HISTORY CAMBRIDGE A2 (PAPER 4)PRESENTATION 5 - HOMEWORK

STALIN MODULE2. STALIN AND THE PARTY

THE SECRETARIATUNDER STALIN

POWERPOINT BASED ON

Harris, Stalin - a new historyLynch, Stalin’s Russia 1924-53

Pravda, 2 April 1922Deutscher, Stalin

D. I. Kurskii’s report of the Central Revision Commission to the Thirteenth Party Congress, p. 132.

Kurskii’s speech to the Fifteenth Congress, p. 164.Kosior, Rakovsky, and Krasin comments to the Twelfth

Party Congress.

STALIN AND FIRST CHANGESWhen Stalin took over the Secretariat in 1922, he introduced several changes to improve its efficiency. The changes he introduced were in keeping with Lenin’s instructions not to get lost in the details. One of his first moves was to reduce the responsibilities of the Secretariat in the assignment of cadres. His predecessors had taken responsibility for assignments from the top to the bottom of the apparatus. Stalin encouraged Party and state organisations to promote their own cadres, and mapped a limited hierarchy of positions to be staffed under the direction of the Central Committee.

NOMENKLATURA NO. 1 AND PARTY CONGRESSES

The resulting list, known as ‘Nomenklatura no. 1’, included 4,000 senior positions from the Presidiums of the Peoples’ Commissariats down to the department and section heads, and from the ‘bureaus’ of regional Party committees down to the secretaries of Party organisations.The total number of cadres assigned from Moscow was reduced from approximately 22,500 in the period between the Tenth and the Eleventh Party Congresses to barely over 6,000 between the Twelfth and the Thirteenth.

THE CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

The Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the gathering of the delegates of the Communist Party and its predecessors. According to the party statute, it was the supreme ruling body of the entire Communist Party.Between the congresses the party was ruled by the Central Committee. Over the course of the party's history, the name was changed in accordance with the current name of the party at the time. The frequency of party congresses varied with the meetings being annual events in the 1920s while no congress was held at all between 1939 to 1952. After the death of Joseph Stalin, the congresses were held every five years.

A BADGE, DEPICTING VLADIMIR LENIN, ISSUED TO THE DELEGATES OF THE

27TH CONGRESS

ASSIGNING PARTY MEMBERS BLINDLYIn theory, this allowed the Record-Assignment department to keep more detailed personnel records and to improve its ability to match cadres’ skills to the needs of organisations. In practice, the department continued to be swamped with demands for new officials and had little knowledge of the cadres it was passing to the Secretariat for approval. At a meeting of the leading officials of the Organisation-Assignment department in early 1927, the poor state of Party records was a central topic of discussion. Department officials admitted that in the vast majority of cases, they were assigning Party members blindly (sovershenno sluchaino).

STRENGTHENING THE ORGANISATION AND ACCOUNTINGThe consensus of the meeting was that the Organisation-Assignment departments of Party and state bodies had to be strengthened and accounting improved. As it was, unemployed Party members tended to head to Moscow to get ‘Party’ jobs and the department was being turned into an employment agency. These concerns were related largely to the great mass of lesser posts, but even in the case of appointments to the key positions in the Party and state bureaucracies similar issues arose. By 1926, the number of nomenklatura posts had expanded again by 50 per cent. As that number expanded and the burdens of the assignments process increased, the consideration given to each appointment decreased.

RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE APPOINTMENTS

The Organisation-Assignment department took no part in appointments at or below the guberniia level. It only kept records of decisions that were taken by the local organisations.In the case of more senior positions, the organisations that were to receive the appointees were aggressively drawn into the appointments process.Seven standing commissions, specialised according to branches of the state and Party apparatus, were created within the Organisation-Assignment department in order to parcel responsibilities for the appointments.

GUBERNIIAThe Organisation-Assignment department took no part in appointments at or below the guberniia level. It only kept records of decisions that were taken by the local organisations. In the case of more senior positions, the organisations that were to receive the appointees were aggressively drawn into the appointments process. Seven standing commissions, specialised according to branches of the state and Party apparatus, were created within the Organisation-Assignment department in order to parcel responsibilities for the appointments.NEW WORD: GUBERNIIA - A governorate, or a guberniya was a major and principal administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire and the early Russian SFSR. The term is usually translated as government, governorate, or province. A governorate was ruled by a governor, a word borrowed from Latin gubernator. Sometimes the term guberniya was informally used to refer to the office of a governor.

CONCERNSThe Organisation-Assignment department was concerned that appointees had the appropriate training, experience, and skills necessary to perform effectively. Appointees who were incompetent could be, and were, rejected and sent back to the Organisation-Assignment department. Almost a third of appointees were fired within a year.The high rate of turnover was a consequence not only of the low skill levels of appointees. The experience of the group struggles in the early 1920s had shown leading officials the importance of surrounding them selves with people whom they could trust. New appointees who ‘did not fit in’ (ne srabotali) to an organisation were also rejected. In order to ensure such a ‘fit’, some organisations preferred to assign officials on the nomenklatura lists without the ‘interference’ of the centre.

PROMOTION FROM WITHINThe rapid expansion of the bureaucracy in the 1920s had created terrible shortages of cadres with appropriate administrative skills, such that when faced with a position to fill, the department often had no one to recommend. A leading Organisation-Assignment department official observed in early 1927 that ‘the system [khoziaistvo nashe] is growing, and we don’t have new people [to staff it]’.Promotion from within (vydvyzhenie) was the preferred method for staffing leading positions, and in encouraging it, the department further strengthened the influence of Party and state organisations over the appointments process. If appointees had personal loyalties, they were more likely to be to the organisation to which he or she was assigned, rather than to Stalin.

THE LOCAL PARTY SECRETARIESStalin encouraged the resolution of conflicts locally. The simplest way to do so was to strengthen the hierarchy of existing Party and state organisations, and reinforce the powers of the current ‘bosses’, most notably, the network of local Party secretaries. Following Stalin’s speech on organisational matters, the resolutions of the Twelfth Party Congress (April 1923) strengthened the role of Party secretaries in selecting ‘responsible workers of the soviet, economic, co-operative and professional organisations’ in their regions. In effect, the Party secretaries became the main arbiters of the struggles, with the power to remove officials who refused to submit to their decisions.

SETTLING THE CONFLICTSNot all struggles could be resolved so easily. Many organisations were unable to settle conflicts on their own, and they continued to appeal to the Secretariat for intervention.In such cases, the Secretariat despatched one of its instructors, who would call an extraordinary conference of the local Party committee and attempt to win the censure or expulsion of the weaker of the groups. In cases of truly intractable conflicts, the Secretariat reassigned all parties to the conflict and replaced them. For most leading officials unable to work in the face of constant challenges to their leadership, the risk was worth taking. Generally, the worst outcome they could expect was to be assigned to a different institution or region.

GEORGIAN AFFAIRThe best-known case is the so-called ‘Georgian Affair’. Stalin had sent Sergo Ordzhonikidze (then an instructor of the Secretariat) to remove two members of the Georgian Party organisation accused of ‘local nationalism’ in the hotly contested issue of Georgia’s participation in the recently established Transcaucasus federation. They were removed in the autumn of 1922 by a decision of the Georgian Party, but not without controversy.Stalin’s tactics and Ordzhonikidze’s actions – including a physical assault on one of the participants – provoked a great deal of animosity in the process of settling the larger conflict. The case is often cited not because it was typical, but because it incensed Lenin. Less than a year after he had recommended him to the post, Lenin expressed profound reservations about Stalin’s ‘hastiness and bureaucratic impulsiveness’. Privately, he considered recommending that he be replaced by someone ‘more patient, more loyal, more polite and more attentive to comrades’.

ANASTAS MIKOYAN, JOSEPH STALIN AND GRIGOL ORDZHONIKIDZE IN TIFLIS (NOW TBILISI), IN 1925.

DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISTS AND WORKERS OPPOSITION‘Bureaucratic impulsiveness’ was not the only charge levelled against Stalin in his role as General Secretary. Some Party leaders were also concerned that the Secretariat was stifling ‘intra-Party democracy’. Intra-Party democracy, meaning not only the election of officials, but also the open discussion of policy issues, had been a subject of considerable debate and controversy since the civil war had come to a close. Lenin had promoted the ban on factionalism specifically to deal with groups such as the ‘Democratic Centralists’ and the ‘Workers’ Opposition’ which demanded a more participatory political system. Those ‘factions’ were crushed, but as the immediate threats to the survival of the Soviet state receded, the question of intra-Party democracy returned to the political agenda.

STRUGGLE FOR POWER AND CONSPIRACIES

At the time Stalin was named General Secretary, the main subject of correspondence between the Secretariat and Party organisations was the struggles for power (skloki), rather than conflicts over political principles or policy platforms. Letter after letter referred to the conflicts among individuals and institutions as rooted in ‘personal antagonisms’, and ‘lacking any ideological content’.Party secretaries were always on the lookout for conspiracies against their leadership, and there was no more dangerous time for them than the regular local Party conferences, at which key posts were filled by election. It was at these meetings that such ‘oppositions’ often came out into the open and challenged the authority of existing leaders.

HOMEWORKExam Type Essay: • To what extent was the Party the dominant force in Russia in the years 1922

to 1926?

Extra Homework: • Identify the role of the Bolshevik Party in the period 1914-1924 and the part it

played in those years.• Explain the structure of the Party and identify the centre/s of power in it• Identify Stalin’s role in the party to 1924• Identify the way in which Stalin utilised his role in the Party to acquire power.