In this way, Stalin accomplished his ‘master plan’ to become sole ruler. The party was stripped of the very thing Stalin wanted to strip it of : the ability to change its leadership through elections. Bolshevism – and this point must be underscored – still possessed this ability. Destroying such a mechanism was consequently a precondition for Stalin’s success; contrary to the widespread idea that the Soviet Union was ‘ruled by the Communist Party’, it tolled the bell for any political party. Under Lenin, something like this did obtain; under Stalin, the government and party executed policies in precisely the fashion ‘cadres’ were supposed to, so long as they gave satisfaction.
All this must be studied in detail, for dictatorships come in different guises. Some ‘one-party systems’ retain a capacity to master their fate, or at least the composition of their leadership. When this is not the case, a ‘one-party system’ is merely the scenery, not the play itself. The principal roles are played by the apparatus that administers the country, in accordance with the dictates of the summit, whatever it might be. The history of the Soviet system reveals a radical change in the rules of power, and not mere inflections over time. It is to this issue that we must now turn in more detail.
4
THE PARTY AND ITS APPARATY
As yet, neither the state nor the party bureaucracy has a ‘history’, and we can only deal with a few of their key features here. For clarity’s sake, we must employ distinct terms for the personnel of the two ruling bodies. The state bureaucracy can be classified as the ‘administration’, while its upper echelons are often referred to as upravlentsy (the equivalent of ‘managers’) in Soviet sources. For its part, the party administration is best designated an ‘apparatus’ or apparat, and the apparatchik is precisely someone who holds a post in the party’s own administration. It is not always possible to distinguish clearly between these two categories, but even so the terminology is serviceable.
We have already alluded to the fact that from the time of its emergence the ‘apparatus’ created problems for party members. As early as 1920, voices were raised denouncing the increasing disparity between the verkhi (those at the top) and the nizy (those at the bottom), and they were taken seriously by both the rank and file and the leadership. Something that was to become obvious a few years later to the Soviets and outside observers alike – namely, the inequality between upper and lower echelons – was still a shock for members of a party that remained Bolshevik. In the miserable year of 1920, which I shall return to in Part Three, the leadership was embarrassed by the problem and allowed it to be aired in the party press. During the 1920s, the lack of equality and democracy inside party ranks was one of the key issues raised by the opposition while it could still express itself. But it was met with demagogic denials. Until the end of the 1920s (and even later), the battle against bureaucratic tendencies – ‘bureaucratization’ – in the state administration was officially authorized, and seemingly supported by the party leadership. It lent itself to scapegoating officials. Attacking bureaucratization in the party itself, especially when such criticism emanated from the successive oppositions, was an altogether different matter. Still, the party, which at the end of the 1920s had more than a million members and thousands of apparatchiks, could not afford to bury reactions to internal bureaucratization within its ranks, even though opposition had been practically eliminated.
Thus, it turned out that if an administration is a tool, it also takes its toll. The problem came under the jurisdiction of the party’s Central Control Commission (CCC). In June 1929, the chairman of its Presidium, Ia. A. Iakovlev, presented it with an outline of the intervention he intended to make on the theme of bureaucratization at the Sixteenth Party Conference. Not everything he said was included in the published record, but what does feature there is highly informative.[1]
Iakovlev, one of the ‘old guard’ still in post, did not hide his concerns: a struggle of the utmost vigour must be conducted against bureaucratization inside the party itself. According to him, the phenomenon could be explained by the fact that so many party members worked in the state administration and acquired there pernicious habits with which they were ‘contaminating’ the party. To counteract this trend, the party needed to fight for a democratic spirit within Soviet institutions and other governmental bodies, where those in charge were concentrating all power in their own hands and substituting themselves for the formal leading bodies of state and cooperative organizations. Democratization, he suggested, was the only way to treat the disease at source.
Such an approach by an old Bolshevik, who was known as an intelligent, competent administrator, testifies to a time when the party no longer tolerated being perceived as responsible for anything negative. He understood that if, as so often before, he engaged in a real analysis of the problem without quotation marks, he risked being accused of belonging to some opposition or other. Yet calls for more democracy and less bureaucracy, including within the party itself, featured in a mass of material addressed by local party organizations to the Control Commission and other leading bodies complaining about party bosses. These complaints were still being summarized in the 1920s by the party’s Information Service and circulated in a bulletin for the use of its top cadres. The bulletin also contained other documents deemed important, issuing from the trade unions and the GPU. At least twice a month it provided briefings on the mood and opinions of specific social groups, especially workers. It referred to strikes, but also to the reactions of party members who had participated in them. Certainly, in 1929 Pravda was not somewhere one would find the bitter accusations of workers who were party members and on strike against their bosses, who were themselves members. But the leadership was kept informed of such matters and regularly discussed what to do in response, for the most part without much publicity. Readers should also be aware that, regardless of what conclusions they might care to draw from the fact, during the 1920s GPU reports on labour disputes were mainly critical of both administrative and party bosses, who were accused of indifference and incompetence when it came to dealing with workers’ legitimate grievances. The reports often vindicated strikers and criticized the behaviour of union leaders. GPU and party information bulletins from the 1920s contain a mass of material of this type.
It was not inaccurate to say that the state apparatus was contaminating the party. But this was due to the existence of an apparatus peculiar to the party, which did all it could to prevent public animus against bureaucrats rebounding on it. The Central Committee had launched a major campaign, particularly during the struggle against the various oppositions in the 1920s, to defend and celebrate the party apparatus – those referred to as politrabotniki (party cadres) or even the party’s ‘faithful guard’. Nevertheless, non-party people and members who had remained loyal to Bolshevik ideals continued to amalgamate both types of cadre into the single category of ‘bureaucrat’. There were good reasons for this.
Once an apparatus has been set up, especially if it is intended to control other, larger apparatuses, it operates in an environment that secretes shared habits, behaviour and a mindset. The use of the term ‘comrade’ loses its magic if the ‘comrade’ is a superior who issues orders and determines your salary and promotion prospects. The new reality, which is now part of daily life, is very simple: ‘We are not on an equal footing but on a ladder, comrade Ivanov, and I am not your comrade, comrade Ivanov.’
1
RGASPI, f. 613, op. I, d. 79: materials of the Collegium of the Central Control Commission.