Communists and Their Party in the Late Soviet Period

Communists and Their Party in the Late Soviet PeriodAuthor(s): Stephen WhiteSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Oct., 1994), pp. 644-663Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4211635 .

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SEER, Vol. 72, No. 4, October 1994

Communists and their Party in the

Late Soviet Period

STEPHEN WHITE

UNTIL the late I980s there was little doubt that the Communist Party was the central - indeed defining - feature of the Soviet system. The early months of Soviet rule, admittedly, had been based upon a coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, and in many ways it was the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin, which shaped the direction of public life until the mid- 1920s, rather than the Communist Party.' Later, after the death of Stalin, it was again the Soviet government, headed by Malenkov, that appeared to dominate the formation of public policy, rather than a debilitated Party.2 The Russian Communist Party (as it then was) received no mention in the first and second Soviet Constitutions, of I9I8 and I924 respectively, and it was mentioned only towards the end of the Constitution of I 936 as one among a number of co-operative, youth and sporting organizations, although one that was the 'leading detachment of the toilers in their struggle for the construction of a Communist society and the leading core of all organizations of the working people' (Art. 126).

Nominally at least, 'all power' (in Article 3) belonged to working people and the institutions of government through which they were represented.

The real political role of the Party was first acknowledged in the I 977 Constitution, which continued to insist in Article 3 that 'all power belong[ed] to the people' but which went on to make clear (in Article 6) that the CPSU was the 'leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public bodies'. The republican constitutions, approved the following year, made similar commitments.3 Nor were these merely words. The Party, through the nomenklatura system, controlled all positions of executive authority. It enjoyed an effective monopoly of the right to nominate

Stephen White is Professor of Politics and a Member of the Institute of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow.

1 See T. H. Rigby, Lenin's Government. Sovnarkom 1917-1922, Cambridge, I979. The financial support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council in the preparation of this paper is gratefully acknowledged (Rooo232900); I am also grateful to the staff of the Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation, Moscow, for their assistance.

2 See L. B. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2nd edn, London, 1970,

PP.557, 56o-6I. 3 For the texts see Konstitutsiia SSSR. Konstitutsii soiuznykh sovetskikh respublik, Moscow,

I978.



COMMUNISTS AND THEIR PARTY 645

candidates at local and national elections; the Politburo, in the early 1980s, approved the results before the elections themselves had taken place.4 Its deputies, through the formation of Party groups, dominated the soviets to which they were elected. The Party, through its network of branches, had a decisive presence in factories, farms and offices throughout the USSR. And it controlled the media, the courts, trade unions and all other forms of associational life through its 'leading role' in the wider society. Asked to describe its place in national life, an e'migre of the 1970S had to resort to a religious metaphor: 'like God, it is everywhere', he told a Western interviewer.5

It was the collapse ofthe Party in the late I 98os and I 990s which was, in turn, decisive in the transition from Communist rule in what was then the Soviet Union, and in the much broader process that took place in Eastern Europe and in other Communist systems. As glasnost' made clear the mistakes and illegalities of the past, the Party attracted an increasing share of the blame as the body that had monopolized -political power throughout those years. As economic growth declined and then went into reverse, the Party found itself responsible for a fall in living standards and with no clear idea how to reverse it. The local elections that took place in I987 left more than 200 Party officials without a seat;6 the elections of I989, which were more broadly competitive, found more than forty regional first secretaries among the defeated, including a non-voting member of the Politburo.7 The Party attempted to democratize, increasing the rights of its members and of its republican sections; but its unity began to dissolve, members began to leave, and the public at large began to regard its right to rule with increasing scepticism. By the summer of I 99 I there was 'practically no one who was satisfied with the situation in the Party';8 the Party itself concluded, after Boris El'tsin had won the Russian presidency, that the leadership had 'finally lost authority' and that the Party as a whole had 'neither cadres nor power'.9

The Party's decline and fall could be interpreted in several ways. For at least a substantial group, particularly well represented among emigre scholars, the CPSU was simply unreformable. Founded on force and terror, lacking the legitimacy that an electoral victory would have conferred, centralized in its operation and committed to a monolithic

4 Izvestiia, 13July 1992, p. 3. 5 Aryeh L. Unger, 'Images of the CPSU', Survey, 23, I977-78, 23-34 (24). 6 Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation (TsKhSD), Moscow,fond

89, perechen' 7, doc. I I (over 6oo state officials were also unsuccessful in the elections, and there were more comments than ever on 'concrete questions of local life').

7 A rgumeny ifakty, I 989, 2 1, p. 8. 8 Svobodnaia mysl', 1991, 13, p. 15. 9 CC Secretary Iu. Manaenkov, memorandum, 24June I99I, TsKhSD,fond 89, perechen'

22, doc. 8i.



646 STEPHEN WHITE

ideology that could not be questioned, there were (from this perspec- tive) only two possible outcomes: either the Party's collapse, as its incapacity became increasingly clear to its own members, or its overthrow by political forces that drew upon more authentic sources of support. 10 For the Party's own leaders, even after the CPSU had passed into oblivion, a very different outcome was possible or even probable. For Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking in early 1992, the Party was in the process of division and there would have been a regrouping at the 29th Congress that was due to take place in November i99i.11 At least 'several million' would have supported a reformed Communist Party, he argued elsewhere, on the basis of the revised and social democratic programme that would have been adopted by the Congress; others would have adopted different platforms and formed other parties.12 Even El'tsin, interviewed after he had resigned his membership, thought the CPSU had enjoyed a real opportunity to reform itself and become a party of democratic change. 13

For those who worked inside the Party apparatus a third, more nuanced interpretation was possible. For at least one former Central Committee official, Leon Onikov, it was crucial that the CPSU had failed to democratize itself, leaving the full-time bureaucracy with a degree of uncontrolled power greater than any they had previously enjoyed. It had been very different in the 1920S, when any member of the Central Committee could attend meetings of the Politburo and Secretariat, examine Party documents, and publish their views -

whenever they wished to do so - in Pravda. Under Gorbachev, by contrast, even second-ranking Secretary Egor Ligachev had been unable to circulate two considered statements within the Central Committee. The rank and file had no influence at all upon Party policies; even Central Committee members, up to I990, were the 'purest decoration'. By August I99I, in Onikov's view, the Party was already dead as a political organization, the 'logical result of all the preceding policies of its leadership'.14 Perestroika, Onikov observed elsewhere, should have started with the democratization of the Party apparatus, which enjoyed absolute power, and then moved on to the Party itself and last of all the wider society. Democratization, in the

10 See for instance M. Geller, Sed'moi sekretar', London, I99I, which speaks of the party-based system as a 'dinosaur' (p. 245); or Francoise Thom, The Gorbachev Phenomenon London, I989, pp. 46-53. Peter Frank, 'Russian History, Gorbachev and Soviet Politics', Irish Slavonic Studies, 12, I99I, describes the system as 'unreformable' (p. 6); Elizabeth Teague and Vera Tolz argue similarly that the Party 'proved to be unreformable' (RFE/RL Report on the USSR, 3, 22 November I99I, p. 2).

11 Pravda, 30 April 1992, p. 3. 12 Svobodnaia mysl', 1992, I3, p. I4. 13 Izvestiia, 23 May 199I, p. 3. 14 Rossiiskie vesti, 2 I October 1992, p. 2.




event, had begun with the society and never reached the apparatus;15 the Party remained committed to 'unlimited centralism, single man management and absolute secrecy', which 'completely excluded intra- party democracy'.16

What was crucial, clearly, was the attitude of ordinary members to what was nominally their Party. What, for instance, were their main concerns? And what support did members provide for a democratization of the Party that would have removed most of its Leninism if not its Marxism? Letters to the press, and polls of local areas, have provided some of the evidence that bears upon these points.17 What is now available is a further and still more important source, the archives of the CPSU itself, and in particular the declassified documents that are available in what was formerly the Party headquarters in central Moscow.18 The material in what is now the Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation must clearly be used with some discrimination, not least because it was originally prepared for a rather different purpose (the hearings that took place in 1992 on the constitu- tionality of Party activities). The evidence available is none the less a substantial body of documentation in its own right. It consists, for the most part, of resolutions and communications from Party branches, not just from individuals; it has been drawn from the 'presidential archive' (now the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation), as well as from files that were held by the CPSU Secretariat; and it reflects all parts of the country, military as well as civilian life, and country as well as town. Russian archivists have themselves pointed out that the documentation available on the last years of the CPSU is a 'significant' body of evidence,19 reflecting the 'concrete daily interests, thoughts, anxieties, concerns and difficulties of individual members of the society'.20 What was the context of these communications? And what

15 S. A. Bogoliubov (ed.), KPSS vne zakona?, Moscow, 1992, p. i 68. Onikov set out his views for the first time in Argumenty ifakty, I 989, 36, pp. I-3.

16 Nezavisimaia gazeta, 4 July I992, p. 2. The Party's regulations on secrecy were made public by Onikov in ibid., i6 September I993, p. 5. Onikov noted elsewhere that there had been no reference at any time to 'vnutriapparatnaia demokratiia' (ibid., i6 November I993,

P 5). 17 See for instance, Svobodnaia mysl', i99i, I3, pp. I5-2I; Izvestiia TsK KPSS, I99I, 4,

pp. I3-I6; Pravda, 26 February 199I, p. 3. 18 Several overviews of the Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation

are now available, including 'K sozdaniiu Tsentra khraneniia sovremennoi dokumentatsii', Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, I992, 2 (hereafter 'K sozdaniiu'), pp. I98-202; 'Prezentatsiia: TsKhSD', Otechestvennye arkhivy, I992, 3, p. 3; 'Novyi arkhiv - istorikam', Kentavr, July- August I992, pp. I32-37; and a news report in Izvestiia, 25 February 1992, p. 7. The fullest and most recent inventory is I. I. Kudriavtsev (ed.), Arkhivy Kremlia i Staroi ploshchadi. Spravochnik po dokumentam, predstavlennym v Konstitutsionnyi sud Rossiiskoi Federatsii po 'Delu KPSS'. Prilozhenie k zhurnalu 'Istoricheskii arkhiv', 1993, 1-2 (hereafter Arkhivy). A similar discussion appears in Kudriavtsev, 'Dokumenty Sekretariata i Politbiuro TsK KPSS v TsKhSD', Otechestvennye arkhivy, I993, 2, pp. 82-90.

19 Kudriavtsev, Arkhivy, p. 4. 20 'K sozdaniiu', p. 200.



648 STEPHEN WHITE

do they tell us about the mood of Party members in the last months of Communist rule, and the prospects for a democratic renewal of the kind that Gorbachev had apparently envisaged?

The Party in Late Communist Russia

The attempt to reform the CPSU went back to the Central Committee plenum of January I987 which launched the slogan of 'democratization', and more directly to the igth Party Conference in i 988. There had been 'definite deformations in the Party itself', Gorbachev had told the delegates. Democratic centralism had degenerated into bureau- cratic centralism. The rank and file had lost control over the leadership that spoke in their name. Officials had come to believe they were infallible and irreplaceable, and an atmosphere of comradeship had been replaced by one of commands and directives.21 The Conference, in its concluding resolutions, agreed with Gorbachev that a 'profound democratization' of Party life was necessary. Membership, it was agreed, should in future be determined by the political qualities of the applicant rather than by centrally determined quotas. Meetings should be more constructive and open. Central Committee members should be able to play a more active part in the formation of Party policy; more records of Party meetings should be published; and - a matter of 'prime importance' - all posts up to Central Committee level should be filled by secret and competitive ballot for a maximum of two five-year terms.22

These and other decisions had certainly led to changes, as the Party entered the last months of its existence. Competitive elections to Party posts had in fact been taking place since I987, when a local first secretary in the Kemerovo region had been chosen by secret ballot from two candidates.23 By the end of the year, I 2Party secretaries had been chosen the same way.24 In late I988 the Central Committee approved the formation of six new commissions on Party affairs, ideology, social and economic policy, agriculture, international affairs and law reform, all of them headed by a senior member of the leadership.25 In October

21 Materialy XIX Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii KPSS 28 iiunia-I iiulia 1988 goda, Moscow, I988 (hereafter Materialy XIX Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii), pp. 70-73. On Party reform more generally, see Ronald J. Hill, 'The CPSU: Decline and Collapse', Irish Slavonic Studies, 12, 199I, pp. 97-I20; Stephen White, 'Rethinking the CPSU', SovietStudies, 43, I99I, pp.405-28; Neil Robinson, 'Gorbachev and the Place of the Party in Soviet Reform, i985-9 ', Soviet Studies, 44, 1992, pp. 423-44; James R. Millar (ed.), Cracks in the Monolith: Party Power in the Brezhnev Era, Armonk, New York, I992; and E. A. Rees (ed.), The Soviet Communist Party in Disarray, London, 1992 (hereafter Soviet Communist Party). I have also been able to consult Graeme Gill's study The End of Single-Party Rule, Cambridge, forthcoming.

22 Materialy XIX Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii, pp. 124-27. 23 Pravda, I0 February i987, p. 2. 24 Partiinaiazhizn', I 988, II, p. I 5. 25 Pravda, i October i988, p. i; the membership is listed in ibid., 29 November i988,

pp. 1-2.




I990 the commissions were reorganized and extended, taking over many of the responsibilities of the Central Committee Secretariat.26 The Central Committee apparatus was reduced in size and scope;27 and more information began to be published about Party affairs, particularly through the revived Central Committee journal Izvestiia TsK KPSS. In February and March I990 the Party surrendered its constitutional monopoly, or more accurately acknowledged that it no longer existed.28 At the 28th Congress, in July I990, there were still more significant moves to democratize the Party's own operation: members were given the right to form 'platforms', if not organized factions; the rights of minorities were strengthened; 'horizontal' structures, of a kind that had previously been regarded as incompatible with democratic centralism, were explicitly approved; and religious believers (for the first time) became eligible for membership.29

The Congress, certainly, had 'slowed down' the Party's decline, according to surveys conducted among the mass membership the following November; and about half of those who were asked reported that the Congress's decisions were being actively discussed at branch level. But only i8 per cent believed the Congress had exercised a positive influence upon Party affairs, and only i o per cent thought the Congress had strengthened Party influence in the workplace.30 In a survey that was conducted in early I 99I, only 6 per cent reported that the Party organization had begun to work better since the Congress. And what had been the effect of the new Party statute, with its attempt to institutionalize the rights of ordinary members? For 7I percent, there had been no change at all in the distribution of power within the Party; for 65 per cent, there had been no improvement in organi- zational coherence; and for 52 per cent, there had been no improvement in the Party's ideological unity (37 per cent thought things had become worse).31 Had members themselves, after the Congress, become more active? For I3 percent, the answer was yes; but 58 percent were no more involved in Party activities than they had been before, I 9 per cent were less involved, and io per cent had decided to leave the Party

26 Materialy Tsentral'nogo komiteta KPSS8-9 oktiabria iggogoda, Moscow, I990, p. 20I. 27 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, I 989, i, pp. 8 I-89. 28 It was in these terms that Gorbachev presented the decision: Materialy plenuma

Tsentral'nogo komiteta KPSS 5-7fevralia iggo goda, Moscow, I990 (hereafter Materialy plenuma ... 5-7 fevralia), pp. 9- I 0.

29 The amended Party Rules are in Materialy XXVIII s"ezda Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza, Moscow, I990, pp. I08-24. On religious believers more particularly, see Pravda, 26July I99I, p. I.

30 Tsentr sotsiologicheskikh issledovanii Akademii obshchestvennykh nauk pri TsK KPSS, Politicheskaia sotsiologiia. Informatsionnyi biulleten', 199 1, 2, p. I 2 (I am grateful to Simon Clarke for making this source available to me). Among delegates to the Congress, I 3 per cent were satisfied by its decisions but 2 7 per cent were dissatisfied and the remaining 6o per cent were 'not fully satisfied' (Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, I990, I I, p. 103).

31 Politicheskaia sotsiologiia, 199I, 3, pp. 74, 70.



650 STEPHEN WHITE

altogether.32 All of this, by I99I, was some distance from the 'updated CPSU', working through parliament as well as workplace, allowing 'total freedom of debate', and co-operating with other 'progressive' social and political forces, for which Gorbachev had called in his opening address .33

Not simply was the 'vanguard lagging'; it was also shrinking, particularly among the social groups whose interests it was supposed to represent. The rate of increase in C PSU membership dropped in I 988 to a scarcely measurable o. i percent, and then in I989 membership actually fell, for the first time since I 954.34 The fall continued into I 990

and i 99 I, with the Party losing about a quarter of its members over a period of eighteen months.35 The proportion of industrial workers among those leaving the Party was particularly high;36 so too was the proportion of younger members.37 The typical resigner, according to contemporary surveys, was a man aged between thirty and fifty, an industrial worker with secondary education, who had been a Party member for more than ten years 38 Those who remained within the Party became increasingly uncertain of their membership39 and increasingly reluctant to part with their membership dues, which had in any case been reduced by the 28th Congress. By October I 990 more than a million members were behind with their payments, and a 'regime of severe economy' had already been instituted.40 At the same time the Party press, which had previously contributed to central funds, lost subscribers and began to run at a loss; Pravda alone lost about 70 per cent of its subscribers in the course of I 990.41 By the summer of I 99 I expendi- ture was running at almost twice the level of Party income.42

An increasing level of non-payment was in turn related to a collapse of discipline in an organization that had once prided itselfon its 'monolithic unity'. There were grass-roots revolts against local leaderships throughout the winter of I989 and early I990: in Volgograd and Tiumen', in Voroshilovgrad and Donetsk, in Kostroma and Cheboksary, in Ufa and Sverdlovsk.43 There were increasingly open divisions among the

32 Ibid., p. So. 33 Pravda, 3 July I990, pp. 2-4. 34 See Philip Hanson and Elizabeth Teague, 'Soviet Communist Party Loses Members',

RFE/RL Report on the USSR, 2, i8 May I990, pp. I-3. 35 Pravda, 26July 1991, p. 2.

36 Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, I 990, 6, p. I03. 37 Dialog, I990, 17, p. I4. 38 Politicheskaia sotsiologiia, 199 I, 3, pp. I 4-I 5. 39 Voprosy istorii KPSS, I 989, 8, p. 8. 40 Pravda, I 2 October 1990, p. 3, and (for 'severe economy'), ibid., I 2 March 1990, p. 3. 41 Argumenty ifakty, I 990, 48, p. I. 42 Pravda, 29July I99I, p. 2. 43 See respectively Izvestiia, 28January I990, p. 4 (Volgograd) and i9January I990, p. 3

(Tiumen'); Pravda, 15 February I990, p. 2 (Voroshilovgrad and Donetsk), 26 February 1990, p. 3 (Kostroma), I March I990, p. 2 (Cheboksary), i i February I990, p. 2 (Ufa) and 13 February 1990, p. 3 (Sverdlovsk).



COMMUNISTS AND THEIR PARTY 65I

membership at large, and even factions. For the playwright Mikhail Shatrov there were three, four or five parties within the CPSU in early I 990;44 for the director of the Higher Party School, Viacheslav Shos- takovskii, there were as many as eight distinct tendencies, including a 'silent majority';45 for the chairman of the Party Control Commission, in the summer of i99i, there were at least ten organized tendencies.46 The months before the 28th Congress saw the formation of overt and co-ordinated groupings of this kind, including the Democratic Platform

which favoured a parliamentary rather than a vanguard party and the Marxist Platform, which favoured a stronger emphasis upon working-class interests.47 The republican party organizations of Lithuania, Georgia and Moldova left the CPSU entirely; the other Baltic organizations split into pro-Moscow and independent sections; and in a further variation, several regional Party organizations -

among them the Komi and Bashkir - formally arrogated to themselves the status of republican parties.48

The Party's crisis of confidence reflected a deeper uncertainty about its functions under conditions of perestroika, and indeed about the direction in which society as a whole was meant to be moving. Gone, for a start, were the days of disciplined centralism. Some Party members were leading strikes, and others were opposing them. Party members in the Baltic werejoining the popular fronts, and even leading them, while others were joining their Russian-speaking opponents. Party members were competing against each other at the polls, and on the basis of different electoral programmes; the Party as a whole suffered a serious blow in the defeats that were sustained by leading officials in the elections to the Congress of People's Deputies in I 989- a process that Ligachev described as 'political shock therapy'49 and in the elections of 1990 it lost control of several republican and local governments. By late I 990 barely half of the members that were surveyed supported the principle of the 'socialist choice', and no more than a third still believed it was possible to achieve a Communist society; about a fifth were dissatisfied with the Party's policies more generally, and about a third had a 'kind of "vacuum" in terms of values and social perspectives'.50 By early i99i, fewer than half of the Party's members associated

44 Pravda, I February 1990, p. 2. 45 Politicheskoe obrazovanie, I 990, I 8, p. 6. 46 Pravda, 29July 199I, p- 3. 47 For a discussion of these developments, see RonaldJ. Hill, 'The CPSU: From Monolith

to Pluralist?', Soviet Studies, 43, 199I, pp. 217-35, and Rees (ed.), Soviet Communist Party, pp. 20-24.

48 For these last developments see Pravda, 20 October I 990, p. 2, and 29 October I 990, p. 2. 49 E. K. Ligachev, Zagadka Gorbacheva, Novosibirsk, 1992, p. 75. 50 Politicheskaia sotsiologiia, I 99 I, 2, p. I 2.



652 STEPHEN WHITE

themselves with the decisions of the 28th Congress; I 4 per cent supported the Marxist Platform, I 2 per cent the Party reformers, 9 per cent more hard-line groupings, and I7 per cent 'had no real idea'.51

Party members were accordingly in a state of some confusion during the last months of Communist rule. The most fundamental problem, in the view of delegates to the 28th Congress, was the lack of a clear vision of the kind of society the Party was attempting to construct.52 Equally, there was widespread concern that ordinary members were being allowed little influence on the Party's own choice of its priorities. The decision to establish a party organization for the Russian Federation in the summer of I990, for instance, had been taken without any attempt to discuss the matter beforehand with its larger branches.53 The move towards a 'regulated market' was equally unexpected: for at least one delegate, speaking to the Party Congress, Ryzhkov's proposals were as much of a surprise as Matthias Rust's landing in Red Square.54 Some 59 per cent of members thought their opinions on matters of the day were 'simply ignored';55 others, writing in the Party press, insisted that the independence of branches was almost entirely 'symbolic' and that the influence of ordinary members was 'close to zero'.56 The term 'discussion' appeared in the Party Rules, a Kazakh delegate told the Central Committee in I990, but it had never been put into practice.57 For the membership as a whole, in the summer of I 990, it was democratization of the Party itself that must be its first priority.58

Party Members and Party Policies

Party members, to judge from the resolutions that reached the Central Committee, were certainly concerned by the direction of public policy and by the state of their own organization. Naturally, perhaps, many of them laid particular emphasis upon the dangers that appeared to threaten socialism itself. As the Party members of an electrical goods factory in the Moscow region wrote to the Central Committee in January I99I, 'certain forces' had been 'making use of perestroika' and were now 'going into an open offensive against the Communist Party and the unitary socialist state'. More specifically, a 'counter- revolutionary bloc of false democrats, nationalists and separatists' was 'stepping up its attacks aimed at the collapse of the USSR, the exclusion of the CPSU from the political arena, the destruction of the

51 Ibid., 3, p. 10. 52 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, 8, p. I 33. 53 Pravda, 8July I990, p. 5. 54 Ibid., 9July 1990, p. 3. 55 Partiinaia zhizn', I 989, 24, p. 2 3. 56 Ibid., I990, no. 6, p. 23, and Izvestiia TsKKPSS, 1990, 3, p. 33. 57 Materialy plenuma . . 5-7fevralia, p. I 84. 58 Argumenty ifakty, 1990, 25, p. 2.




bases of socialism [and] the creation in the country of an anti- Communist hysteria which, in the end, may lead to civil war'. The Party leadership, in the view of the local Communists, had shown 'insufficient consistency and firmness in rejecting these attacks', which included 'demagogy, lies, slander, denigration of all the past [and] bitter attacks on the army and police'. Nor could the CPSU leaders readily counter these attacks, lacking as they did a 'clear ideological conception of the defence of the achievements of October' .59

As A. A. Karandeev, deputy secretary of a Party committee at a chemical factory in Dzerzhinsk, told the Central Committee in August I99I, local Party workers accepted perestroika as an 'objective neces- sity'. Indeed they were involved in it themselves as Party members. But they were facing an 'impending catastrophe', which, if not averted, would lead to the 'complete collapse of the economy and society as a result of which every Soviet person would suffer'. The main cause of their difficulties appeared to be the 'serious errors' of the Party leadership, who said one thing and did something else. Prices had been raised, for instance, although Gorbachev had promised otherwise, and living conditions had worsened accordingly. The '500 days' programme had been supported, but then abandoned. The Law on the State Enterprise had led, despite promises to the contrary, to a fall in the output of cheaper goods and to the disruption of economic relations throughout the country. The Party was no longer trying to direct matters of this kind, and had no clear plan of action; not surprisingly, its authority was falling, and local power had effectively passed into the hands of its opponents.60

A Party committee in the anti-aircraft forces shared these concerns. Writing to the Central Committee in July i99i, they were concerned above all by the lack of an adequate analysis of the way in which social and political life was changing. The kinds of changes that were taking place were clearly in contradiction with the Party's own policies, as they had been set out at the 28th Congress the previous year. Draft laws on property were being discussed which, if adopted, would destroy the fundamentals of the socialist order. The introduction of executive presidencies and mayoralties was undermining popular democracy. And nationalist feelings were being 'exploited'. The basic problem was that the 'overwhelming majority' of its own members had no idea what the Communist Party stood for in these circumstances, and neither they nor the society as a whole had any clear impression of the position that the Party leadership was adopting in this connection.

9 TsKhSD,fond 89, perechen' i i, doc. I 83. 60 Ibid., doc. I 85.



654 STEPHEN WHITE

Indeed it sometimes appeared, the anti-aircraftmen went on, as if 'certain circles in the Party leadership' were in fact quite satisfied with the erosion of its authority and with the Party's 'political death'. Millions of members, who wanted themselves to build a civil and democratic society based on the rule of law, had somehow found themselves on the margins of political life as a 'kind of conservative force'. Party members wanted 'realistic answers' to the questions that concerned them and the early adoption of a new Programme, which would give some policy guidance for the immediate future and more generally 'define the Party's relationship to the Communist perspec- tive'. Was the Party, for instance, in favour of 'primitive capitalism', with its unemployment, social divisions and debased mass culture? Did they want to bring back the totalitarian structures of the past, or to establish a society based on socialized property, where political and economic power would belong to working people and where the direction of policy would reflect their interests? The aims of 'real democrats' and of Party members were in these respects the same, and all constructive forces - it was argued- should work together towards these ends.61

The Party leadership came in for heavy and sustained criticism in all parts of the correspondence. The Party committee of the Black Sea Fleet, for instance, in a telegram ofJune I 99 I, expressed its 'dissatisfaction with the passive position of the CPSU Central Committee in relation to the deformation of the socialist order in the country' and demanded an 'extraordinary congress of the CPSU, at which the Programme of the Party should be considered'.62 An open meeting at a Sverdlovsk factory in May i 99 I was still more categoric. The plenum of the Central Committee that had taken place the previous month had 'not satisfied the aspirations of Party members'; nor had it made clear why the CPSU had been transformed from a 'monolithic, organizing and directing force' into an 'amorphous body that was unable to defend its views'. While the unofficial workers' movement was increasingly active, Party leaders at the local and national level had been 'sitting it out in their offices and not responding to changes in the society around them'. The strikes that had taken place in the Kuzbas and Donbas, and the referendum on the role of the Party that had resulted in its expulsion from the Uralmash factory, showed how far Politburo and Secretariat members and their Sverdlovsk counterparts had lost touch with the ordinary people they claimed to represent. Indeed they had the impression, in the Urals, that the national Party leadership, with the support of the Sverdlovsk obkom, were 'aiming consciously at the liquidation of the

61 Ibid., per. 8, doc. 3. 62 Ibid.




Communist Party, and in a developing market environment preparing themselves to make use of its property'. The resolution, which was carried unanimously, went on to propose that Party dues be withheld until a satisfactory answer had been received on these and other issues.63

The call for an extraordinary congress was a widely supported one. A gorkom in the Cheliabinsk region, for instance, 'taking into account the dissatisfaction of rank and file Communists with the policies of the CPSU Central Committee and of the CPSU CC General Secretary M. S. Gorbachev', agreed at a plenum to demand a congress at the earliest opportunity.64 So too did the Vyborg Party organization in what was still Leningrad, and Party members in the Altai.65 Party members in Dzerzhinsk were in favour of an early congress, not just of the all-union but also of the Russian party organization, and they called in addition for the re-election of Party first secretaries by the membership as a whole on the basis of programmes setting out their political positions.66 In Izhevsk Party members were against the convening of an extraordinary congress with no clear agenda until a draft Party Programme had been discussed; when it came, they were concerned to ensure that delegates were elected on the basis of competing platforms rather than the importance of the position they occupied.67 Party members at Osinsk, meeting in July I99I, agreed to suspend their CPSU membership until the whole position had been clarified. In their view, the entire Politburo and Central Committee should resign, together with the Party's central apparatus, and a congress should be held by the end of the year at which a new Central Committee should be chosen by competitive ballot.68

'We cannot find answers to the questions that workers ask us', complained the Osinsk members: 'what has perestroika given us in six years, what is the position of the Party on the issues that face society at the moment, what kind of work can be conducted in workplaces or residential areas?' In particular, the Party was 'distancing itself more and more' from the concerns of ordinary workers, and there was 'no clear programmatic idea around which we could unite our ranks [and] attract the working class to our support'. The 28th Congress had attempted to address these matters, but many of its decisions had 'remained on paper'. The Party's aims were still unclear, the whole

63 Ibid., per. ii,doc. I 79. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., docs i8o and i8I. 66 Ibid., doc. I85. 67 Ibid., doc. i79. The elections to the igth Party Conference had been particularly

controversial: see Aryeh Unger, 'The Travails of Intra-party Democracy in the Soviet Union', Soviet Studies, 43, I99I, pp. 329-54.

68 TsKhSD, fond 89, per. i i, doc. I 79.



656 STEPHEN WHITE

project of perestroika was 'contradictory and inconsistent', and any necessary actions were being taken by the 'method of trial and error'. Party publications gave little impression of the real distribution of opinion within its ranks, and of the tendencies and groupings that had developed. The Party was losing members, particularly among the younger age groups, and yet the central leadership appeared to have no policies to deal with the matter. As well as an extraordinary congress before the end of the year, Osinsk members wanted competitive elections for Party posts at all levels, the political repentance (pokaianie) of the Party before society, and a resolution of the controversial question of the ownership of Party property.69

Party members at a mining enterprise in Krasnoretsk were still more demanding. The Central Committee, Politburo and General Secretary, they resolved, had failed to ensure fulfilment of the decisions of the last Party congress, and had taken an excessively indulgent view of a number of decisions of the Russian parliament which were clearly aimed at the 'capitalization of society'. As well as an extraordinary congress, Party members in Krasnoretsk wanted the dismissal of Gorbachev as General Secretary and his expulsion from the CPSU altogether.70 The Falen district organization in Kirov region complained that the socialist state was collapsing, with the Central Com- mittee's connivance. It was another of the branches that called for an extraordinary congress, renewal of the Central Committee, and replacement of the General Secretary.71 A machinery factory in Riga went even further. As well as an extraordinary congress no later than November, the local Party organization called for the adoption of a new programme, the introduction of the post of Chairman of the CPSU, and the replacement of Gorbachev as General Secretary by the Latvian Party leader Rubiks.72 Party members at the giant Baltic Factory in Leningrad thought the Central Control Commission should consider formal disciplinary charges: 'many Communists do not want to remain in the same party as a leader conducting an anti-popular policy'.73

Democracy, Morality and CPSU Membership

There were many demands, in the communications that reached the Central Committee, for a return to earlier orthodoxies. The Liublin Party committee in Moscow, for instance, wanted direct presidential rule introduced in the Baltic, Georgia and South Ossetia.74 The

69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., doc. i8o. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid., doc. I 87. 74 Ibid., 29january I 99 I, doc. I 83.




Elektrozavod factory committee, also in Moscow, called for consolida- tion, but with the 'healthy forces of society', and on the basis of policies 'in the interests of the working class'. Any delay, in their view, would lead to 'catastrophe'. It was time to give a principled assessment of the actions of the Russian parliamentary leadership under Boris El'tsin, which were aimed at the 'restoration of capitalism in the USSR'. A new programme was needed, in which there should be 'no compromise on questions of principle'. Those who were openly hostile to socialism should not be allowed to remain in the Party, and deputies who had been elected under Communist auspices but who had since changed their allegiance should be recalled.75 The Baltic Factory in Leningrad, similarly, declared Gorbachev and his 'liquidationist' policies a threat to the interests of working people, who were being called upon to make 'countless sacrifices on the altar of a mythical market prosperity' while glasnost' was exploited by 'political turncoats' using 'pseudodemocratic phraseology'.76 In Dzerzhinsk there were calls, not just for the resignation of Gorbachev as General Secretary, but for his resignation as President, the separation of leading posts, and the re-election of Party leaders at all levels.77

There were other Party organizations, however, that raised broader questions of democracy and even morality. The Party members of a construction bureau in the Cheliabinsk region, for instance, were concerned about the failure to bring to account the Party leaders whose policies had clearly failed, or who had been found to have enjoyed improper privileges. They were also concerned about openness and accessibility. Why, they asked, were Party leaders so rarely interviewed in the mass media, and why did they make so few speeches before the ordinary membership? Why had they failed to inform members of the Party's policies for dealing with the economic crisis, and why had the activities of the General Secretary and of the Central Committee as a whole had so little effect? They shared the view that the General Secretaryship and Presidency should be separated, and argued that members of the Central Committee should be required to appear in the media and in front of groups of ordinary workers to discuss the problems that were facing society and the Party's plans for dealing with them. 78

The question of privilege was raised in a lengthy communication from the secretary of a Party committee in the Belorussian military district, reflecting the conclusions of an open meeting in his regiment. Part of the problem was recruitment into the armed forces: the army

75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., doc. I87. 77 Ibid., doc. I85. 78 Ibid., doc. I83-



658 STEPHEN WHITE

was becoming increasingly 'worker-peasant' as the sons and daughters of well-off parents, 'using their connections, official position and so forth, go directly into the institutes'. Did they really need 'specialists in protektsiia, who after graduating from college go off to "cosy" postings selected for them beforehand by anxious parents'? And there was concern that Party and state as well as military leaders, 'forgetting about honour, conscience and the elementary norms of decency', were building themselves "'dacha palaces"' at public expense while half a million army families waited for rehousing. There were "'generals' hospitals"' (the Party committee in Brest had suggested they be converted into kindergartens), travelling restaurants with their own staff (Kutuzov and Suvorov had eaten with their men), and special transport arrangements ('You won't see the needs of the people from the windows of an official car, especially when it has its winter heating on'). In the Party itself local branches were supposed to elect ruling bodies that carried out their instructions, but in this case at least it was the 'other way round'.79

The question of dues was a related concern, reflecting as it did the financial relationship between members and their party. The Party committee of the Orel region statistical administration, in their letter to the Central Committee of April I99I, were particularly concerned about the deduction of dues not from basic salary but from income, a procedure which although 'widely practised' appeared to conflict with the Party rules. The leadership were seen as pursuing 'purely fiscal aims', requiring members to pay a share of earnings they might never have seen. Some members were leaving the Party for this reason alone, believing that Party officials were just 'interested in collecting as much as possible so as to maintain a large staff of full-time Party functionaries in comfortable surroundings'. It was hardly a secret that Party com- mittees, including the Central Committee, were housed in 'luxuriously appointed and equipped premises' using a 'substantial pool of high- class automobiles', a state of affairs very different from the circumstances of ordinary members. Apart from this, the monthly pay of Party officials was up to three times higher than that of the members they represented. If the Party really needed an increase in its resources, ordinary members had to be persuaded this was the case and told for what specific purpose their contribution was required.80

As Party members in the anti-aircraft forces suggested, it should be the responsibility of the leadership to set out clear objectives for ordinary members and for the wider society, and to provide a means by which members could then become actively involved in the 'genuine

79 Ibid., 25 January I99I, per. 8, doc. 5. 80 Ibid.,per. ii, doc. I84.




reformation of our society'. In their view, a Party conference for the army as a whole should first be held, and then a regular Party congress. There would have to be 'genuinely democratic elections' to the congress, so that it could not become a 'congress of the Party, military and state nomenklatura'.8' As a Party secretary from Belorussia wrote to Gorbachev in January I99I, the central institutions of the CPSU adopted decisions that the rank and file were then obliged to carry out. For some reason, however, a 'cleavage' had opened up between the local and central leadership and the branches and members that made up the Party presence throughout the country. This had made it possible, for instance, for substantial pay rises to be awarded to Party officials at all levels, a decision, taken without any consultation with members, that had 'delivered a powerful blow to the authority of the whole party'. As long as this state of affairs continued, 'the authority of the Party will continue to fall and its ranks will continue to diminish'.82

Members, Leaders and Party Reform

The flow of letters and resolutions that reached the Central Commit- tee in i99i can obviously provide no more than a partial guide to the changes that were taking place within the CPSU in the last months of its existence. Only a selection of these documents has so far been made available, and they are unlikely to constitute a representative sample of the twenty-nine million items that are held in the archive or of the twenty million that have yet to be accessioned.83 It was certainly clear that the Central Committee Secretariat did its best to manipulate the flow of correspondence to its own advantage, main- taining a file of letters from 'honest Communists' in which they set out their opposition to reform;84 and the communications that reached the Central Committee could also be manipulated by local leaderships so as to suggest (for instance) a greater degree of support for the August coup than in fact existed.85 At the same time the documentation that is available from within the Party in its last year is a substantial and varied one, reflecting the views of a wide range of members and branches. It is far from 'conservative' in its tone, calling as it often does for a more genuine and far-reaching democratization than the leadership was originally prepared to contemplate, including a commitment to democracy in reality and not just on paper and a

81 Ibid., per. 8, doc. 3. 82 Ibid., 25January I99I; also in per. 8, doc. 5. 83 'K sozdaniiu', p. I99. 84 Izvestiia, i i September I99I, p. 3. 85 Ibid., 3 September I99I, p. 2.



66o STEPHEN WHITE

Party press that reflected the variety of opinion within its ranks.86 And it accords reasonably well with the public record of Party discussion in

I99i9, and with the survey data that are available for this period.87 The communications that reached the Central Committee during

these last months of Communist rule certainly confirmed the differ- ences that had emerged within the Party's ranks on the whole strategy of reform. What, for a start, was perestroika? Gorbachev himself refused to define it, or when he did so spoke in terms of a lengthy list of 'postulates' that gave little clear guidance to ordinary members.88 How, for instance, could the 'socialist choice and Communist perspec- tive' be combined with private ownership, particularly of land?89 What was 'humane, democratic socialism': did this mean there could be socialism that was inhumane and undemocratic?90 And why was the 'transition' so prolonged?91 Members were certainly confused about these kinds of questions, if surveys were any guide. About 38 per cent supported the principles of Communism in early i 99I, according to a poll in Russia and three other republics, but 40 per cent rejected them. About 46 per cent, in a separate survey, favoured the private ownership of land, but 'nearly the same number' rejected it. Many members (33 per cent) blamed the Baltic authorities for the crisis that developed in the region inJanuary I 99 I, but at least as many (35 per cent) blamed the central government; and almost as many opposed a federal party (39 per cent) as supported it (40 per cent) 92 In these circumstances it was not surprising that the Party bureau of a labour research institute should call for a 'conception of Marxism-Leninism in contemporary circumstances';93 without it members and their branches had little to guide them in a rapidly changing society. 'Many local Party organizations', the Central Committee confirmed on the basis of an analysis of these appeals, in a 'complex and steadily worsening situation', were seeking 'clear positions and directives on the urgent problems of perestroika'. 94

The communications that reached the Central Committee were also concerned about the lack of influence that members and their branches could exert upon Party policy; and again, these concerns were fully

86 See (for a commitment to 'real democracy') the communication from the Baltic factory, 17 April I 99 I, TsKhSD,fond 89, per. I i, doc. I 87, and (for a more varied Party press) ibid., doc. I 79 (Osinsk raikom).

87 See, for instance, Stephen White and Ian McAllister, Communists after Communism, Centre for the Study of Public Policy SPP 22 I, Glasgow, I 994 (based on the New Russian Barometer I, conducted inJanuary-February I992).

88 Nikolai Ryzhkov, Perestroika: istoriia predatel'stv, Moscow, 1992, pp. 157-58. 89 Pravda, 26 February 1991, p. 3. 90 Materialy plenuma ... 5-7fevralia, p. 125.

91 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, I990, 6, p. 28. 92 Novoe vremia, I991, I2, p. 13; Politicheskaia sotsiologiia, 1991, 3, pp. 68,9. 93 TsKhSD,fond 89, per. ii, doc. I 83. 94 Ibid., doc. 70, December I990.



COMMUNISTS AND THEIR PARTY 66I

reflected in the Party press and contemporary surveys. The Central Control Commission spoke of an 'information famine' in the Party in the spring of I 99I; the Central Committee itself acknowleged a lack of 'intercommunication and interaction' at 'all levels of the Party structure'.95 Members, for their part, were concerned that the slogans on Party democracy adopted by the 28th Congress had generated no institutional forms through which the views of the rank and file could be expressed.96 Ordinary members, it appeared, had no real influence 6n the Party's decisions, and 'only a single right - to pay dues'.97 The proposals that came forward through the resolutions and letters of members and branches suggested several ways in which this damaging gulf could be overcome, including the election of Party secretaries by ordinary members, meetings between elected officials and workers at factories, elimination of the corrupt and discredited, and a more open and equitable allocation of Party resources (the main reason members were reluctant to pay their dues was because they were used to support the full-time apparatus).98 There was particularly strong support, among these suggestions, for the direct election of Party officials at all levels by ordinary members;99 another popular proposal, with the support of two-thirds of members, was the conduct of periodic referenda within Party ranks. 100

Even Central Committee members, in early I 99 I, were complaining about their lack of influence. There was no opportunity to meet other members before a plenum, a Moscow railwayman told the Central Committee in February i99i; documentation was available on their arrival, when it could hardly be absorbed, and many resolutions, as a result, were adopted 'practically blind'. There was nowhere that Central Committee members could meet before a plenum, and no way they could communicate with Party headquarters without going through their obkom orgorkom. They were still working in the 'old way', complained Lavrenov: 'we meet, raise our hands and go home'.101 The historian Roy Medvedev, elected to the Central Committee in i990, found he was ignored for two months; when he visited Party headquarters to find out what was happening he was told to write out a list of the responsibilities he would assume. The apparatus, he found, was

95 Pravda, 6 March I 99 I, p. 4; TsKhSD, fond 89, per. i i, doc. 70. 96 Pravda, 26 February I99I, p. 3. 97 Ibid., gJuly I990, p. 3. 98 Politicheskaia sotsiologiia, I991, 3, p. 76. 99 See for instance Zh. T. Toshchenko et al., Politicheskoe soznanie i ego rol' v perestroike

obshchestvennykh otnoshenii, Moscow, I990, p. i 8 (64.7 per cent of members were reported to favour this procedure). 100 See, for instance, Izvestiia TsK KPSS, I99I, 4, p. 64; according to a survey conducted in

early i 99 I 67 per cent of members favoured such referenda (Politicheskaia sotsiologiia, 1991, 3, p. 7). A polozhenie on Party referenda was published in Izvestiia TsKKPSS, 199I, 3, pp. 62-64. 101 Pravda, 5 February I99I, p 3.



662 STEPHEN WHITE

'used to commanding CC members who did not hold office in one of the structures of power'.102 G. M. Abel'guzina, a Bashkir chemical worker, complained that there was nothing to show from her eight months of membership; she received virtually no information about the way in which the Politburo or Secretariat had been operating, and the Central Committee's own commissions met hastily just before plenary meetings with no time for a proper discussion.103 Even the Politburo, by I99I, had become a 'largely formal' organization.104

The views of members and their branches went still further on the question of the leadership. Gorbachev had faced a call for his resignation at the Fourth Congress of People's Deputies in December 1990105 and again at the Central Committee in April I99I, when Gorbachev himself acknowledged that resolutions had been adopted calling for the resignation of the General Secretary and of the Politburo as a whole.106 Gorbachev was personally responsible for the fall in popular living standards, the Chita first secretary complained: how could he be entrusted with the future leadership of Party and country?107 There had been calls at an earlier stage for Gorbachev to concentrate on his presidential duties, allowing someone else to assume the considerable responsibilities of Party leadership,108 and a number of Party deputies in the Russian parliament had suggested the abolition of the general secretaryship and of first secretaryships as well.109 The communications that reached the Central Committee suggested a greater measure of hostility towards the Party leadership than any of these public discussions, going as far as to demand Gorbachev's expulsion from the Party and impeachment, not simply his resignation as General Secretary. Nor were these necessarily the views of a minority of hardliners. There were calls for the Russian leader Polozkov to be dismissed as well,"10 and there was substantial support for the idea that positions of this kind should be elected in future by the membership at large and on the basis of competing platforms. Nor, on these matters, were Party members necessarily out

102 Bogoliubov, KPSS vne zakona?, p. 58. 103 Pravda, 27 April i99i, p. 3. 104 lu. Prokofev in ibid., 26July 199I, p. 3. 105

Cherveroyi s"ezd narodnykh deputatov SSSR I7-27 dekabria 9ggo goda: Stenograficheskii otchet, 4vols, Moscow, I991, vol. I, pp. I2-I 3. 106 Materialy ob"edinennogo plenuma Tsentral'nogo komiteta i Tsentral'noi kontrol'noi komissii KPSS

24-25 aprelia 1gg1 g., Moscow, I99I, p. ii. The resignation was rejected in the 'highest interests of the country, the people [and] the party' (Politburo minutes, 25 April I99I, in TsKhSD, fond 89, per. 12, doc. 26). 107 Izvestiia, 23 July I99I, p. I- 108 Ryzhkov, Materialy plenuma . . . 5-7fevralia, pp. I I6-22. 109 Pravda, 2I November 1992, p. 2. 110 See, for instance, TsKhSD, fond 89, per. ii, doc. i85. Other calls for Polozkov's

resignation were reported in Kommersant, 1 99 I, no. 26, p. I 3.




of step with the wider society, where Gorbachev's level of support had fallen, by late I99I, as low as 3 per cent.1I'

The communications that reached the Central Committee about the Party itself were almost certainly a very small minority of the half a million that reached Party headquarters every year, still more so of the 25-30,000 that were identified for preservation."12 It would be surprising, however, if a wider sample suggested more than minor changes in the picture suggested in this paper: of a Party that was divided and confused about its purposes, and of a mass membership that was increasingly dissatisfied with its policies and leadership but unable to bring any significant influence to bear on its destinies. The body of evidence that is now available suggests, in turn, that there was a real potential for Party renewal in the early I99os, based upon a commitment to social justice and a far-reaching democratization of the Party structure, involving a shift of influence from central leadership to rank and file and the development of effective forms of discussion and accountability. Communist parties in Eastern Europe had some suc- cess in carrying through reforms of this kind, and in Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and elsewhere they were able to retain a substantial or even predominant position in local parliaments. Socialist ideals, it appeared, could still appeal to a modern electorate; but the Leninist model of party organization on which the CPSU continued to be based was, in the end, one that repelled a membership that was no longer monolithic and fatally compromised an organization that had itself initiated the process of democratization.

Izvestiia, I2 September 1991, p. 2. 112 'K sozdaniiu', p. 200.



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Communists and Their Party in the Late Soviet Period

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