"The Communist Party in the USSR has adopted for its own organisation the pattern which we have described.... In this pattern individual dictatorship has no place. Personal decisions are distrusted, and elaborately guarded against. In order to avoid the mistakes due to bias, anger, jealousy, vanity and other distempers... it is desirable that the individual will should always be controlled by the necessity of gaining the assent of colleagues of equal grade, who have candidly discussed the matter and who have to make themselves jointly responsible for the decision....
"Stalin... has... frequently pointed out that he does no more than carry out the decisions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party....
"The plain truth is that, surveying the administration of the USSR during the past decade under the alleged dictatorship of Stalin, the principal decisions have manifested neither the promptitude nor the timeliness, nor yet the fearless obstinacy that have often been claimed as the merits of a dictatorship. On the contrary, the action of the Party has frequently been taken after consideration so prolonged, and as the outcome of discussion sometimes so heated and embittered, as to bear upon their formulation the marks of hesitancy and lack of assurance.... These policies have borne... the stigmata of committee control." (S. & B. Webb: Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation; London; 19 ; p. 431, 432, 433, 435).
