From E.H. Carr's 'The Bolshevik Revolution'

[New Tet]

[This passage I transcribed from the book some years ago. All boldface words are hyperlinked to wikipedia entries]



"Before the end of Lenin's life, therefore, the authority of the party over every aspect of policy and every branch of administration had been openly recognized and proclaimed. At the highest level the predominance of the party as the ultimate source of policy was assured by the supremacy of the Politburo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo); in the working of the administrative machine the commissariats were subject to the control of the Commissariat of Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_and_Peasants%27_Inspection) and, through it, of the central control commission of the party; at the lowest level, party 'fractions', subject to party instructions and discipline, participated actively in the work of every official or semi-official body of any importance. Moreover, the party exercised in such organizations as the trade unions and the cooperatives, and even in major industrial establishments, the same functions of leadership as it performed in relation to the state. Just as the autonomy of the constituent republics and territories of the RSFSR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSFSR)(and later of the Soviet Union) was qualified by the dependence of all on decisions of policy taken by the central authorities of the ubiquitous party, so the independence enjoyed by trade unions and cooperatives in relation to organs of the state was qualified by the same common subordination to the will of the party.

The formula in which this complicated nexus of institutions and functions was expressed varied from time to time. According to Lenin:

'The party, so to speak, embodies in itself the vanguard of the proletariat. This vanguard makes the dictatorship of the proletariat a reality; and without having such a foundation as the trade unions that make the dictatorship real, it is impossible to give reality to governmental functions. Reality is given to them through a series of special institutions of a new type, namely through the apparatus of the Soviets.'

In 1919 he made a trenchant retort to those who assailed the 'dictatorship of one party':

'Yes, the dictatorship of one party! We stand upon it and cannot depart from this ground, since this is the party, which in the course of decades has won for itself the position of vanguard of the whole factory and industrial proletariat.'

He poked fun at those who treated 'the dictatorship of one party' as a bugbear, and added that 'the dictatorship of the working class is carried into effect by the party of the Bolsheviks which since 1905 or earlier has been united with the whole revolutionary proletariat'. Later he described the attempt to distinguish between the dictatorship of the class and the dictatorship of the party as proof of 'an unbelievable and inextricable confusion of thought '. This formula continued to satisfy the party for some years. At the twelfth congress in 1923, with Lenin no longer present, Zinoviev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory_Zinoviev)made light of 'comrades who think that the dictatorship of the party is a thing to be realized in practice but not spoken about', and proceeded to develop the doctrine of the dictatorship of the party as a dictatorship of the central committee:

'We need a single strong, powerful central committee which is leader of everything... The central committee is the central committee because it is the same central committee for the Soviets, and for the trade unions, and for the cooperatives, and for the provincial executive committees and for the whole working class. In this consists its role of leadership, in this is expressed the dictatorship of the party.'

And the congress resolution declared that 'the dictatorship of the working class cannot be assured otherwise than in the form of dictatorship of its leading vanguard, i.e. the Communist Party'.

This time, however, Zinoviev's heavy-handedness provoked its reaction. Stalin, for his part, was concerned to resist the encroachment, not of the party on the state (that was anyhow a lost cause), but of the central committee on the working organs of the party, including the secretariat; and the dictatorship of the central committee was a doctrine little to his taste. At the congress he cautiously described the view that 'the party gives orders... and the army, i.e. the working class, executes those orders' as 'radically false', and developed at length the metaphor of seven 'transmission belts' from the party to the working class: trade unions, cooperatives, leagues of youth, conferences of women delegates, schools, the press and the army. A year later he boldly described the dictatorship of the party as 'nonsense', and attributed its appearance in the resolution of the twelfth congress to an 'oversight'. But, whatever the formula of the moment, the essential fact was nowhere questioned. It was the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) which gave life and direction and motive power to every form of public activity in the USSR and whose decisions were binding on every organization of a public or semi-public character. Every significant struggle for power henceforth took place within the bosom of the party."

--E.H. Carr, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.H._Carr) "The Bolshevik Revolution," pp. 235-237

[New Tet]

"More striking was perhaps a development of the functions of the central control commission which was announced at the following congress a year later:

'We have coordinated our work with organs that by the nature of their activity are in close contact with the control commission: these are the judicial organs and the organs of the GPU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosudarstvennoye_Politicheskoye_Upravlenie). ... Members of the party from time to time are arraigned in the courts or fall into the hands of the GPU. For this purpose we have established contact with the Supreme Court. It informs us of any comrade who is charged in a court...Similarly with the GPU. We have arranged matters so that we have our investigator in the GPU, and as soon as the case of a communist is brought in he conducts it as an investigator of the control commission.'

The convenience was mutual. The GPU secured direct party support: the party control commission could invoke the assistance of the GPU for the furtherance of its own task. It is not unfair to say that the main ultimate difference between the Cheka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka) and the GPU was that, whereas the former directed its activities exclusively against enemies outside the party, the GPU acted impartially against all enemies of the regime, among whom dissident party members were now commonly the most important. The difference was due not to any change in the character of the institution, but to the change that came over the political scene when the party acquired a political monopoly in the Soviet state. It was becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between disloyalty to the party and treason against the state.

Another event occurred as soon as the eleventh congress ended. The central committee undertook a further remodeling of the secretariat. On 4 April 1922, two days after the congress closed, Pravda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda) carried two modest paragraphs on its front page in the space usually reserved for routine party announcements:

'The central committee elected by the eleventh congress of the Russian Communist Party has confirmed the secretariat of the central committee as follows: comrade Stalin (general secretary), comrade Molotov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Molotov), and comrade Kuibyshev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_Kuybyshev).'"

--E. H. Carr, "The Bolshevik Revolution," p.218.

[Dave B]

The Dictatorship of one party quote, that I had forgotten was also in E. H. Carr, is from;


V. I. Lenin

Speech At The First All-Russia Congress Of

Workers In Education and Socialist Culture

July 31, 1919



When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party and, as you have heard, a united socialist front is proposed, we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position because it is the party that has won, in the course of decades, the position of vanguard of the entire factory and industrial proletariat.




http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/lenin/works//1919/aug/05.htm (http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/lenin/works//1919/aug/05.htm)
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