THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

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THE COMMUNIST PARTY
OF THE SOVIET UNION
A New Look at the Foundations
of international Communism
By Alan Braith
STAT
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THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION
Table of Contents
I The Party of Lenin and Khrushchev
II
III
Iv
VI
VII
VIII
ix
"Democratic Centralism," the Key to Party Power
Soviet Government as a Party Facade
The Soviet Police System
Labor in the Soviet State
The Party's Nhnagement of Agriculture
The Party's Position on Religion
The Party's Role in Education
Soviet Press: the Voice of the Party
Propaganda Aims and. Methods
XI Soviet Culture and "Party Spirit"
XII The Party and the Question of Nationalities
XIII Front Organizations: Vehicles for Party Goals
XIV Moscow's Role in International Communism
XV Some Conclusions
Historical Highlights
Glossary of Communist Terminology
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42,
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PICTORIAL HIGHLIGHTS
1917-1959
The Party's Founder and His Heirs
The Old Bolsheviks
The Formative Years
The Era of Stalin
Heads of the Secret Police
Khrushchev in Action
The Anti-Party Group
Some Members of the Party's Inner Circle
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Democratic Centralism
"The Communist Party must be built on the basis of democratic central-
ism. The main principles of democratic centralism are the election of the
upper body by the lower body; the absolute compulsory nature of the decisions
of the upper body for the lower bo4y/ the latter being subordinated to the
former; and the existence of an authoritative party center as the undisputed
direct institution of the party life from one congress to another."
Resolution of the Second Congress of the
Communist International, 1920
The Old
'Bolsheviks
Communist Morality
"When people talk to us about morality we say: For the Communist,
morality consists entirely of compact united discipline and conscious mass
struggle against the exploiters...We say that our morality is entirely sub-
ordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat."
V. I. Lenin -- "Tasks of the Youth League"
October 20, 1920
Stalin (far left) shown with
Old Bolsheviks (left to right)
Alexei Rykov, Lean Kamenev,
and Gregory Zinoviev, a trio
later purged by the dictator.
One-Party System
"The class which took political power in its hands did so knowing that
it took this power alone. This is contained in the concept dictatorship of
the proletariat. This concept has meaning only when a single class knows
that it alone is taking political power in its hands and does not deceive
itself or others with talk of 'populsr, elected' government 'sanctified by
the whole people'."
V. I. Lenin, speech to Transport Workers
March 27/ 1921
Nikolai Bukharin Yakov Svi.irdlov
Valerian Kuibyshev G. K. Ordzhonikidze
Among early leaders of Russian communism was a group of revolutionaries now commonly known
as "Old Bolsheviks." Many of them later were purge victims. included (left to right) are
Nikolai Bukharin, Yakov Sverdlov, Valerian Kuibyshev, and G. K. Ordzhonikidze; below
(left), Leon Trotsky in exile, shortly before his assassination by a Stalin agent in -
Mexico, 1940. At right, Trotsky is shown reviewing Red troops during the revolutionary
period. His fame as a military leader is ignored by Communists who execrate "Trotskyism."
Communist Culture
"The entire course of our cultural development is determined by the
policy of the Soviet state, the Bolshevik world outlook."
Bolshevik, No. 10, 1947
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Leon Trotsky in exile. Trotsky as army commander during Revolution.
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The Party's Founder
and His Heirs
The Formative Years
During the revolutionary period, Lenin swayed crowds
of workers and soldiers by propagating apt slogans.
V. I. Lenin (1870-1924), founder of
Soviet Communism, successfully led
his minority Bolshevik Party in the
1917 Revolution and inaugurated the
single-party rule characteristic of
Communist regimes. He also produced
a body of Communist doctrine which
provides basic criteria, in theory
and practice, for Communist parties
everywhere. The principles authored
by Lenin include "iron discipline"
as a duty for all party members and
"democratic centralism," or control
by a small elite group -- the cen-
tral committee -- over the party
and its administrative organs,
policies and programs. Lenin is
venerated by all Communists above
._other leaders, living or dead,
throughout the world.
Lenin's return to Moscow from exile in April
1917, as pictured in the idealized painting
at left, was a prelude to the November coup
by Lenin's well-organized followers, but the
popular elections after the Revolution gave
the Bolsheviks only one fourth of the votes.
In January 1315 Lenin forcibly dissolved the
Constituent Assembly, ending free elections
in Soviet Russia. Thereafter, Bolshevik rule
was maintained by Red troops, such as those
shown below, while other Communist elements,
on orders from the party leaders, engaged
in looting churches and persecuting priests.
This was the first anti-religious campaign
by Communists, who oppose all faiths.
Churches were stripped of religious
treasures in the atheistic campaign.
Red troops patrolled streets during
the November Revolution, 1917.
Josef Stalin (1879-1953), adapted Lenin's
theories in building a totalitarian state
under his absolute control. He made use of
the party apparatus in eliminating all his
rivals through a series of purges carried
out by the secret police in 1936-1938.
Nikita Khrushchev (1894- ), emerged as
the dominant party leader shortly after the
death of Stalin in 1953. Drastic revamping
of industry and agriculture has marked his
regime, combined with an aggressive foreign
policy centering mainly in economic fields.
The picture of Stalin and Lenin (at right)
was widely circulated after Stalin gained
absolute power, in order to imply that he
was Lenin's sole heir in party leadership,
but Lenin's own words indicated distrust
of the youthful Stalin. As dictator, Stalin
used all the party's propaganda facilities
to enhance his role in the party and state.
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During the collectivization drive, 1929-1931, millions of farmers
lost their land. Individual farmers or kulaks (shown above) were
persecuted, deprived of all possessions and exiled to Siberia.
Khrushchev in the 1930's was
a valued assistant of Stalin.
Pallbearers at the funeral of
Stalin in March 1953 included
(extreme right) Serie,
(center) Malenkov, Stalin's
son ,Gen. Vassily Stalin,
( beh nk Malenkov) Molotov,
Bulganin and Kaganovich.
Berle we's later executed and
the others have been removed
from their high positions.
At Yalta in 1945, Molotov
was an adviser to Stalin.
The Era
of Stalin
For more than three decades
Stalin was the dominant
leader of the Soviet Union
and for most of that time,
an absolute dictator who
liquidated all his rivals,
pushed collectivization at
the cost of ten million or
more lives, inaugurated a
ruthless program for heavy
industry at the expense of
consumer goods, destroyed
the power of trade unions,
and turned the USSR into a
totalitarian police state.
His faithful lieutenants
included such party aides
as Molotov, Malenkov, and
.Kaganovi ch. In the later
stages of Stalin's career
police chief Beria helped
secure the dictatorship.
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Heads of the Secret Police
Following the Bolshevik power seizure in 1917,
Lenin's regime established the secret police
to protect the proletarian dictatorship and
crush the party's political opponents. First
of the variously named police organizations
was the Cheka (1918-1922), headed by Felix
Dzerzhinsky, who set the pattern for police
terrorism and extra-legal activities which
characterized Communist police organizations
until the downfall of Beria in 1953. Up to
that year, the secret police system comprised
a huge complex of functions and responsibility
involving forced labor and its output. Since
then, the Committee of State Security (KGB)
has exercised a decreased authority.
Genrikh Yagoda, police head
during the purges, was himself
arrested and shot in 1938.
Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877-1926) was noted for
administrative ability and ruthless methods.
Nikolai Yezhov followed Yagoda,
held the title for two years,
and then disappeared.
en. Ivan Serov, police chief through
1958, was associated with Baltic
and Hungarian police terrorism.
Ldyrenti Beria ruled a vast
police empire under Stalin,
but was liquidated in 1953.
Alexander Shelepin, present head
of the KGB, was a leading figure
in Communist youth movements.
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Khrushchev in May 1955 headed a delegation to Yugoslavia,
marking a temporary reconciliation with President Tito.
At the 20th CPSU congress in February 1956, Khrushchev
delivered an electrifying speech assailing the late
dictator Stalin for promoting the "cult of personality."
At the 21st CPSU congress in
February 1959, Khrushchev is
shown applauding a speaker
during the final session. The
main topic' of discussion
was the Seven-Year Plan.
Khrushchev in Action
After Khrushchev achieved control
of the party central committee, he
emphasized "unity and discipline"
as party aims. He also overhauled
the economic ministries, initiated
industrial decentralization plans
and revamped the collective farms.
Extensive changes in education are
in process of development. Cultural
fields have been a frequent topic
of his pronouncements, stressing
adherence to the party line. The
party chief has made many visits
to other countries in pursuit of
Soviet foreign policy objectives
connected with trade expansion in
the less-developed countries.
Before the "anti-party" purge,
Khrushchev (left) and Mikoyan
(right) were close associates of
then Premier Bulganin (center).
Yetern,diplomat V. Molotov
in Stalin's day was a leading
party figure and spokesman.
Georgi Malenkov while premier
promised the Soviet people
an "era of abundance."
Lazar Kaganovich held high
posts in the party and state
from the time of Stalin.
From the death of Stalin in March 1953, the CPSU central committee was the focus
of a power struggle which moved through several stages. With Malenkov as premier,
the principle of "collective leadership" for the time being prevailed. This soon
crumbled, however, when the new leaders, fearing the vast power wielded by their
associate Beria as head of the secret police, conspired against him. In July 1953
he was arrested and in December was executed with his immediate aides. Meanwhile,
Malenkovss remaining authority was being threatened by the steady rise of first
secretary of the CPSU presidium, Khrushchev. By the spring of 1957 Khrushchev
controlled most of the party apparatus and prepared to move against his rivals.
IK,June 1957, in a sensational inner-party conflict, Khrushchevis faction won a
majority vote of the central committee plenum and ousted the "anti-party" group
comprising Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich, as well as former Foreign Minister
Shepilov. Premier Bulganinis ouster came in March 1958, when he_was replaced as
premier by Khrushchev. In 1959 no other contenders for party leadership appeared!
Pravda to Foreign Minister in 1956.
Nikolai Bulganin, as premier, often
accompanied Khrushchev on tours.
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Some Members of the .
Party's Inner Circle
At the 21st CPSU Congress,
members of thse presidium
of the central committee
are shown standing back of
Khrushchev on the rostrum.
In 1959, First Deputy Premiers Anastas Mikoyan and Frol Kozlov, along
with Party Secretaries Aleksey Kirichenko and Mikhail Suslov, were
rated the most influential members of Khrushchevls inner circle.
Kozlov and Kirichenko, both 51. and Ekaterina Furtseva, 49, were
believed to be Khrushchevls favorites among the younger Presidium
members. Otto Kuusinen, 77 and a party worker since 1904, was a
senior adviser on Communist Party relations. Former Premier Bulganin,
although Khrushchevls inseparable companion in earlier days, was in
oblivion as a disgraced member of the 1957 "anti-party" group.
tU310V
? Kirichenko
Furtseva
4S-
Chapter One
THE PARTY OF LENIN AND KHRUSHCETV
Nikita S. Khrushchev, in the course of a long speech opening the Soviet
Communist Party's 21st congress in January, 19591gave a one-sentence expla-
nation of his organization's operating philosophy.
"Our party," he said, "imparts the idea of the struggle for communism
to the consciousness of the masses in the form of quite definite tasks; it
organizes and directs the efforts of every coUssctive, of all people, toward
the solution of these tasks."
The Soviet Premier and Party Chief's brief statement merely confirmed
what has been known for a long time -- that the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (see footnote) is the most powerful single influence in the USSR and
that its program affects the day-to-day life of every citizen.
These .four aspects of the CPSU's role are widely recognized:
1. The CPSU is the USSR's sole policy-determining and enforcing body.
2. The CPSU operates and controls all Soviet governmental organizations.
3. The CPSU performs similar functions for those countries which have
been incorporated into the Soviet satellite system.
4. The CPSU has assumed the role of advisory director for all inter-
national Communist activities, although this function, normally, is more
implicit than openly declared. The implication is clear, nevertheless, that
Communist parties in other countries are expected to model their activities,
at least ideologically, after the Soviet pattern. From time to time, of
course, as in crises such as the Hungarian uprising of 1956, it is necessary
for the CPSU to take direct, instead of advisory action.
At the 7th Party Congress, March, 1918, the All-Russian Social-Democratic
Party (Bolsheviks) was renamed the All-Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks)
or RKP (b). The 14th Party Congress, in 1925, changed the name to All-Union
Communist Party or VKP (b). At the 19th Party Congress, in 1952, the VKP (b)
became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In this monograph
the last-named designation is used throughout for reasons of simplification
and clarity.
1
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- 2 Chapter One
Organizationally speaking, the CPSU's primary power is vested in its
Central Committee, a body composed of about 270 members and candidate mem-
bers. The inner circle of this group, known as the Presidium and made up
of a few individuals of top stature; is popularly regarded as being the
real decision-making and policy-formulating unit. The Central Committee as
a whole: however, has been known to overrule its Presidium. The most recent
instance of this was in 1957, when the Committee supported Khrushchev against
the "anti-party" group which had a temporary majority in the Presidium.
Another part of the top-level Party structure is the Secretariat, to
which Khrushchev has given detailed attention. This body of experienced
officials is in the potentially powerful position of managing; on a day-to-
day basis; the CPSU's highly-involved organizational affairs. The Secre-
tariat, of course, has immense practical influence through its direct line
connections with Subordinate secretariats at all levels of the party struc-
ture.
Under the over-all direction of the Central Committee, various control
aad auditing organizations help to maintain the party as a closely-supervised,
monolothic structure traditionally opposed to rival theories, ideas or methods,
especially within the Communist movement.
At the heart of the CPSU's system is the Leninist dogma of "democratic
centralism," which can be described briefly as the rule that decisions of
top officials or bodies are binding on all lower bodies and on all party mem-
bers.
To carry out its decisions, the CPSU has devised a hard core of well-
trained, dedicated individual functionaries known as cadres.
Khrushchev, it has been noted, stressed the importance of this cadre
corps at both the 20th and 21st party congre.ses. He told the 20th congress
in 1956 that a primary goal is to "improve the selection, education and
distribution of cadres." In 1959, the 21st congress was told of new plans
to "revitalize" and expand the party's cadres.
Cadres undergo intensive training and operate under what is essentially
a military discipline. Both at home and abroad, the cadre is the key unit
in the party's day-to-day activities. Cadres not only guide the work of
party and non-party organizations, including those of writers, artists, en-
tertainers, scientists, etc. -- they also are charged with maintaining a
close guard against indifference or deviationism which might crop up in any
of these groups.
The party also places high priority on its tools of propaganda and
agitation. Khruchshev, for example, has stressed the necessity to "make
fuller and more efficient use of all means of ideological influence...such
as propaganda, agitation, the press: radio, cultural-educational organiza-
tions and institutions, science, literature and the arts." In the Soviet
?
THE PARTY OF LENIN AND EHRUSHCBEV
3
"agitprop" field alone, there are almost 400,000 full-time agitators, or-
ganizers, lecturers and other activists, their work supported by some 6,000
party training schools.
It is obvious that this highly developed political machine is vastly
more complex than the minority group of radical revolutionaries which
comprised the Bolshevik party of 1917. Remarkable parallels exist, never-
theless, between the party's modus operandi today and the marking style of
Lenin's original Bolsheviks.
One of the most obvious parallels is found in the seemingly changeless
concept that opposition views can not be permitted because they would tend
to detract from the party's efficiency and effectiveness. Within days of
the Bolshevik coup of November 7, 1917, Lenin had implemented this philosophy
by rejecting various proposals that representatives of other political parties
be allowed some measure of participation in the new Bolshevik government.
Forty years later, Lenin's original theory of monolithic rule was still
apparent in the disciplinary measures taken against the "anti-party" group
of Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich? Shepilov and Bulganin.
There is another parallel in Lenin's 1917 suspension of non-Bolshevik
publications and today's practice of maintaining the Soviet press and radio
as direct extensions of the CPSU. As an illustration of continuity in party
outlook, Lenin's 1917 promise to restore freedom of the press "as soon as
the new order is consolidated" needs only to be placed alongside Premier
Khrushchev's 1957 statement that "me cannot let the press organs fall into
unreliable hands. They must be in the hands of the workers that are the
most loyal, most reliable, most staunch politically; and most devoted to
our cause.
Lenin's plan to "consolidate the new order," in other words, is still
in process.
The CPSU's practice of periodically rewriting its own history is another
outgrowth of the basic Communist view that only one policy line can be
allowed to exist at any given time. This concept is particularly useful in
handling sudden policy switches, as in 1956 when Khrushchev's secret speech
at the 20th party congress signalled the beginning of de-Stalinization and
a concentrated effort to create a new historical evaluation of the whole
Stalinist era.
The same approach can also be applied in adjusting the official reputa-
tions of men like Molotov and Malenkov, or other former party "heroes" who
fall from power or become, in the party's viewpoint; suspected of revisionism
or other "anti-party" tendencies. From the standpoint of established party
doctrine, there is nothing illogical about the exposure and denunciation of
key members of the Central Committee itself when current strategy so dictates.
Because of the CPSU's tendency to refute its own former leadership, it
is not surprising to find that only one man; V. I. Lenin, is now considered
to have been "all-wise" as both activist and theorist. Although Karl Marx
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4 Chapter One
is still honored as a sort of theoretical godfather to modern communism,
it is Lenin alone who has become the party's real symbol. Thus, while
Marxism-Leninism is still used as the Party's doctrinal label, it is the
"Leninist central Committee" which assumes responsibility and credit for
all Soviet undertakings.
In this general connection, the party's seemingly paradoxical emphasis
on "peaceful coexistence" is explained by a concept called "communist moral-
ity." The phrase simply identifies the CPSU theory that any action is
justified if it advances the cause of Communism. According to the doctrine
of "Communist morality," therefore, it becomes quite logical for the party
to advocate "peaceful coexistence" as an international policy while simul-
taneously engaged in campaigns to undermine the legitimate governments of
non-Communist nations.
The Large Soviet Encyclopedia, in an official definition, says "Com-
munist morality" is merely "the defense of the interests of the victory of
communism."
Communist morality as practiced by the CPSU, however, has proved un-
acceptable to a number of party members and sympathizers outside the Soviet
Union. Soviet intervention to end the Hungarian national uprising of 1956,
for example, had serious repercussions throughout the international Communist
movement, prompting a wholesale series of defections. One of those who broke
with communism because of Hungary was S. W. Scott, who had been New Zealand's
leading Communist for almost 30 years. Scott commented later that he had
found that many Communists had an "attitude to ethics which is intensely
dangerous." The concept that the "end justifies the means," he added, "is
all-pervasive in the Communist movement."
As one solution to its vexing problem of trying to maintain ideological
solidarity throughout the Communist movement, the CPSU has turned more and
more to a kind of Lenin-worship. The party's founder, throne) the years, has
been made into the image of a legendary hero who is above criticism. Lenin's
voluminous writings, moreover, provide party leaders with an invaluable
reservoir of quotations which can be cited, or paraphrased as is frequently
the practice, to support almost any of the CPSU's current policies.
The party has adopted a similar approach in its references to the
Bolshevik revolution of 1917. This event, which brought Lenin to power,
is now depicted as having been the direct result of a mass workers' up-
rising against Czarism. Missing from current CPSU annals are certain
historical facts, principally that Lenin's coup of November 7, 1917, was
essentinlly a counter-revolution. The Czar's actual overthrow, it will
be remembered, was accomplished some eight months earlier through a spon-
taneous, popular uprising known as the "February" revolution. Lenin was
still in exile at this time and his Bolshevik supporters were an unorganized
minority. What the Bolsheviks really accomplished by means of their No-
vember 7, 1917 take-over was to stop an eight-month-old experiment in
representative government and make possible the gradual substitution of
a system of one-party control.
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THE PARTY OF LENIN AND.KHRUSECHEV
-5
Party literature of the present, in fact, tends to gloss over the more
realistic aspects of early Communist history in favor of a highly idealized
version of the revolution as a mass triumph of the working class. Leninism,
therefore: has become less a term suggesting revolutionary violence and
intrigue and more a generalized ideological label which can be used to cloak
the party's every decision with doctrinal respectability.
It is true, however, that while many of Lenin's original ideas have been
found impractical, a large part of his realistic operating philosophy has
survived. There is a familiar ring, for example, in this March 27, 1921,
statement by the party's founder:
"The class which took political power in its hands did so knowing that
it took this power alone. This is contained in the concept 'dictatorship of
the proletariat.' This concept has meaning only when a single class knows
that it alone is taking political Power in its hands and does not deceive
itself or others with talk about 'popular, elected government sanctified by
the whole people.'"
As early as 1922, Lenin had formulated basic working policies which
differ little from those followed by the CPSU today. Lenin's principles
included: maintenance at ,all costs of the one-party system; suppression by
the party's dominant faction of all internal opposition; the use of force,
as necessary, to maintain discipline. Interestingly enough, it was Stalin
who popularized Lenin's term "iron discipline," still regularly employed in
party exhortations, Radio Moscow broadcasts and Pravda editorials.
Throuji a selective use of Lenin's methods, the CPSU has attained an
unprecedented degree of power in the USSR. It operates the Soviet government
and sets the line of development for the USSR's military forces, agriculture,
industry, education, youth activities, literature and the arts.
While the Party is literally everywhere, its comparatively small member-
ship (roughly four Percent of the Soviet Union's population) and the infini-
tesimal numbers actually engaged in mnking policy tend to give it an air of
secrecy and mystery. Thus, it has become a common practice for Soviet workers
at all levels to refer to the party leadership merely as "they." Not every-
body knows just who may be meant by "they," but nobody doubts what is meant --
whichever faction may be in control of the party at the moment.
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.1
- 6 -
Chapter TWO
"DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM," THE KEY TO PARTY POWER
The concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" comes from the
Communist Manifesto issued by Marx and Engels in 1848, but its antithesis --
"democratic centralism" -- dates from _Lenin. Both expressions are currently
used in Communist parlance, but only the last-named has meaning in terns of
party power.
At the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party, July-August 1917, some
months before the Bolshevik Revolution, new precepts were adopted which
provided that all party organizations should be built on the principles
of democratic centralism., defined in the following rules as:
(1) all directing bodies, from top to bottom: should be elected;
(2) party bodies should give periodical accounts of their activities
to respective party organizations;
(3) there should be strict party discipline and subordination of the
minority to the majority; and
(4) all decisions of higher bodies should be absolutely binding on
lower bodies and on all party members.
Although the 6th Congress ostensibly provided for democratic bodies
through elections, genuine free elections were never contemplated by Lenin,
who scorned "popillar, elected governments sanctified by the whole people."
He distrusted all electoral procedures except as they contributed to the
ascendancy of his party and to the centralist rule of its inner hierarchy.
After the forcible dissolution of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly
in January 1918, the Bolshevik (Communist) regime carried no mandate from
the people based on free elections. The establishing of the Supreme Soviet
under the 1936 Constitution proved to be meaningless; it had then, and has
now, no genuine legislative authority.
Of the "higher bodies" referred to in Rule 4 promulgated by the 6th
Bolshevik Congress, the Central Committee of the CPSU is the paramount
controlling organ of the party. The post of party secretary was used by
Stalin as a stepping-stone in his rise to dictatorial power. The title
is now held by Nikita Khrushchev, and there is every indication that he
is in complete control of the party machinery.
The 11th Congress of the CPSU, March 1922, set the autocratic pattern
of the central committee. Immediately following the Congress, Stalin on
April 4, 19220 was named secretary-general of the party.
"DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM," THE KEY TO PARTY POWER - 7 -
Lenin had found Stalin a useful subordinate in helping to carry out
his awn policies suppressing opposition; nevertheless, he began to have
misgivings in regard to Stalin's character and ambitions.
In May 1922 -- a month after Stalin's appointment -- Lenin, Stplin,
and Nikolai Bukharin, a prominent "Old Bolshevik," appeared at a trade
union congress: where they forced the union representatives to accept CPSU
control of the trade union movement. But in the following December, Lenin
was highly critical of the part played by Stalin in a controversy involving
a national Communist movement in the Georgian Soviet Republic.
In a note of December 31: 1922: Lenin wrote that a "fatal role was
played here by Stalin's haste and preoccupation with the administrative
aspect (of the Georgian situation) and also by his rage against the noto-
rious 'socialist nationalism.' Rage in general usually plays the worst
role in politics."
Lenin Ilimself favored a policy of conciliation -- "It is better to
be excessively tractable and lenient towards the national minorities than
not to be sufficiently so."
Stalin, however, in his "preoccupation" with the creation of a highly
centralized totalitarian state, detested nationalism in any form, especially
as manifested in the non-Russian Soviet republics. His "rage" against
alleged expressions of nationalism reached a climax during World War II:
when in 1944 he announced the liquidation of six autonomous regions and
republics on the grounds that they had been "traitors" to the Soviet Gov-
ernment.
Despite liberal provisions -- on paper -- in the Soviet Constitution,
for the autonomy of the constituent republics of the USSR, they are little
more than feeble replicas of the central government and subject, in the
last analysis, to the will of the CPSU.
The Central Asian national entities, nevertheless, serve a useful
propaganda purpose of Moscow. For example, at the Cairo "Afro-Asian Soli-
darity Conference," December 25, 1957 - January 1, 1958, the 15-man Soviet
delegation was composed largely of representatives of Central Asian'so-
called republics -- a circumstance that enabled the USSR to appear in the
guise of an Asian country.
The concern of Lenin and Stalin over "socialist nationalism," or
independent communism, continues to be reflected in current MOSCOW policy.
Today it is called revisionism. Tito's insistence on following his own
independent road to communism led to Moscow's break with the Yugoslav
Communist Party in 1948, and after the long-drawn feud with Tito was
patched up: it was renewed with greater bitterness in 1958.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/03/24: CIA-RDP81-01043R004200130004-3
6
Chapter TWO
"DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM," THE KEY TO PARTY POWER
The concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" comes from the
Communist Manifesto issued by Marx and Engels in 1848, but its antithesis --
"democratic centralise -- dates from Lenin. Both expressions are currently
used in Communist parlance, but only the last-named has meaning in terns of
party power.
At the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party, July-August 19172 some
months before the Bolshevik Revolution, new precepts were adopted which
provided that all party organizations should.be built on the principles
of democratic centralism, defined in the following rules as:
(1) all directing bodies, from top to bottom: should be elected;
(2) party bodies should give periodical accounts of their activities
to respective party organizations;
(3) there should be strict party discipline and subordination of the
minority to the majority; and
(4) all decisions of higher bodies should be absolutely binding on
lower bodies and on all party members.
Although the 6th Congress ostensibly provided for democratic bodies
through elections, genuine free elections were never contemplated by Lenin,
who scorned "popular, elected governments sanctified by the whole people."
He distrusted all electoral procedures except as they contributed to the
ascendancy of his party and to the centralist rule of its inner hierarchy.
After the forcible dissolution of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly
in January 1918, the Bolshevik (Communist) regime carried no mandate from
the people based on free elections. The establishing of the Supreme Soviet
under the 1936 Constitution proved to be meaningless; it had then: and has
now: no genuine legislative authority.
Of the "higher bodies" referred to in Rule 4 promulgated by the 6th
Bolshevik Congress, the Central Committee of the CPSU is the paramount
controlling organ of the party. The post of party secretary was used by
Stalin as a stepping-stone in his rise to dictatorial power. The title
is now held by Nikita Khrushchev, and there is every indication that he
is in complete control of the party machinery.
The 11th Congress of the CPSU: March 1922: set the autocratic pattern
of the central committee. Immediately following the Congress, Stalin on
April 4, 1922, was named secretary-general of the party.
"DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM," THE KEY TO PARTY POWER - 7 -
Lenin had found Stalin a useful subordinate in helping to carry out
his own policies suppressing opposition; nevertheless, he began to have
misgivings in regard to Stalin's character and ambitions.
In May 1922 -- a Month after Stalin's appointment -- Lenin, Stalin,
and Nikolai Bukharin, a prominent "Old Bolshevik," appeared at a trade
union congress: where they forced the union representatives to accept CPSU
control of the trade union movement. But in the following December, Lenin
was highly critical of the part played by Stalin in a controversy involving
a national Communist movement in the Georgian Soviet Republic.
In a note of December 31: 1922, Lenin wrote that a "fatal role was
played here by Stalin's haste and. preoccupation with the administrative
aspect (of the Georgian situation) and also by his rage against the noto-
rious 'socialist nationalism.' Rage in general usually plays the worst
role in politics."
Lenin Ilimself favored a policy of conciliation -- "It is better to
be excessively tractable and lenient towards the national minorities than
not to be sufficiently so."
Stalin, however, in his "preoccupation" with the creation of a highly
centralized totalitarian state: detested nationalism in any form: especially
as manifested in the non-Russian Soviet republics. His "rage" against
alleged expressions of nationalism reached a climax during World War II:
when in 1944 he announced the liquidation of six autonomous regions and
republics on the grounds that they had been "traitors" to the Soviet Gov-
ernment.
Despite liberal provisions -- on paper -- in the Soviet Constitution,
for the autonomy of the constituent republics of the USSR, they are little
more than feeble replicas of the central government and subject, in the
last analysis, to the will of the CPSU.
The Central Asian national entities, nevertheless, serve a useful
propaganda purpose of Moscow. For example, at the Cairo "Afro-Asian Soli-
darity Conference," December 25, 1957 - January 1, 1958, the 15-man Soviet
delegation was composed largely of representatives of Central Asian so-
called. republics -- a circumstance that enabled the USSR to appear in the
guise of an Asian country.
The concern of Lenin and Stalin over "socialist nationalism," or
independent communism, continues to be reflected in current Moscow policy.
Today it is called revisionism. Tito's insistence on following his own
independent road to communism led to Moscow's break with the Yugoslav
Communist Party in 19482 and after the long-drawn feud with Tito was
patched up, it was renewed with greater bitterness in 1958.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/03/24: CIA-RDP81-01043R004200130004-3
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/03/24: CIA-RDP81-01043R004200130004-3
- 8 - Chapter Two
Following the decision of the Polish regime in 1956 to seek its own
"road to socialise (communism), further Soviet concessions were made, in
terms of methods and timing: not in ultimate goals. Aside from Poland:
the CPSU has shown no disposition to ease its hold on the Communist parties
of the other satellite states.
Soviet control of the satellites, as well as the Baltic states and
other annexed areas, basicRily is a military-political problem and reflects
the CPSIT's concern with the military aspects of communism, which characterized
the party from the very beginning.
It is noteworthy that although Marx and Engels pictured the proletarian
revolution in terms of workers' mass movements, Lenin and his successors used
military terms in referring to the structure and functions of the Bolshevik
or Communist Party.
In 1904, when Lenin was faced. by a split in Social Democratic ranks, he
wrote from Geneva: "To the extent that a real (workers') partris formed:
the class-conscious worker must learn to distinguish the mentality of the
soldier of the proletarian army from the mentality of the bourgeois intel-
lectual who flaunts his anarchist talk."
Stalin was even more specific. In March 1937 -- during the Moscow
purge trials -- he told the Central Committee of the CPSU:
"In our Party: if we have in mind its leading strata, there are about
3,000 to 4/000 first-rank leaders whom I would call our Party corps of
generals. Then there are 30,000 to 40:000 middle-rank leaders who are our
Party corps of officers. Then there are about 100:000 to 150:000 of the
lower-rank Party command staff who are: so to speak, our Party's non-
commissioned officers."
Stalin neglected to remind the central committee that this "party army"
had already suffered great losses through a succession of purges: and that
more were to come. During the period 1936-1938y about 25 percent of the
high-ranking officers of the Soviet Army were executed: and 75 percent of
the Supreme War Council.
First Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev told the 20th Congress of the
CPSU in his secret speech of February 25: 1956: "It was determined (by
the presidium of the central committee) that of the 139 members and candi-
dates of the Party's Central Committee who were elected at the 17th Congress,
98 persons: i.e., 70 percent, were arrested and shot, mostly in 1937-1938...
The same fate met not only the Central Committee members but the majority
(56 percent) of the delegates to the 17th Party Congress."
The Stalin purges affected not only the party and the army; in the end:
tens of thousands of persons with no party or military connections were
victims of the countrywide blood bath. Khrushchev, however: showed no
emotion over the fate of the non-party victims.
"DEMOCRATIC CENTRALIal," THE KEY TO PARTY POWER - 9
The purges carried out by Stalin: to pave the way for his absolute
dictatorship: were a by-product of the principle of democratic centralism:
coupled. with the concept of party discipline.
In a speech to the Second Congress of the Comintern (the subversive
organization of international communism, also known as the Second Inter-
national): Lenin declared:
"In the present epoch of acute civil war, the Communist Party will be
able to perform its duty only if it is organized in the most centralized
manner, only if iron discipline bordering on military discipline prevails
in it: and if its Party center (Central Committee) is a powerful organ of
authority, enjoying wide powers and the general confidence of the members
of the Party."
Shortly after the death of Lenin in 1924: CPSU Secretary-General Stalin
proclaimed: "Iron discipline in the Party is inconceivable without unity of
will, without complete and absolute unity of action on the part of all mem-
bers of the Party...It follows that the existence of factions is incompatible
either with the Party's unity or iron discipline."
Stalin used the party rules of iron discipline and absolute unity to
eliminate his first important rival, Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was expelled
from the party in 1927 and sought refuge in Mexico, where he was assassi-
nated by a Stalinist agent on August 21: 1940.
In the mass blood-letting of the Moscow trials of the 1930's most of
Stalin's former associates -- the "Old Bolsheviks" -- fell before firing
squads; so: also, the organizer of the Red Army, Marshal Tukhachevsky and
seven top generals.
In June 1953: Minister of Interior Lavrenti Beria and his close
associates were arrested by the post-Stalin leaders who, in turn, under-
went a milder purge at the hands of Party Secretary Khrushchev and his
faction four years later. (Beria was executed in December.)
Khrushchev in his report to the Supreme Soviet: May 7, 1957, on his
new decentralization program for industry, at the same time reaffirmed
the principle of democratic centralism for the party.
"Yes:" said Khrushchev, "we have not repudiated: nor do we intend to
repudiate Lenin's principle in the management of the national economy --
the principle of democratic centralism."
No months later: the same principle was invoked in the ouster of the
"anti-party" group -- Malenkov, Molotov: and Kaganovich. At the end of
October: Zhukov was removed from his Defense Ministry post and consigned
to obscurity, charged with "frustrating party control of the armed forces."
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- 10 - Chapter Two
In the course of decades of party purges in the USSR, all of the nota-
ble victims considered themselves devout followers of Marxism-Leninism, all
believed in and followed the principles of democratic centralism, party
unity, and iron discipline. But they helped to create and perpetuate a ma-
chine they could neither control nor escape.
Recently, the party organ Kammunist denounced the movement to do away
with democratic centralism within the party. The journal also censured
national Communists who would like each country to find its own road to
communism.
Of greater interest than these rebukes to revisionist attitudes is the
fact that such doctrinal heresies do exist as a challenge to orthodox Marxism-
Leninism.
?
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Chapter Three
SOVIET GOVERNMENT AS A PARTY FACADE
The 1936 Constitution of the USSR endowed the Supreme Soviet with some
25 categories of legislative powers. However, these broad powers were not
at any time exercised and exist only as nominal functions. The real focus
of power in the USSR does not lie in the Supreme Soviet or its presidium,
but in the CPSU central committee and its presidium.
The proceedings of every session of the Supreme Soviet are directed to
predetermined ends by key central committee members elected to it, but de-
spite its lack of actual authority, the Supreme Soviet is pictured in Soviet
domestic propaganda as the elective will of the people. Abroad, in propa-
ganda terms addressed to sympathetic opinion, the Supreme Soviet passes as
a "workers' parliament."
The Supreme Soviet is divided into two separate bodies -- the Council
of Nationalities and the Council of the Union. The Council of Nationalities
is made up of 25 members from each of the Union Republics, 11 from each
Autonomous Region, and one from each National Area. The Council of the
Union is composed of deputies elected on the basis of one for each election
district of approximately 300,000 population.
Direct popular elections were still being held in the 1920's, but they
were restricted to rural and urban soviets (local assemblies). The 1936
Constitution extended the suffrage privilege to the highest bodies, central
and regional, but in practice the constitutional provisions are nullified
by the method of selecting candidates.
Article 141 of the Constitution states: "The right to nominate candi-
dates is secured to public organizations and societies of the working people:
Communist Party organizations, trade unions, cooperatives, youth organi-
zations and cultural societies."
However, all these organizations are wholly dominated by the CPSU which,
at local levels, determines the eligibility of candidates through election
commissions of its own selection.
Electoral campaigns are usimlly preceded by a month or two of intensive
propaganda, by press and radio, designed to stress the importance of the
coming elections, but the only issues are those connected with party slogans,
production plans, and the like. At such times the Soviet press is filled
with exhortations such as (Pravda): "construction of the Communist society:"
"greater solidarity of the peoples of the USSR in their struggle for the
successful fulfillment of great constructive tasks set by the Party and
Government," and so forth.
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- 12 Chapter Three
Candidates are chosen at pre-election conferences of public organizations
under strict party guidance. All nominees are unanimously approved, and no
attempt is made to weigh the quOifications of one nominee against those of
another. The final list names only one candidate for each election district.
In the March 1958 elections, there were 1,378 candidates and precisely that
number of candidates were elected to the Supreme Soviet.
Another peculiarity of the Soviet electoral system is the practice of
conferring honorary nominations on CPSU leaders by an unlimited number of
constituencies. Thus Pravda on February 6: 1950, in reporting a local elec-
toral conference said:
"The meeting unanimously decided to nominate, as candidates to the Soviet
of the Union, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin: Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov,
Georgi Naxlmilianovich Malenkov, and Ivan Nikolayevich Krapivin."
Krapivin, a shop foreman and the real nominee, was designated as the
candidate after the conference had received form letters from the three no-
tables thanking them for the honor and declining the nominations. The
prestige value of districts which party leaders actually represent reflects
their standing in the party hierarchy.
For example, in the pre-election campaign of 1958, when Premier Bulganin
was assigned a candidacy in a remote and obscure district, his down-grading
in the party was obvious and his replacement as Premier came as no surprise.
Many candidates elected to the Supreme Soviet are not party members, but
its controlling body: the Presidium, is made up exclusively of CPSU members.
(The 31-member Supreme Soviet Presidium, of which Klementi E. Voroshilov is
Chairman, should not be confused with the presidium of the CPSU central com-
mittee. The central committee has 125 full members and 119 candidate members.
Its presidium consists of 15 full and 10 candidate members. About half of
the members of the CPSU central committee presidium are also on the Supreme
Soviet Presidium; the rest are deputies heading important commissions.)
Under the Constitution, the Supreme Soviet is vested with plenary
powers in every field of legislation: but in practice its plenum merely
confirms or ratifies decisions taken by the Presidium, and this body in
turn is a facade for the CPSU central committee, the de facto governing
authority of the USSR.
Since the outcome of all election campaigns is a foregone conclusion --
government candidates win by more than 99 percent (in the last election, by
99.97 percent) -- the question may be raised as to why the Soviet Government,
and all other Communist regimes, are at such pains to hold elections.
There are two main reasons for this exercise in mass obedience.
First, there is the announced purpose of emphasizing the "unity" between
the people and the Communist leadership. Secondly, under balloting con-
ditions prevailing under communism, a voter, in ordek to register
Ll
?11.
SOVIET GO
I DI" I IIH
AS A PARTY FACADE
-13-
opposition to a candidate, must enter a special roam or booth for this pur-
pose. In such an instance, his name can be taken down by officials present.
Thus: by and large, the voting process -- which is practically manda-
tory -- is also a test of loyalty to the regime.
From the days of Lenin, the real struggle for power has always taken
place within the political zone that cannot be touched by any pretense of
popular mandate or responsibility -- the CPSU: the government bureaucracy:
and such appendages as the armed services and the secret police. Since the
death of Stalin in 1953, this struggle has narrowed down to the CPSU central
committee.
In 1923: while Lenin was incapacitated, the 12th Party Congress adopted
a resolution offered by Gregory Zinoviev, supported by Leo Kamenev and Stalin,
which proclaimpd:
"The dictatorship of the working class can be guaranteed only in the
form of a dictatorship of its vanguard, i.e.: the Party."
This was the first public assertion of the primacy of the CPSU's
political-organizational apparatus -- the party machine -- over the party
itself and the state. Following the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin pre-
pared to crush all his potential rivals for power, but he moved slowly aad
carefully until the "Great Purge" of 1936-1938.
Stalin liquidated the Zinoviev-Kamenev faction in 1936, and then turned
on the group that included such "Old Bolsheviks" as Alexei Rykov, Nikolai
Bukharin, and Mikhail Tomsky (the Communist trade union leader who committed
suicide). Bukharin, Rykov, and NKVD chief Yagoda were executed in March
1938.
During the series of Moscow purge trials, more than 70 percent of the
members and candidate members of the CPSU central committee and 60 percent
of the delegates at the 17th Party Congress (1934) were liquidated. The
Soviet Army's officer corps and high command were decimated, and millions
of minor victims in no way connected with the leaders were executed or sent
to forced labor camps.
Controlling all the levers of power, Dictator 8talin faced the 18th
Party Congress in March 1939 with a new, hand-picked central committee.
However, to insure that the principle of democratic centralism would be
observed, he gave the secret police commissar of Interior Lavrenti Beria
the official right to investigate and, if need be, arrest and prosecute
members of the CPSU central committee itself. This was an "unconstitutional"
invasion of the "rights" of party members,, but not essentially different from
Stalin's previous acts.
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- 14 Chapter Three
During World War II: the subordinate role of the party machine remained
practically unchanged: but after the war: Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov
tried to rebuild the party apparatus as an even stronger political force.
Zhdanov died on August 31, 1948, and subsequently: all of his close
associates in the central committee and in his own Leningrad organization
were liquidated. This is known as the "Leningrad Case," referred to by
Khrushchev in his attack on the "cult of personality" in 1956.
Immediately after Stalin's death, a realignment of intra-party elements
took place. At the first central committee plenum on March 14: 1953, Malenkov,
who then held the posts of Premier and ranking secretary of the party presid-
ium, yielded the latter title to a less conspicuous party figure, Nikita
Khrushchev. In September, Khrushchev became first secretary of the central
committee -- from which vantage point he began his tortuous ascent to domi-
nation of the party.
The first target of Khrushchev -- supported by his colleagues in
"collective leadership" -- was Minister of Interior Berle, whose vast powers,
embodied in the MVD: posed a grave threat to both the government bureaucracy
and the party machine. The liquidation of Berle, who was arrested on July 10,
1953 (charged with treason) and executed with other accomplices on December 23,
shattered the hold of the secret police.
From the time that Khrushchev became first secretary of the central
committee until the deposition of Malenkov as Premier on February 8, 19551
there was a steady decline in the strength of the bureaucracy vis-a-vis the
party apparatus: although this was not fully apparent for another two years.
During this period: Khrushchev was actively engaged in reshuffling the
party organization. He secured the dismissal of large numbers of party
secretaries in the union republics and replaced them with his own appointees.
At the same time, the farm bureaus of the regional soviets were abolished and
the vital area of agricultural control passed to the jurisdiction of special
party secretaries who were Khrushchev supporters.
When the 20th Party Congress met in February 1956, the party apparatus
already was largely in the hands of Khrushchev and his central committee
faction: the presidium secretariat.
At the 20th Congress, Deputy Premier Anasta Mikoyan declared:
"Our Party now at its disposal a strongly welded leading collective
(leadership)...But the most important thing is that this collective, guided
by Lenin's idea, Lenin's principles of the Party's structure and the Party's
leadership, has within a short space of time achieved the restoration of
Lenin's norms of Party life from top to bottom." This statement was window-
dressing to Khrushchev's bid for power in the party.
Conti. - Caniti,pri r. nv Aoproved for Release ? 50-Yr
SOVIET GOVERNMENT AS A PARTY FACADE - 15 -
Until mid-1955, central government officials who were members of the
Council of Ministers, as well as members of the CPSU central committee
presidium, played a stronger role than members of the central committee
secretariat headed by Khrushchev.
Khrushchev was an exception to the dual functions of the upper party
hierarchy. In his own words: "concentrating on work in the central commit-
tee" gave him no time to perform other administrative duties. However, his
preoccupation with the central committee did give him an opportunity to
undermine the administrative bureaucracy which, by 1957, had grown to huge
OimAnsions. Thus, when he moved against the bureaucrats, he did so in the
name of efficiency.
On March 29, 1957/ the CPSU central committee issued Khrushchev's
report on the "Further Organizational Improvement of Management of Industry
and Construction" -- the now-famous "decentralization" plan, which was
adopted at a special session of the Supreme Soviet on May 10.
Khrushchev's program called for abolishing more than half of the 52
All-Union central ministries and for setting up approximately a hundred
"councils of national economy" based: he said, on the "Leniniat principle of
democratic centralism in the field of economic construction." However,
decentralization was only part of Khrushchev's scheme; it also struck a
powerful blow at ministerial prestige and prerogatives.
In June came the dramatic downfall of the "anti-party" group -- Molotov,
Malenkov, and Kaganovich, all of wham were central government officials.
Linked to the fate of these conspirators was Shepilov, who was deprived of
his post of candidate member of the presidium.
Having disposed of his opponents in the bureaucracy -- reportedly-with
the aid and concurrence of Marshal G. K. Zhukov Khrushchev prepared to
eliminate the Marshal himself, who symbolized another lever of power in the
Communist system -- the Soviet Army.
On October 26: the day when Zhukov returned from a visit to Yugoslavia
and Albania, Moscow announced that he had been replaced as Minister of
Defense. A week later, his expulsion from the CPSU presidium was announced
together with charges leveled against him by the central committee.
Of the four major offenses of which Zhukov was found guilty by the
central committee, the first was the most significant -- that he had
"frustrated party control of the armed forces."
With Zhukov '5 downfall: the power of the remaining presidium members
,4as only a shadow of what it had been, following Stalin's death. Six of the
10 veteran presidium members -- the "heirs of Stalin" -- had been deposed:
and the party machine headed by Khrushchev had in turn imposed its will on
the ministerial bureaucracy, the army, and the presidium itself.
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-16-
Chapter Three
The party machine: built on the secretariat of the CPSU central committee
presidium, includes a score of executive departments and a highly disciplined
hierarchy of subordinate secretaries and executive staffs, which operate from
republic (provincial) levels down to the oblasts (regional) and lesser admin-
istrative and political units of the USSR.
Directly under the secretariat is the "party apparatus," or executive
staff, ythose channels of power and authority extend to every aspect of Soviet
life and reach out even beyond the Soviet orbit. One of the most important
of the central committee's subordinate organs is the Department for Agitation
and Propaganda (Agitprop).
Agitprop has performed a vital service to Khrushchev in his rise to
power: as it did for Stalin. Controlling all information and propaganda
media, Agitprop outlets have furnished Khrushchev with a sounding board and
concurrently have bestowed on him an aura of preeminence appropriate to his
party standing.
The assumption of the premiership by Khrushchev -- conducted in the
name of the central committee and ratified by the Supreme Soviet -- gave
official sanction to the maneuvers whereby he has won a position in the
CPSU and Soviet Government resembling in some respects that of Stalin, but
differing in others. The rise of Khrushchev to the position of authority
he now enjoys to a large extent is the fruit of his political maneuvering
within the CPSU, starting with his secretaryship of the Ukrainian party
organization, 1938-1949.
The core of Khrushchev's "machine" within the 14-member central com-
mittee presidium is made up chiefly of Ukrainian party notables: eight of
whom served under him in the earlier period. Thus, the Soviet Government
in effect is a facade for a tightly knit political machine within the CPSU
central committee.
17
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17
Chapter Four
Thi b; SOVIET POLICE SYSTEM
The principal architect of present-day communism -- V. I. Lenin -- in
a speech at the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), March 8, 1918, made the statement:
"Soviet power is a new type of state, in which there is no bureaucracy,
no police: no standing army: and in which bourgeois democracy is replaced by
a new democracy -- a democracy which brings to the forefront the vanguard of
the toiling masses: turning them into legislators, executives, and a military
guard, and which creates an apparatus capable of re-educating the masses."
Whether or not Lenin believed this, he had already been instrumental
in framing a political and administrative system that would negate every
item of his assertion. Chief of the weapons used by Lenin's Bolsheviks to
forge absolute power was the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, known
as the Cheka -- first of the secret police organizations set up in the USSR.
The Cheka was established by a decree of the Council of People's Com-
missars of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) on Decem-
ber 20, 1917. Directed to combat "counterrevolution, sabotage and specula-
tion," the RSFSR Cheka was empowered to supervise local Chekas and officially
was subordinate to the Council of People's Commissars, the supreme govern-
mental body.
During its existence: 1918-1922, the Cheka, like its successors, had a
high degree of independent authority in the interpretation of Soviet laws
and party regulations as well as in administrative matters. Since it was
given broad powers to suppress "counter-revolutionaries," its victims in-
cluded thousands of political opponents of the Communists.
A 1924 report by the Soviet Supreme Court showed that almost half of
those executed by Chekists were peasants; about 25 percent were workers;
intellectuals and office workers made up 20 percent of the death list and
"others," 8.5 percent.
The terroristic activities of the Cheka were explained. by Lenin as
necessary to safeguard the dictatorship of the proletariat. In November
1918 he said:
"The Cheka directly realizes the dictatorship of the proletariat and
in this respect its role is inestimable. There is no other way to the
liberation of the masses save by suppressing the exploiters." However,
the great majority of Cheka victims were not exploiters in any sense; they
were simply non-Bolsheviks. Chekas sprang up throughout the Soviet Union
and were used by local or regional Communist parties to terrorize the
people into accepting Communist rule.
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When the Civil War ended: the Soviet Government was eager to achieve
domestic stability and placate world opinion. Under a decree of February 6,
1922: the Cheka was abolished and its place was taken by the State Political
Administration, or GPU.
The GPU lost certain Cheka functions when some categories of crime were
transferred to the "People's Courts" for adjudication. Whatever the official
or de facto powers of the Cheka and GPU: their basic characteristic -- un-
bridlea?ffiqvolutionary" terrorism -- was fixed by the ruthless methods of
their first chief: Felix Dzerzhinsky, who established a pattern followed by
succeeding heads of the secret police.
When the first Soviet Constitution was adopted in January 1924: the
GPU ceased to exist, but its personnel was absorbed by the new United State
Political Aaministration, or OGPU: which was an All-Union organ.
With the establishment of the OGPU: again headed by Dzerzhinsky, there
was created a vast network of police controls and secret tribunals which
dispensed justice: according to OGPU standards. Gradnelly, every citizen
from factory worker and peasant to party bureaucrat -- was subject to the
probing and possible arrest and trial by various OGPU organs and agents.
This accretion of powers is shown by the record: the system of forced
labor camps, initiated in 1918, was centralized under the OGPU in 1924;
frontier areas became a responsibility of the OGPU guards in 1927/ the in-
ternal passport system was introduced in 1932 as part of OGPU's operations
and in the same year the regular police force or Militia was placed under
the OGPU.
=Ilan
The OGPU's most drastic mission was to carry out Stalin's decree ordering
the collectivization of all Soviet farms. The mass persecutions by OGPU agents
and deportations of peasants, 1929-1933: numbered millions of victims.
Stalin later told British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that forced
industrialization and collectivization cost the USSR 10 million lives; in
addition, other millions filled the OGPU-run forced labor camps.
In July 1934: the OGPU was renamed the Peoples Commissariat of Internal
Affairs (NKVD), which retained control of all Soviet police forces up to
February 1941. During this seven-year period, the NKVD took on the complex
pattern of functions, powers and activities which, with some changesschar-
acterized the Soviet police system until the downfall of Minister of
Interior Lavrenti Beria in July 1953.
Many NKVD activities were the result of its control of the huge forced
labor camps: which provided cheap and expendable labor for building rail-
roads: constructing irrigation systems: lumbering: mining, etc. Coal, gold
and other metals, forest products: fisheries and other basic natural resources
of the USSR comprised part of the vast economic-police empire of the NKVD:
which functioned almost as a state within a state.
I
fHh SOVIET POLICE SYSTEM
-19-
The NKVD's most dreaded function -- that of investigation: interroga-
tion and secret trials -- was brought into full play during the Moscow purge
trials of 1936-1938. Under Stalin's overall direction: the MKVD was judge:
jury and executioner. In this series of purges, the CPSU leadership was
decimated and the armed forces were shorn of most of their higher officers.
Before this period of mass executions ran its course: the MKVD chief,
Genrikh Yagoda,was himself accused of intriguing with conspirators and shot
in 1936. His successor, Mikolai Yezhov, lasted for two more violent years
and then disappeared.
In 1938 Stalin appointed a fellow Georgian, Lavrenti Beria, to head
the NKVD police organization. Beria: who had been a member of the party's
central committee for four years, rose rapidly in the party ranks.
During the war years: Beria served as Commissar General for National
Security and, after April 1943, he held two redesignated posts -- Minister
of Interior (MVD) and Minister for State Security (IB) -- until his arrest
in July 1953. (See footnote.)
In a report to the 18th Congress of the CPSU, February 1939, Stalin
acknowledged mistakes in respect to the purges: but explained complacently:
"Nevertheless:the purge of 1933-1936 was unavoidable and its results on the
whole were beneficial. Our Party is now somewhat smaller in membership:
but on the other hand: it is better in quality."
The purges to which Stalin referred were relatively minor and involved
no such large-scale bloodshed as those in the late 1930's which he failed to
mention.
Starting with the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland in 1939 and of
the Baltic states in 1940, the NKVD was responsible for the mass deportations
and police terrorism in all the newly conquered lands. The barbarous measures
taken by the MKVD in the Baltic Republics were the responsibility of General
Ivan Serov, then Deputy Commissar and later chief of the Soviet secret police.
(General Serov also was reported to have had a hand in the Soviet suppression
of the Hungarian freedom rebellion in November 1956. In December 1958, Serov
was replaced by Alexander Shelepin, former head of the Communist Youth Organ-
ization or Komsomol.)
After the wartime reorganization of the Ministry of Internal Affairs:
Beria coordinated and directed the work of both the MVD and the MGB -- a
situation that gave him unparalleled powers, limited only by the decisions
of Dictator Stalin.
During World War II: certain changes took place in the official designation
of the NKVD. On February 3, 1941, it had been divided into two People's
Commissariats, that for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and that for State Security
(NKGB). In 1946, because of the redesignation of the People's Commissariats
as Ministries, the NKVD and the NKGB became: respectively, the MVD (Ministry
of Internal Affairs) and MGB (Ministry of State Security).
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- 20 - Chapter Four
The military strength of the combined organizations under Beria's control
came to an impressive total. A defecting MGB officer estimated that the MGB
alone had about one million troops of various categories in 1953. But this
concentration of police and military powers proved Beria's undoing. After
Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria was a member of the "collective leader-
ship" that took over the reins of government. But the very existence of such
an untrammeled authority as that wielded by Beria posed a threat to the new
leaders, and in July 1953 they conspired in his arrest.
Following the execution of Beria in December 1953: the MVD was shorn of
Most of its economic powers and, in March 1954, the internal security or
secret police functions were transferred to the Committee of State Security
(KGB) under the Council of Ministers -- a potent arm of the CPSU. Thus the
central committee regained control of the police system, including Counter-
intelligence, one of its most important functions. ?
The subordinate relation of the KGB to the CPSU was again emphasized at
an All-Union conference of leading officials of the police organization: held
in Moscow in May 1959. The conference heard a report by KGB Chairman Shelepin
and an address by A. I. Kirichenko, a member of the CPSU central committee
presidium.
Of significance is the letter sent by the KGB leaders to the CPSU central
committee, which was published in Pravda on May 18. This communication in
effect was a policy statement -- an unprecedented action for the KGB. The
letter said in part:
"The Twenty-first Party Congress comprehensively defined the role and
place of the state security organs in the system of the Soviet state and
their tasks as political organs of the Party under modern conditions, during
the period of the construction on a broad front of a Communist society in
our country."
The KGB letter stated further: "Soviet Cheka officials (see footnote)
have interpreted this as a fighting program for their activities, as a demand
on the part of their own Communist Party to hoist the banner of revolutionary
vigilance even higher...We Soviet Cheka officials well understand that a
curtailment of our punitive functions within the country by no means signifies
that we have less work to do or that the efforts of our enemies have slackened...
Aggressive imperialistic states have at the present time raised subversive
activity against the USSR and countries of the socialist camp to the level
of state policy..."
CHEKA is the Russian language abbreviation for the Extraordinary Commission
for the Struggle with Counter-Revolution. Although the official designation
of the Soviet internal security police has been changed several times since
it was established, the term Cheka is still commonly used to describe the
secret police and its personnel.
IhE SOVIET POLICE SYSTEM - 21 -
"Under these circumstances," the KGB letter added, "we are obliged to
reply to the active efforts of our enemies with decisive counter-blows by
the organs of state security and to direct the point of the proletarian
sword primarily against the agents planted in the USSR and the countries
of the socialist camp." This excerpt points to domination by the KGB over
the police organizations of the satellite countries.
In the 1959 KGB communication to the CPSU, the name of the Cheka's
first chief, Felix Dzerzhinsky, is invoked as a model for the present police
organization to emulate. The passage states:
"In the future we shall continue to perfect the forms and working
methods of the Cheka...to educate all officials of the state security organs
in the spirit of unlimited devotion to the Communist Party...in the spirit
of the glorious traditions of the All-Union Cheka, and to imbue our entire
activity with the style and working methods of the brilliant Bolshevik-
Leninist F. E. Dzerzhinsky."
The KGB policj statement implies that there are no internal enemies
within the USSR. However, any individual who furthers the activities of
external agents, even involuntarily, may be charged with aiding and abetting
enemy agents. The mention. of Dzerzhinsky and his methods is significant
because under him the Cheka exercised authority and powers that were inde-
pendent of the courts.
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22
Chapter Five
LABOR IN THE SOVIET STATE
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) speaks to labor with two
voices, depending on whether Communist spokesmen are discussing labor in the
free world or within the Communist bloc.
The gist of the official Communist thesis is: first, that all workers
under capitalism are exploited, whereas, in the "workers' state" (under
communism) they enjoy all the freedoms ascribed to them, in Marxist-
Leninist ideology, under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
A further contention of Communists is that, as a result of the "Great
October Revolution" -- the Bolshevik power seizure of November 7, 1917 --
a Communist government was established in the USSR, which expresses the
collective will of workers and peasants and is responsive to their needs.
On a worldwide basis, the CPSU exerts a dominant influence in the World
Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), whose affiliates in the free world are
controlled by Communists or fellow travelers. The picture of working-class
life under "scientific socialism" (communism), presented by WFTU organizers
and propagandists, differs materially from the actual situation of labor in
the USSR.
This situation is not due solely to the governing bureaucracy or to the
hierarchical structure of the CPSU itself; the subordinate place of labor in
the USSR -- except as a means of production -- stems from the policies of
Lenin.
During the period of political turmoil attending the Bolshevik Revolu-
tion, Lenin's followers used the slogan "All power to the soviets!" as a
means of gaining the support of the workers' councils (soviets) which had
sprung up in Russian industrial centers in 1917.
However, Lenin distrusted the soviets, as he did all manifestations
of popular or democratic sentiment. He also viewed the trade unions as
potential competitors for power in the emerging new order. Lenin's pri-
mary allegiance, in fact, was not to the workers apostrophized in the
Marx-Engels Communist Manifesto ("Workers of the world, unite!"), but to
the Bolshevik Party in its "vanguard role" of leading the proletarian
revolution.
Although Communists, the world over, pay lip service to the principles
of the Communist Manifesto, all Communist regimes follow Lenin's example in
their treatment of the workers.
LABOR IN THE SOVIET STATE - 23 -
Following Lenin's forcible dissolution of the All-Russian Constituent
Assembly in January 1918, a period of economic chaos set in, soon aggravated
by civil war. In April, the Central Council of Trade Unions -- under the
prodding of Lenin -- decreed the introduction of "work norms" (required
standards of work performance), piece rates and bonuses. These became per-
manent features of labor under communism.
During 1920, unrest among trade union rank-and-file members came to a
head in the Workers' Opposition, an organization that called for trade-
union direction of industry, democratic rule in the CPSU, and participation
in government. These labor dissidents, however, were beaten down at the
10th Communist Party Congress in March 1921 and their platform was condemned
as a "complete rupture with Marxism and Communism."
Lenin's victory in the party congress came at a time when the sailors
of the Kronstadt Naval Base, who had helped Lenin to power, were demanding
new elections by secret ballot, free speech, freedom of the press, free trade
unions and an end to political commissars in the armed forces.
Under Lenin's orders, the Kronstadt uprising was brutally suppressed by
Red troops led by Leon Trotsky and Mikhail Tukhachevsky. (Marshal Tukhachevsky
was liquidated by Stalin in June 1937).
The trade unions under the militant leadership of H.P. Tomsky still
retained a considerable degree of independent action, but the 10th Party
Congress, spurred by Lenin, initiated the first of a series of party purges,
including the ousting of those who favored a strong role for labor in
government.
In May 1921, Tomsky was temporarily dismissed as chairman of the Central
Council of Trade Unions. Although he was reinstated, he was gradually re-
duced to obscurity in party matters. In June 1929 (with Stalin in control
of the CPSU), Tomsky was removed as head of the trade unions and in July 1930
he was dropped from the Politburo. During the first of the Moscow purge trials,
in August 1936, he committed suicide.
The political and administrative impotence of the trade unions, which
Lenin had fostered, was brought to completion by Stalin. Thus, in 1940, the
leading authority on Soviet law, A. I. Denisov, accurately described the
status of the unions when he wrote:
"Formally, the Soviet trade unions are not a (Communis c) Party organi-
zation but, in fact, they are carrying out the directives of the Party. All
leading organs of the trade unions consist primarily of Communists who execute
the Party line in the entire work of the trade unions."
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All the characteristics of labor under communism -- the work norm system,
piece rates based on the norms, and "socialist emulation," or production
speed-up drives -- were established in the early 1920's and perfected in the
mid-1930's.
During World War II, the few remaining rights of the workers were
abolished, and all infractions of "labor discipline" were subject to harsh
penalties under the Penal Code. Many of these punitive measures were repealed
after the death of Stalin but the more "liberal" policy toward labor of the
post-Stalin period does not basically alter the status of the trade unions as
an arm of the state's enforcement and administrative machinery.
State domination of trade unions, as developed in the USSR, characterizes
all Sino-Soviet Communist regimes. Under this system, plant elections have
no meaning ether than acceptance by the workers of candidates whom they can
neither freely choose nor refuse. Union activities are confined to the settle-
ment of minor grievances, drives for "socialist emulation" (higher productivity),
and carrying out state welfare programs.
The work norm principle is closely associated with the term "socialist
competition" or "emulation." In the 1930's the speed-up technique was intro-
duced by using pace-setters, known as Stakhanovites (from Stakhanov, the first
noted pace-setter), who set a production record in a given operation on a
short-time basis. This then became the norm for all workers performing the
same operation.
When the term Stakhanovite fell into disrepute because of endless, exhaust-
ing emulation drives, the exhibition-work performers were called "advanced
workers" or "innovators."
By fixing the maximum performance of "advanced workers" as the minimum
required of all workers in an enterprise, base pay rates were established for
"progressive and premium" piece-work. A common device of Communist plant
management is to set a higher norm, thus effecting an actual cut in wages,
since failure to meet a "progressive norm" means loss of take-home pay.
The popular uprisings in East Germany in 1953 and in Poznan, Poland, in
1956, were sparked largely over the question of higher norms. During the
people's rebellion in Hungary in October 1956, one of the demands of the Cen-
tral Council of Hungarian Trade Unions was a "general end to production norms
with the exception of factories where workers or workers' councils desire their
maintenance."
Lenin in 1918 deprecated the Bolshevik policy of "paying high wages to
experts because of a shortage of specialists" and favored the "reduction of
all salaries to the level of the average worker." This in practice proved to
be impractical and in 1931 Stalin denounced wage equalization and called for
progressive wage scales based on piece-work output.
LABOR IN THE SOVIET STATE - 25 -
Since the 1930's, wage differentials have been used to attract skilled
workers to heavy industry and to induce their migration to new industrial cen-
ters in the Urals and eastern Siberia. At the same time, the "advanced" workers
have been rewarded with special bonuses, premiums, privileges and honors. There
has been an increasing gap between the wages of the skilled labor aristocrats
and the average worker.
In an effort to close this gap and also raise "labor productivity," CPSU
leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 proposed to abolish multiple bonuses and
replace them by a single bonus for aver-fulfillment of the work norm in each
enterprise and industry. As a further step in this direction, managers of
state enterprises have been authorized to raise production norms at any time --
thus reducing take-home pay -- if this leads to higher per capita productivity.
In Soviet factories and industries, collective agreements are entered
into between labor and management but these agreements -- between captive
labor unions and Communist management -- bear no resemblance to those in effect
in the free world.
Comments on bad working conditions appear frequently in the Soviet pro-
vincial press. As a newspaper in the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic stated
on September 7, 1956: "Some plant directors are concerned with only one
stipulation of collective a reements -- the fulfillment of production plans --
and ignore clauses concerning the protection of labor." Through all these
complaints runs the refrain: "The officials were only interested in the ful-
fillment of the production plan."
Trade union visitors from the free world, who have toured Soviet plants
and installations have been shocked by the prevalence of unhealthful and
hazardous working conditions, and the absence or poor condition of safety
equipment. Both of these situations drew sharp criticism from a delegation
representing the British National Union of Mine Workers which visited Soviet
coal mines in 1956.
A report by the British miners' chief Sam Watson cited the "shocking"
conditions in the Soviet coal mines, especially the sight of women working
underground, "some of them pushing heavy tubs of coal in wet places virtually
unfit for strong men to labor in." The visitors found women on crutches and
even pregnant women working in the mines.
When Soviet mine officials were questioned about this, they replied that
since men and women were equal in the USSR, there is no reason why women
should not work below ground." Watson pointed out in reply that the pyramids
were built by "equal men and women slaves."
Although it has long been obvious that Soviet trade unions have no real
power, their importance in the Soviet social order was extravagantly publicized
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Chapter Five
in 1957. The occasion of the first celebration, in June, was termed the
"50th anniversary of the Soviet trade union movement." This is entirely mis-
leading. During the Czarist period, the Bolsheviks had little or no influence
in the Russian trade unions, and they did not bring the union movement under
complete party domination until 1922.
For internal and external reasons, the trade unions were given a prominent
place in the party's calendar of events in 1957. Plenary sessions of the All-
Union Central Council of Trade Unions were held in June, August, and December,
The CPSU central committee awarded the affiliated unions the "Order of Lenin"
at the August meeting, and at the December conference, some 7,000 trade unions
and members received orders and medals. On December 17, the central committee
decreed an expansion of trade union activities.
The Soviet domestic situation was at least partly responsible for these
steps. Repeated official emphasis on increased labor productivity already had
indicated that a decline in worker enthusiasm was troubling the party's eco-
nomic planners. It had even been necessary, in some cases, to curtail annual
production goals. Khrushchev's new economic decentralization program also
necessitated certain readjustments in the Soviet labor union organizations.
A further attempt to raise labor productivity, per worker and per produc-
tive unit, was evident in the decision of the CPSU central committee, announced
on April 21, 1958, to introduce the 7-hour day in some branches of heavy in-
dustry and the 6-hour day for work underground, such as mining.
On the basis of the established 6-day week, the new working hours for
certain industries will be 41 hours weekly. These measures, to be carried out
in 1958-1959, call for the restudy of wage scales. Since Soviet wage scales
are tied in with work norms, workers may have to put in unpaid overtime, in
addition to working at higher speed, in order to enjoy any benefits from re-
duced hours. On the other hand, shorter hours may spur productivity by reduc-
ing absenteeism and by giving workers an added incentive to maintain their output
at the previous levels.
A clue to the labor cost element in the new policy was the proviso in
the central committee announcement..." as and when enterprises are ready to
reduce the length of the working day and introduce the new conditions of pay-
ment for work, so as not to permit the lowering of the volume of industrial
production, labor productivity, or excessive expenditure of the established
wage funds."
According to the central committee's directive, responsibility for in-
suring that production is increased -- without materially adding to total wage
expenditures in each enterprise rest with the party and trade union
organizations.
?
-
LABOR IN THE SOVIET STATE - 27 -
The CPSU central committee's objectives for the trade unions in
1958, as set forth in the committee's decisions of 1957, were to intensi-
fy Communist-run union activities and broaden their scope within and out-
side of the Communist bloc.
Soviet trade union representatives dominated the 4th World Conference
of Trade Unions, held in Leipzig, East Germany, in October 1957. Moscow's
policy is to bolster the Communist-controlled World Federation of Trade
Unions (WFTU) and, at the time, to push Communist infiltration of non-
Communist unions throughout the free world, especially in the underdeveloped
countries.
In this endeavor, every effort is being made by Communist trade union-
ists to picture the Soviet trade unions as free agencies of the Soviet
workers.
As part of the propaganda picture of "free Soviet trade unions," two
decrees issued in July 1958 are significant. On July 16, a Supreme Soviet
decree was released, which on the surface gives local factory trade unions
an increased voice in plant management. On July.18 a decree issued jointly
by the Council of Ministers and the Central Council of Trade Unions deals
with the so-called Permanent Production Conferences, which have existed
on paper for the past 35 years and are now being activated.
According to the first decree, factory trade union committees have
been granted the right to approve managerial appointments and to demand dis-
ciplining of managerial personnel who are derelict in their duty. The union
committees also may challenge the dismissal of workers by management, and
they are to have more say in regard to overtime work, welfare and safety
measures, etc.
The principal aim of the production conferences, on the other hand,
is to ensure that state enterprises "fulfill and overfulfill production
plans." These conferences, now scheduled to hold regular meetings, bear
a superficial resemblance to the Yugoslav "workers' councils," but they
are subordinate to the plant committees and therefore subject to CPSU
control.
Despite Moscow's claims that the two decrees promote "industrial demo-
cracy," there is no evidence that the hold of party cadres on plant committees
will be relaxed. On the contrary, they will have broader powers to threaten
any management that fails to carry out state production plans.
Although the factory committees may be of advantage to the workers in
certain limited respects, plant management -- taking orders from the Trade
Union Council, a CPSU mouthpiece -- will continue to fix wages, work norms
and working conditions in all Soviet industrial establishments.
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Chapter Five
In Khrushchev's report to the 21st CPSU Congress on the Seven Year
Plan, a large section was devoted to a labor program, which is tied in
with the overall production plan, 1959 through 1965. The main features
of the Seven Year Plan in respect to labor calls for: (1) mobilization
of some 11.5 million workers; (2) lowering production costs by nearly 11.5
percent; and (3) an increase in per capita productivity of 45 to 50
percent.
Criticizing the "outdated, too-low work norms," Khrushchev made it
clear that increasing the work norms will not be acccmpanied by a corre-
sponding increase in wages, percentagewise.
For example, when the work norm in an industrial plant at Sverdlovsk
was raised about 25 percent, wages increased only about 12 to 15 percent.
Workers thus had to speed up unit production by one fourth but labor costs
were held down by the small increases in wages paid out to workers. Fur-
ther, when the work norm is raised, workers who fail to meet the new
standard of production receive less take-home pay than before.
Raising wages of the 8 million workers in low-paid occupations accord-
ing to Khrushchev, will be done without increasing total wage and salary
costs. It will be done at the expense of the higher income groups of
skilled labor in preferred occupations. Current emphasis on the creation
of "Communist labor brigades" also suggests a revival of the Stakhanovite
system and "Communist competitions."
The program for labor under the Seven Year Plan was discussed by
Swiss economist Ernst Kux in an article published in Neue Zurcher Zeitung,
Zurich, Switzerland, December 16, 1958. Kux pointed out that "while
Khrushchev asserts that working hours are to be shortened without a lessen-
ing of labor salaries, it will nonetheless bring in actual fact a reduc-
tion of the real income of the laborers."
Kux commented further that "the shortening of working hours and the
raising of wages change nothing in the present situation of the Soviet
worker, and one asks, with Lenin, how 'dozens and dozens of millions of
people can be led to communism without material interest'."
Khrushchev's answer to this is the promise of greatly increased
mechanization of production but, in the words of economist Kux, "the Soviet
economy will be hampered by excessively exploited and overage factories,
by a tight labor market and by an agriculture which lags behind industrial
production."
Nevertheless, the possibility of a reasonable advance in living
standards, even though far below anticipated goals, is not to be discounted.
The price to be paid, according to Kux, lies in "new efforts on the part
of the population" resembling those of the Stalinist period.
29
Chapter Six
THE PARTY'S MANAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURE
4?11P
From the time of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, agriculture has been
one of the weakest links in the Soviet economy. This is not due solely --
as in the case of the lag in housing and consumer goods -- to continuing
emphasis on heavy industry. However, the guns-instead-of-butter philosophy of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) accounts for some agricultural
failures.
The inadequacy of farm output in general has resulted mainly from the
application of party dogmas to farming methods, organization and administration.
Party control of farming has fluctuated from time to time; a stage is fast
approaching wherein farm workers will be under a form of regimentation
similar to that of industrial labor.
Communist Party leader and Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, claims that the
Soviet collective farm (kolkhoz) system follows the agricultural principles
of Lenin. This is inaccurate. It was Stalin, and not Lenin, who forcibly
imposed collectivization on Soviet Russia's peasantry and in the process
caused the death of millions. Other millions of victims. ended their days
in Siberian forced labor camps.
In 1918 Lenin told the Council of People's Commissars: "Every intelli-
gent Socialist (Communist) will agree that socialism (communism) cannot be
imposed on the peasantry by force, and we can rely only upon the force of
example and on the masses of the peasants assimilating living experiences."
After Lenin's death in 1924: Stalin moved gradually toward personal
domination of the party and state. In 1928 he launched the first Five-Year
Plan and at the same time decreed the collectivization of agriculture. The
Stalinist policy of mass collectivization in 1929 was followed by the
decision to liquidate the main opponents of the program -- the well-to-do
farmers, known as kulaks. Under Stalin's prodding, this step was formal-
ized by a resolution of the 16th Party Congress, June-July 1930.
The kulaks, who numbered about a million peasant families, were evicted
from their farms, banished to forced labor, or executed. Although this
campaign was aimed ostensibly at the more affluent farmers, opposition to
Stalin's policy was so widespread that in many areas the entire peasant
population suffered at the hands of the OGPU (secret police).
Millions of peasants burnt their grain and slaughtered their herds.
As a result, a famine of catastrophic proportions in 1931-1932 claimed several
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million victims in southern Russia and Soviet Central Asia. Unorganized
resistance to collectivized farming continued for many years.
Khrushchev, in his report "On the Further Development of the Collective
Farm System and the Reorganization of MIS (Machine Tractor Stations)," issued
by the central committee on February 25, 1958, had this to say of the period
when the peasants were being driven into collectivization:
"'Millions of the poorest peasants and farm laborers were saved from
enslavement by kulaks, poverty and ignorance...The creation and stabilization
of the collective farm system is a victory of the Leninist general line of
our party."
The MTS network was established as an intrinsic part of the collectiviza-
tion system and up to about 1957 had been identified-with it in all Communist
thinking. The Khrushchev proposal to reorganize the MTS, approved by the
Supreme Soviet on March 31,was therefore considered revolutionary, although
since 1956 some changes in the MTS status had become apparent.
The state-operated MTS from the beginning had two primary functions --
one economic and the other political. As collective farms (kolkhozes) were
not allowed to awn their own machinery, the mission of the MTS was to service
adjacent kolkhozes by performing mechanical services -- plowing, harvesting
and the like -- on a contract basis.
The number of MTS rose from six in 1928 to more than 7,000 in 1940,
reached a peak of 9,000 in 1955, and declined to 8,000 in 1958. The recent
reduction in numbers was due to the assignment of MTS machines and personnel
to state farms (sovkhozes).
An equally important function of the MTS was to act as a political watch-
dog over the kolkhoz membership and management. Until recently, the Communist
Party was scantily represented in rural areas and among collective farm members.
Although overt opposition of peasants had ceased by the late 1930's, their dis-
satisfaction and indifference was expressed by failure to meet production
goals, neglect of collective labor, and huge losses in grain harvests.
The MTS, with virtual police powers, exercized pressure on the kolkhozes
through control of all mechanical processes, and also through the activities
of party secretaries and political instructors attached to MTS "zones."
Since 1955, the party's hold on the collectives has been tightened by
appointing party nominees as directors of the kolkhozes and by the assignment
of tens of thousands of party members to rural areas. These steps were made
somewhat palatable by granting the kolkhozes more leeway in production plan-
ing and by upping the prices paid by the state for kolkhoz products.
The Stalin period was characterized by oppressive compulsory deliveries
to the state of kolkhoz products, low prices paid to the collective farms,
THE PARTY'S MANAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURE - 31 -
and the extraction of all possible income from agriculture in order to pro-
vide the state with capital for the expansion of heavy industries.
After the death of Stalin in 1953, the kolkhozes were promised better
treatment, but there was little improvement until 1956. In the meantime, a
noteworthy transformation in the pattern of Soviet agriculture took place,
which has continued at an accelerated rate.
Since 1940, the trend in kolkhoz administration has been marked by a
steady decline in kolkhoz numbers, and a consequent increase in their average
size. Thus, in 1940 there were 235,000 collective farms; in 1955 there were
85,000, and today there are about 72,000. The larger kolkhozes, with areas
of 10,000 to 20,000 acrRs or more, may have several thousand persons living
on them, including 500 or more peasant households, artisans, araftsmen, etc.
They are, in fact, agricultural communities, rather than farms.
Another tendency has been the increasing emphasis given to the develop-
ment of the state farm (sovkhoz) system. Although the number of sovkhozes
has not shown an impressive increase -- from 4,000 in 1940 to 5,800 in 1957 --
their average size has more than tripled. As a result, the aggregate area
of state farms has grown from 8.8 percent of the total cultivated area in
the USSR in 1940 to 25 percent of the total today.
The expansion of state farm areas is due largely to the fact that since
1952 some 89 million acres of virgin and fallow land have been put to the
plow -- almost all of it organized as sovkhozes. State farms have also grown
by the absorption of adjacent collective farms -- a process that has been
stepped up in the past three years.
Unlike kolkhoz members, who have a limited vested interest in the col-
lective farm to which they belong and share its "profits," workers on state
farms have no communal rights or interests whatsoever; they are merely day
laborers employed by the state. This distinction is important because
Khrushchev favors the sovkhoz system and plainly intends to bring the kolk-
hozes into line with it.
In his "theses" on the reorganization of the MTS, Khrushchev referred
to the state farms as a "superior form of ownership" and a "higher level of
socialization." He advocated "raising the level of socialization of collective
farm ownership and bringing it up to the level of national awnership...through
a thorough consolidation and development of both state and collective farm
ownership."
Khrushchev added: "The work of collective farmers, based on a broad
application of modern machinery, will approach in its characteristics the
work of industrial workers."
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Chapter Six
This is pure Stalinist doctrine, not Leninism. Speaking at the 19th
Congress of the CPSU in 1952, Stalin attributed Soviet agricultural failures
to the existence of two kinds of property -- completely nationalized property,
such as industry, and kolkhoz property.
Stalin envisaged the future nationalization of all forms of property,
including collective farms, within a unified system of "all-national ownership."
This, he believed, would do away with the existing "money economy" and its
"market exchange." However, he was willing to tolerate the "market exchange"
as a concession to kolkhoz farmers, but was opposed to letting them awn their
farm machines.
Although Khrushchev's proposal -- to allow the kolkhozes to purchase farm
machinery from the MTS and to transform the latter into Repair Technical Sta-
tions (RI'S) as state sales and service depots -- seems completely at variance
with Stalin's principles, it amountsto the same thing, that is, the eventual
transition of collective farmers to the status of day laborers working for
the state. If the Communist Party is to exercise complete control of the kolk-
hozes, the question of ownership is immaterial.
In his theses Khrushchev pointed out that the number of party members
working in the kolkhozes increased by more than 230,000 between 1954 and 1958.
This increase, plus the 80,000 newly appointed kolkhoz directors nominated
by the party, means that the party now has a firm grip on the collective farmers
and their'management. Khrushchev stated specifically that the political func-
tion of the MTS is no longer needed -- which explains his readiness to grant
the ownership of machines to the kolkhozes.
While emphasizing the party's dominant influence over the kolkhozes,
Khrushchev also warned that further administrative purges, extending from
collective farm directors to group foremen, were in prospect. In this con-
nection, he praised "experienced workers, who have undergone a serious school-
ing in organizational work and who have proved their skill in militantly
implementing the decisions of the party and government on the upsurge of
agriculture."
Khrushchev added that collective farmers must be educated "day by day,
in a spirit of conscious discipline." This is essentially the party doctrine
applied to industrial workers.
Another Khrushchev statement, linking his point of view to Stalin's,
was his reference to the fact that although kolkhoz members work the land,
they do not awn it. Also, on the status of the indivisible funds (funds
that may not be divided among kolkhoz members as dividends), Khrushchev said
that the indivisible funds are "wealth created by the nation"; hence, they
are in the category of "all-national ownership."
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THE PARTY'S MANAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURE - 33 -
The indivisible funds are used by the kolkhozes for the purchase of
MIS machines and equipment, and the entire operation is being carried out
under strict party supervision through the party appointees in collective
farm management and other party agencies.
The collective farms, in addition to MTS purchases, are under heavy
obligations for other aspects of the reorganization program. MTS personnel
transferred to kolkhoz payrolls need additional living quarters; MTS machines
require storage facilities, and the farms have been advised to undertake an
expanded road-building program -- at their own expense.
In connection with the transformation of kolkhoz structures, there have
been broad hints that the last vestiges of private farming -- the small per-
sonal plots worked by collective farm households -- are to be liquidated.
(Recurrent official complaints charge that farmers neglect collective work-
norm requirements in favor of labor on their own plots.)
A Moscow broadcast of March 25, 1957, quoted a party functionary as
stating that, as a result of the new policy, "the practical necessity for
collective farmers with subsidiary establishments (private plots) will cease.
Receiving for their labor from the communal establishment considerably more
than from the subsidiary one, collective farmers will themselves voluntarily
forego their private cows and the cultivation of private kitchen gardens."
Further confirmation of Khrushchev's objective of creating a rural
proletariat was supplied during the 1958 session of the Supreme Soviet. A
plan for a new nationwide farm union was submitted by Dmitri Poliansky, a
member of the CPSU central committee from Krasnodar -- a wheat-growing
region. The new union would embrace workers of collective farms, state farms,
and former MTS, now the RTS.
Since Soviet trade unions are used almost exclusively as functional
arm sof the state control apparatus, a farm union would serve a like purpose.
According to Poliansky, the "organization of such a trade union would ensure
an increase in labor discipline and labor productivity." It would also erase
any remaining distinctions between collective farmers and regimented industrial
workers.
A further radical innovation in the agricultural system was announced by
Khrushchev in a speech of June 17, 1958, to the CPSU central committee. The
plan involves abolishing the previous system of compulsory deliveries of farm
products and for payment by the state in cash instead of in kind.
Offhand, the new program seems to offer inducements for greater production
by state and collective farmers. But whether collective farm workers actually
derive substantial benefits -- in consumer goods, better housing, etc. --
remains to be seen.
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Chapter Six
Cash payment in fact was essential to the complicated bookkeeping of
the state and collective farms, once they engaged in buying machinery from
the former MTS. Khrushchev explained that the new state purchase price will
vary from region to region, depending on production costs, and also from year
to year, according to harvest conditions. He stated further than the pro-
curement system henceforth must guarantee delivery to the state of an increased
volume of agricultural produce, and at reduced costs. These, in essence, are
the same criteria that govern production by state industrial establishments.
In his speech, Khrushchev declared that agricultural technicians trans-
ferred from MTS to collective farms must be responsible for bringing about
the planned "upsurge" in agriculture -- at low cost -- and intimated that the
salaries of experts will depend on their success in achieving these ends. In
explaining his program, Khrushchev often refers to the "creative initiative"
of the collective farmers and their "voluntary" efforte to increase production,
but in view of the party's iron grip on all facets of agriculture, these are
euphemisms.
By January 1959, about tO percent of the collective farms (kolkhozes) had
purchased MTS machinery, according to an official report. In another report,
Minister of Agriculture Matskevich disclosed that between January 1, and May 1,
1956, the number of collectives decreased from 76,000 to 72,000 -- a drop of
about 7.7 percent. (During the entire year, the number of kolkhozes declined
by more than 10,000.)
Taken together, these items indicate that a considerable number of
collectives have been unable to finance the purchase of MTS machines, and
that the uneconomic farms are being rapidly absorbed into larger farm units.
Recently, a further drastic change in the kolkhoz structure was suggested
in a series of articles by Soviet farm experts. Published in official
journals, these pieces are presumed to represent the thinking of the
Khrushchev faction.
In the course of the technical discussion some startling data on the col-
lective farm situation was given by the writers. Figures were cited showing
the great disparity between the income of farm workers on the most profitable
kolkhozes, compared with average farm incomes and those of farms with marginal
productivity.
Agrarian writer Ivan Vinnichenko, in an article in the June 1958 issue
of the periodical October, pointed out that it is an anachronism for some col-
lectives to pay 30 rubles for a labor-day while at the opposite extreme there
are many farms that cannot afford to pay more than one and a half rubles for
the same amount of work.
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THE PARTVS MANAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURE - 35 -
(Note: The average income for communal farm work is 3.65 rubles per work day
plus one to one and one-half kilograms of payment-in-kind. This total is
below the average subsistence level, but the deficit per worker is compensated
by products of individual garden plots.)
The "millionaire" kolkhozes are those raising preferred industrial
crops such as cotton, which have been heavily subsidized by the state, or
they are in areas of exceptional fertility and operate under competent
management.
Any attempt to introduce even modified equalization of income between
these privileged establishments and the less productive kolkhozes, which are
far more numerous, poses formidable problems for Soviet agricultural planners.
Vinnichenko also called attention to the widespread practice of hoarding
grain on the most profitable farms, in order to sell on the open market where
prices are twice as high as those paid by the state agencies. Storage of
grain surpluses in the homes of peasants, he said, results in a heavy loss
through spoilage.
The trend of the comments by the experts indicate that marked changes
in Soviet agrarian policy are in the making. These developments, it appears,
will include an all-cash system of remuneration for the more advanced farms
and a reappraisal of incomes of both the average kolkhozes and those at the
lowest economic levels.
A program offered by the experts calls for the creation of a unified
cooperative system, based on the amalgamation of large numbers of economi-
cally weak farms into a series of kolkhoz unions. The planning, purchasing,
and distribution apparatuses of several districts and even of regions would
be coordinated in a single kolkhoz union (kolkhoz soiyuz).
Such a system, while attractive
Khrushchev, would further remove the
from direct interest in the land and
the creation of huge aggregations of
cultural technocrats.
to the mass planners headed by
individual collective farm members
its products. The scheme envisages
land and equipment, directed by agri-
The goals for agriculture, announced by Khrushchev as part of the
Seven Year Plan, call for the production of 1965 of 165 million to 180
million tons of wheat (as compared with recent average harvests of slightly
more than 100 million tons); of 16 million tons of meat, and 100 million
tons of butter.
The planned increase in wheat output can only come through increasing
productivity per hectare (one hectare equals 2.47 acres), and not by opening
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Chapter Six
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up new lands. In fact, Khrushchev told the 21st CPSU Congress that future
use of virgin and fallow land will be on a "reduced scale" and will not
provide a further increase in gross grain harvests. On the other hand, the
planned production of 30 million tons of fertilizer, if achieved, will cause
only a modest increase in productivity per hectare.
Marked increases in meat and milk production depend to a large extent
on tripling fodder production -- from 30 million tons to 90 million tons
by 1965. There are at present no prospects for such a phenomenal rise in
fodder output, and Khrushchev himself refers to the "lag in fodder production"
as a continuing problem.
In a speech on June 29, 1959, to the CPSU central committee plenum,
Khrushchev admitted that "organizational guidance of farming is not perfect"
and criticized party work in agriculture. "Bureaucratism must be stopped as
quickly as possible," he said.
Nalenkov in October 1952 voiced the same complaint at the 19th CPSU
Congress where he was the principal speaker. He also censured, without naming,
the author of a plan to establish "agro-towns" -- a form of urbanized,
industrialized agriculture which Khrushchev had proposed in 1950. Rejected
by Stalin at that time, the idea has again been broached as a projected
development in Soviet agricultural planning.
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Chapter Seven
THE PARTY'S POSITION ON RELIGION
In 1843 Karl Marx said: "Religion is the opiate of the people; our
duty is to deliver the people from this opiate."
Lenin in 1909 enlarged on the Marx aphorism by declaring: "Religion
is the opium of the people -- this dictum of Marx's is the cornerstone of
the whole Marxist view of religion. Marxism has always regarded all modern
religion and churches and all religious organizations as instruments of
bourgeois reaction."
Stalin in 1927 introduced a new note by stating: "Science and religion
are two incompatible concepts. The Communist State works for the glory of
science and thus is incompatible with religion."
Thirty years later, this maxim was given current relevancy in connection
with the successful launching of the first earth satellite by the USSR.
Shortly after Sputnik was launched in October 1957, Moscow radio announced
that the achievement had "immense importance for atheistic propaganda" be-
cause Sputnik made it "impossible to believe in religious fabrications about
God Almighty."
A few days later, Radio Moscow broadcast a lengthy youth lecture on
science and religion. The broadcast stressed that the "correct world out-
look is the direct antithesis, the full antithesis to religion...Every
scientist, if he is indeed a scientist, proves by his work that God does
not exist."
During the past three decades, the Soviet approach to the inculcation
of atheism has gone through several phases, the latest being that of scien-
tific education as an antidote to religion.
In the period immediately following the 1917 Revolution, churches and
mosques were pillaged; persecution was widespread although relatively un-
systematic. However, the various Union Republics began drafting highly
restrictive laws in regard to religious practices.
For example, the criminal code of the Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic (RSFSR), enacted in 1926, specified that "instruction
of the under-aged or minors in religious doctrines in state or private
educational institutions and schools or the violation of the rules estab-
lished for this is punishable by corrective labor for a period of one
year.
Under this provision, thousands of priests were sent to forced labor
camps during the collectivization period, 1929-1931. Untold numbers of
mullahs and other religious leaders received the same treatment.
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The RSFSR Code also forbade religious organizations to engage in chari-
table works create mutual assistance funds, or carry on other extra-clerical
activities. Although criminal penalities against this type of church vork
are no longer imposed, the Soviet Government makes it difficult, if not im-
possible, for church organizations to conduct social and charitable activities.
Another RSFSR decree) followed by similar actions taken by the other
Soviet republics, deprived religious groups of their property, their legal
status, their right to maintain schools, and all grants from the government.
Nationalization of church property led to the closing of the majority of
Christian churches and Islamic mosques.
By 1933 it was estimated that 50 to 60 percent of the Orthodox churches
-- largest of the denominations in the USSR -- had been closed. Information
on the closing of mosques is more specific. In 1942, Soviet War News, an
official periodical, revealed that whereas there had been 7,000 mosques in
European Russia alone before the Bolshevik Revolution, only 1,312 remained
throughout the entire USSR. Some 8,000 Muslim schools had been terminated
by the government.
The antireligious campaign in the Baltic States began with the Soviet
troop occupatic.in. In Lithiumia, which was predominantly Roman Catholic,
the leading personnel of religious organizations were arrested by Soviet
authorities in 1940. Some were executed, while others were sent to forced
labor camps in the USSR.
In Estonia and Latvia, as well as in Lithuania, church property was
confiscated, religious publications were suspended, and religious teaching
was outlawed.
In 1943, when the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union posed a serious
threat to the country, Stalin temporarily decreed a policy of religious
tolerance which, for the first time, gave some meaning to the provision of
the 1936 Constitution guaranteeing "freedom of religious belief." Soviet
war efforts thereafter were supported by pronouncements fram Moscow's
Orthodox Patriarchate. Also, a "Central Asian Muslim Administration" was
set up to promote wartime loyalty among the Muslims.
Although overt religious persecution was less pronounced in the USSR
after the end of World War II, a new antireligious campaign began in Eastern
Europe as the border states fell under Soviet domination in 1948-1950.
Leading Roman Catholic and Protestant figures in the satellite states
were imprisoned or subjected to house arrest. Only those Orthodox church.
leaders who adhered to the party's policies were spared. At the same time,
Patriarch Alexei of Moscow sought to impose his authority on the Eastern
European Orthodox churches, none of which had previously acknowledged the
primacy of the Moscow. patriarchate.
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THE PARTY'S POSITION ON. RELIGION - 39 -
Places of worship that were closed in the USSR between 1918 and 1940
were turned into atheist museums, cinemas, social clubs or warehouses.
Atter the death of Stalin in 1953, some churches were reopened and several
mosques were restored.
Although the Soviet Constitution proclaims the theoretical right of
religious freedom, the CPSU itself remains adamant in its opposition to
all religion as basically incompatible with communism. Lenin, for example,
once declared: "We (the Bolsheviks) demand that religion should be a
private affair as far as the State is concerned, but under no circumstances
can we regard religion as a private affair as far as our Party is concerned."
Members of the CPSU and the League of Communist Youth (Komsomol) are
required not only to profess atheism but also to take an active part in anti-
religious activities and propaganda.
For example, the youth organization's official publication, Komsomolskaya
Pravda on February 12, 1957, quoted a decree of the Komsomol central committee
making it compulsory for all Komsomol groups to "improve scientific atheistic
propaganda among youth."
In the same month, an. editorial in the Central Asian newspaper Altaskaya
Pravda, while repeating that it was necessary to step up atheistic propaganda,
tried to reconcile the party's antireligious drive with Soviet constitutional
provisions regarding freedom of worship.
"The Soviet State," said the editorial, "guarantees its citizens full
and unlimited freedom of conscience in accordance with Article 24 of the
Constitution. This article stipulates freedom of worship as well as freedom
to conduct antireligious propaganda, at the discretion of citizens.
"Our (Communist) Party has demanded and continues consistently to demand
that its organizations increase dissemination of atheistic knowledge and
assist workers to free themselves of religious prejudices.
"However, it must be noted. with regret that some Party, trade union,
Komsomol, and other organizations whose duty it is to conduct mass cultural
educational work, are too mindful of freedom of conscience, and for one
reason or another forget about freedom to conduct antireligious propaganda
and about arming workers with a materialistic world outlook and natural,
scientific, atheistic knowledge."
Soviet propaganda's dual stand on religion is illustrated in the case
of the treatment given to Islam. Moscow radio broadcasts on the subject of
Islam differ materially, depending on whether the broadcast is for domestic
or Middle East consumption.
In July 1956, for example, Radio Moscow, in a broadcast to the Middle
East in Arabic, quoted the "Chairman of the Muslim Board of the European
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Chapter Seven
Part of the USSR and Siberia" as saying: "Our children are being educated
in freedom." But the same station, in a broadcast to the Soviet home
audience a month earlier, had stated: "The only attitude of Soviet schools
toward religion is one of irreconcilable hostility."
Four regional Muslim "boards" -- puppet Islamic organizations -- now
operate under the supervision of the Soviet Council of Religious Cults. The
carefully selected Muftis who head these boards are promoters of party
policies. They also originate propaganda directed toward Muslim countries
outside the Soviet bloc. On visits to Arab lands, the Soviet Muftis repeat
CPSU propaganda themes, claiming religious freedom in the USSR, while
Ignoring Soviet campaigns against Islam.
Thus, a brochure intended for domestic consumption, titled "Islam, its
Origin and its Social Content," calls Islam a "profoundly reactionary re-
lation." Originally written by Soviet Academician L. I. Klimovich in 1936,
the book:was revised for publication in 1956. It is published in Moscow
under the sponsorship of the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of
Political and Scientific Knowledge, an organization controlled by the cen-
tral committee of the CPSU through its member, Mitin, the society's presi-
dent.
In this work, central committee first secretary Nikita Khrushchev is
quoted (Pravda, Demcember 110 1955) as having stated during a trip to India:
"Representatives of many religions live in the Soviet Union. However,
this does not create any misunderstandings in our country, and the Soviet
people live and work as a united family.
"The problem of religion is a problem of the conscience of every person
and every nation."
Some three months earlier, on September 22, 1955/ Khrushchev had told
a visiting French delegation: "We remain atheists, and we will do all we
can to liberate a certain portion of the people from the charms of the
religious opium that still exists."
In May 1957 the party sponsored an atheist conference in Moscow which
was attended by some 350 antireligious propagandists.
Following the conference, the "League of Militant Godless," disbanded
in 1941, was revived. A more ambitious undertaking was the establishment of
the "House of the Atheist" at Odessa, the first institution devoted exclu-
sively to atheistic indoctrination and training.
The "House of the Atheist" is described as the center of "antireligious
and cultural enlightenment work among the population." It trains atheist
propagandists and sends activists into workers' hostels and clubs.
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In 1958, a "University of Atheism" was established at Ashkabad, Turk-
menistan, and a similar institution was organized in Ieningrad toward the
end of the year. Other such institutions are in process of formation.
On another front, the year-end issue of Red Star, organ of the Soviet
Army, was devoted to the subject of antireligious activities in the ranks
of the Soviet military establishment. The article disclosed that on
December 29, 1958, a conference took place in the Main Political Admin-
istration of the Soviet Army and Navy which "discussed the position and
tasks of atheistic propaganda." Red Star reminded its readers that "it
must always be borne in mind that our (Communist)Party has been and is
considering atheist propaganda an integral part of Communist education."
The December 1958 issue of the magazine Partiynaya Zhizn (Party Life),
semimonthly organ of the CPSU central committee, complained that 'a "certain
section of party and Soviet workers adhere to the mistaken opinion that
with the liquidation of the class base of the church in our country, the
need has vanished for active atheist propaganda...Our Party has always
taken and now takes a position of militant atheism and irreconcilable
aggressive ideological struggle against the narcotic of religion."
The article also said that the central committee's decree of November 10,
1954, "On Mistakes in the Execution of Scientific Atheistic Propaganda among
the Population"?had been misunderstood to imply a relaxation of the "systematic
struggle against religious ideology and the beginning of a curtailment of
antireligious propaganda." The article added: "All this has created favorable
conditions for clergymen and sectarians and their religious activities."
A significant admission by Party Life was the statement that some members
of the Communist Party "themselves participate in various altar rites and
ceremonies/ forgetting that this is incompatible with the title of Party
member."
References in the press of the non-Russian republics during 1958
revealed that nut only Communist party members but also members of the
Komsomol in some areas had engaged in religious rites and attended meetings
of believers. Warnings against these practices were reiterated in official
organs of the Central Aisian republics, Georgia, the Ukraine and the Baltic
States.
In the case of the Armenian SSR, a paradoxical situation developed.
In October 1958/ the fiftieth birthday of Vazgen I (head of the Armenian
Apostolic Church) and the third anniversary of his enthronement as Supreme
Patriarch (Catholicos) of all Armenian believers, within and outside of
the Soviet Union, was celebrated at Echmiadzin, Soviet Armenia. Present
at the two-week ceremonies were representatives of the Armenian Apostolic
Church from the USSR and from non-Communist countries.
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The ceremonies were given full coverage by the Soviet preas and radio.
The wide publicity given to the event suggests there was an element of
political motivation, designed to appeal to Armenians outside the Soviet
bloc, mainly in Turkey and Iran.
Party Life, however, in an article published two months after the
religious event in Soviet Armenia, reaffirmed the party's attitude toward
such celebrations. It stated that it would be "incorrect to think that a
growth of religiosity is occurring in our country, that the number of
believers is growing. On the contrary there is occurring a gradual but
unbroken process of the final departure of believers fram religion and
its organizations."
The Large Soviet Encyclopedia, which accurately reflects party policy
on all subjects, carries numerous articles dealing vith religion. Published
under the auspices of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the current edition
of the Encyclopedia refers to religious rituals and doctrines in terms of
myths and legends.
The Encyclopedia's assaults on Roman Catholicism are concentrated
largely on the Vatican as an institution and on the late Pope Pius XII
personally. A typical statement declares: "The Vatican videly utilizes
the press, radio and films for the purpose of aggressive propaganda, under
religious disguise, of reactionary political ideas, and the struggle against
communism and progressive scientific thought."
References to Protestantism in the Encyclopedia endeavor to equate
Protestants with "capitalistic exploitation" and "colonialism." The opening
paragraph on the general subject states:
"Protestantism, as a bourgeois variety of Christianity, justified
capitalistic enterprises, profit and exploitation? ? ?In the USSR, Protes-
tantism in the form of Lutheranism is spread to a certain extent in the
Latvian and Estonian SSR's. The social roots of Protestanism? as of all
religions, have been exterminated in the USSR."
Under the beading of Islam, the Large Encyclopedia has this to say:
"In the Eastern countries beyond the (Soviet) border -- in Turkey, the
Arabian countries, Iran, Afghstnistan, Pakistan, Indonesia -- where Islam
is the religion of the state, it continues to remain one of the weapons
In the hands of local reaction and foreign imperialism."
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Chapter Eight
THE PARTY'S ROLE IN ELLVATION
The place of education and culture under "scientific socialism" (commu-
nism) had not been precisely defined when Lenin -- founder of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) -- died in 1924.
Up to that time, millions of children in the Soviet Union had been
receiving instruction of sorts -- most of it rudimentary -- during years
of civil war, famine, and social and economic chaos. What pedagogic methods
should be utilized to further communism and strengthen a Communist Govern-
mend was a subject of debate then, and for another decade, while Joseph
Stalin was forging his personal domination of the party and state.
In 1934, Stalin told a visiting journalist: "Education is the weapon
the effect of which depends upon the one who holds it in his hands, and the
one who is struck with it."
The doctrine that education is one of many "weapons" in the hands of
a Communist regime -- and a vits_rly important one -- is still a cardinal
principle in all Communist-run countries. This was stated in an article
published in the official Soviet journal Culture and Life of August 31,
1947:
"The Soviet school cannot be satisfied to rear merely educated persons.
Basing itself on the facts and deductions of progressive science, it should
instill the ideology of communism in the minds of the young generation, shape
a Marxist-Leninist world outlook and inculcate the spirit of Soviet patriotism
and Bolshevik ideas in them."
Another important factor in the development of Soviet education, and
the keystone of its present structure, is the emphasis on science. Communist
devotion to science is bound up with the Marxist doctrine of the "material-
istic world outlook." Both Marx and Lenin and their disciples looked upon
the Communist version of science as the bulwark of "scientific socialism"
(communism), and as an antidote to the "opiate of religion."
Lenin envisaged scientific progress as the only means of lifting Russia
from its technological backwardness to the status of a modern Communist state.
However, when Stalin inaugurated the first Five Year Plan, designed to create
a powerful industrial and military state, he was faced at once with the scar-
city of Soviet technicians, industrial managers, and scientific specialists.
This lack of trained personnel was so acute during the 1930's that
foreign technicians, including those with "bourgeois" backgrounds, were
brought in to fill the void and help guide the USSR toward the goal of
Industrialization.
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44 Chapter Eight
Even at the start of World War U, the Soviet Union was so deficient
in the technical means of carrying on modern warfare that the Soviets had
to rely to a large extent on help from the Western allies. Hence, in the
postwar years, every effort was made to turn out an increasing number of
technicians, industrial managers, and scientists. These have become priv-
ileged classes in the Soviet social order and are relieved of maw of the
ideological demands the party imposes on peasants and industrial workers.
The Soviet statistical handbook (1956) states that the number of
"specialists with higher and secondary special education employed in the
USSR national economy" on January 1, 1956, totaled about 5.5 million.
This figure includes doctors, lawyers, journalists, and other professional
people as well as technicians, engineers, managers of state enterprises,
etc.
Of this total, 25 percent were listed as engineers and 7.5 percent as
agricultural specialists of various kinds. The predominance of engineers
testifies to the Communist Party's concern for heavy industry, especially
in military fields, mining, construction, transportation, etc. The scien-
tific, managerial and technical personnel constitute an elite class, with
incomes ranging into the upper levels of remuneration in Soviet society.
The emphasis in Soviet education on science -- particularly as applied
to the processes of heavy industry, atomic and projectile development and
so forth -- again represents a spectacular extension of the party dogma that
regards education primarily as a "weapon against capitalism."
This "weapon" has another use in Moscow's trade and aid agreements with
underdeveloped countries, where the ultimate purpose is political rather
than economic. In most instances, an economic assistance pact calls for a
multitude of Soviet specialists to be sent -- as a vanguard for political
infiltration -- to the recipient country. These specialists are not likely
to be directly engaged in subversive activities, but they prepare the ground
for it.
Lenin's concept of party "unity" anediscipline" has affected the whole
structure of Soviet education. Specifically, it has meant that the content
of Soviet textbooks and all teaching material, once established by party
functionaries, is not subject to critical inquiry or reappraisal by teachers
or students.
Party control of the school system and all pedagogic literature has led
to anomalous situations. In the years immediately following World War 11,
the rationale of Soviet culture and education underwent a series of shifts
in the party line, due in part to conflicts within the party itself.
From mid-1948 on, a science controversy, which began in the field of
genetics, spread to the other natural sciences and to medicine. It was
the result of a dramatic rise to scientific power of Trofim Lysenko, a
geneticist who von the backing of Stalin.
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THE PARTY'S ROLE IN EDUCATION - 45 -
At a meeting of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Science, July 31,
1948, Lysenko advanced a doctrine of 'genetics which brought him fame
the USSR and derision from leading geneticists in the free world. According
to Lysenko, dialectical materialism proves that environment -- and not
inherited genes -- is the prime factor in determining individual charac-
teristics.
For a few years, Lysenko was virtually dictator of natural sciences
in the Soviet Union and his opponents were ruthlessly demoted or purged.
But by 1953, the Lysenko doctrines were discredited and their author had
been deposed as science czar. However, Soviet genetics is still dominated
by party dons. Recently, Lysenko's scientific status was restored.
As another example, from the late 1930's and up to the death of Stalin
in 1953, the entire subject matter of instruction, with .a few exceptions, was
permeated with Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism -- the main emphasis being on the
last-named member of the trinity.
After CPSU chief Khrushchev downgraded Stalin in February 1956, it be-
came necessary to revise large sections of the textbooks and reference works
then in use -- a task that has not yet been completed. Also, publication
of Volume 29 of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, containing Stalin's biography,
was held up and the following volume was issued instead.
The Encyclopedia itself, in its treatment of historical events inside
and outside of the Soviet bloc countries, is largely a compilation of Marxist-
Leninist propaganda and dialectical sophistries. This is especially evident
in the bias shown toward all religious subjects.
Since the preparation of the Great Encyclopedia is conducted under strict
party supervision, any changes in the party line or in the standing of Soviet
notables is reflected in revisions that are constantly taking place.
The Communist Party's objective -- to mold the "Communist. man" from
childhood to adult years -- depends for success on the government's ability
to insulate all pupils and students from "bourgeois" influences and informa-
tion. This Iron Curtain, which has been imposed on the educational system
for almodt forty years, was lifted briefly during the Sixth Festival of
=Youth, held in Moscow in 1957.
The $150-million propaganda spectacle, staged for the purpose of in-
fluencing.the thousands of youthful visitors, backfired to some extent as
Soviet young people were brought into direct contact with groups from the
free world.
Free world students attending the festival were struck by two charac-
teristics of the Soviet youths they encountered -- first, an intense curiosity
about the outside world, and secondly, profound ignorance of its realities.
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On the other hand, except for a minority of more knowledgeable students,
few of the Soviet young people were disposed to criticize either the tenets
of Marxism-Leninism or the CPSU. Nevertheless/ there was considerable skep-
ticism regarding the official version in the Soviet press of the Hungarian
freedom rebellion.
The most thoroughly indoctrinated young persons
amenable to outside arguments -- were members of the
zation. The Kbmsomcls in fact are the main channels
control at secondary school and higher institutional
-- and these least
Komsomol youth organi-
of CPSU influence and
levels.
The party also sets its doctrinal line through control of the official
organs, Teachers' Gazette and Komsomolskaya Pravda.
The Young Communist League, or Komsomol, with its network of komsomols
extending throughout the educational system and into the armed services,
continues the work of the Young Pioneers -- an organization for inculcating
Marxism-Leninism in its simplest form in elementary schools.
Komsomol members, ages 2.4 throligh 26, number about 18 million. From
this organization are drawn the candidate members and members of the CPSU,
after they have proved their devotion to the party in various ways.
One of the most important functions of the Komsomol is to carry on the
party's continuing anti-religious campaign. Komsomol members, like CPSU
members/ are expected to profess atheism and to strive to uroot out the
remnants of superstition" in the people.
A new role for the Komsomol was proposed by Khrushchev in a speech at
the Komsomol Congress, April 1958. The Premier called for a drastic reorgan-
ization of Soviet education and demanded that the Komsomol organizations take
an active part in carrying out the plan. This involves state-directed labor
service, on farms and in factories, by all youths who seek more advanced
technical instruction.
As outlined by Khrushchev, the plan is to select more candidates for a
college education from talented factory and farm workers and, secondly, to
send university students to collective farms and industrial plants for ex-
perience in manual work. Beginning at the secondary school level/ students
will be directed into labor fields; if, during their apprenticeship/ they
show marked proficiency -- and also measure up to Communist Party standards
in party work and enthusiasm -- they may become candidates for higher edu-
cation or specialized training.
The reasons given by Khrushchev for his radical program do not explain
all the factors back of the CPSU decision. He said that in 1957 at least
700,000 high school students were denied admission to higher educational
institutions and that from 1953 through 1956 the number turned away was 2.2
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THE PARTY'S ROLE IN ErUCATION - 117 -
million. This situation, he said, was due mainly to the fact that these
institutions, which include correspondence schools, lack facilities for
admitting more than 450,000 new students annually.
Further light was thrown on the Soviet educational situation by an
editorial in Moscow's newspaper Pravda of September 25, 1957. The editorial
considered the "growth of a new -e.d-J3-1.ssr -- the Soviet privileged elite --
in relation to higher education. The Pravda article admitted that "only
a small fraction of secondary school graduates are admitted into higher
and technical schools." Those who fail to gain admission must seek
employment in industrial plants and mines and on collective farms.
The editorial pointed out/ however/ that young people belonging to
the "new class" do not want to accept the status of workers because at
that level they find it hard to get ahead. Pravda suggested that a safety
valve for such young people might be a period of work in industry as a
prerequisite to a higher education, but conceded that this would not solve
the problem of caste formation.
The Pravda article highlighted a situation in Soviet education which
has long prevailed, namely that the children of the new class -- the class
of party functionaries, bureaucrats, managerial personnel, higher special-
ists and engineers -- have been favored over all others in educational
opportunities. Pravda itself has given the ratio of privileged to non-
privileged candidates for admission as three to one.
Khrushchev declared that the selection of candidates for admission to
higher educational institutions "must be made according to the standards of
preparation, inclination, and assurance that the person will justify the
expense involved, and that he can really become a useful leader and organizer
of production." Thus/ the factor. of "increased labor productivity" becomes
a decisive element in higher education.
The Khrushchev plan was accepted by the CPSU central committee presidium
on September 20, 1958, and received formal endorsement by the central com-
mittee plenum on November 12. Four days later, the central committee, in
conjunction with the Council of Ministers, issued "theses" on the proposal,
for public discussion.
The theses clarified a number of points sketched in by Khrushchev. It
was made clear, for example, that the union republics are expected to pass
lams requiring compulsory schooling for at least eight Years. (Eaucation in
the USSR is the responsibility of the constituent republics.) As presented
in the theses, the program calls for:
A proposed second stage of secondary education, during which most
students will do productive work and study part time in three types of
schools: (1) schools for working and rural youth; (2) secondary general
education labor poIytechnical schools; and (3) technical schools/ or
teknikums.
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Students in the first two types of schools, who successfully complete
the prescribed three-year program, will be eligible for admission to higher
institutions of learning. However: these students will have less class-room
time in the 9th through 11th grades than those in the present 9th and 10th
grades. Some of the more promising students in these grades may be given a
shorter working day or be released from production two or three days a week.
Special schools for gifted children in the arts and music will be continued.
Significantly, the original Khrushchev proposal has been modified in
that not all students at university levels will be required to hold full-
time jobs during the first two or three years. The exceptions, according
to the theses, will be students engaged in the "complicated theoretical
disciplines," namely, future engineers and scientists of above-average
ability. The revised version also indicates that four or five years, in-
stead of a much shorter period, will be needed to carry out the program in
its entirety.
The means for implementing the Khrushchev scheme -- and a weapon in the
hands of the CPSU -- is the authority granted the Komsomols and trade unions
to name those who may go on to a higher or advanced technical education.
Since both the Kamsomols and the trade unions are instruments of the party,
the decision in each case amounts to selecting individuals who meet the
party' d requirements as to reliability and "enthusiasm."
In his speech to the 21st Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev said, in
this connection: "Some workers do not appreciate the danger of bourgeois
influences on Soviet youth: but consider the bourgeoisie is far away and
does not touch our youth. But this is a fallacy. We cannot ignore the
possibility of bourgeois influences and must conduct a struggle against it:
against penetration into the midst of Soviet people, and especially of the
youth: of foreign views and tastes."
The new educational program, in short: is designed to reduce the
possibility of "bourgeois influences" by a tightly controlled work-study
system.
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Chapter Nine
SOVIET PRESS: THE VOICE OF THE PARTY
Soviet literary works have occasionally deviated from the dictates
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), but this is practi-
cally impossible in the case of the press and radio. The structural
relation of these media to the party precludes ideological or policy
lapses.
The CPSU central committee's organs of publishing control comprise:
(1) the Soviet news 'agency TASS, a state monopoly; (2) the Chief
Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs, known as Glavlit;
and (3) the central committee's Section for Agitation and Propaganda, or
Agitprop.
All printed material in the USSR, with the exception of certain
publications and newspapers directly under orders from the central commit-
tee, are supervised by Glavlit agents. Glavlit control and censorship cover
every stage in publication.
In addition to Glavlit's operations, the Soviet press at central,
regional, and local levels is under the general supervision of Agitprop
through its section on press and publications. As an administrative arm
of the CPSU central committee, Agitprop is a keystone in the party struc-
ture, transmitting and directing the day-to-day execution of central commit-
tee policy and directives.
Since Agitprop is concerned primarily with the political education
of non-party workers, peasants, and intelligensia, and this objective is
likewise the guiding principle of all media of communication, Soviet press
and publications are subject to Agitprop guidance. (Lecture propaganda
among the workers is directed by the Voluntary Society for the Dissemination
of Political and Scientific Knowledge.)
For external consumption, the propaganda flow from the CPSU central
committee is transmitted through the committee's Foreign Section, which
utilizes the distribution facilities of local Communist parties and Communist
front organizations. Agitprop also provides material to local Communist
parties on a mutual exchange basis. Outside the USSR, TASS gathers news
of use to the central committee and transmits outgoing foreign and domestic
news in accordance with central committee policy.
Communists from the time of Lenin have considered the press a vital
link in indoctrinating and controlling the masses. AB far back as 1901,
Lenin said of the press under communism: "The role of a newspaper is not
confined solely to the spreading of ideas, to political education, and to
attracting political allies. A paper is not merely a collective propagandist
and collective agitator; it is also a collective organizer."
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Chapter Nine
Lenin also gave the Bolshevik answer to freedom of the press when he
said of the Communist-run press: "The periodical and non-periodical press
and all publishing enterprises must be entirely subordinated to the Central
Committee of the (Communist) Party, irrespective of whether the Party as a
whole is legal or illegal at the given moment."
In similar vein, Stalin declared in 1939: "The press is the only im-
plement which helps the Party to speak daily, hourly, with the working class
in its awn indispensable language."
The Soviet press, and the Communist press in general, however, does not
speak the language of the working class. On the contrary, it uses the
formalistic idiom of Marxism-Leninism, screened through whatever party line
is current in Moscow.
Party chief Premier Nikita Khrushchev follows Marxist-Leninist precepts
in regard to the press. As reported in the official central committee organ
Kommunist, No. 12, 1957, he stated:
"Just as an army cannot fight without weapons, so the Party cannot suc-
cessfully carry out its ideological work without such a sharp and militant
weapon as the press. We cannot surrender the organs of the press to unre-
liable hands; they must be in the hands of the workers who are most faithful,
most reliable, politically staunch and loyal to our cause."
Inasmuch as this statement appeared after Khrushchev had achieved the
downfall of his inner-party adversaries, the reference to loyality may be
construed as loyalty to himself personally, as well as to the revamped
central committee. Among those who felt the heavy hand of Khrushchev was
Dmitri Shepilov, one-time editor of Pravda.
Extraordinary measure are taken
that of Moscow and the USSR regions,
Communist press in the free world --
and the party's hour-by-hour view of
to insure that the Communist press --
as well as the satellite press and the
follows the broad lines of Soviet policy
events.
The Soviet censorship agency Glavlit censors every Soviet book, journal,
film and radio broadcast; every lecture, exhibition and photograph. Theoret-
ically, newspapers are exempt from Glavlit censorship, because they come under
the heading of "party publications." However, as Glavlit is designated the
watchdog of all "state secrets" -- and information of almost every description
is so classified -- Soviet newspapers in practice do not escape Glavlit's
attention.
Glavlit representatives are attached to all but the smallest newspaper
staffs. The press departments of party committees, to which the papers --
both national and provincial -- are responsible, also exercise censorship.
Finally, the CPSU central committee issues minutely detailed instructions to
the press on a continuous basis.
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SOVIET PRESS: THE VOICE OF THE PARTY - 51 -
The Soviet press is organized to cover every level of readership and
every occupational segment. No group, large or small, is without its appro-
priate newspaper or journal.
In general, there are three types of newspapers and periodicals. The
All-Union press consists of some 25 newspapers with nationwide circulation,
chief of which is Pravda, organ of the central committee of the CPSU.
Another important paper is Izvestia, the Government organ. Other All-
Union newspapers are issued by leading national organizations. Among these
is Thud, organ of the All-Union Trade Union Council. Since the Trade Union
Council takes its guidance from the CPSU central committee, Thud reflects
the party line in all trade union matters.
Reflecting diverse professional interests, but entirely subservient
to the party are: Teachers' Gazette, published jointly by the Teachers'
Union and the Ministry of Education; Red Star, the Army's paper, and Soviet
Fleet, official Navy publication; the Youth League organ, Komsomolskaya
Pravda, and others.
Periodicals expressing the party viewpoint include Party Life, journal
of the central committee, and Kommunist, the central committee's theoretical
and political magazine; Problems of Philosophy, leading expression of Commu-
nist philosophy; Soviet Culture, Literary Gazette, New World, and Theater,
representing various cultural phases of Soviet life. It is in the latter
area that some "deviations" from the party line have appeared, resulting in
the tightening of party control over the last two publications.
Aside from the All-Union press, about 500 republic, regional and
territorial papers have a combined circulation of more than 10 million.
There are more than 4,000 city and district papers and several thousand
factory and farm papers, of purely local interest. But even the most ephem-
eral of these little sheets is not immune to district party committee censor-
ship and control.
The provincial press is directed by the central committees of the party
in the constituent republics, autonomous areas, etc. At varying distances
from Moscow, these regional papers carry a far greater proportion of reveal-
ing and critical comment on local conditions than is the case with Moscow
Pravda. They are also more likely to voice the dissatisfaction of the non-
Russian inhabitants of their areas with some aspects of Communist life.
Critical comments for the most part appear as Letters to the Editor,
exposing the shortcomings among comrades and superiors in the collective
farms, industrial plants, and the local bureaucracy. This form of criticism
is officially encouraged as samokritika, or self-criticism, and it is
designed to further efficiency or call attention to bureaucratic blunders.
However, the correspondence is carefully screened, to insure that comments
never overstep the party line.
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Chapter Nine
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All lines of Soviet news and broadcasting converge in the Telegraphic
Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), which gathers and distributes domestic
news and also conducts news operations on a worldwide basis through a net-
work of offices in the free world.
By a joint decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and
the Council of Ministers in 1925 and 1935, TASS was given a monopoly of
domestic and external Soviet news gathering and distribution. Officially,
TASS is responsible to the Council of Ministers, but it directly reflects
the central committee's line and policies.
TASS is more than a news agency. It also works closely with Communist
news media and parties outside of the Soviet bloc, and it services Communist
newspapers in the free world gratis. TASS operations are intimately asso-
ciated with Soviet Intelligence abroad, and employees of TASS have been
publicly identified as participants in several well-known espionage trials
in free world countries, specifically, in Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden,
and Australia.
In the case of the spy trial in Sweden, October-November 1951, TASS
representative Viktor Anisimav was shown to be directly involved. The atti-
tude of the Swedish presa toward TASS was summed up by the Stockholm Morgan-
Tidningen on October 31, the day after the spy story broke. The paper
commented:
"We know from the Russian press and radio that news about Sweden dis-
patched by TASS is highly distorted and false. News not intended for
publication -- i.e., spy reports -:- however, is both correct and detailed.
TASS correspondents' real task thus does not appear to be the operation of
a news service in the accepted sense, but to conduct propaganda against
countries where they are stationed."
TASS offices and correspondents are located in most of the major cities
of western Europe, in a few Latin American cities, and in a wide belt ex-
tending from North Africa through the Middle East to the Far East. The
emphasis placed by Moscow on propaganda and political penetration in the
last-named region is reflected in the recent stepped-up activities of TASS,
ranging from Cairo, Egypt, to Djakarta, Indonesia.
Corresponding to TASS's activities in the press field are its radio
tranamittals. From its home radio station in Moscow, TASS transmits short-
wave broadcasts in Morse code or Hellschreiber, a form of teletype. Voice
stations.
transmission is reserved for Radio Moscow and other Soviet broadcasting
Since the impact of broadcasting is more immediate and compelling than
that of the press, the broadcasts of TASS -- in the guise of news -- register
the hour-by-hour propaganda line of Agitprop, hence of the CPSU central
committee.
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SOVIET PRESS: THE VOICE OF THE PARTY - 53 -
The Soviet press and radio also have an important role in shaping
public opinion in the USSR regarding drastic shifts in the upper hierarchy
of the CPSU itself, or changes in the party line. Here, the technique
varies from case to case.
For example, when members of the "anti-party" group were ousted from
their posts in July, 1957, supporting angles were added to the story by
newspapers and broadcasts until it reached a crescendo several weeks later.
The dismissal of Marshal Zhukov as Defense Minister, on the other hand, was
cautiously disclosed and there was little comment in the Moscow papers
until, a week later, the central committee released an itemized indictment
of the Marshal. Then the final disposition of the ousted officer was
obscured by the sensational publicity attending the launching of the Sputniks.
During the periodic elections for deputies to the Supreme Soviet,
Pravda invariably conducts a campaign of public "enlightenment" which re-
states the Marxist-Leninist dogmas about "capitalist democracy" versus
"Communist democracy." Thus, in its issue of February 9, 1958, in prepa-
ration for the March 19 elections, Pravda issued an "Appeal of the Central
Committee of the Soviet Communist Party to all Electors," which said, in
part:
"But can one really regard as democratic the States where the wolfish
laws of capitalism operate, where the works and factories, railways and banks,
land and its minerals, are in the hands of millionaires and milliardairs;
where the fruits of the labor of hundred of millions of people are taken
by a handful of predatory exploiters, while the masses of working people, the
creators of all material benefits, are brutally exploited and are deprived
right and left of the necessary conditions for human existence?"
This is the orthodox Communist picture of the outside world -- espe-
cially of life in the United States -- which it is the mission of the Soviet
press and radio and school system to implant in the minds of all citizens
of the USSR.
Again, the current foreign policy directives of the central committee
are hammered home almost daily through the party-controlled press and radio.
For example, Pravda on January 7, 1958, reiterated the call for setting up
"united fronts" in free world countries, as a step toward Communist ascen-
dancy -- a theme that was sounded by Khrushchev in 1956 and was repeated in
the "declaration" of Communist leaders in Moscow in November, 1957. Said
IDUKTig:
"Communists and Socialists can jointly strive for the unification of the
working peasantry, craftsmen and intelligentsia around the working class.
On the basis of setting up a workers' and peoples' united front...Communists
and Socialists can obtain a majority in Parliament and transform it from a
weapon of bourgeois dictatorship into a genuine instrument of popiOar power."
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Needless to say, Pravda did not print the rejection of this proposal
by the Fifth Socialist International, meeting in Vienna, July.19571 coupled
with a scathing denunciation of the Moscow-backed Hungarian regime. On May
2, 1958, Pravda again appealed for a Popular Front, citing the"growing economic
crisis in the capitalist countries."
This appeal was followed by letters from the CPSU central committee to
the Socialist parties of Italy, France, Britain, West Germany, Norway, Denmark,
the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria. At the same time, the Soviet press was
loud in denouncing Social Democrats for "lapsing into Social Democratic
Attitudes" -- which was termed one of the sins of "revisionism."
In June 1958 came the shocking news of the execution of Hungarian leader
Imre Nagy and three associates in the people's freedom rebellion. First
revealed in the Moscow press, this cynical betrayal was lauded by Pravda in
defiance of world opinion, including that of all Socialists.
The great variety of ways in which Agitprop censors the domestic press
and obstructs news facilities for foreign correspondents were discussed by
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Andrew H. Berding in
a speech of June 24, 1958. '
Among notable omissions of basic information about the USSR in the
Soviet press, Berding listed: crime statistics and other social data, in-
cluding figures on patterns of income and consumption; wholesale and retail
prices; agricultural procurement prices paid by the state; production figures
in a wide range of items, from grain to non-ferrous metals and precious stones.
There have been no meaningful statistics on the breakdown of the Soviet
population by social groups and nationalities for 19 years. Civil disorders
in 1953 in two forced labor camps and an outbreak at Tiflis in 1956 were not
reported; nor have other symptoms of popular unrest appeared in print.
Soviet propaganda repeatedly attacks nuclear tests by Western powers,
but the Soviets in 1958 acknowledgedonly 12 such tests of their own, although
many more than that number were conducted. The most recent and extensive
test series -- completed just prior to their announced suspension of testing
'-- was not formally published. No figures have been issued on fallout from
Soviet testing, although it is known to .have been very heavy.
Accurate information on Western political institutions, according to
Berding, is not revealed, and in the international field, "accounts of
United Nations proceedings are warped beyond recognition." One technique
used in this connection by the Soviet press is to print in full a speech
by a Soviet delegate to the UN, while suppressing all other speeches by
UN representatives on the same subject.
Berding stated that censorship of dispatches of American and other
foreign correspondents stationed in Moscow is constant and extensive. This
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SOVIET PRESS: THE VOICE OF THE PARTY - 55 -
censorship, he said, is marked by two objectionable characteristics --
deletion of material and delay in transmitting outgoing cabled news.
"As for recent delays," said Berding, "there was a 17-hour delay in
clearing Khrushchev's remarks at the British Ehibassy on June 12, and then
only with some omissions." Berding cited other instances involving 24- hour
and 30-hour delays in transmission.
Moscow's press censorship of foreign correspondents is by no means as
rigorous or all-pervasive as it was in the days of Stalin; by contrast, it
seems fairly liberal. However, censorship persists and operates in ways
that are incomprehensible to foreign newsmen. The reasons are known only to
the party censors in Agitprop.
Foreign visitors to the USSR find that the average Soviet citizen --
with rare exceptions -- is not disposed to question the accuracy or validity
of what he reads daily, whether in'the Moscow or provincial press, or in his
awn trade paper. The Iron Curtain, which has been lifted to a considerable
degree as regards travel within the USSR, still tightly encloses the millions
of readers of the party-controlled press and publications.
This is also true of news broadcasts from outside the USSR. For example,
the heaviest Soviet jamming of foreign radio transmissions occurred in August
1958, when the entire debate of the UN General Assembly on the Middle East
situation .was broadcast. Radio jamming, that is, the use of noise-producing
devices on numerous radio frequencies, is practiced constantly by the USSR.
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Chapter Ten
PROPAGANDA AIMS AND METHODS
The current outpouring of Communist propaganda --especially of prop-
aganda originating directly or indirectly in the USSR -- raises questions
regarding the purpose and credibility of this vast output.
Political analysts have conceded that Moscow's worldwide exploitation
of many subjects, such as the launching of the Sputniks, serves legitimate
aims comparable to those of other governments. The achievements of Soviet
scientists, for example, have been applauded everywhere. But there are
areas of Soviet propaganda and uses to which it is put, which differ mark-
edly from those of the news, information and propaganda media from free-
world sources.
The basic difference between Communist propaganda and that of non-
Communist agencies and governments lies in differing principles of gov-
ernment, social standards, and the ethics of mass communication.
If much of Soviet propaganda material is demonstrably false or shows
glaring omission of fact, that circumstance does not in itself disturb its
purveyors. Neitherwas the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) con-
cerned over the 1958 execution of the leaders of the Hungarian people's
rebellion, on orders from Moscow. Soviet Party leaders, in fact, are in-
dignant that world opinion should be outraged by this cynical betrayal.
For a member of the CPSU to question the rightness of such an action
would be a question of "Communist morality." V. I. Lenin, founder of
modern communism, once stated: "At the foundation of Communist morality
lies the struggle for the strengthening and perfecting of communism."
That is, any action or statement is morally right if it serves Communist
ends.
Whether based on fact, fiction, or half-truths, propaganda is a normal
expression of social, political, and governmental life. It has other uses
indicated by the dictionary definition: "Any organized or concerted group
efforts or movement to spread a particular doctrine or system or principles."
In the latter sense, propaganda has been the life-blood of the Com-
munist movement from the beginning. It is still a major function of the
CPSU, and of the party's vast ramification of agencies and subsidiaries
within the Communist bloc and in the free world.
In the Soviet Union -- even more than was the case in Nazi Germany --
official propaganda is on a par with diplomacy, the armed services and the
secret police. It is a fundamental element of Soviet diplomacy, and Mos-
cow's foreign policies cannot be disassociated from CPSU propaganda.
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PROPAGANDA. AIMS AND METHODS - 57 -
Propaganda is the main weapon used by all Communist regimes against
non-Communist governments and peoples; internally, it is a principal means
of fortifying the regime and promoting the objectives of the ruling Com-
munist Party.
Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, gave an expla-
nation of Communist propaganda which applies equally to all other countries
under Communist control. Speaking of domestic propaganda, he said:
"What is a propagandist? Not only is the teacher a propagandist, the
newspaper reporter a propagandist, the literary writer a propagandist, but
all our (party) cadres in all kinds of work are also propagandists...Anyone
engaged in talking with another person is engaged in propaganda work."
The specific doctrine or system of principles furthered by CPSU prop-
aganda and that of all other Communist parties is Marxism-Leninism. But
in practice, there is less reference to the founders of communism than to
such easily understood slogans and catchwords as "peaceful coexistence,"
"increased labor productivity," "upsurge of agriculture," "anti-colonialism,"
and the like.
Lenin himself appreciated the practical advantages of slogans in
spreading bolshevism. In 1917, his Bolshevik Party did not propagate the
dictum of the Communist Manifesto: "Workers of the world, unite!" Instead,
he coined new slogans with immediate appeal: "All power to the soviets
(workers' councils)!" and "Bread, peace, and freedom!"
Reporting to the 9th Congress of the CPSU in March 1920, Lenin de-
clared: "It was only because of the Party's vigilance and its strict dis-
cipline...because the slogans issued by the Central Committee were taken
up by millions of people like one man, that the miracle could take place
which actually did take place. It was only because of that, we were able
to win."
This statement itself 'is misleading propaganda. Lenin's minority
Bolsheviks won because on January 18, 1918, Lenin ordered armed sailors
from the Kronstadt Naval Base to disperse the freely elected All-Russian
Constituent Assembly in which the Bolsheviks commanded only 25 per cent of
the votes.
The systematic falsification of the CPSU's own history, as well as the
misrepresentation of current events to suit the party's version of them,
reached the height of organized deception under Stalin and has been con-
tinued by his successors.
Soviet propaganda is closely associated with Communist semantics, which
give slanted meanings to such terms as "democratic," "peace-loving," "pro-
gressive," and the like. Institutions and regimes approved by the Com-
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Chapter Ten
munists are tagged with euphemisms such as "people's democracies," "peo-
ple's diplomacy," and so forth. Opposing ideas and institutions are
characterized as "bourgeois reactionary," "aggressive circles," "imperi-
alists," etc.
A whole category of invectives is reserved for dissidents within the
party: "dogmatists," "revisionists," "deviationists," "anti-party," etc.,
especially after the victorious faction in one of the recurring intra-party
struggles has ousted or eliminated its rivals.
A semantic gilding is also applied to international pro-Communist front
organizations, and to Communist-inspired international conferences, meetings,
and assemblages. A multitude of "peace" and "friendship" societies and or-
ganizations echo Scviet propaganda and repeat Moscow's diatribes against
"warmongers" -- that is, all those who refuse to accept a Communist-dic-
tated peace.
In the complex of propaganda agencies and outlets, the Central Com-
mittee's Section for Agitation and Propaganda, known as Agitprop, is the
principal instrument for disseminating domestic propaganda. The Foreign
Section of the Central Committee directs propaganda outside the USSR,
utilizing local Communist parties and front organizations. Agitprop pro-
vides material to these parties on an exchange basis.
Soviet economic plans have long been the subject of sustained domestic
propaganda, embodied in such slogans as "fulfillment and overfulfillment
of the Plan," "socialist emulation," and so forth. (See Chapter Five).
Thus, Xhrushchev in addressing the 21st Congress of the CPSU on Jan-
uary 27, 1952, declared: "When fulfilled, the Seven Year Plan will so
greatly increase the economic potential of the USSR that it will, together
with the growth of the economic potential of all the Socialist countries,
give peace a decisive edge."
At another point Khrushchev said: "This new balance of (economic)
forces will be so patently evident that even the most die-hard imperialists
will clearly see the futility of any attempt to start a war against the
Socialist camp."
The propaganda themes stressed in these statements repeat the claim
for Communist economic superiority and at the same time reitceate the Lenin-
Stalin formula that "imperialists" threaten Communist states and start wars-.
a favorite axiom of the international Communist front organizations, es- .
pecially the World Peace Council.
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PROPAGANDA AIMS AND METHODS - 59 -
The distinction between Communist propagandists and agitators was
first set forth by Lenin in 1902. He said that a propagandist- should ex-
plain events, such as the "inevitable transformation of capitalist society
into Socialist (Communist) society," according to the Marxist formula and
thus present "many ideas." An agitator, on the other hand, should "direct
all his efforts to presenting a single idea to the masses." The "single
idea," for example, may mean agitating for a strike or other local distur-
bance, without introducing any Marxist terminology whatever.
"Consequently," Lenin added, "the propagandist operates chiefly by
means of the printed word; the agitator operates with the spoken word."
This distinction, though made before the invention of radio, now a
principal medium of propaganda, to some extent is still maintained in
Communist activities. On a large scale, the downfall of the Republic of
Czechoslovakia was the result both of intensive and prolonged anti-govern-
ment propaganda prior to February 1948, and of mass mobilization on Feb-
ruary 24 of street mobs, led by Communist agitators, which threatened the
Government of President Benes.
Of primary importance to CPSU propaganda objectives is the former All-
Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS). VOKS
was reorganized in February 1958 as the Union of Soviet Societies for
Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. The VOKS publi-
cations, Culture and Life, was taken over by its successor.
On April 21, 1958, an affiliate of the above-named organization was
set up at a meeting in Moscow, accompanied by a fanfare of publicity.
This is the Soviet Society of Friendship and Cultural Ties with Countries
of the Arab East. The establishment of this organization underscores a
key Soviet propaganda objective -- the campaign to link the USSR and its
policies with the Arab nations.
The successor organization to VOKS performs substantially the same
functions as those of VOKS. As one of the political arms, and hence of
the CPSU central committee, VOKS was responsible for all Soviet cultural
exchange matters and relations with the innumerable "friendship" groups
throughout the world.
VOKS also arranged for overseas tours by Soviet groups such as
musicians dancers, and theatrical troupes. Its cultural advisers helped
select films, art and literary works and other exhibits sent out of the
USSR.
Agitprop's connection with publishing, which extends indirectly to
satellite publishing, accounts for the huge output of propagandas material
in the form of books, pamphlets, periodicals, etc., distributed in many
parts of the free world. (Several Soviet publications are under the ad-
ministrative control of the Minis try of Culture).
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The CPSU central committee's Agitprop conducts an unceasing domestic
campaign directed toward Soviet citizens en masse and also toward every
labor, professional and cultural group individually.
Agitprop's field staff has almost 400,000 full-time agitators, organi-
zers, lecturers, and so forth. It supervises the output of the press and
guides the contents of all specialized publications along party lines. Also,
lower-level party members can be called upon to help in propaganda work.
The.domestic censorship exercised over the Soviet press and radio by
Agitprop and Glavlit operates in two principal ways. Nothing unfavorable
to the Soviet Government or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
ever appears in the press or is heard over the radio. At the same time,
all actions taken by the government and the party are presented in terms of
irrefutable "rightness," and all official comments and statements are as-
sumed to be matters of "undeniable fact."
As a result, the great mass of Soviet citizens have no means of under-
standing or judging events that take place outside of the Communist bloc,
or even within the bloc itself. The people of the USSR are kept in ignorance
of many elemental circumstances in regard to their own government and the
ruling Communist party.
A further use to which Soviet propaganda facilities are devoted is to
publicize the particular leader or faction in the CPSU central committee
in control of the party machine.
Stalin in his rise to absolute power made full use of the Soviet do-
mestic propaganda agencies that were finally merged in Agitprop. Thus, in
his life-time, Stalin already was a semi-mythical figure created through
the ceaseless propaganda of the press, radio, films, and even arts and
sciences. The "cult of personality," which Stalin exemplified and party
leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced in his famous "secret" speech at the
20th Party Congress, is an inevitable outgrowth of the Communist system of
"democratic centralism" introduced by Lenin.
Khrushchev himself, in his climb to the position of "first among
equals," assumed control of the Agitprop administration when he took over
the party machine in 1957.
The three-way relation of CPSU propaganda -- to Soviet foreign policy,
Communist front activities, and the promotion of Communist Party objectives
in the free world -- is illustrated in. the ease of two leading propaganda
themes, "peace" and "solidarity."
The theme of "peacful coexistence," with variations, is being promoted
by Soviet propaganda agencies and affiliates on a worldwide scale. The
"solidarity" idea, on the other hand, is limited to the region extending
from Africa to the Far East. CPSU attempts to enlist the Socialist parties
of Western Europe in Moscow's "solidarity" drive have proved unavailing.
PROPAGANDA AIMS AND METHODS - 61 -
. The theme of Communist-style "peace" has been stressed by Soviet
leaders ever since the Bolshevik Revolution, but the start of the present
peace offensive by Moscow dates to Autust 1948, when the first Soviet-backed
"peace" organization -- the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace -- met
at Wroclaw, Poland.
In April 1949, the Communist-run Partisans for Peace established a
World Peace Council in Paris, which was and is under tight Communist con-
trol. The Council has sponsored a series of world peace congresses from
year to year and is the parent body of innumerable national and local "peace"
groups and organizations.
The formation of a "peace" network under CPSU auspices came immediately
after the Soviets' aggressive expansion had brought some 90 million people
of Eastern Europe under Moscow's domination.
The period when the peace movement was being actively pushed also
coincided with the most belligerent action taken by the USSR in the post-
war period -- the Soviet blockade of Western Berlin, June 1948 through May
1949, which was balked by the United States airlift.
A notable peace hoax was the so-called Stockholm Peace Petition
sponsored by Soviet representatives at a World Congress of Partisans of
Peace, in Stockholm, March 1950. This appeal gained millions of signatures
from those who mistakenly believed it to be a genuine bid for peace. The
Stockholm Appeal was still being circulated in June 1950, when the Moscow-
supported North Korean Communist regime launched an invasion of the Repub-
lic of Korea. ? ?
While Soviet propagandists have trumpeted their own "peace" proposals--
echoed by Communist parties and Communist front organizations throughout
the world -- Moscow for years has blocked United Nations efforts to further
disarmament by means of an effective international inspection plan.
On May 2, 1958, the Soviet representative in the UN Security Council
cast the 83rd Soviet veto -- this one against the United States proposal for
an international patrol of the Arctic region to prevent a surprise attack
being launched by any power, across the Arctic Circle.
Khrushchev in a speech on March 14, 1958, called on world opinion to
support the Soviet stand on peace. He reiterated the familiar "peace" prop-
aganda line of the CPSU and implied that Moscow would resort to a propaganda
technique set forth at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 -- the use of "peo-
ple's diplomacy" to exert pressure on governments for Soviet political ends.
This was preliminary to the summoning of another Stockholm conference by the
World Peace Council.
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Chapter Ten
The Council's Bureau and Secretariat met in New Delhi, March 22 through
25, 1958 and drafted a call to all the Communist front organizations,
preparatory to enlisting their active support at a Congress for Disarmament
and International Cooperation, scheduled to be held in Stockholm from July
16 to 22.
The proclamation issued by the Peace Council members at New Delhi said,
in part:
"In a world made up of states with different social and political sys-
tems, the peoples must seek roads that lead to harmonious ways of living and
working in peace together."
No one would challenge such a conclusion; however, the World Peace
Council itself condoned the Communist aggression in Korea in 1950 and was
silent on the heavy deliveries of Soviet bloc military arms to the Middle
East, beginning in 1955, which still continue. Further, the Council did not
condom Soviet military intervention in Hungary in November 1956.
The technique of "people's diplomacy," in combination with the current
"anti-colonialist" professions of Moscow, reached a peak at the Afro-Asian
Solidarity Conference in Cairo, December 26, 1957, to January 1, 1958.
The Cairo conference was represented in advance publicity as a meeting
of "people's representatives," designed to carry on the "Bandung spirit."
Both propaganda tags were misleading. The delegates at Cairo did not in
fact represent the people of the countries from which they came. They had
no official standing and consisted for the most part of officials from Com-
munist bloc countries, self-appointed fellow travelers, groups that were
hand-picked by Communist front "solidarity committees," or persons known
for their opposition to their own governments.
The Bandung Conference of 1955, on the contrary, was a meeting of high
government officials who were free to express the views of their governments.
At Cairo, any conferees who took a stand against the pro-Moscow majority were
effectively gagged. Under the circumstances, several independent groups and
individuals withdrew from the conference.
As a result of Communist tactics, the speeches at the conference and
the final resolutions reflected little more than propaganda themes repeat-
edly voiced by Moscow, tied to Arab nationalism.
The massive 1958 Soviet propaganda offensive Carle in part from the
effort of the CPSU to overcome the party's serious loss of prestige and
influence in Communist parties outside the bloc, due to Soviet interven-
tion in Hungary.
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PROPAGANDk AIMS AND METHODS - 63 -
Another form of Soviet propaganda is illustrated by Moscow's heated
controversy with the Yugoslav Communist Party, which began in the spring
of 1958. In this instance, the Yugoslav Communists were accused of "re-
visionism" -- a term of opprobrium used by Agitprop media to describe Com-
munists who refuse to accept the dictates of the CPSU.
In some respects, Communist propaganda has advantages over that dis-
seminated by non-Communist governments or agencies. The first is that the
Communists have -- and seem to need to have -- no regard whatever for the
truth. They can say one thing in one part of the world and something 180
degrees opposite in another part of the world at the same time. The truth
is no obstacle in Soviet propaganda.
The technique used by Soviet propaganda sudsidiaries in free-world
countries is illustrated by the case of the Communist-controlled tabloid
Blitz, published in India.
This paper regularly publishes articles purporting to be based on
"facts" which actually are either pure fabrications or else distortions of
the truth. Such material not infrequently is picked up by Radio Peiping and
Radio Moscow and broadcast as "indisputable facts."
The identification of Soviet foreign policy with Soviet propaganda was
evident at the time when the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) was
established in 1947. Planned and organized by Andrei Zhadanov, the Comin-
form had a small membership, composed of representatives of nine Communist
parties -- those of the USSR, five satellites, Yugoslavia, France and Italy.
From the start, the CPSU dominated Cominform proceedings, but the re-
fusal of the Yugoslav Communist Party to yield to Soviet dictation in re-
spect to the country's internal policies led to a split in 1948. The Yu-
goslav Communists were expelled from the Cominform, amid volleys of recrim-
ination which find echoes today in the current exchanges between Belgrade
and the Sino-Soviet bloc.
The official organ of the Cominform was the weekly newspaper For a
Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy, which set the theoretical and
propaganda line for Communist parties everywhere. The paper suspended
publication in April 1956, when the Cominform was dissolved.
Moscow's subsequent efforts to revive a Cominform-type world organi-
zation were not entirely successful, but general agreement was reached by
Communist party leaders assembled in Moscow in November, 1957, to establish
a modified version of the earlier organization.
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The Communists in Moscow issued a 12-party declaration (not signed by
the Yugoslavas) and a "peace manifesto" adhered to by representatives of 65
Communist parties. A communique stressed the primacy of the CPSU and re-
peated current Agitprop propaganda themes. The gathering also discussed
publication of a new periodical for worldwide consumption by Communist
parties.
As a sequel to the oscow meeting, representatives of certain Com-
munist parties at the end of August 1958 launched a monthly titled
Problems of Peace and Socialism. The English-language edition is called
World. Marxist Review. The editorial office is in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
The new periodical, like the earlier one, reflects Soviet propaganda
formulas regarding the world situation from the CPSU standpoint. The edi-
torial in the first issue, for example, stated that "revisionism is the
main danger to the Communist movement in present-day conditions."
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Chapter Eleven
SOVIET CULTURE AND "PARTY SPIRIT"
Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia had an illustrious tradition
in literature, drama, ballet and other cultural and art forms. This whole
structure, with the exception of ballet, music and the theater, crumbled
under the impact of the 1917 revolution. Some literary forms managed to
survive for a time without interference from the new Communist bureau-
crats. Distinguished writers such as Sholokhov and Zoschenko maintained
their literary integrity in the face of increasing regimentation.
Lenin, who laid the foundation of a single-party political system in
the USSR, also was mainly responsible for the cultural totalitarianism that
characterizes all Communist regimes. His ideas on the subject were formed
long before the revolution. In a brochure, "The Party Organization and
Party Literature" (1905), he outlined the principle of partiinost ("party
spirit") as the determining factor in all Communist cultural expression.
He wrote:
"The principle of party literature consists in the fact that not only
may literature not be an instrument of gain for individuals or groups, but
also in that it may not be an individual matter at all...Literature must
become a component part of organized, planned, unified Social Democratic
Party work." (At that time, the Bolsheviks were a minority dissident fac-
tion of the Russian Social Democratic Party.)
With the rise of Stalin to a dominant position in the party and state,
Soviet cultural and creative activities were brought more and more under
the control of the CPSU. In 1932, the CPSU central committee dissolved all
independent literary and artistic organizations and created in their place
a series of unions for each of the cultural fields which, like the industri-
al trade unions, represent the party machine. One of these is the Union of
Writers.
As supreme cultural arbiter, Stalin made use of the censorship organi-
zations Glavlit and Agitprop set up inorderto supervise press and publi-
cations. Glavlit gradually assumed censorship functions over all cultural
and creative works.
The 18th Congress of the CPSU (1933) laid down a new set of party rules
and provided for the establishment of the Section for Agitation and Propa-
ganda (Agitprop) as an arm of the CPSU central committee, with authority
over domestic cultural outlets and activities.
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66 Chapter Eleven
Meanwhile, Glavlit continues as the party's watchdog, policing cul-
tural fields in the interest of party unity and discipline. Soviet books,
pamphlets, brochures, etc., bear the imprimatur of Glavlit -- "passed for
publication."
Since 1939, Agitprop, in conjunction with other propaganda and censor-
ship organs, has left its imprint on fine arts, films, belles-lettres, his-
torical works, music, theater, etc. (See footnote.) This development can
be attributed in large part to Andrei Zhdanov who, in 1939, became a full-
fledged Politburo member and for the next nine years held the ear of Stalin
in cultural matters.
Zhdanov waa an ambitious party zealot with considerable military ex-
perience who, at the peak of his political career, was placed in charge of
the Soviet-occupied Baltic States. In addition to his political activities,
he fancied himself a connoisseur of arts and letters. In 1934 he was the
principal speaker at the All-Russian Congress of Soviet Writers and, five
years later, he keynoted the meeting of the 18th Party Congress.
From his elevation in the party's innermost circle, Zhdanov proceeded
to dictate the terms for all cultural expression in the USSR. World War II
interrupted party emphasis on this subject, but by 1946 the Zhdanov tenets
gained wide acceptance. His pronouncements on culture from 1946 to 1948
(the year he died) set the pattern for subsequent party directives in this
field. The Zhdanov viewpoint is still accepted by the party's cultural
functionaries.
Zhdanov, who counted piano-playing as one of his minor accomplishments,
lashed out at the composers of his day. In February 1948 he steered a re-
solution through the central committee which rebuked the most eminent of
the Soviet composers -- Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khacha-
turrian, V. Y. Shebalin, Gabriel Popov, Nikolai Miaskovsky, and others. The
central committee accused these musicians of a "formalist trend" and con-
cluded: "This music reeks strongly of the spirit of contemporary modern bour-
geois culture, the full denial of musical art."
A few of the so-called "independent" organizations also have responsibility
for propaganda in certain fields. For example, until March 1957, the Ministry
of Culture was responsible for lecture propaganda among the workers. In March,
the CPSU central committee transferred this function to the "voluntary" All-
Union Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge.
Regardless of organs or officials given detailed responsibility for cultural
aspects of Soviet life, policy in these fields is set by the CPSU central
committee and, in turn, is subject to the guidance of the party's indisputable
leader. Lenin was concerned with party cultural formulas only in a generalized
way; Stalin was more specific about certain subjects, and Khrushchev has made
pronouncements on almost every phase of cultural activity.
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(On June 8, 1958, the CPSU central committee accused Malenkov and
Molotov -- together with executed secret police chief Beria -- of having
had an "extremely negative influence" over Soviet music. An official cen-
tral committee decree of May 28 denounced the trio for criticizing the
famous composers who, in fact, were the victims of Zhdanov's persecution,
not of the ousted party leaders mentioned.)
The attack on the composers in 1948 had no serious lasting effects
but the party's dogmatic literary criteria, imposed on writers, critics,
and teachers, placed Soviet literature in an ideological straightjacket
for almost a decade. Zhdanov was also responsible for the central com-
mittee's editorial purge of the cultural journals, Zvezda and Leningrad
in 1946, and the ensuing regimentation of writers and critics.
Soviet authors henceforth were restricted to such themes as five year
plans, factory output, collective farm goals, and the standard "anti-capi-
talist" approach. The element of romance shriveled to "boy-meets-girl-meets
tractor" dimensions. Whether or not the concept of "socialist realism" ori-
ginated with Zhdanov, the phrase came into wide circulation in his day and
has been a cultural slogan of the party ever since.
The party journal Bolshevik in an article of May, 1948, defined "social-
ist realism" as follows: "Socialist realism, relying on the traditions of
classical realism, establishes as the basis of artistic creation not the
subjective, arbitrary ideas of the writer, but his detection of objective
reality...In their work, Soviet writers are guided by the policy of the
Bolshevik (Communist) Party and the Soviet state."
An article in Culture and Life, March 11, 1947, proclaimed: "Only that
artist is free who is versed in the laws of the historical development of
society and who with all his heart is devoted to his people, to the Commun-
ist Party, and to the Socialist (Communist) society."
Georgi Malenkov, a party rival of Zhdanov, had much to say about the
aims of Soviet cultural workers. In December 1947 he told a Cominform meet-
ing in Poland:
"In the Communist education of the people...the central committee of the
CPSU stresses that Soviet writers, artists, and cultural workers can have no
other interests save the interests of the people and the state."
Five years later, however, at the 19th Party Congress (October 1952)
principle speaker Malenkov complained that the "ideological and artistic
level of many works is still not high enough."
Malenkov continued: "Many mediocre and dull works, and simply pot-
boilers which distort Soviet reality, still crop up in literature and art."
In reference to the complete lack of satire -- a traditional Russian lit-
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- 68 Chapter Eleven
erary expression -- Malenkov called for new "Soviet Gogols and Shchedrins
whose scorching satire would burn out all that is negative, decaying and
moribund, everything that acts as a brake on our march onward."
The answer to this, which subsequent discussions failed to bring out,
was the fact that a true post-revolutionary satirist and "realist" --
Zeshchenko ("The Adventures of an Ape") -- suffered disgrace at the hands
of the Zhdanovists in 1946. There was no guarantee that writers who ven-
tured to escape from party stereotypes would not meet a similar fate.
The dead hand of partiinost was felt in the story line of plays and
motion pictures. By 1952, even the party censors could not fail to notice
that empty theaters demonstrated that the "Soviet man," far from being
edified by themes illustrating Communist "morality" and "socialist realism,"
was merely bored. Not until recently have Soviet filns ventured to portray
characters and situations of greater human interest, such as those in "The
Forty-first, ""Occurrencein Shaft No. 8," "The Flying Aces," and others.
Party limitations imposed on Soviet cultural arts and belles-lettres
became a subject of protracted discussions in Pravda and the literary
journals in 1953. A novel that touched off a heated debate was "The Thaw,"
by Ilya Ehrenburg, who had long been a party conformist in his speeches ?
and writings. "The Thaw" was by no means "anti-party," but it treated
themes and characters in a manner not set forth in party directives and its
author was rebuked at the second Writers' Congress in December 1954.
Ehrenburg, however, was too valuable as party propagandist to be per-
manently discredited, and he shortly resumed his activities as Moscow's
cultural and "peace" emissary abroad.
The resentment of some literary critics toward Glavlit censorship was
expressed by V. Pomerantsev in a trenchant essay that appeared in the De-
cember 1953 issue of Novy Mir (New World). Pomerantsev offered the opinion
that the great bulk of Soviet postwar literature was not only "untrue to
life" but "insincere." The article indirectly appealed for literary freedom
and condemned, without mentioning, the concept of partiinost. A series of
letters which endorsed the article was published by Komsomolskaya Pravda,
organ of the youth organization, early in 1954.
Another critic, Mark Shcheglov, also attacked the party approach to
literature in reviewing Leonid Leonov's novel, "Russian Forest." The
Leonov work, produced while Stalin was alive, deals with characters who
thrive under a Communist regime.
Another break with "socialist realism" was registered in a play by
L. Zorin, titled "The Guests," which was performed in 1953 and published in
Theater magazine in February 1954. Based on the notorious "Doctors' Plot,"
the play indicated to what extremes Soviet bureaucrats go in their struggle
for power.
SOVIET CULTURE AND "PARTY SPIRIT"
-69-
As a result of these literary innovations, the three writers were for-
mally censured by the party-line Union of Writers. Also, Novy Mir hastened
to apologize for printing the Pomerantsev contributions; its editor, poet
Alexander Tvardoysky, was replaced by Konstantin Simonov, whb himself was
removed in July 1958. Tvardovsky was restored to his former editorial posi-
tion, and Simonov regained his party standing after making perfunctory amends.
The temporary eclipse of Simonov resulted from Novy Mir's endorsement of
a new play by Valentin Ovechkin, "Facing the land," which "deviated" from tie
party line in regard to Soviet agricultural policies.
Between the second Writers' Congress of December 1954 and the outbreak
of the Hungarian freedom rebellion in October 1956, the balance of influence
between the party formalists and the dissident writers shifted by degrees in
favor of the latter. A landmark of this movement was the long controversial
novel, "Not by Bread Alone," by noted author Vladimir Dudintsev, which was
serialized in the August, September and October ssues of Navy Mir and im-
mediately became a literary sensation among university students and some mem-
bers of the new intelligentsia. The theme of the book is the struggle of an
engineer against bureaucratic obstacles.
In general, the novel would seem to fall in the category of self-criti-
cism (see Glossary) and might therefore have been considered permissible.
But since the story offers a grim picture of the subjection of the individual
to the party bureaucracy, author and book became the targets of party spokes-
men and of party chief Khrushchev.
At a reception for writers, artists, sculptors and composers in May 1957,
Khrushchev laid down the party line on cultural matters. Khrushchev continued
to expound his cultural theories, which were issued on August 28, 1957, under
the title "For Closer Links of Literature and Art with the Life of People."
He was quoted in the August issue of Kommunist as demanding that writers
follow implicitly the principles of socialist realism.
Khrushchev singled out Dudintsev's novel and said that its "general
direction is fundamentally false." He said further:
"One can only regret that certain literary and artistic magazines and
publishing houses did not observe this unhealthy and harmful tendency and did
not correctly analyze and rebuff it in time. The editors of Novy Mir put
their magazine at the disposal of works such as Dudintsev's book."
During the year,following Khrushchev's literary pronouncements, the CPSU
and its organs exerted mounting pressure to insure conformity to the precepts
of socialist realism in writing, films, theater, ballet, and other cultural
media.
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Soon after the Khrushchev document was issued, the editor of Novy Mir
was dismissed and the editorial board repudiated the magazine's previous
stand on literature and criticism. In October 1957, the Literary Gazette
published a series of articles attacking noncomformist writers and Soviet
Culture assailed Theater magazine for its "deviations."
The October 19 issue of Soviet Culture censured the artists Glazunov
and Chlenov for not following the canons of socialist realism in their
paintings.
Literary Gazette also published the "confession" of poetess Margarita
Aliger, who had strayed from the party line in her poetry. She said, in part:
"I should follow the teachings and appeals of Comrade Khrushchev's speeches.
I think that I will be able fully to explain the profound conclusions which
I have drawn for my future only by working wholeheartedly, by remembering al-
ways that the main task of a Soviet writer is political work, and that it can
only be performed honorably by following unwaveringly the Party line and Party
discipline."
Despite the surrender of some noncomformist writers to party discipline,
others remained silent and offered no further writings for publication.
The output of unorthodox writers had found acceptance by the group of
university students who published the Young Guard, a magazine with a circu-
lation of 75,000 copies. Unable to curb these student tendencies, the Writers'
Union took drastic action. In January 1958, the editorial staff of the peri-
odical was reorganized and the editor was removed on the grounds that the
magazine had not kept to its main task -- the "Communist education of youth."
Party control of other forms of cultural expression was illustrated by
an article in Theater, February 1958, which dealt with an order issued by the
Ministry of Culture on "measures for the further development of the art of the
Soviet ballet." The Ministry complained that "ballets having for their sub-
ject the life of the Soviet people appear extremely rarely on the stage of our
biggest theaters." Ballet composers and producers were orde;:ed to provide
annually for not less than one new production in the mode of socialist realism.
The motion picture field also came under scrutiny, according to Pravda
of April 6, 1958. The CPSU central committee told a conference of film
industry workers that their main task was to insure "profound loyalty to the
ideologies and esthetic principles of socialist realism."
The CPSU central committee's viewpoint -- that writers should devote
themselves to contemporary themes and that socialist realism requires that
they adapt their literary work to current party objectives -- was indirectly
challenged by Mikail Sholokhov, author of the well-known novel, "And Quiet
Flows the Don."
SOVIET CULTURE AND "PARTY SPIRIT"
- 71
Sholokhov, according to an interview published in the May 1958 issue of
the journal of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union, expressed the opinion that a
writer should follow his conscience in creative work and resist the pressure
of party critics.
During the spring and summer of 1958, CPSU cultural spokesmen and offi-
cial organs continued to assail cultural revisionism (see Glossary), both in
the USSR and in some areas of Eastern Europe.
Party emphasis on the errors of noncomformist writings was motivated in
part by the growing popularity, outside of the Soviet bloc countries, of
Boris Pasternak's novel of life in pre-revolutionary and revolutionary
Russia, "Doctor Zhivago."
The manuscript of "Doctor Zhivago," Pasternak's only novel -- his repu-
tation was based on his poetry and translations of classical drama -- was
sent in 1956 to an Italian publisher after it had been denied publication in
the USSR. Between that date and December 1957, when it appeared in an
Italian edition, Soviet officials tried unsuccessfully to regain possession
of the manuscript on the grounds that it was "hostile to the October Revo-
lution."
After the book was published in Italy, it was issued in English and other
languages and soon reached best-seller lists abroad. On October 23, 1958, the
Royal Swedish Academy announced that Pasternak had won the Nobel Prize for
Literature "for his important achievements both in contemporary lyric poetry
and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition."
On October 24, the Moscow Literary Gazette lashed out against the award
as a "hostile political act" directed against the Soviet state and charged
Pasternak with choosing the "path of shame and dishonor." There followed a
concerted campaign against the author, conducted by the official press and
party spokesmen, and on October 29 the Soviet Writers' Union announced the
expulsion of Pasternak and the withdrawal of his appellation "Soviet writer."
It was also suggested that he be exiled from the USSR.
As official reactions gathered momentum, Pasternak on October 29 wired
his refusal of the prize "because of the meaning attributed to the award in
the society in which I live." When he learned of the exile proposal, he
sent a personal plea to Khrushchev, protesting that such an extreme measure
would be "equivalent to death."
Although the CPSU reaffirmed its cultural position in this instance,
worldwide repercussions against the Soviet treatment of Pasternak damaged
the party's cultural standing abroad. According to reports, the banning of
the book in the USSR stimulated interest in it among many Soviet students
seeking to read and judge it for themselves.
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Chapter Eleven
In the six months following the Pasternak affair, the CPSU was intent
on overcoming the effects of the book within the USSR and regaining the in-
itiative as regards the canons of socialist realism, which have been chal-
lenged in Poland and Yugoslavia. (Yugoslavia is not a Soviet bloc member.)
In Hungary, the Writers' Union was abolished by the regime in April 1957,
but dissident writers refuse to bow to party dictates.
The campaign to reaffirm and strengthen cultural orthodoxy gathered
headway after the 21st Congress of the CPSU early in 1959. In the first five
months of 1959, writers' conferences were held in the Soviet republics of
Byelorussia, Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania, Turkmenia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia,
and the Ukraine. This series of meetings reached a climax in the Third Con-
gress of Soviet Writers, held in Moscow, May 18-23. Writers' congresses were
also held in Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany during the same period.
At all the meetings of writers, and other connected with the arts, ad-
herence to Leninist dicta was stressed, yet many speakers complained of the
inferior quality of works that keep strictly to the party line on socialist
realism. Major themes of these conferences were "topical literature and party-
mindedness in literature." The entire range of previous discussions at
writers' meetings in the Soviet republics received detailed treatment at the
Third Soviet Writers Congress in May.
An impression of complete solidarity between the writers and the CPSU
was furthered by the setting and circumstances of the six-day congress, held
in the Great Hall of the Kremlin. Some 500 Soviet writers and several hundred
guests from the Soviet bloc and elsewhere were present, together with CPSU
central committee presidium members who attended in a body.
In a keynote address, Alexey Surkov, first secretary of the Union of
Soviet Writers, declared in part: "The rich experience of the Soviet mul-
tinational literature shows the life-asserting strength of socialist realism,
which is the most progressive artistic method of the present day." (Note:
Surkov on May 25 was replaced as secretary of the writers! union by Kon-
stantin Fedin.)
Speakers from various Soviet republics developed themes made familiar in
the Soviet bloc conferences of the previous five months. Although speakers
refrained from attacking Pasternak, his fictional method in "Doctor Zhivago"
was disparaged by a declaration on the "insolvency of retrospectivity" -- that
is, the description of events that occurred many years ago. As against this
treatment, writers were urged to keep strictly to "topicality," or the fic-
tionized account of current developments in the "construction of socialism."
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SOVIET =RUBE AND "PARTY SPIRIT" - 73 -
A leading topic of discussion at the congress was the subject: "What
must the hero of Soviet literature be like?" The "positive hero," as pic-
tured by the speakers, should not be an individualist in isolation (a re-
ference to Pasternak's hero, Doctor Zhivago), but an "active participant in
the major events of the daily life of the Soviet country."
Soviet writers were told that their books should give "fuller and more
vivid portraits of our contemporaries, the builders of communism." One
speaker complained that much of the writing is "dull, written on a gray back-
ground." He added that "we need sparkling artistic colors."
On May 22, Khrushchev covered the main themes of the conference in a
lengthy speech that carried conciliatory overtones but made no concessions
as regards the tenets of socialist realism. With reference to writers re-
admitted to good standing in the Writers' Union (these-did not include Pas-
ternak), he said there should be no recriminations against those trying to
overcome "serious mistakes," but that the mistakes themselves should not be
forgotten.
With respect to fiction depicting aspects of Soviet society in need of
reform, Khrushchev warned that "if anyone reveals and lays bare failings and
faults, it will be done by the party, by its central committee." This would
rule out such books as Dudintsev's "Not by Bread Alone," which pictures the
evils and ineptitudes of bureaucracy.
The weight of Khrushchev's cultural pronouncements at the congress gives
them the effect of binding CPSU directives, not only for writers in the USSR
but also for those in Soviet bloc countries who are obliged to follow Moscow's
policies. Nevertheless, frequent allusions in other congress speeches to the
generally poor quality of writing produced under party directions suggest that
the CPSU is by no means sure of its ability to inspire widespread enthusiasm
for the stereotypes demanded in the name of socialist realism.
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Chapter Twelve
THE PARTY AND THE QUESTION OF NATIONALITIES
A leading propaganda theme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) is the phrase "freedom for colonial peoples." Moscow's professed
support of anti-colonialism is a basic element in Soviet Russia's relations
with parties and movements in countries ranging from Africa to the Far East.
Yet no empire in history has been more ruthless in suppressing the political
and cultural aspirations of nationalities within its own borders.
Although in theory a limited degree of autonomy, and even sovereignty,
is granted to the component political units within the USSR, in practice the
central government alone is sovereign; its functional apparatus, the CPSU,
guides the destinies of all the peoples within the Soviet boundaries.
The duality between the Soviet constitutional de facto governmental
structure can be attributed to the contradictory principles of Lenin. He
believed in democratic centralism, or the single-party (Bolshevik) control
of a Communist state. At the same time, he had less positive views on the
multinational relationship between the federated Socialist states of the
USSR.
On November 2, 1917, a few days before the Bolshevik Revolution,
Lenin's party issued a proclamation regarding the "Rights of the Peoples
of Russia," and on the same day party leaders proclaimed the "Rights of the
Toiling and Exploited People." The first manifesto appealed to subject
nationalities within the former Czarist empire; the second repeated the
slogan of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 -- "Workers of the world, unites"
The November 2 "Declaration of Rights," issued in the names of Lenin
and Stalin (then Commissar of Nationalities), stated, in part:
"The Council of People's Commissars has decided to base its work in
relation to the nationalities of Russia on the following principles: (1)
the equality and sovereignty of the nations of Russia; (2) the right of the
nations of Russia to free self-determination, including the right to secede
and form independent states."
Despite this declaration, the suppression by the Bolsheviks of national
movements and the subordination of non-Russians to the Great Russians of
western Russia proceeded by several stages.
rj
TBE PARTY AND THE QUESTION OF NATIONALITIES - 75 -
Three weeks after the first declaration was issued, another party
manifesto was addressed to "all toiling Muslims in Russia and the East."
This proclamation urged "all those whose mosques and prayer-houses were
destroyed, and religion and customs trampled upon, to build up their faith
and customs and to enter on a national life freely and unhindered."
Not the former Czarist government, but its successor, the Bolshevik
regime, effectively destroyed Muslim cultural and religious institutions
and "trampled upon" Muslim national aspirations.
Following the collapse of Czarist authority, many of the former sub-
ject nations declared their independence. Almost without exception, the
new regimes in the Ukraine, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia elected anti-
Bolshevik governments, for the most part under Menshevik (conservative
Social Democratic) control. Communism, in fact, had little appeal outside
of the large cities of the Russian Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).
During the civil war, 1918-1922, Bolshevik troops fought "White Guard"
armies and engaged in guerrilla warfare with Social-Revolutionary and other
non-Bolshevik contingents. The Red troops in time crushed all of their
opponents and, in so doing, overthrew one anti-Bolshevik regime after another.
In 1917 an autonomous government was set up at Kokand in Uzbekistan, but
a year later, Bolshevik soldiers executed the Uzbek leaders and commissars
from Moscow established a Communist regime at Tashkent. In 1918 the Turkestani
tried to form an independent "democratic republic" -- a movement that was not
entirely extinguished for almost two decades.
The Moscow Government concluded a treaty with the Republic of Georgia
on May 7, 1920, which stated: "Russia recognizes unconditionally the
existence and independence of the Georgian State, and voluntarily renounces
all sovereign rights which belonged to Russia with respect to Georgian
people and territory."
In violation of the treaty, Soviet forces crossed the Georgian frontier
on February 21, 1921, seized Tiflis, and immediately proclaimed the Georgian
Soviet Socialist Republic. Two other Caucasian republics had already fallen
to Soviet armed forces -- Azerbaijan in the spring of 1920 and Armenia in
November of that year. A short-lived revolt by the Tatars was also suppressed.
Stalin's purge trials of 19361938 also provided an excuse for the
suppression of the "Pan-Turanian" movement and the execution of its leaders,
Mir Seyed Sultan-Galiev and Faizulla Khodzhaev, together with thousands of
their alleged followers. Actually, the crime of Khodzhaev was his objection
to Moscow's policy of making Uzbekistan exclusively a cotton-growing area.
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Chapter Twelve
Between 1940 and 1946, mass deportations and, in some instances, the
obliteration of national governments, were carried out by Stalin's orders.
The liquidation of autonomous political entities in the USSR and the
deportation of their citizens involved, in 1941: the extinction of the
Volga German Autonomous Republic and the deportation of the population,
followed by similar treatment of the Kalmyks, Balkars, and Karachais in
1942. Liquidation of the autonomous areas of the Crimean Tatars and_
Chechen-Ingushi and mass deportations of their peoplecame in 1944-1945.
Altogether, more than a million people were the victims of Stalin's
policy, carried out in the lower Volga, Crimea, and Caucasus. In 1956,
Communist Party chief Nikita Khrushchev announced that several of the
deported nationalities would be "restored" to their native hams, but the
number actually resettled was not announced and there was no mention of
the 400,000 Volga Germans and 260,000 Tatars who suffered persecution
en masse.
The Soviet conquest of the Baltic Republics occurred in two stages,
1940-1941, and 1944-1945 (Nazi occupation intervened). These actions
were accompanied by terrorism, police brutalities, and large-scale
deportations of Estoni*ns, Latvians, and Lithuanians. Hundreds of
thousands of Baltic peoples were sent to the interior of the USSR, and
the national intelligentsia of the three countries was decimated, except
for those who found refuge abroad.
Besides the outright subjugation of non-Russian nationalities, ethnic
groups and races in the USSR in many instances have been weakened and
diluted by the forcible intrusion of alien stocks from western Russia and
elsewhere.
Thus, untold numbers of Ukrainians, Great Russians, Belts, Poles, and
others have been resettled in Kazakhstan, Turkmenia, the Buryat-Mongolian
Autonomous Republic, etc. As a result, in some Union Republics there are
now more non-natives than indigenous inhabitants. For example, in
Kazakhstan there are more Russians than Kazakhs, while in Uzbekistan,
Turkmenia and Kirghizia, Great Russians are the second largest ethnic
element.
Besides measures involving mass deportations and resettlement, a
further means of disintegrating national ethnic stocks has been through
a policy of "national demarcation," that is, the arbitrary rearrangement
of traditional boundaries, carried out in the southern Soviet republics
and elsewhere.
Other measures include the "russianizing" -- as far as possible -- of
all nationalities or, at least, CPSU insistence on the superiority of Great
Russian achievements. The central government's educational system, imposed
on all areas of non-Russian nationality, is a further lever in the hands of
the party. Finally, the entire Soviet economic structure, centralized in
the "party machine," tends to isolate and disperse any surviving national
groupings.
j
THE PARTY AND THE OIDESTION OF NATIONALITIES _ 77 _
Occasionally, the discontent of non-Russians with their lot breaks
into print. This happened in 1957, when the long-smoldering resentment
of Kazakh intellectuals against Moscow's overlordship was disclosed in
Kazakhstan Pravda, organ of the Kazakh Communist Party.
On January 13, 1957, Kazakhstan Pravda leveled charges against the
Kazakh-language journal of the writers' union, Kazakh Adebieti, which was
accused of printing "false, pernicious, and defamatory" articles with
regard to Soviet policy in Kazakhstan.
According to Kazakhstan Pravda, the writers' journal had been guilty
of the following "misrepresentations": the "interests and wishes" of
Kazakhs were being ignored; (non-Kazakh) "specialists" were brought in to
direct livestock raising and other local enterprises, and Soviet officials
consistently violated the Leninist principle of "nationality" within the USSR.
Kazakh Adiebeti was also charged with having complained that Kazakh
national epics had been placed on a "black list" by Soviet literary censors
and that all references to Kazakh literature of the pre-Bolshevik period
were omitted from school textbooks.
Apart from the Kazakh Communist Party's attack on the literary journal,
all evidence points to the truth of the writers' contentions. Official
party reaction to the controversy was the comment, inspired by the CPSU
central committee, that only "approved" versions of national epics and other
literary works from which all "feudalistic encrustrations" had been removed
would be published.
In connection with the Soviet suppression of national epics, the case
of Kazakhstan is not exceptional. The Kirghiz epic "Manes," the Azerbaijan
folk epic "Dede Korkud" and the Turkmen "Korkud Ata" have also been con-
demned by Moscow's cultural mentors. This is in line with the CPSU policy
of stressing the cultural superiority of the Great Russians over all other
regional cultures.
A typical effusion on this theme was an article by Stalin Prize Winner
Cheisvili, a Georgian, which appeared in the newspaper Zarya Vostoka of
May 29, 1954. Cheisvili said, in part:
"Socialist Georgia awes the development of its economy and culture to
its strong friendship with the Russian people, and their constant, dis-
interested, and sincere assistance...The wise Lenin-Stalin policy of the
Communist Party unites the Georgian people with the Great Russian people,
the people of the glorious Ukraine and all the nations of the vast country."
The independence of Georgia was extinguished in 1920; the last spark of
nationalist expression was crushed in the spring of 1956, following disturb-
ances in Tiflis.
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Chapter Twelve
On November 7, 1954, the newspaper Soviet Kirghizia quoted Yunusaliey,
rector of Kirghiz State University, as follows: "Such truly grandiose successes
of the Kirghiz people were attained only through the revolutionary-transform-
ing role of the Soviet Government, the wise leadership of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, and the constant brotherly help of the Great Russian
people."
Kirghizia was one of the victims of Moscow's policy of "national demar-
cation" which placed part of its original population in adjacent republics.
The influx of western Russians has been such that at present the Kirghiz
people constitute little more than half of the population and the ratio of
Kirghizians to newcomers is constantly diminishing.
The systematic destruction of the historical and cultural heritages of
peoples within the boundaries of the USSR was followed by a similar process of
denationalization in the annexed Baltic states. This reached full intensity
about 1946 and has continued ever since then. As an exiled Estonian educator
wrote:
"When the whole nation is destined to die, its culture, language, and
national character have to be destroyed first. When the Soviet Union annexed
Estonia, it did not start only the physical destruction of the nation by means
of deportations, arrests and murders of Estonians, but even more, the spiritual
destruction and doom of this detormined and freedom-loving nation."
This epitaph on Estonia applies equally to Latvia and Lithuania. After
the Baltic countries were absorbed by the USSR, their national constitutions
were consigned to oblivion and their respective legal systems were altered to
conform to that of the Soviet Union. A former Latvian judge testified:
"They (the Russians) appointed people's courts after the annexation.
They discharged all judges, and now the whole jurisdiction was in the hands
of 'people's judges' who were simply appointed by the Communist Party."
The school systems of the Baltic nations have been remodeled on the
Soviet educational pattern and their national histories have been rewritten
under the direction of Muscovite historiographers.
For example, a one-volume History of the Estonian Republic, published
in 1952, offers a Marxist-Leninist explanation of the "emergence of an
independent Estonian state as a result of prior historical events and devel-
opments." However, according to this Communist version, the era of Czarist
imperialism (1700-1917), because it was Russian, was more liberal and conferred
more benefits on Estonia than the independence won by the country in 1917-1918,
which was based on western-type democracy until its overthrow by the Communists.
The falsification of national histories and the perversion of national
cultures followed the take-over of Eastern Europe by Soviet armed forces and
4
THE PARTY AND THE QUESTION OF NATIONALITIES
-79-
agents. The establishment of "people's democracies," concluded by 1948-1949,
led to the complete revamping of educational systems in the satellite countriea
and the rewriting -- under Moscow's direction -- of textbooks, histories, etc.
In this pedagogic material, again, the superiority of Russian culture and
achievements is emphasized at all times.
As the products of Western culture, publishing, and journalism were
withdrawn from public circulation in Eastern Europe, printed material
carrying the Communist, pro-Moscow line everywhere was substituted. The
Communist-run presses in the satellites are assigned heavy publishing quotas
as part of the production plans of the puppet regimes. Also, Soviet publi-
cations in vast quantities are distributed, many of which are compulsory reading
for students in the satellite countries.
Despite the persistent and ruthless suppression of nationalist tendencies
in the USSR and Moscow's unremitting efforts to wipe out genuine nationalism
in Eastern Europe, the Hungarian freedom rebellion of October-November 1956
demonstrated that the embers of national spirit have not been extinguished
in the satellite nations. The question of nationalities therefore is still
a matter of deep concern to the CPSU central committee.
The bitter conflict between Moscow and the Yugoslav Communist Party,
which was renewed in the spring of 1958 after three-year detente,
illustrates another nationalist problem that plagues the CPSU. This issue
is known as "revisionism," or the refusal of a Communist Party outside of
the USSR to follow Moscow's dictates in every respect.
Within the USSR, the question was settled in the 1920's by the harsh
suppression of independent Communist parties and the purging of their leaders.
Movements for national communism were most vigorous in Byelorussia and the
Ukraine, reaching the height of their influence during the civil war period
(1918-1922), when Lenin and his associates were engrossed in military operations
elsewhere.
Once these were completed, Lenin and his subordinate Stalin turned
their attention to the autonomous Communist parties on the periphery of the
USSR. Within a short time, the doctrine of democratic centralism was
imposed on all non-conforming Communists by a combination of Bolshevik armed
force, intrigue, and pressure by the "centralists."
In the Ukraine, however, vestiges of nationalist sentiment persisted in
the Ukrainian Communist Party through World War II. The movement was crushed
by Khrushchev, at the instance of Stalin, after the war ended.
By 1947, when the Communist Information Burueau (Cominform) was estab-
lished, it seemed that the principle of CPSU dominance of international
communism was firmly accepted, but Tito's quarrel with Moscow in the follow-
ing year exposed a weak link in the CPSU international system.
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After a period of adjustment between the parties, May 1955 to April
1958, the controversy was renewed; revisionism is now a major heresy in
CPSU ideological dogma. The battlefield embraces the entire international
Communist movement.
- 83. -
Chapter Thirteen
FRONT ORGANIZATIONS: VEHICLES FOR PARTY GOALS
Wherever Communist parties are active -- and even in some countries
where the party is outlawed -- there are Communist "front" organizations.
Some of these, on an international scale, have millions of members; their
affiliates at national levels may enlist the support of several thousand
fellow travelers and sympathizers. District units may run to a dozen
or so, or a few hundred members. They represent the local spearhead of
an international front -- usually under a different name.
Whatever their designations, front organizations have several features
in common -- they echo Moscow's propaganda and also serve the aims of local
Communist parties. In any event, all front activities are traceable,
directly or indirectly, to d4rectives issued by the central committee of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
Another characteristic of the front organizations is that, ostensibly,
they offer some form of appeal to non-Communists. Although their tactics,
meetings, and administration are under firm Communist control, their front
activities are generally conducted by persons who are not identified with
a Communist Party. This, too, is the result of a policy adopted by the
CPSU more than a decade ago.
Broadly, there are two types of front organizations. One is based
on adherence to a generalized propaganda theme, such as "peace," "peaceful
coexistenoe," "anti-colonialism," "solidarity," etc. The other category of
front organizations includes all those set up; on occupational, educational,
or social lines. The latter fronts repeat the generalized propaganda themes
but also further Communist ends in their particular fields.
An outstanding example of the generalized front organization is the
World Peace Council, with its innumerable affiliates -- "partisans of
peace," "peace committees," and so forth.
The principal functions of national and local "peace committees"
and "partisans of peace" are (1) under the guidance of Communists, to
draw in non-Communists who are sympathetic to the cause of world peace;
and (2) to further the aims of Soviet foreign policy or serve the local
Communist Party in the guise of "peace" propaganda. Most of this propa-
ganda pictures the Communist bloc regimes as "peace-laving"; contrarywise,
non-Communist powers are depicted as ruled by "aggressive cliques" of "war-
mongers."
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Moscow's "solidarity" propaganda, tied in with the theme of "anti-
colonialism," is now concentrated largely in the "Afro-Asian People's
Solidarity Council," an outgrowth of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference
held in Cairo between December 26, 1957, and January 1, 1958. National
"solidarity committees" are being organized in a number of the countries from
which the so-called people's representatives came to the Cairo meeting.
The growing network of "solidariv" groups, with headquarters in
Cairo, is more than an outlet of CPSU Agitprop and Arab nationalist
propaganda. The Council also represents an extension of Soviet foreign
policy in its attempt to identify the USSR as an Asiatic power -- with
interests An the Far East, Near East and Africa.
Although the World Peace Council (established in 1949) with its sub-
sidiaries represents the largest complex of front groups and organizations,
it was not the first in the field. Other major international front organi-
zations were organized in 1945 and 1946, immediately after the conclusion
of war in Europe, during the year when the United Nations became a viable
international organization.
The Communist-controlled international fronts have never endorsed
the principles of the United Nations Charter in respect to any particular
situation that brought forth a Soviet veto in the UN Security Council.
The World Peace Council, for example, followed Moscow's lead when the
Security Council in June 1950 labeled the North Korean regime an aggressor
and later leveled the same charge against Communist China. The USSR
refused to accept the UN ruling in both cases.
Among the principal international front organizations that follow
occupational or other specialized interests of members (with the dates
of their founding) are the following:
World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), 1945
World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), 1945
Women's International Democratic Federation (1WIDF), 1945
International Union of Students (ills), 1946
World Federation of Teachers' Unions (FISE), 1946
International Association of Democratic lawyers (IADL), 1946
International Organization of Journalists (ICJ), 1946
Similar international organizations serve other leftwing and fellow-
traveling occupational groups.
_
400
%
FRONT ORGANIZATIONS: VEHICLES FOR PARTY GOALS - 83 -
The multitude of national front organizations in various nations
include groups such as societies for "cultural relations with the USSR,"
national "friendship" associations for promoting ties with Communist
bloc countries, sports associations, and so forth. Many fronts have
special designations, such aS"Congress of Mothers in Defense of Children,"
"Union of Families of Political Exiles and Prisoners," and the like. Often
a Communist front assumes a name closely resembling that of a non-Communist
association having a legitimate social welfare or other objective.
In no case does any Communist-controlled front -- large or small --
comment adversely or pass rPsolutions condemning social, economic or
political conditions within the Communist orbit. Nor does any front ever
take a stand against the foreign policy of the USSR, the satellite countries,
or the Communist regimes in the Far East.
Since the largest proportion of members in international fronts comes
from Communist bloc countries, the claimed membership of any front is
difficult to assess, especially as membership for stated occupations and
professions is practically mandatory in Communist countries.
The present worldwide ramification of front organizations was
anticipated, in theory, by Lenin when he wrote:
"Every sacrifice must be made, the greatest obstacles must be overcome,
in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly,
persistently and patiently, precisely in those institutions, societies and
associations -- even the most reactionary -- to which proletarian or semi-
proletarian masses belong."
However, aside from the World Federation of Trade Unions, certain
leftwing farmers' unions, and the like, other Communist fronts are not
of proletarian origin or background. For the most part, their members
belong to the intelligentsia and not to the industrial or agricultural
working classes. This shift in emphasis is due to the postwar policy of
the CPSU, designed to enlist student, professional and technical groups
in a drive for world communism.
The propaganda uses to which front organizations may be put was
illustrated by the Sixth World Festival of Youth, held in Moscow, July 28 -
August 11, 1957. This spectacular event was the offshoot and propaganda
showpiece of the WFDY and the IUS, which had sponsored five previous youth
festivals between 1947 and 1955, all of them held in satellite countries:*
When the WFDY was founded in November 1945 at the World Youth Conference
in London -- convened by the Communist-controlled World Youth Council -- it
professed to be nonpolitical and all-embracing in membership. Because of its
obvious pro-Soviet activities, however, by 1949 most of its non-Communist
affiliates had withdrawn to form their own organization, the World Assembly
wrhe Seventh World Youth Festival, on an even more lavish scale, was held
in Vienna, Austria, July 26-August 4, 1959.
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of Youth (RAY). Other youth organizations that withdrew from the WFDY
included the Catholic students organizations and the International Union
of Socialist Youth (IUSY).
A further disruption in the WFDY occurred in 1950, when its executive
committee expelled the Yugoslav People's Youth organization. The committee
resolution called the Yugoslav youth leaders "traitors to the cause of
peace and democracy, and deserters into the camp of the imperialist warmongers."
Despite WFDY charter provisions setting student rights and freedoms as
goals, none of the stated rights and freedams are found in the Communist bloc
countries which contribute the great majority of WFDY's members. The suppression
of the Hungarian rebellion, and the shooting, arrests, and imprisonment of
Hungarian students brought no hostile comment from the WFDY executive
committee.
The executive committee of the WFDY Council, like the CPSU central
committee, is not subject to democratic elections or rank-and-file check.
It is guided and directed by veteran Communists and fellow travelers.
The WFDY has a typical front structure, which resembles that of the CPSU.
In theory, the governing body of the WFDY is the World Congress of Youth,
but its functioning organs -- especially the executive committee -- wields
de facto authority in the organization. The executive committee is served
by a permanent secretariat.
Central guidance and coordination of activities extends from the
emcutive committee and secretariat to regional, national, district and
local youth organizations. The upper levels of the WFDY are sprinkled with
non-Communists, but the secretariat is almost solidly Communist and does not
deviate in policy from the line handed down, through various channels, fromtthe
CPSU central committee.
In 1955, WFDY claimed 85 million members, but an analysis of member-
ship rolls, based on Communist sources, shows that at least 70 percent
are from Communist countries, where students are pressured into joining unions
affiliated with WFDY. The membership claimed among free-world students is
believed to be greatly exaggerated.
The tie-in between such a front as the WFDY and other front organizations
is maintained through an interlocking directorate -- that is, officers and
personnel who belong to two or more fronts. For example, officers of the
World Peace Council are found as officers in many other fronts.
The official organ of the WFDY is World Youth, a monthly issued in
eleven language editions. All the front organizations have their awn
periodicals and some have several. The IUS, for example, publishes World
Student News in six-language editions and the fortnightly IUS an Service.
FRONT ORGANIZATIONS: VERICMS FOR PARTY GOALS - 85 -
It also issues separate magazines for agricultural, architectural and
medical students. Trade union internationals affiliated with the WFTU
also have their own trade papers with a Communist slant.
Membership in the International Union of Students is drawn mainly
from Communist bloc countries; for example, the Soviet Komsomol organi-
zations are listed in toto as belonging to the IUS.
As in the case of the WFDY, complete administrative control of IUS
is vested in a closed body -- the executive committee of the World Students'
Congress. The Congress, which has met four times since its founding in
1946, is not amenable to democratic procedures.
Again, like the WFDY executive committee, the IDS executive committee
took no action on Soviet intervention in Hungary. Its Prague headquarters
remained silent on the executions of Hungarians.
An occasional function of local affiliates of the WFDY and IUS is to
provide the active nucleus of mob actions directed against targets set by
a national or local Communist Party. Local Communists, generally speaking,
act on instructions prepared in Moscow but they may use their own discretion
as to the exact moment to foment disorders or violence.
Communist-directed student agitators have formed the spearhead of
mobs in Singapore, Tokoyo, Lebanon and other Near East areas, Caracas and
other Latin American cities, and elsewhere. In many instances, a relatively
small band of student provocateurs has been able to spark an outbreak
involving hundreds of thousands of demonstrators.
In addition to its agitation activities, IUS conducts systematic
propaganda through its official organ, World Student Newsland in a series
of pamphlets of topics associated with CPSU propaganda themes.
In many ways, the World Federation of Trade Unions is potentially
Moscow's most important implement of agitation, infiltration and subversion
in the free world. As in the case of other fronts, WFTU claimed membership
figures have little significance, since the WFTU itself concedes that about
80 percent of its affiliated members are from Communist countries.
The claimed WFTU membership in the free world is less than one-third
of the known membership of the non-Communist International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Nevertheless, WFTU affiliated unions are a real
menace to the free trade union movement in some countries, especially in
economically less developed areas where trade unionism is just emerging.
Although the WFTU was founded in 1945 as a nonpolitical organization
it soon fell under Communist influence and by 1949 was firmly under
Communist domination. This led to the withdrawal of three powerful affiliated
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- 86 - . Chapter Thirteen
nat:I.onal unions -- British, American, and Dutch, who then formed their
own organization, ICFTU.
The WFTU's official organ, World Trade Union Movement, follows every
shift in Moscow's propaganda line and faithfully echoes Soviet foreign
policy and propaganda statements.
The steps by which the WFTU passed to Communist control are evident
from figures on membership in the three governing bodies, between 1945
and 1948.
The WFTU executive bureau in 1945 was made up of 4 Communists and 5
non-Communists; in 1948, there were 6 Communists and only 3 non-Communists.
The executive committee of the bureau in 1945 had an even balance of 11
each, Communists and non-Communists. Three years later, there were 14
Communists on the committee, as against 6 non-Communists. The WFTU General
Council in 1945 had a total of 64 members, of which 38 were non-Communists;
by 1948 the ratio was 34 Communists to 30 non-Communists.
The accretion of Communist strength in front administrations is
accomplished by a variety of tactics: pressure or hard bargaining aimed at
the non-Communists; manipulation of meetings or conferences by the hard-
core party cadres, especially in the initial or preparatory stages of a
conference; devious voting procedures, or sheer aggressive persistence
pitted against the indifference oib apathy of the rank-and-file members.
For example, when Communists were engaged in taking over the WFTU, a
stream of newly created unions from economically underdeveloped countries
applied for affiliation. Previously, the total membership of the new unions
had been given as several tens of thousands, but the total figure jumped to
more than a million at the time when they came to vote in a WFTU conference.
The validity of their membership claims could not be checked.
Working organizations of the WFTU which reflect the executive committee's
policy line are the regional liaison bureaus and the national affiliated
unions. The Latin American Confederation of Labor (CTAL), for example, is
recognized by WFTU as the liaison bureau for all Latin America.
Another form of transmission belt between the WFTU and affiliated
unions are the trade departments, known as Trade Union Internationals (TUIs).
These provide international links between workers in a particular field or
Industry and the central NFTU apparatus.
Examples of TUIs are those of the international transport workers, metal
and engineering workers, agricultural and forestry workers, and the trade
union departments of public service enterprises, recently merged as the
"Public and Allied Employees TUI."
?
FRONT ORGANIZATIONS: VEHICLES FOR PARTY GOALS
se 87
The Miners TUI (headquarters, France), the TUI for Chemical, Glass,
Oil and Glassware Workers (Budapest), and the Metal and Engineering Workers
TUI (Vienna) illustrate the penetration of Communist-controlled trade
department unions into key industries.
Directives issued during the meeting of Communist leaders in Moscow
in November 1957 called for intensifying WFTU activities during 1958,
especially in underdeveloped countries. Latin America and the Middle
East were singled out as prime targets for increased WFTU penetration.
An official WFTU handbook, "Report of the Activity of the World
Federation of Trade Unions, November 1953 - June 1957," records WFTU's
support of Soviet propaganda themes.
During the past two years, "friendship societies" have proliferated
in some parts of the free world and throughout the Communist orbit, with
notable increases in Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Japan, and
Indonesia.
These societies, oriented to members of the Communist bloc, use a
variety of tactics to form new societies, increase their membership, exercise
political pressure and promote the propaganda objectives of the CPSU.
They employ the familiar Communist devices of coercion, flattery, subterfuge,
respectability-through-association, and slogans designed to win popular
support. In some instances, government and civic officials unwittingly have
lent themselves to Communist aims by consenting to attend or participate in
activities sponsored by a national friendship society.
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Chapter Fourteen
MOSCOW'S ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM
The bitter controversy that came to a head in 1948 and again in 1958
between the Yugoslav Communist Party (League of Communists of Yugoslavia)
and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) again raised the ques-
tion of "independent communism."
Since both parties to the argument profess to follow Marxism-Leninism,
the debate hinges partly on the definition of the "leading role" assumed by
the CPSU in international communism, and also, on the practical results of
differences in theory betveen the two Communist parties. (Other Communist
parties in the Sino-Soviet bloc quickly followed suit in denouncing the
Yugoslav position.).
The Yugoslav Communist Party congress, which opened on April 22, 1958,
at Ljubljana, was boycotted by observers from the Communist parties of the
USSR, the satellite states (except Poland) and Communist China. The ini-
tial target of the CPSU attack on the Yugoslays was a draft program of the
congress which, prior to the meeting, came under fire from Soviet theorists
writing in Kommunist, organ of the mu central committee.
Stripped of ideological phrasing, the substance of the Kommunist
charge was that the Yugoslav Communists are guilty of the grave heresy of
"revisionism" -- in this instance, stemming from their refusal to accept
without qualification Moscow's policy line in all matters, domestic and
foreign.
One section of the congress program was singled out by Kommunist for
special censure -- the Yugoslav assertion that "by.reason of its strong
international political position, or because of the different degree of
economic development, it is possible for one socialist country (i.e., the
USSR) to maintain by various means its unequal relation with one or several
other socialist countries."
The Kommunist writers argued that this point was immaterial, and
declared that "Marxism-Leninism does not reject the possibility of one or
another Communist party of socialist (Communist) country playing the
leading role during a definite historical period."
The Yugoslav position regarding the "leading role" in international
communism assumed by the CPSU has long been a subject of discussion among
Communists outside of the USSR, and during the split between Moscow and
Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, led to widespread purges of upper-level Com-
munists in the satellites. The question itself is deeply imbedded in
Communist Party history and dialectics.
MOSCOW'S ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL =MONISM - 89 -
Communist leader V. I. Lenin discoursed at length on this problem; his
party subordinates, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, had conflicting views
in regard to it. The CPSU theorists nevertheless ignore the recorded
statements of Lenin on international communism. He believed that the "pro-
letarian world revolution" started with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917,
and that the USSR -- as the first Communist State -- should have the support
of Communist parties throughout the world. But he did not demand specifi-
cally that the Soviet party should be the sole voice of international com-
munism.
In 1920 Lenin wrote: "Every party that wishes to affiliate to the
Communist International (Comintern) must render selflessly devoted assist-
ance to every Soviet republic in its struggle against counter-revolutionary
forces." At the time, Lenin still pictured the Soviet Union as a federation
of Soviet republics, guided but not wholly dominated by Moscow.
Yet the Comintern itself was a creation of the party's central com-
mittee and although non-Russians occupied prominent posts in its top leader-
ship, the Comintern, as a worldwide conspiratorial organization, was rigidly
governed by the CPSU in Moscow from 1919 to 1943.
The Comintern was a highly organized body with a system of regional
bureaus, agents, couriers, etc., operating through a secretariat that was
responsible solely to the CPSU central committee; it did not consult
affiliated Communist parties in regard to its broad policies. It was dis-
solved during World War II by Stalin as a gesture of conciliation toward his
Western allies.
The war had scarcely ended when Stalin revived the old Marxist-Leninist
slogans about "capitalist encirclement," the "inevitable conflict between
the two camps" (communism and capitalism), and the "downfall of capitalism"
predicated on "capitalist contradictions." In this renewal of Soviet antag-
onism to the West, Stalin had the able assistance of Andrei Zhdanov.
The successor to the Comintern -- but with a different structure --
was the Communist Information Bureau, or Cominform, which was largely the
creation of Zhdanov.
At its first meeting in Szklarska Poreba near Warsaw, September 1947,
Zhdanov outlined the principle functions and aims of the Cominform. Mainly,
he voiced the opposition of the Kremlin to the newly announced Marshall Plan
for United States aid to devastated Europe. (On Zhdanov's insistence, Poland
and Czechoslovakia were forced to reject participation in the Marshall Plan.)
In this connection Zhdanov referred to the "insolent and aggressive
policy of the U.S.A." and added: "The Communists parties must head the re-
sistance to the plans of imperialist expansion and aggression in all fields."
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At this time, the USSR was supporting armed guerrillas in northern
Greece and had threatened the Turkish Government. Following Zhdanov's
plan for the subjugation of Eastern Europe, minority Communist parties in
all the border states were engaged in undermining existing governments and
in Aome cases had already succeeded in overthrowing them. At this time,
also, the Soviet penetration and exploitation of China's provinces of
Sinkiang and Manchuria were still proceeding and Outer Mongolia had become
a full-fledged satellite of Moscow, several years before.
The Cominform was made up of the Communist parties of the USSR, the
satellites, Italy and France. It had no hard-and-fast organizational
structure and held only four meetings of public record: the inital meeting
near Warsaw in 1947; a meeting in Yugoslavia in January 1948; a session in
June 1948 (when the Yugoslav Communist Party was expelled); and finally, a
meeting in Hungary on November 27, 1949, which reaffirmed the policies of
the organization and repeated the attack on Tito.
The sole publication of the Cominform was its weekly newspaper, For
a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy, issued in several languages.
This organ was discontinued in April 1956, when the Cominform was dis-
solved. (For the new monthly on international communism see Chapter X .)
The Cominform weekly, to which leading Communists of various national
parties contributed, voiced the policy of the CPSU central committee on all
matters pertaining to international communism. It provided party-line
guidance to Communist leadership throughout the world and offered appropri-
ate information for the benefit of upper-level party members and "cadres."
In addition to the ideological guidance exercised through the Cominform,
the CPSU itself has always had a worldwide apparatus for exerting practical
control of the most Communist parties outside the Soviet bloc. The disso-
lution of the Cominform therefore had little effect on Moscow's ability to
steer the international Communist movement -- with a few exceptions -- along
the lines set by the CPSU central committee.
The ending of the Cominform coincided with Moscow's effort to restore
amicable relations with Belgrade. This began with a visit to Yugoslavia
in May 1955 of Soviet party leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin, and a return
visit by Tito in June 1956. As a result of the latter conference, a joint
statement was issued by the conferees, in which "freedom of will and equal-
ity" was conceded to the Yugoslav Communist Party by the CPSU.
Soviet armed intervention in the Hungarian freedom rebellion adversely
affected the standing of the CPSU in western Europe. Western European
Communist parties declined in prestige and membership and Communist in-
fluence in trade unions, wherever it existed, was seriously impaired.
Defections and resignations -- from Communist front organizations and
parties -- including writers, artists, fellow-traveling politicans and others,
were numerous throughout western Europe. By mid-summer of 1957, the Com-
munist movement in western Europe was at its lowest ebb since 1939.
MOSCOW'S ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM
- 91-
Meanwhile, agitation for a new type of international Communist party
organization began to take shape under CPSU prodding. In January 1957, a
conference was held in Budapest, which was attended by Khrushchev and
Georgi Malenkov (then Deputy Premier), and party leaders from Hungary,
Rumania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.
On January 7-8, a two-day conference took place in East Berlin between
German Communist leaders and a Soviet delegation. A statement over
Khrushchev's signature said that the "Communist parties of the world should
close ranks and reach unity of views and actions on fundamental questions of
building socialism (communism)."
Developments in the USSR during the summer and fall of 1957 indicate
that Khrushchev had two main objectives as regards the CPSU. First, he
planned to win undisputed control of the party machine. Secondly, he pro-
posed, if possible, to re-establish the primacy of the CPSU in the inter-
national Communist movement, which had been shaken by the aftermath of the
Hungarian rebellion.
The ousting of the "anti-party" group -- Malenkov, Bulganin, Molotov,
Kaganovich, and Shepilov -- at the beginning of the summer was followed in
October by the dismissal of Marshal Georgi Zhukov as defense Minister and
his removal from the central committee presidium.
The next step came in November, when leaders of some 65 Communist
parties met in Moscow, in connection with the 40th celebration of the
Bolshevik Revolution. At a meeting, November 14-16, representatives of 12
Communist regimes signed a lengthy Twelve Party Declaration. Although the
Yugoslav delegation was in Moscow, it did not sign the declaration.
Three principal themes emerge from this declaration, namely:
(1) the assertion of ideological unanimity among the signatories, and its
corollary, the denunciation erevisitionist tendencies; (2) Communist pro-
fessions of support for nationalism and (3) a reaffirmation of CPSU
cipales, set forth at the 20th Party Congress of February 1956, prescribing
"roads to power" which should be taken by the Communist parties of the free
world.
The subjects treated in the Moscow Declaration contribute variously
to CPSU propaganda and organizational objectives. For example, the asser-
tion that the Declaration reflects "identity of views of the parties on
all questions examined" is an attempt to minimize the known divergence in
some particulars between the Yugoslav Communist Party and the CPSU. So,
too, the bitter attack on revisionism and dogmatism suggests that ideol.
ogical differences in the international Communist movement are more pre-
valent than Moscow cares to admit.
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Chapter Fourteen
Citing the tendency of revisionists to demand free and open dis-
cussion of ideological matters, together with democratic procedures in
settling them, the Declaration proposes to ban all factions and groups
which, in its own words, "sap party unity." These pronouncements in
essence repeat the Leninist-Stalinist formula regarding democratic central-
ism -- that is, authoritarian party control by the CPSU central committee.
The Moscow Declaration also supports "national liberation movements"
while denouncing "imperialism" and "colonialism." At the same time, the
Declaration condemns nationalism within the Soviet bloc, which it labels
"bourgeois nationalism" and "chauvinism." Thus, the Communist parties
support "national liberation struggles" outside of the bloc while they
suppress all such tendencies within their own boundaries.
The Moscow Declaration produced other inconsistencies. While it pays
lip service to the principles of complete equality, sovereignty, and non-
interference in the relations between Communist states, it refers to the
CPSU as playing the leading role in deciding bloc policies.
(Significantly, the Chinese Communist delegation acknowledged the primacy
of both the USSR and the CPSU in international communism.)
Another important section of the Declaration has to do with Communist
goals in the free world. The signers state frankly that their unalterable
aim is to impose communism on all areas of the world -- by parliamentary
means if practicable, by violence if necessary. This again is the sub-
stance of the policy guidance for Communist parties laid down at the 20th
Party Congress.
The Moscow Declaration urges a flexible approach to the achievement
of world communism, relying especially on the tactic of the "united front,"
whereby liberal and Socialist parties would be enlisted in political coali-
tions.
?
The Declaration makes it plain that once the Communists are in power
they will "smash the resistance of the reactionary forces" and in the
process liquidate all other parties, including their temporary allies in
the "front."
In another variation of the "united front" idea, the Declaration pro-
poses to line up "workers, peasant masses, and urban middle classes against
monopolistic capital...in order to gain far-reaching social reforms."
Taken at face value, this seems to be a tactical retreat from the orthodox
7
dogmas of Marxism-Leninism, which scorned any concessions to the "bourgeoisie,"
but Lenin himself advocated an occasional tactical retreat for the Bolsheviks
in order to consolidate their ranks for further advances.
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MOSCOW'S ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM - 93-
An analysis of the Declaration shows that the Communists of the Soviet
bloc are concentrating on underdeveloped countries, rather than trying to
expand in industrialized western Europe, where they have recently experi-
enced setbacks.
At the end of the session of representatives from some 65 countries,
November 16-19, 1957, the conferees issued a "Peace Manifesto," which is
closely related to the Twelve-Party Declaration, but with a somewhat dif-
ferent connotation. In the Manifesto, the CPSU, while claiming the "lead-
ing role" in international communism, tried to give the impression that
"collective leadership" would prevail among the Communist parties of the
world.
In February 1956, Khrushchev had told the 20th Party Congress that
the "leadership of the Communist Party of China and the Communist and
workers' parties of the other countries of people's democracy must work for
the great cause of Socialist (Communist) transformation, taking into account
the peculiarities and special conditions of every country...It is quite
likely that the form of transition to socialism (communism) will become
more and more diverse." Nevertheless, by the spring of 1958 .he CPSU was
furiously at odds with the direction being taken by the Yugoslav Communist
Party.
The CPSU attack on the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, amounting
to political interference in the internal affairs of that country, has a
direct bearing on an instrument to which the CPSU has publicly subscribed--
the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.
A double standard in the interpretation of the five principles has
been apparent in Soviet foreign relations since 1954, when they were first
announced as a preamble to the Sino-Indian agreement on Tibet. The five
principles were promptly endorsed by Moscow Pravda.
The five principles are: (1) mutual respect for each other's
territorial integrity and sovereignty; (2) nonagression; (3) noninter-
ference in each other's internal affairs; (4) equality and mutual benefit,
and (5) peaceful coexistence.
The five principles were promulgated on June 28, 1954, in a communique
signed by Prime Minister Nehru of India and Prime Minister Chou En-lai of
Communist China. They were supported in their entirety by the CPSU through
its official organ Pravda in its issue of July 1. On September 30, Andrei
VishinsRy, Soviet representative to the United Nations, addressing the UN
Assembly, defined Soviet foreign policy as based on the five principles.
On June 2, 1955, (then) Soviet Prime Minister Bulganin and President
Tito of Yugoslavia issued a joint declaration which expanded the five
principles to include a pledge of "noninterference in internal affairs for
any reason Whatsoever," and expressed "condemnation of any attempt to im-
pose political and economic domination on other countries."
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- 94 - Chapter Fourteen
On June 23, 1955, Prime Ministers Bulganin and Nehru issued a further
declaration that made Principle 3 even more specific: "Noninterference in
each other's internal affairs for any reason -- of an economic, political,
or ideological character."
On various occasions, Soviet spokesmen in referring to Soviet relations
in the Middle East and Far East have reiterated Soviet adherence to the
"five principles of the Bandung Conference" (held in April 1955). However,
at the Bandung Conference (in which the USSR was not represented), the
official representatives of 29 Asian and Middle East governments issued a
10-point -- not a 5-point -- Declaration on the Promotion of World Peace and
Cooperation, based mainly on the Charter of the United Nations.
Less than a year and a half after the Bulganin-Nehru pronouncement on
the five principles, came Soviet intervention in Hungary, followed by in-
creasing Soviet pressure on Poland to conform to CPSU policy directives.
The CPSU attacks= the Yugoslav Communists, which had been smoldering
for some times came into the open in March 1958, and reached a climax dur-
ing and after the meeting of the Yugoslav Communist congress in April.
Khrushchev's strictures on the Yugoslav Communists, delivered before
the Bulgarian Communist Party congress on June 3, 1958, were echoed by other
leaders in the Sino-Soviet bloc during the months that followed. His ar-
raignment of the Yugoslays was only slightly modified in his speech to the
21st Congress of the CPSU on January 27, 1959.
The first issue, August 1958, of World Marxist Review, a monthly
magazine launched by representatives of Communist parties within and out-
side the Communist bloc (excluding the Yugoslays) stated that "revisionism
is the main danger to the Communist movement in present-day conditions."
This dictum has become a slogan of the CPSU and its affiliated Communist
parties.
Since the CPSU campaign against the Yugoslav Communists would seem to
violate Principles 3 and 4 of the five principles, it is significant that
this contradiction and other discrepancies in Soviet foreign policy were
explained away by a leading Soviet theoretician, A. P. Butenko, in an
article published a month after Khrushchev denounced the Yugoslavas in
Bulgaria.
The Butenko article, which appeared in Voprosi Filosofii (Froblems of
Philosonhv, organ of the Soviet Academy of Science), in No. 6, 1958, en-
deavors to rationalize the contradictions between Soviet theory and practice
in regard to peaceful coexistence. The article is titled "National Com-
munism as an Ideological Weapon of the Bourgeoisie," but its implications
are not confined to the subject of revisionism.
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MOSCOW'S ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM
-95-
The line of reasoning expounded by Butenko runs as follows. While
ascribing the "false" slogans of national communism to bourgeois propaganda,
Butenko attributes the theories of revisionism to "separate, ideologically
unstable elements in the Communist movement" itself. He cites as hotbeds
of revisionism:Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Poland. Yugoslavia is singled out
as a country where revisionism persists unabated and is officially condoned
by the League of Communists.
In this connection, Butenko refers to attempts by the Yugoslays to
"galvanize certain anarcho-syndicalist ideas" (the Workers Council), and
accuses the Yugoslays of casting doubt on the international significance of
experience in the development of socialism (communism) in the USSR" ...
"under the guise of the criticism of mistakes committed during the period
of personality cult" (Stalin).
Another theme in the Butenko article is the assertion that the foreign
policy of any Communist country must be stripped of purely national ihter-
ests and concentrated on a common foreign policy which proletarians in
every country are obliged to support in the interest of "proletarian soli-
darity."
As against this CPSU doctrine, Butenko cites as revisionist examples,
the Yugoslav press and "Imre Nagy, a Hungarian revisionist." The reference
to Nagy, Hungarian Premier at the time of the Hungarian rebellion, intro-
duces the familiar Soviet version of the uprising and its aftermath. In
line with the CPSU propaganda on the subject, Butenko argues that Hungary
would have fallen into the hands of the imperialists had the Soviet Union
followed the five principles in this instance.
In the economic field, too, Butenko claims that the five principles
must be superseded by considerations of "strengthening the economic positions
of socialism (communism) in other countries and in the entire world." That
is, according to Butenko, the Soviet economic domination of Eastern Europe
should be viewed in the light of the whole Communist bloc economy in its
relation to capitalist economies.
,Backgrounding this pert of the Butenko article was a significant eco-
nomic development that took place in May, 1958, a fortnight before Khrushchev
visited Bulgaria. This was a conference of representatives of Communist
regimes belonging to the Council of Economic Mutual Assistance, known as
Comecon or CEMA.
(Comecon was set up in 1949 as the Soviet answer to the Marshall Plan.
It called for close integration of the economies of the USSR and the
satellite states. Yugoslavia is not a Comecon member. Comecon meetings
held in 1958-1959 stressed another objective: specialization by members
of the Soviet bloc in industrial production, in order to avoid competitive
output between the bloc countries.)
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Chapter Fourteen
The Comecon communique, issued on May 25 at the end of a five-day
session, called for closer economic-military planning among all members of
the Sino-Soviet bloc and implied an intensification of the bloc trade-and-
aid offensive in less-developed countries: The aim is to increase the de-
pendence of underdeveloped countries on bloc markets and, eventually, to
open the way to Communist political penetration.
Butenko concludes that even outside the Communist bloc, the principles
of national independence should be considered as purely nationalistic, un-
less associated with Communist bloc interests. National rights, says Butenko,
must be subordinated to the interest of the Communist struggle on a worldwide
scale. If Soviet interests are served, the national struggle is "progres-
sive"; if they are not, the nationalistic movement is "regressive" or reac-
tionary.
"It is known," declares Butenko, "that at the present time, nationalism
plays a progressive role under the banner of the struggle against imperial-
ism and colonialism in a number of countreis (India, Egypt, Indonesia, and
others). However, each time when nationalism was fostered by the exploiters
with a view of dividing the toilers, it invariably performed a reactionary
role. National communism caters precisely to such reactionary aims."
The virtual repudiation of the five principles of peaceful coexistence
in inter-bloc relations and their tactical espousal in Soviet propaganda for
the outside world, is of concern to uncommitted nations, for if they fall
within the Soviet orbit, they are immediately subjected to another and dif-
ferent interpretation of the five principles, justifying force by an inter-
vening Communist regime.
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Chapter Fifteen
SOME CONCLUSIONS
Despite the Soviet Communist Party's position of power and influence
in the USSR, the organization is faced with a number of actual and poten-
tial problems.
It has been suggested, for example, that Soviet youth, the third
generation to experience the realities of Communist rule, is bored and
restless to a degree causing veteran party officials to worry consider-
ably about the future.
Edward Crankshaw, the noted British analyst of Soviet affairs, says
the whole youth picture is complicated by the attitudes of those who were
very young when the Stalin era ended in 1953.
"They mere school children, Pioneers or very junior Komsomol members
when Stalin died," Crankshaw comments. "And very soon they were suddenly
told that this great leader and teacher, this being, quasi-divine, had
feet of mud and had committed abominable crimes. With this came new oppor-
tunities for freedom of expression and, at the same time, comparative mate-
rial abundance. They wanted desperately to believe in something ? prefer-
ably the swift fulfillment of Lenin's ideals, of which Khrushchev was always
talking. But what did Khrushchev offer them? On the political side the
spectacle of dog-fight between one Kremlin faction and another, and a sus-
tained exhibition of inspired opportunism; on the side of self-expression
a very sharp reminder, early in 1957, that the party still knows best in
everything; on the ideological front, the Hungarian spectacle, and; for
Ideals, a stone."
Premier Khrushchev's 1958 announcement of a new program of less formal
schooling and more physical work for the rank and file of Soviet young
people appeared to be at .least partly motivated by the party's awarenessof
the points raised by Crankshaw. Aside from the obvious intention to
strengthen the party's ideological controls over youth, the Khrushchev
program promised to provide vitally-needed increases in the Soviet labor
force.
It has long been apparent, in view of the party's continued emphasis
on heavy industry, that Soviet workers were going to be called upon for
higher and higher rates of productivity in the years to came.
Proceedings of the CPSU's 21st congress, held in late January and
early February of 1959, merely served to underscore the party's recent
emphasis on the necessity for a stepped-up economic pace. As Khrushchev
and other speakers pointed out, one of -the party's principal future tasks
is to stimulate the USSR's rate of industrial and agricultural production.
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98
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Chapter Fifteen
Khrushchevls new seven.year-plan, indeed, accounted for most of the
official agenda of the congress.
It has been known for some time, of course, that Khrushchev is
publicly committed to a kind of international prestige gamble; he has
staked communism's economic reputation on its ability to match or out-
produce the democratic powers.
There are several reasons for the Soviet Party's new emphasis on
making the USSR a showplace of Communist economic achievement. One is
that the Soviet bloc countries have long been at a disadvantage in living
standards compared with other nations. For reasons of prestige, there-
fore, it has become advisable to press harder for observable results.
A suggestion of the problem's urgency, as an ideological issue) is
contained in an observation made a few months ago by a young Chinese-
speaking Soviet citizen who has been much in demand as interpreter for
Soviet delegations visiting China and for Chinese delegations visiting
the USSR. "It is very embarrassing," this interpreter confided to the
writer Robert C. North, "to show the Chinese through our country. They
go around, looking, and don't say a mord. Then, suddenly one of them.will
say something like this: 'Well, Camrades, you Russians have had socialism
for forty years. Haw does it happen that you are still living like this?"'
A second reason for the CPSU's apparently increasing concern with
economic matters is that the party's ultimate success or failure depends
upon its ability to provide a satisfactory living standard for the
peoples of the USSR. The people cannot help but judge the party by the
material results of its policies.
The CPSU's future leadership pattern is another matter of consider-
able interest and conjecture. A frequently raised question: Will the
role of Khrushchev, or his successor, develop more and more toward new
forms of the Stalinist "cult of personality" or will there be a reversion
toward the theoretical but never realized concept of "collective leader-
ship"?
On the international front, signs of strain already have been noted
in the CPSUls relationships with the Chinese Communist Party, although
these have been smoothed over, at least outwardly, in public declarations
of fraternal solidarity. The question of each individual party's right
to its awn "road" in the "building of communism," however, is expected
to be a continuing hazard to Soviet ideological supremacy. The CPU's
running feud with the Yugoslav Communists has served to focus the atten,
tion of all parties on the issue of orthodox (Soviet) vs. national com-
munism.
_
?12.1
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5
SOME CONCLUSIONS
- 99 -
In Eastern Europe, the 1956 Pblish and Hungarian uprisings brought
into the open a number of questions which have caused heated debates in
Cammunist circles, particularly within the CPSU's higher levels. The
main issue here, one which is reported to have contributed to the split
between Khrushchev and the "anti-party" group in 19572 appears to be
basic: Can the CPSU liberalize its intra-bloc controls without running
the danger of widespread disaffection or outright rebellion? In other
words, can the party survive in its present form without the Stalin-
like colonial disciplines of the past?
Mbanwhile the Soviet Communist Party is always faced with the task
of implementing its historical mandate to sponsor a world revolution.
Whether in the tactical guise of "peaceful coexistence" or in the actual
day-to-day leadership of Communist parties in other countries, this
Leninist objective must always be at the heart of long-range party stra-
tegy or the whole raison dletre of international communism will be in
danger of withering away.
As primary tools in the international campaign, the various organized
Communist parties have an estimated total membership of 31.6 millions,
roughly 28 millions of these located in the Soviet Union, Communist China
and other copntries of the Sino-Soviet bloc.
Internationally, Communist party representatives work both overtly
and covertly through a system of espionage linkages, diplomatic, commercial
and cultural missions, and front organizations such as "peace committees",
women's and youth groups. Pressures of various sorts are regularly applied
to trade unions and occupational entities -- teachers, lawyers, journalists,
scientists, etc. Propaganda -- printed, broadcast and mord-of-mouth, is
constantly employed.
It should be noted that the CPSU's international strategy has tended,
in recent years, to emphasize what is known as a "quest for legitimacy."
This is the theory that it is more expedient, under certain conditions, for
revolutionary Communist parties to play down the use of violence in their
control efforts, seeking instead to build up their strength in national
legislatures, and to prepare the ground in other ways before making their
moves for power. Part of this approach, of course, is vigilance in the
spotting of opportunities to divide non-Communist countries from within
and to disrupt their defensive groupings.
Mbthods of this kini might be called part of Lenin's famous "zig-zag"
policy. The founder of Soviet communism once said: "The strictest loyal-
ty to the ideas of communism must be combined with the ability to make all
the necessary practical compromises, to 'tack,' to make agreements, zig-
zags, retreats and so on, in order to accelerate the ()party's) coming in-
to power."
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Chapter Fifteen
Lenin's basin thinking on the strategy of world conquest is strongly
reflected in the modern Communist line as spelled out in the famous ]2
partydeclaration of November, 1957.
This declaration, issued after a Moscow meeting of those party leaders
most apeely associated with the Soviet Communist bloc, makes it clear that
the non..miolent or "parliamentary road to communism" is only a tactical
approach for use in special situations. When resistance is encountered,
the declaration adds significantly, "the possibility of non-peaceful
transition to socialism (commusism) must be borne in mind."
-101-
? HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS
An Annotated Chronology of Key CPSU Developments From 1917 to 1959
(This chronology is restricted to matters most directly
related to the Soviet Communist Party's structural and
ideological development.)
November 7, 1917
Lenin's Bolshevik Party gained control of the Russian government in a
coup based on skillful organization of its minority forces, a successful
campaign to neutralize military units stationed in the capital city of
Petrograd (now Leningrad), and a shrewd exploitation of the chaotic con-
ditions created by World War I.
(The government overthrown by the Bolsheviks was a provisional multi-
party administration elected eight months earlier, after Czar Nicholas II
was deposed by the spontaneous popular uprising known as the "February"
revolution. This provisional government, according to plan, was to surrender
its power to a Constituent Assembly. That body, as the supreme authority in
Russia, was to draft a constitution and establish a new form of government
on a permanent basis. Despite its short-lived existence, the provisional or
"Kerensky" government made substantial progress in the introduction of
democratic reforms; it abolished all class distinctions, disbanded the Czar's
secret police, proclaimed freedom of press and assembly, and took action to
end discriminatory measures against national minorities.)
November 8-9, 1917
In the first hours of its newly-achieved control, Lenin's party ordered
the confiscation and redistribution to peasants of large Russian land holdings.
Some non-Bolshevik publications were suspended, although a promise was made
that freedom of the press would be restored when the new order had been con-
solidated.
(In later years, the party changed its early views on land rights,
introducing collectivization and moving steadily toward the concept that
farmers, under a system of state ownership and control, should be treated
In much the same way as industrial workers. Similarly, Lenin's promise of
a free press was discarded as undesirable and impractical in a Communist
system.)
Note: All dates in this chronology, in keeping with current practices in the
Soviet Union, are based on the Gregorian calendar adopted in 1918.
This advances all 1917 anniversaries by 13 days and explains why the
October 25 Bolshevik revolution is now listed as having occurred on
November 7.
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- 102 - HISTORICAI,BIGHIIGHTS
November 25, 1917 '
Russian citizens, in what was to be their first and last opportunity
to cast ballots for non-regime candidates, voted four to one against the
Bolsheviks in an election of delegates to the long-awaited Constituent
Assembly. This parliamentary assembly, whose election had been scheduled
long before the Bolshevik coup on November 7, was supposed to organize a
permanent, representative type of Russian government.
(Although Lenin had committed himself to a free election, he imme-
diately charged "falsification by bourgeois .elements" when the voting went
so heavily against the Bolsheviks. "The crisis in connection with the
Constituent Assembly," he asserted in what proved to be a prophetic state-
ment, "can be settled only in a revolutionary way, by revolutionary measures."
On January 18 and 19, 1918, Bolshevik troops dispersed the Constituent
Assembly.)
December 20, 1917
The Bolsheviks organized their own secret police organization, called
the Cheka. This disciplinary and security force, under a succession of
names, was to become a fixture in the Soviet Communist Party structure
(Its creation also constituted one of the Bolsheviks' most notable early
reversals of reform programs introduced by the liberal provisional govern-
ment a few months before.)
December 31, 1917
The Byelorussian Congress, representing the hopes for self-rule of
some seven million Byelorussians, was dispersed by Bolshevik forces, al-
though the Bolsheviks had previously agreed that various national groups
would be granted the right to secede from Russia proper.
On the same date, the Bolsheviks made one of their first moves in the
direction of atheism as an official policy by legalizing a civil ceremony
on a gar with the traditional religious wedding rite.
January 18-192 1918
The Bolshevik Party made its final break with representative government
by-ordering military guards to disperse the just-convened Constituent Assembly,
because this body, in which the Bolsheviks were a minority, refused to accept
Lenin's ultimatums. This action ended the last hopes of many Russian liberals
that the totalitarian pattern of the two-month-old Lenin regime could be
reversed, or at least altered to accomodate the views of non-Bolshevik
political parties.
February 10, 1918
The new regime repudiated all financial obligations incurred by the
previous Russian government.
OP
HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS
-103-
Mhrch 12, 1918
The Bolshevik government, because of Petrograd's exposed position amid
growing opposition forces, transferred its headquarters from Petrograd to
Moscow.
April 222 1918
All Soviet Union adults were made liable for compulsory military and
labor service.
April 25, 1918
Leaders of the All-Russian Muslim movement were arrested at Uta as part
of what later developed into a major anti-religious campaign. (On December 7,
1917, Lenin had promised that the religious customs and traditions of Islam
would be respected by his regime.)
June 30, 1918
The Bolsheviks decreed that strikes or any other form of work stoppage
constituted treason. CA month previously it had been necessary to declare
martial law in Moscow because of mounting civilian unrest. Early in July
anti-Bolshevik insurrections were reported in Moscow, Petrograd, Yaroslav,
and 23 other Russian cities.)
July 12, 1918
Religious instruction was forbidden in Soviet schools.
July 16, 1918
Bolshevik-Communist agents executed Czar Nicholas II and all members of
his family in the basement of a house at Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk) where
they had been imprisoned for some time.
August 30-31, 1918
A large-scale series of executions and other reprisals was touched off
by the killing of a Cheka official named Uritsky and an unsuccessful attempt
to assassinate Lenin.
March 22 1919
Lenin founded the Third International, an organization designed to help
spread the Communist revolutionary doctrine in other countries.
November 29, 1920
Nationalization of the Soviet economy was virtually completed by the
party's assumption of control powers over all enterprises employing more than
10 persons, or more than five if motor power was employed.
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HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS
February 11-12, 1921
Government troops invaded the Republic of Georgia in a move which
emphasized the party's plan to absorb into the RSFSR national groups which
only recently had been assured of retaining their independence.
March 8-16, 1921
The 10th Communist Party congress gave the Central Committee blanket
authority to wipe out, by whatever means necessary, all opposition to party
policies. This decree was not published until 1924.
March 17, 1921
As a result of Bolshevik-Communist political and economic policies, the
Kronstadt sailors (previously the backbone of the "October" Bolghevik revo-
lution) revolted against the Bolshevik regime. Rebel forces held off govern-
ment troops for ten days, despite heavy losses of dead and wounded.
August 11, 1921
Party leaders introduced the New Economic Policy (REP) in an effort to
overcome growing difficulties with the civilian population. For a number of
years, NEP provided a general relaxation of economic discipline.
June 1922
Leaders of the "SR" party, a social revolutionary group which opposed
Lenin's policies, were arrested.
April 17-25, 1923
Stalin emerged as the most powerful figure at the 12th Party Congress,
conducted without the seriously ill Lenin.
December 5, 1923
Leon Trotsky openly attacked Stalin and his supporters by demanding
greater democracy within the party and an end of the organization's repressive
methods.,
January 16-18, 1924
At the 13th Party Congress, Stalin accused Trotsky and his followers of
"deviating" from Lenin's conception of party unity. The Stalin faction
asserted its opposition to the principle of democratic discussion.
HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS
-105-
January 21, 1924
Lenin died after a long illness, intensifying the competition among his
would-be successors.
October 21-23, 1926
Stalin ended his association with Zinoviev and Kamenev, the three having
formed a ruling triumvirate during Lenin's illness. Zinoviev and Kamenev,
along with Trotsky, lost their high party positions.
December 2-19, 1927
The 15th Communist Party Congress found the Stalin faction in control.
The Trotsky faction was banished, Trotsky himself later being exiled and
ultimately assassinated.
October 1, 1928
A new era of heavy emphasis on industrialization and collectivization
of the USSR began with announcement of the first Soviet five-year plan.
November 10-17, 1929
A conflict within the Communist Party's Central Committee ended with the
expulsion of Bukharin and several sympathizers. The expelled group had
advocated a more conciliatory policy toward Russian peasants balking at
Stalin's collectivization measures.
1929-32
This was a general period of collectivization emphasis. The party,
under Stalin's leadership, moved rapidly to consolidate its political and
economic controls. Heavy pressure was applied against peasants and others
accused of resisting Communist policies. (Stalin told Winston Churchill,
years later, that 10 million people had died as a result of the forced
collectivization program in the USSR.)
December 1, 1934
Sergei Kirov, recognized as one of Stalin's staunchest supporters, was
assassinated.
August 19-24, 1936
The Stalinist purge of party leaders reached a peak of intensity with
the execution of 16 veteran party officials. The victims included Gregory
Zinoviev and Leon Kamenev, who with Stalin had comprised a ruling triumvirate
for a period before and after Lenin's death.
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HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS
December 5, 1936
Adoption of the new Soviet constitution helped to consolidate the party's
centralized control over Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Armenia, Turkmenia, Uzbekistan, Tazhikstan, Kazakhstan and Kirghistan.
January 23-30, 1937
The second major purge trial resulted in death sentences for 13 more
veteran Communist party leaders, including the noted economist Yuri Pyatakov
and former Central Committee Secretary Leonid Serebryakov. Four others,
among them the Comintern secretary Karl Radek, were imprisoned and deprived
of their "political rights." (On December 19, 1937, it was disclosed that
eight more party leaders had been executed.)
June 12, 1937
The continuing party purges struck at the highest levels of the Red
Army. Marshal Tukhachevsky and seven other top generals were executed,
along with undisclosed numbers of their subordinates.
March 2-12, 1938
In the third major purge trial, 18 high-ranking party members were sen-
tenced to death and several others were imprisoned. Those executed included
veteran revolutionaries Alexei Rykov, Nikolai Bukharin, Nikolai Krestinsky,
and H. G. Yagoda, the former secret police chief.
The purge sentences, 1936-1938, were only a minute fraction of the
victims whose numbers ran to tens of thousands at all levels of the party
and military services, in addition to a vast multitude of persons in no
way connected with the party or the military. Every constituent republic
and autonomous area was affected.
May 3, 1939
V. M. Molotov was named Commissar of Foreign Affairs. He replaced
Maxim Litvinov, who was dismissed after 18 years of service.
1939-45
The events of the World War II period, notable for a general emphasis
on patriotic nationalism, are not summarized in this chronology because they
pertain more to national than party history. Toward the end of this period,
it is true, the party's post-war plans for annexing its present satellites
in Eastern Europe began to be apparent. Other significant developments of
the war years included military absorption of the Baltic states and a vast
prOgram of?deportation for various ethnic groups of the USSR on charges they
had engaged in "treasonable" activities. A number of republics, such as the
Crimean and Chechen-Ingush, were wiped out even as nominal entities in a
general drive for centralized control by the Communist party apparatus.
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October 6, 1947
The Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) was established to regu-
late the activities of Communist parties in the Soviet satellites and in
other countries where Communist representatives were operating either openly
or underground.
December 30, 1947
Soviet control was established in Rumania as Communist representatives
forced the abdication of King Michael and took over the government.
February 25, 1948
A Soviet-dominated political faction took over the government in Czech-
oslovakia.
June 28, 1948
Yugoslavia was ousted from the Cominform because President Tito refused
to azcept the Soviet Communist Party's ideological domination.
April 27, 1949
The Soviet Congress of Trade Unions, meeting after a lapse of 17 years,
acknowledged that all labor activities in the USSR were subject to regulation
and control by the Communist Party.
October 5-15, 1952
The 19th Soviet Communist Party Congress, the first in thirteen years,
produced a recommendation that Communist parties in other countries should
associate themselves with "national" movements as a means of advancing the
objectives of international communism. The party also supported plans for
continued emphasis on heavy industry.
March 5, 1953
Party spokesmen disclosed the death of Stalin. (Georgi Malenkov became
Premier and CPSU secretary the next day.
March 14, 1953
Khrushchev replaced Malenkov as CPSU secretary, marking beginning of
Khrushchev's rapid rise to top leadership.
June 17, 1953
Soviet party officials sent troops to break up workers' uprising in
East Germany.
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July 10, 1953
Lavrenti Beria, veteran Soviet secret police chief, was charged with
treason. (After a campaign of denunciation in the party press, Beria was
executed in December of the same year.)
August 8, 1953
Premier Malenkov launched what proved to be a short-lived policy of
boosting the production of consumer goods.
aultisktE21_1122
Khrushchev was given new title, First Secretary of CPSU Central Committee.
August 17, 1954
Alexander Tvardovsky was dismissed as editor of the Soviet literary
monthly, Novy Mir. He was found guilty of publishing articles critical of
the basic Communist cultural doctrine of "socialist realism."
December 15-26, 1954
The second congress of Soviet writers was marked by criticism of the
"gray flood of colorless, mediocre literature pouring from the pages of our
magazines and flooding the book market."
February 8, 1955
Malenkov resigned as Soviet Premier, to be replaced by N. A. Bulganin,
a move reported as stemming from Nikita Khrushchev's opposition to Malenkov's
"soft" line on heavy industry. On the sitme eventful day, V. M. Molotov made
a serious ideological slip by stating in a speech before the Supreme Soviet
that the Soviet Union was in a process of building socialism. This
contradicted the CPSU position on the growth of communism. Later, after
being subjected to sharp criticism, Molotov admitted in a public confession
that he had made a "theoretically and politically dangerous" mistake.
May 27, 1955
Khrushchev and Bulganin arrived in Belgrade in an effort to smooth over
the party's past differences with Tito.
February 24, 1956
Khrushchev, in a sensational 20th Party Congress speech, denounced
Stalin as a tyrant and murderer whose "personality cult" had damaged the
party's program. This speech, followed by a "de-Stalinization" campaign
in the USSR, had serious repercussions throughout the international com-
munist movement. It was never, however, published in the Soviet Union.
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June 1, 1956
Former Pravda editor Dmitri Shepilov replaced V. M. Molotov as Soviet
foreign minister.
June 17, 1956
The Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti demanded that Soviet
officials explain why they had been unable to stop Stalin's excesses.
Togliatti's statement reflected the widespread ideological concern which
Khrushchev's February speech had created in the minds of party followers
in many countries.
June 30, 1956
The Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee condemned the "cult of
personality" which had developed under Stalin but warned against criticism
of the Communist system itself.
September 3, 1956
Soviet party leaders sent special instructions to Communist officials
in the satellite countries, warning against adoption of viewpoints similar
to Tito's "many roads" of nationalistic approach to the building of com-
munism.
October 19-21, 1956
In a series of warnings prompted by evidences of rebellion in Poland,
Soviet Party Chief Khrushchev warned the Poles that "if you do not obey we
will crush you" and Pravda accused Polish leaders of "shaking the founda-
tions of Communism." (The Poles remained firm at this time. As one result,
Soviet Marshal Rokossovski was ousted from his position in the Polish
Politburo and removed as Polish minister of defense.)
October 23 - November 4, 1956
The Soviet Communist Party's right to dominate the USSR's Eastern
European satellites was challenged again, this time by a spontaneous nation-
wide uprising in Hungary. The Hungarian rebellion was ended by full-scale
use of Soviet troops and armor in an assault beginning November 4. (This
action produced world-wide criticism of the Communist party and resulted
in heavy membership and prestige losses throughout the world.)
January 17, 1957
Khrushchev signaled a modification of the party's line on Stalin by
praising the late dictator as having been in many ways a "model Communist."
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March 12, 1957
Soviet Communist leaders condemned the concept of "national communism"
and warned satellite countries that obedience to Moscow was required.
March 30, 1957
Khrushchev, in what proved to be the first of a series of moves to
stimulate Soviet industrial productivity, disclosed a plan to reorganize
the national economy. He proposed to overcome bureaucratic stagnation in
central control ministries by establishing a substitute network of regional
economic organizations. (Khrushchev's decentralization program was promptly
approved by the central committee and became a key part of the party's
campaign to boost productivity levels.)
April 19, 1957
The Soviet regime declared a moratorium on state bonds valued at
260,000,000,000 rubles. This fund was frozen for 20 years, with complete
repayment not scheduled until 1997. The bonds had been sold to citizens
of the USSR through a system of "voluntary" subscriptions over a period of
years. (Khrushchev had disclosed the forthcoming action on April 8.)
July 3, 1957
Public announcement was made of a new purge of top-ranking party members,
following reports of serious dissension within the Central Committee. Prin-
cipal victims were former premiers V. M. Molotov and Georgi Malenkov, to-
gether with the veteran economic expert Lazar Kaganovich and former Pravda
editor and foreign minister Dmitri Shepilov. They were accused of "anti-
party activities." Marshal Zhukov, reportedly as a reward for supporting
Khrushchev against the party leadership, was made a full member of the
Presidium. (Premier Nicolai Bulganin later was downgraded and charged with
membership in the previously purged "anti-party" group.)
August 28 1957
A new warning to Soviet writers, some of whom had evidenced liberal
tendencies in the post-Stalin period, was sounded with publication of three
Khrushchev speeches centered around the party's decision that all Soviet
literature must reflect strict adherence to Communist policies.
October 26, 1957
Marshal Zhukov was dismissed as Soviet defense minister. (In the anti-
Zhukov propaganda campaign which followed, the former Soviet military hero
was accused of having resisted the party's efforts to control the armed
forces. Although not linked with the "anti-party" group, Zhukov was removed
from his briefly-held Presidium post and relegated to official obscurity.
The occasion also was used as a means of stressing the party's intention of
tightening its ideological controls throughout the Soviet military organi-
zation.)
HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS
November 14-19 1957
Communist representatives from various countries gathered in Moscow
for large-scale celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revo-
lution (November 7), held meetings to discuss the party's international
strategy. These sessions produced a 12-party declaration (which Yugoslavia
refused to sign) and a "peace manifesto," the general tenor of which was to
assert the Soviet Communist Party's ideological primacy as organizer and
leader of the international communist movement.
March 27, 1958
Nikita Khrushchev replaced Nikolai Bulganin as premier, thus becoming
the first Communist leader since Stalin to head both party and government
in the USSR. (Four days later Bulganin was made chairman of the USSR's state
bank.)
April 22-24 1958
Soviet ideological pressure became a major issue at the Yugoslav Com-
munist Party Congress in Ljubljana. President Tito and other Yugoslav
officials condemned current Moscow criticism as a "senseless" return to the
policies of 1948, when Yugoslavia was ousted from the Cominform. Communist
countries of the Soviet bloc, meanwhile, had boycotted the Yugoslav congress
because the Yugoslav party's draft program was at variance with Soviet
Interpretations of Marxism-Leninism. (Early in May, the Chinese Communist
Party followed up Soviet denunciations of Yugoslavia's independent policies
by beginning a series of sharply-worded condemnations. The Peiping People's
Daily, for example, accused the Yugoslays of revisionist actions "aimed at
splitting the international Communist movement" and of persisting in their
nationalist views in opposition to the Moscow party declaration of the
previous November.)
May 28, 1958
Yugoslav sources disclosed that the Soviet Union had postponed for five
years the granting of previously agreed credits to Yugoslavia amounting to
285 million dollars. This, it was charged, was an attempt to punish Yugo-
slavia for its refusal to accept the Soviet Communist Party's ideological
leadership.
September 5, 1958
Former Premier Bulganin, who on August 15 had been removed from his
state bank position and made chairman of the remote Stavropol regional
economic council, was ousted from the CPSU presidium. (On November 12,
Premier Khrushchev disclosed that Bulganin had been an original member of
the 1957 "anti-party" group.)
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September 21, 1958
Khrushchev announced a new party plan to increase the Communist con-
sciousness of Soviet young people. This proposal, endorsed by the Central
Committee in November, called for less formal schooling and more work in
factories and on collective farms. Too many young people, Khrushchev
declared, were apathetic toward the building ofqcommunism.
October 23, 1958
Announcement that Boris Pasternak had been awarded the 1958 Nobel prize
for literature posed a major literary policy problem for Soviet party offi-
cials. Pasternak's most famous work, the novel "Dr. Zhivago," had been banned
in the USSR as a worthless and malicious work which "rejected" the achieve-
ments of communism. The party solved the problem by expelling Pasternak from
the Soviet Writer's Union, attacking him as a slanderer and threatening him
with exile. (Pasternak's resultant refusal to accept the Nobel award, how-
ever, failed to diminish the wave of adverse criticism which Soviet handling
of the Pasternak case created throughout the non-Communist world.)
December 13, 1958
First Secretary Alexei Surkov of the Soviet Writer's Union, told the
Russian Republic's writers' congress that because a number of writers had
been "disoriented" by the Pasternak affair, closer ideological surveillance
of Soviet literature would be maintained "from now on."
January 27 - February 5, 1959
The 21st Soviet Communist Party Congress endorsed Khrushchev's new
seven-year plan for boosting national economic production rates, along with
other decisions already adopted by the Central Committee. The Congress
also featured a number of speeches denouncing members of the "anti-party"
group along with confessions of complicity by Mikhail Pervukhin and
M. Z. Saburov. In a final resolution, the Congress stated its agreement
with disciplinary measures against the "anti-party" group already taken
by the Central Committee.
- 113-
GLOSSARY OF COMMUNIST TERMINOLOGY
Words and expressions in Communist dialectics in general fall into
one of the following categories:
(1) those originating with the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, such
as "capitalism," "proletariat," etc.;
(2) epithets and invectives frequently used in attacks on non-
Communist elements outside the Sino-Soviet bloc, such as "imperialists"
and "warmongers";
(3) words of censure or condemnation for Communist Party members who
stray from the party line, such as "dogmatist," "revisionist," and
"deviationist";
(4) words given a special meaning for propaganda purposes, unlike
that in traditional dictionaries, such as "democratic," "progressive,"
"peaceful coexistence," and the like;
(5) words referring to CP organs or functions, such as "cadres" and
"activists";
(6) words relating to Communist arts and letters, such as "formalism"
and "socialist realism";
(7) organizational terms such as "sovkhoz," "kolkhoz," "Komsomol,";
(8) words such as "hooligan," which have been given a new interpreta-
tion.
Sources for the glossary include:
Works of Marx and Engels, including the Communist Manifesto; the
writings and speeches of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and other CPSU
leaders; Soviet reference works, including the Large, Soviet Encyclopedia,
Dictionary of the Russian Language, Short Philosophical Dictionary,
Political Dictionary, Diplomatic Dictionary; Soviet newspapers and
periodicals, including Pravda, Bolshevik, Science and Life; Moscow radio
broadcasts; proceedings of the CPSU; official decrees and laws issued by
the Supreme Soviet; propaganda material distributed under the auspices
of the CPSU central committee; and special booklets and brochures, such as
the Agitator's Handbook.
Only the key terms of communism are defined in the glossary which
follows.
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GLOSSARY
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(CPSU refers to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; CP refers to
any Communist Party.)
ACTIVIST ,(activ),-- a member of a group or organization furthering CP
programs. Activists may or may not be Communists but they
promote Communist objectives along specific lines. Normally,
the term refers to leading CP cadres. (See Cadres)
AGGRESSION -- according to the Dictionary of the Russian Language, the
"armed attack by one or several imperialist countries against
other countries with a view to the occupation of their
territories, their forcible subjugation and the exploitation
of their people." In line with the distinction in Communist
ideology between "just" and "unjust" wars, Communist regimes
are never considered to be aggressors. (See War)
AGITATOR -- in a Communist state, a CP - trained person, usually a party
member, engaged in "exhorting the people" to meet production
norms, support the party's policies and programs, etc. In non-
Communist countries a Communist agitator may incite unrest,
promote strikes for political ends, etc. An agitator deals
with specific and generally local issues, while a propagandist
spreads broad Communist principles and doctrines, (See Propaganda)
ANTI-PARTY -- a term of opprobrium, meaning contrary to the precept of
democratic centralism. (See Democratic Centralism)
APPARATUS (apparat) -- the party machine or administrative core, which
cofiliari?the operational functions of the party. It may also
refer to a regional party component. The apparatchiki (CP
functionaries) in general are concerned with internal party
management. (See also Democratic Centralism)
ATIEIST -- an unbeliever. In Communist theory, a party member must profess
disbelief in a Deity, accept the "materialistic world outlook,"
and actively work against religious faith in the people. (See
Dialectical Materialism; Religion)
BOLSHEVIK -- a member of the extreme revolutionary wing of the Russian
Social Democratic Party headed by Lenin, which led the Bolshevik
Revolution of November 1917and in1918became the All-Russian
Communist Party (bolsheviks)..
BOURGEOIS -- a derogatory adjective, associated in Communist usage with
"survivals" of "reactionary" sentiments under communism. Applied
to non-Communist countries, "bourgeois democracy," "bourgeois
nationalism," etc. are invidious terms.
BOURGEOISE -- the property-owning middle class, considered to be the enemy
of communism. (See Capitalism; Marxism)
S.
GLOSSARY
- 115 -
CADRES party members who form the basic staff or hard core of the
CP at any level and in every field of party organization.
They are chosen for reliability and competence in their own
fields. (In Communist China, cadres are not necessarily CP
members.)
CAPITALISM -- the social, political and economic antithesis of communism,
which was treated at length in its historical development by
Marx and Engels. Technically, it is an economic system in which
the ownership of land and natural wealth, and the production,
distribution and exchange of goods are effected by private
enterprise under competitive conditions. In Communist usage,
the words "capitalism" and "capitalist" are always linked with
the "exploitation of oppressed workers." (See Communism;
Proletariat)
CAPITALIST ENCIRCLEMENT -- a dictum set forth by Lenin and echoed by Stalin,
based on the belief that capitalist states have the aim of en-
circling and destroying the USSR as the center of world communism.
In recent years the phrase has passed out of Soviet usage, replaced
by the propaganda expression "aggressive circles" which are
pictured as seeking war. (See Peace; War)
CELL -- smallest organized unit of a CP; in countries where the CP is
outlawed, party cells exist as undercover units.
CHAUVINISM (See Nationalism; Great Power Chauvinism)
COEXISTENCE -- a Communist premise current since Lenin, often repeated by
Stalin and Khrushchev, usually as "peaceful coexistence," that
is, rivalry between the "two camps" -- capitalism and communism
-- which avoids actual hostilities. An eventual resort to war
is not ruled out by Communist theorists. (See Peace; Peaceful
Coexistence; War)
CLASSLESS SOCIETY -- a Marxist tenet assuming that with the triumph of
communism, the State will "wither away" and all class distinctions
will be abolished; this has not happened under any Communist
regime, but in theory would be possible after all othei. conditions
for a Communist society had been achieved. (See Marx)
CLASS STRUGGLE -- a postulate of Marxism-Leninism, which argues that in
capitalist society there are two principal classes -- the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat, or "exploited workers." From
this situation, Communists posit a class struggle, ending in
victory for the workers. (See Bourgeoisie; Dictatorship of the
Proletariat)
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- 116 - GLOSSARY
COLLECTIVIZATION -- an agricultural system under communism, in which
farmers pool their land and equipment in state-directed coopera-
tives. (See Kolkhoz)
COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP -- a term referring to decisions taken by the
"collective whole" (Pravda, April 16, 1953) at meetings of CP
committees, especially the CPSU central committee, as against
"single-handed management" (Party Life, April 1956), that is,
dictatorial decisions by a CP leader. (See Cult of Personality;
Democratic Centralism.)
COLONIALISM -- a term with a special invidious meaning, referring to areas
or countries whose people do not enjoy full sovereignty and are
under some form of administration by "imperialisepowers. The
hegemony exercised by the USSR over Eastern Europe is not considered
colonialism by Soviet definition. (See Imperialism)
COMINFORM -- an abbreviation of Communist Information Bureau (1947-1956),
an organization of representatives of the Communist parties of
the USSR, five satellite states, France, Italy, and Yugoslavia
(expelled in 1948), to afford party line guidance to other
Communist parties. There is no present counterpart of this
organization, but a group of CP representatives publish the
World Marxist Review in Prague, which indicates the party line
that should be followed in international communism.
COMINTERN -- abbreviation of Communist Third International (1919-1943),
an international CP organization, established to further Communist
objectives wherever possible on a worldwide basis.
COMMUNISM -- originally, in Marxist-Leninist theory, a state of society
pictured in the slogan: "From each according to his abilities;
to each according to his need." Lenin assumed that the transi-
tion from capitalism to communism would be socialism, or the
"common ownership of the means of production and the distribution
of the product according to the work of each." This would be the
period of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (which see).
Lenin and Stalin envisaged a high productive and industrial base
for the creation of a Communist society. Stalin initiated this
program in a series of Five Year Plans. (See Collectivization;
Five Year Plans; Norm)
COMMUNIST MANIFESTO -- the public declaration of communism and its aims,
issued by Marx and Engels in 1848, centered about the slogan:
"Workers of the world, unite! " (See Dictatorship of the
Proletariat)
.?7.1
GLOSSARY - 117 -
CORRECTIVE LABOR -- a Communist legal term, referring to sentences
imposed for various crimes or misdemeanors, ranging in'severity
from exile or confinement in forced labor camps to penal labor
in the home community.
CRITICISM, SELF-CRITICISM -- an important party technique re-emphasized by
the 19th CPSU Congress (1952): an obligation of party members to
"develop self-criticism and criticism from below, to expose and
eliminate shortcomings in work, and to fight against a show of
well-being and against being carried away by success in work";
also applied to exposing the shortcomings of Marxist parties anal
other workers' organizations.
CULT OF PERSONALITY -- a term denoting autocratic party rule by a party
head (Stalin), contrary to the principle of collective leadership.
Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress charged that Stalin en-
couraged the cult of personality. (See Democratic Centralism;
Collective Leadership)
CULTURE, SOCIALIST -- in the generalized sense, the development of arts
and sciences under communism, with a Marxist-Leninist content.
The negative form, uncultured or ill-mannered (nekulturny),
refers to public behavior contrary to Communist social norms.
(See Formalism; Socialist Realism; Subjectivism)
DEMOCRACY -- a word used in a special sense by Communists, usually with a
qualifying adjective. Thus, "bourgeois democracy" refers to the
parliamentary system in non-Communist states, in contrast to the
"highest form" -- "Soviet democracy." A transitional form is
"people's democracy," referring to the Communist-controlled regimes
of Eastern Europe. The adjective "democratic" connotes adherence
to, or sympathy with, the principles of Marxism-Leninism. (See
also Progressive)
DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM -- a phrase coined by Lenin to describe one-
party rule,centralized in a small, dedicated leadership. In
theory, the controlling element, the party's central committee,
is chosen through an elective process by party organizations at
various levels, from lowest to highest. Decisions of the central
committee are then binding on the lower bodies. (See Leninism)
DEVIATIONISM -- a term meaning to stray from the straight course of the
party line. In Stalin's day there were "right deviationists"
or "rightists" -- party members who favored permanent political
coalitions with Socialist parties, etc. -- and "left deviationists,"
party members who were too inflexible in their views. Today the
epithet is appli0 principally to parties or groups that do not
acknowledge the primacy of the CPSU, such as the Yugoslav Communists.
(See Party Line)
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GLOSSARY
DIALECTICAL MATERIALSIM -- a basic concept of Marxism-Leninism: the
economic interpretation of history and social phenomena.
From this comes the "materialistic worlioutlook," enjoined on
Communists, which rejects ethical or spiritual causation.
Dialectical materialism combines two Marxist concepts: (1) that
the material world alone possesses reality; and (2) that
progressive changes occur in nature and society as a result of
conflicts between opposing or contradictory forces or elements.
(See Marxism)
DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT -- the cornerstone of the Marxist-Leninist
doctrine, involving the "class struggle" between the organized
workers or proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Marx pictured the
proletarian dictatorship as taking place during the period of
"revolutionary transformation" from capitalism to communism.
(See Marxism; Leninism; Proletariat)
DIVERSIONIST -- originally a saboteur, but now taken to mean an alleged
agent of a foreign power or sympathizer with a non-Communist
state, operating in a Communist regime; sometimes an epithet de-
scribing party members who lend themselves to such activities.
(See also Trotskyism)
DOGMATIST -- a disparaging term for one who harbors the idea that
Marxism-Leninism constitutes a body of fixed principles which
supplies a ready-made solution to every problem under communism;
in general, one who lacks flexibility in meeting new problems.
(See also Objectivism; Party Spirit)
EGALITARIANISM (EQUALITARIANISM) -- a term originally applied to the
Marxist principle: "From each according to his abilities, to
each according to his needs." For a brief period after the
Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin tried to establish equality of wages
for all kinds of work, but soon found that lack of money incentive
resulted in loss of production. Stalin denounced "equalization"
as a "piece of reactionary petty-bourgeois absurdity." Elimination
of the Marxist concept has resulted in a wide spread between the
incomes of the lowest-paid workers and Soviet elite groups.
FIVE-YEAR PLANS -- a series of state planning operations conducted by the
Soviet Government, starting in 1928 w hen Stalin initiated the
first Five Year Plan, together with collectivization. In 1959 the
Government launched a Seven Year Plan. Under state planning, each
branch of state administration has specified goals which it must
meet over defined time intervals. Overall responsibility for pre-
paring and checking the execution of the national plan is con-
centrated in the State Planning Commissibn or Gosplan. (See
Collectivization; Norm; Socialist Emulation; Stalinism)
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FORMALISM -- a word usually applied to cultural attitudes, meaning
contrary to the party doctrine of "socialist realism." A
formalist is one who is more concerned with the form of
culture than its social significance, or who practices "art
for art's sake." (See Socialist Realism) In another sense,
a formalist is one who fails to adjust his work and conduct
to party criticism. (See Dogmatism)
FRACTIONALISM -- a word defined as the "appearance of groups with
special platforms and with the ambition to form in some degree
a unit and establish their own group discipline" (within the
party). (See Democratic Centralism)
FRONT, POLITICAL -- a political coalition, including the Communist Party
as an element. Earlier fronts were generally termed "popular
fronts," that is, alliances with Socialist or Labor parties;
recently, the emphasis has been on "national fronts," or coalitions
with nationalist parties. Use of the word to mean a Communist-
controlled organization, such as the World Peace Council, is not
Communist terminology.
GREAT POWER CHAUVINISM -- by Communist definition, the "national politics
' of the bourgeoisie of a dominating nation which is exploiting
and oppressing other nations." The expression in general is
limited to theoretical discussions. (See Bourgeoisie; Capitalism;
Colonialism)
HOOLIGANISM -- activities of youthful trouble-makers, who are guilty of
public misbehavior ranging from rowdyism to more serious offenses,
IMPERIALISM -- in Leninist theory, the final development of the capitalist
system, frequently associated in the context of colonialism. (See
Capitalism; Colonialism; Leninism)
INTELLIGENTSIA -- the educated and professional groups or class; under
communism, considered an important element of the CP -- "one
of the active builders of communism" (CPSU pronouncement, March
23, 1959).
INTERNATIONALISM -- in acceptable Communist usage often referred to as
"proletarian internationalism," of which the Third (Communist)
International (Comintern) was an early expression. Soviet News
stated in 1950: "An internationalist is not one who verbally
recognizes international solidarity or sympathizes with it. A
real internationalist is one who brings his sympathy and recogni-
tion up to the point of practical and maximum help to the USSR
and support and defense of the USSR by every means and in every
possible form." This definition rules out the Socialist interna-
tional, which is not committed to support and defend the USSR.
(See Comintern; Proletarian Internationalism)
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GLOSSARY
KOLKHOZ -- Russian language abbreviation for collective farm, a "self-
governing" peasant cooperative, in which the land technically
belongs to the state but its use is reserved to the collec-
tive farm members. Collective farm workers are required to
give a large proportion of work-day labor on the communal land,
usually 100 to 150 work-days annually. Farm women are usually
required to work less than men (100 to 150 work days) and men may
put in as much as 300 work days. (See Work-Day) Most equipment
used by the collective is communally owned, but kolkhoz members
have small private plots which they work with manual tools.
Produce from the individual plots may be sold on the free market.
Collective farm products are purchased by agencies of the state.
Since 1957, collective farms have been acquiring power machinery
from the machine tractor stations (MTS), which formerly per-
formed machine operations on a contract basis.
KOMSOMOL -- Russian language abbreviation for the Young Communist League,
an organization of about 20 million members which indoctrinates
young people in the theory and practice of communism. Komsomol
members also perform various other services furthering CP
programs and policies.
KULAK (lit. "fist") -- a term of abuse current during the collectivization
drive of 1929-1934, referring to well-to-do peasants, especially
those who hired day labor. Later, the term referred to any
peasants who opposed Soviet agricultural policies. (See Collec-
tivization)
LENINISM -- generally used as Marxism-Leninism, the "one and only ideology
of the USSR" (Pravda, April 22, 1951). Lenin adapted and ex-
panded the theories of Marx and Engels, giving them practical
application based on the October Revolution. He also developed
the principle of the Communist Party as a "militant staff of the
working class" in its "vanguard role." He initiated single-
party (Bolshevik) control of the government in the guise of
"democratic centralism." In the realm of dialectics, Lenin
projected Marx's theoretical analysis of capitalism to its
modern or "imperialist" phase, which he considered to be the
final stage of capitalism. (See Capitalism; Communism; Democratic
Centralism; Imperialism; October Revolution; Vanguard)
LIBERALISM -- a word with an invidious or acceptable meaning, depend-
ing on the context. As an element in "bourgeois morality,"
Communists disparage liberalism, but not if it is linked with
pro-Communist groups or movements; thus, "progressives, liberals,
and Communists" (cf. Cominform Journal, June 1951). (See
Democracy; Progressive)
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LIBERATION -- a word in frequent Communist use, denoting the liberation
of colonial peoples from "imperialist" rule, or the liberation
of peoples such as those in Eastern Europe, from capitalism.
A common expression is the "liberation of the countries of the
people's democracy from fascist oppression." (See People's
Democracy)
MARXISM -- the revolutionary socialism of Marx and Engels, which was given
concrete illustration in the Communist Manifesto. The basic con-
cepts of Marxism include the class struggle; the materialistic
interpretation of history and social phenomena; and the analysis
of capitalism as exploitation of the workers. (See Bourgeoisie;
Class Struggle; Communism; Communist Manifesto; Dialectical
Materialism; Dictatorship of the Proletariat; Workers)
MASSES -- the great body of the people; the working people as dis-
tinguished from the organized workers or proletariat. ,(See
Proletariat)
MORALITY -- in Communist usage, a word with two specific meanings, i.e.,
in reference to "bourgeois morality" or ethics derived from
religious beliefs, and "Communist morality," based on Marxism-
Leninism. The Short Philosophical Dictionary states: "From the
point of view of Communist morality, 'moral' is only that which
facilitates the destruction of the old world and strengthens the
the new Communist regime."
NATIONALISM -- a concept having various meanings in Communist usage.
Thus "bourgeois nationalism" is the self-determination of a
bourgeois state, which may be supported by the USSR if it
furthers Soviet foreign policy or weakens the capitalist world.
In recent years, national movements in the less-developed
countries have been supported by the Soviet Government as a
means of opposing or thwarting "imperialists." On the other
hand, "national socialise or an independent form of communism,
within the USSR or in the satellite states, is considered
inadmissable. (See Deviationism)
NORM -- the quota of individual output or work performance required as
a minimum in a given period of time, tied in with wage levels
calculated on the basis of norms. Failure to fulfill the
designated norm results in pay deductions. (See Socialist
Emulation; Stakhanovite)
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GLOSSARY
NEUTRALISM -- a word with various shades of meaning in Soviet theory and
usage, not identical with "neutrality," which is a situation of
fact. The Large Soviet Encyclopedia refers to neutralism in
trade unions as "an opportunist theory towards the political
struggle of the proletariat, widely spread in capitalist countries
by reactionary leaders." Strictly speaking, Marxism-Leninism,
asserting the dogma of the "two worlds" (capitalism and socialism),
excludes neutralism in international relations. In practice,
however, Soviet policy is to favor neutralism in some uncommitted
countries in the belief that these may be open to Communist
influence. (See Imperialism; War)
OBJECTIVISM -- according to the Short Philosophical Dictionary: "Any
explanations of the necessity and laws of the historical process
which justify and praise the capitalist system and conceal
bourgeois views with a pretended 'theoretical absence of party
spirit (partiinost)." Objectivism, if charged against Communist
historians, philosophers, etc., is a serious accusation. (See
Bourgeois; Dia/ed!.tical Materialism; Party Spirit)
OCTOBER REVOLUTION -- the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, headed by
Lenin, on November 7, 1917. The difference in date is due to
the fact that in Russia the Old Style calendar was in use until
the Gregorian calendar was adopted by the Soviet Government in
1918. (See Bolsheviks)
OPPORTUNISM -- a charge leveled against moderate Socialists, non-Communist
trade unions, and political parties favoring "reformism," or the
acceptance of social advances short of Communist revoluelonary
goals.
PARTY LINE -- the official CP policy or pronouncement an any subject at
any given time, which is binding on all party members. (See
Democratic Centralism)
PARTY SPIRIT (partiinost) -- usually applied in cultural fields, as an
"inalienable condition of socialist realism.. .Its realization in
practice is the expression of the interests of the toiling masses."
(Large Soviet Encyclopedia). Party-mindedness in the arts and
literature reflects CP attitudes toward all cultural and creative
activities. (See Socialist Realism)
PEACE a word usually linked in Communist propaganda with the objectives
of the Soviet bloc -- the "peace camp" -- as against those of the
"imperialists." The peace theme is the stock-in-trade of Communist
front organizations, such as the World Peace Council. (See
Front; War)
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GLOSSARY - 123 -
PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE -- an international situation postulated in
Communist theory as the continuing existence, without
armed ctinflict, of the two "camps" -- communism and capital-
ism. However, the idea of temporary peaceful coexistence
of the two systems is stressed as a tactic. At no time do
Communists publicly state that permanent coexistence is
possible or likely; on the contrary, they maintain that
peaceful coexistence is only a provisional truce in the
"inevitable conflict" between the two systems, according to
the dictum of Lenin, in which the triumph of communism is
inevitable. Thus the tactical endorsement by Communists
of the principle of peaceful coexistence goes hand in hand
with the Leninist assumption that lasting peace will come
about only when the entire world has fallen under communism.
(See Coexistence;Peace; War)
PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACY -- a term attributed to Stalin to describe the
Communist-controlled regimes of Eastern Europe. In Soviet
theory, a people's democracy is an intermediate form of
government between parliamentary "bourgeois democracy" and
"Soviet democracy," which is considered the highest form of
workers' government. (See Bourgeoisie)
PETTY BOURGEOISIE -- the lower middle class, viewed by Communists in
some underdeveloped countries as a possible ally in national
fronts against conservative parties and groups.
POLITBURO -- originally the political bureau of the CPSU central
committee. In 1952 the designation was changed to presidium.
Many Communist parties outside the USSR retain the name
politburo.
POPULAR -- a laudatory term, meaning communistic or deserving of Com-
munist support; applied to group movements, political aims,
or regimes. (See Democracy; Progressive)
PROGRESSIVE -- like the word "democratic," associated with pro-Commu-
nist groups or movements. It has a special meaning in con-
nection with norms. A "progressive norm" is a unit of pro-
duction within a given period of time, achieved by "advanced
workers" or "innovators" who set the pace for the average
workers. (See Norm; Socialist Emulation)
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GLOSSARY
PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALSIM -- before the Bolshevik Revolution,sig-
nified the international solidarity of workers, aimed at the
overthrow of capitalism; after the Revolution, proletarian
internationalism in addition called for the sur port of the
Soviet State by the world labor movement and support of the
world labor movement by the "toilers of the USSR." (See
Dictatorship of the Proletariat)
PROLETARIAT -- defined by Marx and Engels as the class of workers
brought into existence under the capitalist system, whose
members do not own property or the means of production. They
are pictured as a class to be organized and led by the CP
for Communist political purposes. (See Bourgeoisie; Capital-
ism; Dictatorship of the Proletariat; Marxism)
PROPAGANDA -- In Communist usage, the word has wide theoretical and
functional application, including (1) the systematic indoctri-
nation of the people under communism in Marxism-Leninism; (2)
the use of all media of communication, education, and culture
for the same purpose; (3) support of numerous agencies and
organizations in and outside of the USSR for spreading Commu-
nist principles and attacking capitalist countries. Communist
front organizations are a common medium serving the last-named
objectives. A propagandist, according to the Political
Dictionary, engages in the "intensive elucidation of the
writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and of the history
of the Bolshevik party and its tasks."
PURGE -- a word adapted from the idiom of fascism and Nazism, not a part
of Communist terminology but, in practice, the elimination or
liquidation of opposition elements within the party or state.
? (See Democratic Centralism; Party Line)
REACTIONARY -- a term with a wide range of derogatory meanings; thus,
"bourgeois reactionaries" are opposed by "progressive, demo-
cratic" forces. (See Bourgeois; Deviationism; Diversionist;
Progressive)
REALISM (See Socialist Realism)
RELIGION -- according to Marx, the "opiate of the people." Since
religious faith denies the Marxist materialistic interpreta-
tion of history, Communists consider religion an inveterate
enemy of communism. Members of the CP are required to sub-
scribe to atheism and to further atheistic indoctrination of
people living under communism. (See Atheism; Marxism)
GLOSSARY - 125 -
REFORMISM (See Opportunism)
REVISIONISM -- as used by the CPSU, the term refers to an ideological and
political movement among the Socialist, Marxists, and Communists,
seeking to revise certain dogmatic teachings of Marx, which were
later expounded by Lenin and Stalin as immutable "laws," to be
followed unflinchingly by all Communists and their sympathizers
inside and outside the Communist orbit. Applied to Communist
culture, it is a critical word, stigmatizing CP dissidents who
do not follow the CPSU interpretation of Leninist cultural doc-
trine, especially as regards socialist realism. (See Socialist
Realism.)
REVOLUTIONARY -- in Soviet usage refers to one who "without arguments,
unconditionally., openly and honestly without secret military
consultations, is ready to protect and defend the USSR, since
the USSR is the first proletarian revolutionary State in the
world that is building socialism." (Stalin, Collected Works)
(See Stalinism; Trotskyism)
SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM (See Communism)
SECTARIANISM -- refers to evangelical Christian sects in the USSR as
distinguished from the Orthodox Church. In Science and Life,
1950, V. G. Sokolov called for a "systematic ideological
struggle against the anti-scientific reactionary ideology of
sectarianism." While the Soviet Government tolerates the
Orthodox Church, the CPSU campaigns actively against sectarian
denominations. (See Religion) The term also applies to other
forms of deviationism in the Communist movement.
SELF-CRITICISM (See Criticism, Self-Criticism)
SOCIALIST EMULATION -- a term used in connection with increasing pro-
ductivity, usually in industrial plants; also, a movement to
encourage rank-and-file workers to raise individuals output by
competition with pace-setters called "innovators" or "advanced
workers." The same principle is invoked in "socialist
competition" -- competition between "work brigades" in the
same plant, or between plants producing similar goods, to see
which reaches production targets first, or exceeds production
quotas. (See Five Year Plans; Norm; Stakhanovite)
SOCIALIST REALISM -- defined in the Large Soviet Encyclopedia as a
"means of reflecting life in art peculiar to socialist society.
It demands the true portrayal of reality in its revolutionary
development. The problem of literature is the truthful and
profound delineation of a new people, creators of socialist
society, and of their fight for communism." An article in
Bolshevik, May 15, 1948, stated that "socialist realism
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GLOSSARY
establishes as the basis of artistic creations not the subjective,
arbitrary ideas of the writer, but his detection of objective
reality." In practice, this concept has resulted in a vast output
of mediocre works. (See Culture, Socialist; Formalism; Subjectiv-
ism)
SOVKHOZ -- a farm, usually of large dimensions, operated as state enter-
prise, where the farm workers are paid in cash on a work-day basis
and do not share collectively in profits. (See Kolkhoz; Work-Day)
SOVIET -- Russian language word for council. In the USSR there are soviets
at all levels, from villages to cities. The Supreme Soviet of
the USSR is an elective body which in theory legislates for the
Soviet Union. (See Democratic Centralism)
STAKHANOVITE -- from the Donbas miner Stakhanov, who in the period of the
early five-year plans produced above-average quantities of coal
and taught other miners his method. Pace-setters in industrial
plants were known by his name until the speed-Up system fell
into temporary disrepute; they are now called "innovators" or
"advanced workers." (See Norm; Socialist Emulation)
STALINISM -- CPSU policies and practices associated with J. V. Stalin.
Two leading principles of the party which Stalin initiated were
(1) "socialism in one country," that is, establishing communism
in the USSR without rely.Ing on a world revolution; (2) the
nationalities policy, whereby nationality groups composing
major population elements in union republics, especially the
non-Russian republics, form states that are "national in form,
socialist in content." Following Khrushchev's speech at the
20th Party Congress in 1956, Stalinism became a term of re-
proach. (See Cult of Personality; Nationalism; Trotskyism)
SUBJECTIVISM -- personal views or writings which conflict with the
Marxist-Leninist doctrine that the material world exists in
all its aspects as "objective reality." (See Socialist
Realism)
TROTSKYISM -- commonly used as a term of abuse, derived originally from
the divergent theories of Stalin and Trotsky, the latter arguing
that world revolution should be promoted as an aid to establishing
communism in the USSR. Trotsky insisted that a "permanent
revolution" was a prerequisite to the establishment of a
Communist regime, and that this was a necessary condition for
building socialism in the Soviet Union. He also advocated wide
discussion within the party on measures proposed by the top
leadership. Trotskyism in general connotes Communist heresy,
or refusal to accept the primacy of the CPSU in international
communism. (See Deviationist; Party Line; Stalinism)
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GLOSSARY
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VANGUARD -- used generally in the phrase "vanguard role," meaning the
assumption of leadership by the Communist Party in guiding
revolutionary workers toward communism and, where communism
has been established, determining the structure and policies
of the "workers' state." (See Democratic Centralism; Lenin-
ism; Proletariat)
WAR, COMMUNIST THEORY OF -- according to the Soviet Diplomatic Dic-
tionary: "Lenin recognized two kinds of war, imperialist
wars, and therefore unjust, and wars of liberation, and
therefore just." The Marxist-Leninist view that "imperial-
ist" states are by nature aggressors and a Communist State,
by definition, is peace-loving, does not exclude the possibil-
ity of a "preventive war" by a Communist regime. The epithet
warmongers" refers to the dogma that "capitalist ruling
circles" are always plotting to attack Communist States.
(See Aggression; Capitalist Encirclement; Imperialism;
Liberation; Peace)
-- a unit of time-production, used as a measure of wages
generally on collective or state farms. It does not cor-
respond to a working day, as commonly understood. Under
some conditions, such as harvesting, a worker can put in
more work-days than there are days in the week. (See Norm;
Socialist Emulation)
OR WORKING MASSES -- in Marxist-Leninist doctrine, the broad
mass of toilers, from which emerges the "working class"
organized in unions and politically conscious. The CP is
considered the "vanguard of the working class," entitled
to leadership because of its scientific knowledge of social
and economic principles, and its ability to organize and
establish a socialist society. (See Dictatorship of the
Proletariat; Marxism; Vanguard)
WORK-DAY
WORKERS,
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