members of the Central Committee elected in 1934 reappeared in the list of Central Committee members elected five years later, and of the 68 candidate members only 8 reappeared in the list.
The Political Bureau, which has thirteen or fourteen members, selects the Secretariat, the head of which is the General Secretary. For thirty years this post has been held by Stalin. Since the death of Stalin the administrative set-up has been more complicated. Although to all appearances, Georgii M. Malenkov is Stalin’s heir, the job of General Secretary was given to someone else – Nikita S. Khrushchev. It is now clear that Khrushchev has the upper hand.
The predominance of the bureaucracy is illustrated by the fact that the General Secretary who was, originally, merely an executor of the will of the Central Committee [75], is, under Stalin’s rule, omnipotent, wielding greater power than any Tsar dared dream of.
Lenin, for example, was never a member of the Party Secretariat. In his day, it never included the most celebrated members of the Party. For instance, immediately before Stalin’s inclusion (1922), the Secretariat was composed of Molotov, Yaroslavsky and Mikhailov, none of whom could conceivably be placed in the top flight of Bolshevik leaders. Only with the entrenchment of the bureaucracy and the construction of a Party hierarchy controlled from above did the post of General Secretary become all-important.
It is impossible to trace exactly the changes in the social composition of the Party since 1930. Since that year, the practice of publishing such information has ceased. (The omission is in itself highly significant). Nevertheless, it is possible to gain some indication of the social composition of the Party from the education level of the members.
In Russia, only one in twenty children finishes secondary school, not to speak of the university. [B] Yet of the 1,588,852 Party members in 1939, 127,000 had received a university education, compared with only 9,000 in 1934, and 8,396 in 1927; and 335,000 had received a secondary education, compared with only 110,000 in 1934, and 84,111 in 1927. [76] At the 1924 Party Congress, 6.5 per cent of the voting delegates had received a university education; at the 1930 Congress, 7.2 per cent; in 1934, about 10 per cent; in 1939, 31.5 per cent; and at the 1941 Party Congress, 41.8 per cent. The percentage of delegates who had received a secondary education were: in 1924, 17.9 per cent; in 1930, 15.7 per cent; in 1934 about 31 per cent; in 1939, 22.5 per cent; and in 1941, 29.1 per cent (including those with an incomplete university education). [77] Thus (adding the two together), the proportion of delegates who could be classified as belonging to the “Soviet intelligentsia”, was: in 1924, 24.4 per cent; in 1930, 22.9 per cent; in 1939, 54 per cent; and in 1941, 70.9 per cent. At the 1934 Congress, when 41 per cent of voting delegates had received secondary and higher education, only 9.3 per cent were industrial and agricultural workers. The percentage must have been far smaller in 1939 and 1941.
As regards the Komsomol, its secretary, N.A. Mikhailov, stated: “At the present time more than half the secretaries of provincial, territorial and central committees of the Union Republics have a higher or incomplete higher education. The remaining secretaries have a secondary education. Amongst the secretaries of the district committees of the Komsomol, 67 per cent have a secondary or higher education.” (Pravda, 3 March 1949).
Moreover, of the manual workers at Party Congresses, a considerable number were Stakhanovites. During the war, when the number of Party members increased from two-and-a-half million to six million, 47 per cent of all the candidates accepted had received a high school or university education. [78] On 1 January 1947, of six million members and candidates, 400,000 had had a university education, 1,300,000 had completed a course at high school, and 1,500,000 had an incomplete university education. [79]
Local information on the social status of new entrants to the Party shows the same trend. For example, during 1941 and the first two months of 1942, in the province of Cheliabinsk, of those admitted to probationary membership, 600 were workers, 189 kolkhoz members, and 2,035 “white-collar workers”. Of those who completed their term of probation during that period and became full members, 909 were workers, 399 kolkhoz members, and 3,515 “white-collar workers”. Thus, more than 70 per cent of new candidates and new members were of the latter category. [80]
In 1923 only 29 per cent of the factory directors were in the Party. In 1925, with the partial victory of Stalin’s faction, 73.7 per cent of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5 per cent of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95 per cent of the directors of large enterprises were Party members; by 1927 the corresponding figures were 75.1 per cent, 82.9 per cent, and 96.9 per cent. [81] In 1936 between 97.5 and 99.1 per cent of this type of personnel belonged to the Party, and the figure for the chiefs of trusts was 100 per cent. [82]
As for Red Army commanders, whereas in 1920 only 10.5 per cent belonged to the Party, the figure had reached 30.6 per cent in 1924 and 51.1 per cent in 1929 [83], and, if we include those belonging to the Komsomol, it had soared to 71.8 per cent by 1933. [84] Today there is no doubt that they all belong.
If we consider that in 1937, managerial personnel numbered 1,751,000 [85], and that at least nine-tenths of these belonged to the Party, it is obvious that relatively few people outside this class could possibly have belonged, for the total number of Party members and candidates was only about two-and-a-half million. There is no exact figure available for 1937, but the figures for 1934 and 1939 were 2,807,000 and 2,477,000.
This conjecture is borne out by examples such as that of the Presnia Machine-Building Factory in Moscow. Of the 1,300 employees in that factory, members of the Party numbered 119, of whom more than a hundred were salaried employees and only about a dozen were manual workers. [86] These proportions would, no doubt, be similar in most other factories.
Parallel with the change in the social composition of the Party membership came the elimination of the old guard of the Party. Of the 1,588,852 Party members on 1 March 1939, only 1.3 per cent had belonged since the 1917 Revolution, and 8.3 per cent since 1920, that is, since the end of the civil war. [87] At the end of the Eighteenth Congress it was, in fact, emphasised that 70 per cent of the Party members had joined only since 1929. On the eve of the February Revolution the Party had 23,600 members; in August 1917, 200,000; and in March 1921, 730,000. [88] It is, therefore, obvious that only about one-fourteenth of the 1917 members and about one-sixth of the 1920 members were still in the party in 1939.
This large-scale disappearance of the old guard cannot be explained by natural causes, because the great majority of Party members in 1917 and 1920 were very young. Even in 1927, 53.8 per cent of the Party members were below 29 years old, 32.0 per cent were between 30 and 39, 11.4 per cent were between 40 and 49, and only 2.8 per cent were older than 50. [89]
A few additional facts will suffice to show how far Stalin went in the physical liquidation of the old leaders of the Bolshevik Party.
The first Political Bureau of 10 October 1917 (it did not yet bear that name) consisted of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokolnikov, Bubnov and Stalin. [90] In 1918 Bukharin was added. In 1920 Preobrazhensky and Serebriakov were added, but a year later they were replaces d by Zinoviev and Tomsky. In 1923 Rykov took Bukharin’s place. [91]
Throughout the civil war the Bureau was composed of Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Bukharin and Stalin. Of all these leading figures, only two, Lenin and Stalin, have died a natural death. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov and Serebiakov were executed, each after a show trial; Trotsky was murdered in Mexico by a GPU agent; Tomsky committed suicide on the eve of his arrest, and, after his death, was denigrated as an “enemy of the people” and a “fascist”; Sokolnikov was condemned to a long term of imprisonment; and Preobrazhensky and Bubnov disappeared during “Great Purge”.
In the document known as his Testament, Lenin singles out six people for particular mention. Of these six, four were shot by Stalin’s order after a “trial”; these were Piatakov, Bukharin (of these two Lenin wrote: “in my opinion, the most able forces among the youngest”), Zinoviev and Kamenev. Trotsky was murdered. The only one of the six of whom Lenin spoke scathingly was the executioner – of the other five!
Of the fifteen members of the first Bolshevik government ever to be organised (the Council of People’s Commissars of October, 1917), only one, Stalin, survived the “purge”. Four members died a natural death: Lenin, Nogin, Skvortsov-Stephanov and Lunacharsky. The other ten – Trotsky, Rykov, Shliapnikov, Krylenko, Dybenko, Antonov-Ovsenko, Lomov-Oppokov, Miliutin, Glebov-Avilov and Teodorovich – were either executed by Stalin’s orders or died in his prisons.
All the highest officials of the various Commissariats have been “purged” repeatedly. Thus, for instance, one Commissar of Labour after another has been removed and then executed or held in prison. The first to hold this position was Shliapnikov, then V. Smirnov, later Mikhail Uglanov, and, finally, V.V. Schmidt.
Among those purged as “fascist dogs”, Trotsky had been so prominent in the Party that both during and after the civil war, the Party was called the “Party of Lenin-Trotsky”, and the government was similarly known; Rykov had replaced Lenin, after his death, as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (or roughly Premier); Zinoviev was Chairman of the Presidium of the Executive Committee (or President) of the Communist International; and Tomsky was the President of the Trade Union Congress. Others purged included the army chiefs. One Deputy-Commissar of Defence, M.N. Tukhachevsky, was executed, and another, Jan Gamarnik, committed suicide when faced with arrest (according to an official pronouncement); another, Marshal Egorov, “disappeared” a little later, and so did the Commissar of the Navy, Smirnov. Of the fifteen commanders of armies appointed in 1935, only one continued to enjoy his high position after the purges. One had died a natural death, but all the others had been branded as “traitors” and “purged”. [92] Nearly all the ambassadors of the USSR were also “purged”, as were two thirds of the political police: Yagoda, who had himself prepared the Zinoviev-Kamenev frame-up, and Yezhov, who prepared the other, later trials, in one of which Yagoda became a defendant.
If all those liquidated by Stalin had really been “fascists” and “traitors”, it is a complete mystery how they, comprising as they did at least nine-tenths of the leadership of the Party and the State throughout the October Revolution and the civil war, came to lead a socialist revolution. Thus by their sheer magnitude the “purges” proved their sham nature.
To add a grim touch of mockery to the tragedy of the “purges”, Stalin placed the responsibility for their enormous extent upon their first victims, the Trotskyites, who, he claimed, wished thereby “artificially to sow discontent and bitterness”; thus “the Trotskyite double-dealers can artfully hook ... the embittered comrades and skilfully drag them into the bog of Trotskyite wrecking.” [93] Zhdanov, in a speech to the Eighteenth Party Congress, rounded out this fantastic allegation with a claim that by extending the “purge” the Trotskyites had aimed “to destroy the Party apparatus”. By the same logic the Inquisition could have accused their victims of responsibility for the auto-da-fé! The following incident, cited by Zhdanov in the same speech, indicates with cruel irony, the vast scope of the “purge”. He said: “Certain Party members have resorted to the aid of medical institutions in the effort to insure themselves [from being ‘purged’]. Here is a medical certificate issued to one of these citizens: ‘Owing to his state of health and mind Comrade (so and so) is not fit to be used as a tool by any class enemy. District Psychiatrist, October District, City of Kiev (Signature)’.” [94]
Marx postulated that with the establishment of socialism and the abolition of social classes, the state would cease to exist. The absence of conflicts between classes or other social groups would make superfluous any permanent apparatus of coercion in the form of army, police and prisons. Law, too, would cease to exist, since “law is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of law.” [95] Under socialism all conflicts would be between individuals. For the suppression of such individual wrongdoing as would continue to manifest itself after the abolition of poverty – the chief cause of “crime” in present-day society – no special repressive organisation will be needed. The “General Will” – to use Rousseau’s term – would prevail and deal with such problems. As Stalin once said, long ago, in 1927: “Socialist society [is a] society without classes, society without a state.” [96]
These ideas found expression in the Constitution of the RSFSR, issued on 10 July 1918. It stated: “The fundamental object of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, a Constitution designed to serve the present-day period of transition, is the establishment, in the form of a strong All-Russian Soviet authority, of the dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat together with the peasant poor, to secure the complete suppression of the bourgeoisie, the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, and the realisation of Socialism, under which neither class divisions nor state authority will any longer exist.” [97]
After the victory of Stalin, however, the line changed entirely. Stalinist spokesmen have stopped speaking of the “withering away of the state”, and, indeed, have gone to quite the other extreme, claiming that “socialism in one country” and even “communism in one country” goes hand in hand with the strengthening of the state. Thus P.F. Yudin wrote in 1948: “The Soviet State is the main force, the main instrument of the construction of socialism and the realisation of the construction of communist society.” [98] Again: “The consolidation of the Soviet state by every means has been the necessary condition for the building of socialism, and now, of communism; this is equally one of the most important laws of the development of Soviet society.” [99] Another Soviet theoretician said: “communism pre-supposes the existence of a perfect apparatus administering the economy and culture. The apparatus develops gradually and finds its form in the conditions of the transition from socialism to communism ... That is why the rise of communism will be in accordance with the degree of perfectibility of our state and economic apparatus.” [100]
The strengthening of the Russian state, its increasing totalitarianism, can only be the result of profound class antagonisms and not of the victory of socialism.
Next Chapter:
The economy of a workers’ state
Chapter 2 Index
A. See, for instance, Article 12 of the 1903 programme of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. [9]
B. See the description of education in Chapter 1.
1. K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol.I, pp.226-227.
2. F. Engels in Neue Zeit, Vol.XX, No.1, p.8. Quoted in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, London 1943, p.486.
3. Engels’ Introduction to K. Marx, The Civil War in France, London 1941, p.19.
4. ibid., pp.40-41.
5. ibid., p.18.
6. F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, London 1943, p.195.
7. V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, London 1942, p.10.
8. L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, London 1937, p.211.
9. AUCP in Resol., 4th ed., Vol.I, p.22.
10. Coll. Laws RSFSR, 1917, No.9, Article 138.
11. ibid., Article 139.
12. Ya.L. Berman (ed.) The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and Military Affairs, in Resolutions of Congresses and Conferences of the AUCP (Russian), Moscow 1928, 2nd ed., pp.71-73.
13. L. Trotsky, How the Revolution Armed Itself (Russian), Moscow 1924, Vol.II, Book I, p.118.
14. ibid., Vol.II, Book 2, p.16. The same idea is again put forward in a thesis published by Trotsky on 16 December 1919, ibid., pp.33-36.
15. Berman, op. cit., pp.84-85.
16. I. Smilga, Fundamental Problems of the Construction of the Red Army (Russian), Moscow 1921, pp.16-17. The same ideas are elaborated in M.N. Tukhachevsky’s article The Red Army and the Militia in his War of the Classes. Articles 1919-1920, (Russian), Moscow 1923, pp.60-77. The only difference between Smilga’s arguments and those of Tukhachevsky lies in the emphasis the latter puts upon the incompatibility of the militia system with “Soviet Russia’s military mission of disseminating socialist revolution throughout the world”.
17. Quoted in Soviet Military Encyclopaedia (Russian), Moscow 1932, Vol.I, Column 619.
18. D.F. White, The Growth of the Red Army, Princeton 1944, pp.63-64.
19. Trotsky, How the Revolution Armed Itself, op. cit. Vol.II, Book I, pp.84-86. Quoted by White, op. cit., p.121.
20. White, op. cit., p.303.
21. ibid., p.223.
22. E. Wollenberg, The Red Army, London 1940, pp.182-183.
23. ibid., p.188.
24. White, op. cit., p.303.
25. ibid., p.304.
26. ibid., p.305.
27. K. Voroshilov, in The Land of Socialism Today and Tomorrow, Moscow 1939, p.288.
28. A. Bergson, National Income and Product of the USSR, Appendix: Sources and Methods, New York 1950, hectographed, p.8.
29. New York Times, 23 August 1943.
30. Evtikhiev and Vlassov, op. cit. pp.166-167.
31. Coll. Laws USSR, 1935, No.57, Articles 468-469.
32. ibid., 1937, No.51, Article 219.
33. Supreme Soviet USSR Gazette (Russian), 1940, No.15.
34. ibid., 1945, No.36. For an enumeration of the decrees introducing ranks into the army, air force and navy, see Evtikhiev and Vlassov, op. cit., pp.156-157.
35. Krasnaia Zvezda (Soviet Army daily), Moscow, 4 September 1940.
36. Small Soviet Encyclopaedia (Russian), Vol.VI, p.624.
37. Krasnaia Zvezda, 22 October 1943.
38. ibid., 23 May 1940.
39. Daily Worker, 9 July 1943.
40. Krasnaia Zvezda, 22 October 1940.
41. ibid., 15 October 1940.
42. ibid., 22 October 1940.
43. Pravda, 6 October 1940.
44. J. Towster, Political Power in the USSR, New York 1948, p.210.
45. Speech of Sverdlov, 5 July 1918. Quoted by J. Bunyan, Intervention, Civil War and Communism in Russia, April-December 1918. Documents and Materials, Baltimore 1936, p.205.
46. Izvestia, 1 September 1939.
47. Pravda, 7 March 1952.
48. Pravda, 12 April 1954.
49. Johnson, op. cit., p.353.
50. J. Stalin, Speeches at Pre-Election Meetings of Electors of the Stalin Election District in Moscow Province. 11 December 1937 and 9 February 1947 (Russian), Moscow 1946, p.5.
51. A.R. Williams, The Soviets, New York 1937, p.49.
52. Pravda, 22 December 1947.
53. B. Newman, The New Europe, London 1942, p.159.
54. New York Times, 25 November 1937.
55. AUCP in Resol., 4th ed., Vol.I, p.126.
56. AUCP in Resol., 6th ed., Vol.I, pp.154-160.
57. L. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, London 1932, Vol.I, p.59.
58. ibid., and V. I. Lenin, Works (Russian), Vol.XXI, p.432.
59. A. Shliapnikov, The Year Seventeen (Russian), Moscow 1924, Vol.I, p.197.
60. A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, p.113.
61. Pravda, 15 March 1917. Quoted by Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, op. cit., Vol.I, p.305.
62. Pravda, 8 April 1917.
63. Bubnov, op. cit., p.114.
64. AUCP in Resol., 4th. ed., op. cit., Vol.I, p.258.
65. V. I. Lenin, Works (Russian), 3rd ed., Vol.XX, p.652.
66. ibid., Vol.XXI, p.526.
67. J. Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, London 1932, pp.223-224.
68. ibid.
69. L. Trotsky, Stalin, London 1947, pp.341-342.
70. Bubnov, op. cit., p.511.
71. ibid., p.512.
72. V.I. Lenin, Works (Russian), 2nd ed., Vol.XXVI, p.232.
73. AUCP in Resol., 4th ed., Vol.I, pp.372, 543; Vol.II, p.212.
74. ibid., 6th ed., Vol.II, p.592.
75. V.I. Lenin, Works (Russian), op. cit., Vol.XXX, p.414.
76. Social and National Composition of the All-Union Communist Party [Bolsheviks] (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1928, p.41.
77. Towster, op. cit., p.328.
78. S.N. Harper and R. Thompson, The Government of the Soviet Union, 2nd ed., New York 1949, p.80.
79. Partiinaia Zhizn (Organ of the Central Committee of the Party), Moscow, No.20, October 1947, p.83.
80. Pravda, 22 April 1942.
81. Bubnov, op. cit., p.626.
82. USSR, The Land of Socialism (Russian), Moscow 1936, p.94.
83. Bubnov, op. cit., p.624.
84. K. Voroshilov, Articles and Speeches 1925-1936 (Russian), Moscow 1939, p.94.
85. The Land of Socialism Today and Tomorrow, op. cit., p.148.
86. Pravda, 23 July 1940.
87. Malenkov’s Report, Pravda, 14 March 1939.
88. Bubnov, op. cit., p.612.
89. ibid., p.620.
90. AUCP in Resol., 4th ed., Vol.I, p.315.
91. L. Trotsky, Stalin, op. cit., p.484.
92. White, op. cit. p.387.
93. Bolshevik, No.5, March 1937.
94. The Land of Socialism Today and Tomorrow, op. cit., pp.195-196.
95. V.I. Lenin, Works (Russian), op. cit., Vol.XXV, p.442.
96. J.V. Stalin, Works (Russian), op. cit. Vol.X, p.95.
97. Constitution, Basic Law, of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, Moscow 1919, Article 9, pp.4-5.
98. P.F. Yudin, The Most Important Source of the Development of Soviet Society, On Soviet Socialist Society (Russian), Moscow 1948, p.22.
99. ibid.,.
100. Ts.A. Stepanian, The Conditions and the Paths of Transition from Socialism to Communism, On Soviet Socialist Society, ibid., p.526.
Last updated on 29.8.2002