INTRA-PARTY STRUGGLE OF THE POLITICAL ELITE FOR AUTHORITATIVE POWERS IN THE SOVIET STATE IN 1917–1920

Igor V. Kallin

DOI: 10.47026/1810-1909-2021-2-105-111

Key words

the Communist Party, Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars) of the USSR, Council of Labor and Defense, All-Union Central Executive Committee, Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) – RCP(b)–AUCP(b), the Soviet state, the General Secretary, decree, resolution, struggle, political elite.

Annotation

The article examines the activities of three political institutions (the Council of People’s Commissars, the Politburo, the Secretariat of the Central Committee) of the Soviet state from the point of view of their superiority in the political arena at the time of the initial formation of a new one-party state. As a result of various transformations by the end of the 1920s, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks began to play a special role in the power structures. The relationship between the members and candidates for membership of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the AUCP(b) gradually begins to depend on the position of the General Secretary I.V. Stalin (since 1922). He begins to acquire the functions of a judge in various disputable situations that periodically arose between the opposing ideological associations of the above-mentioned state decision-making body, the nature of outgoing documents that appear in the business correspondence of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party is also transformed, and the factor of the informal system of making key decisions acquires a particular importance. As a result of such transformations, only a part of the approved decisions is recorded in the resolutions of the Political Bureau, while the preliminary work on their implementation is generally not taken into account anywhere. The Secretariat of the Bolshevik Party at the very beginning of its existence was generally conceived as an absolutely technical body, a kind of bureau of typists-secretaries, who would prepare on paper the printed texts of the decisions made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the AUCP(b). The Secretariat of the Central Committee in no way meant a body for making economic, administrative, industrial, personnel, and no less political decisions. Elevation of this unsophisticated organ above other state and party organs is largely due to I.V. Stalin, who managed to redirect the documentation flow of the Soviet state through his department.

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Information about the author

Igor V. Kallin – Post-Graduate Student, Russian History Department, Chuvash State University, Russia, Cheboksary (history20182022@mail.ru).

For citations

Kallin I.V. INTRA-PARTY STRUGGLE OF THE POLITICAL ELITE FOR AUTHORITATIVE POWERS IN THE SOVIET STATE IN 1917–1920. Vestnik Chuvashskogo universiteta, 2021, no. 2, pp. 105–111. DOI: 10.47026/1810-1909-2021-2-105-111 (in Russian).

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