8 - The Structure of the Soviet State: Government and Politics

Summary

HISTORICAL FACTORS

Three major historical factors are reflected in the Soviet political system. The first is the role which Lenin attached to the Communist Party as leader of the proletariat. He had elaborated his doctrine very largely for the purposes of making a revolution. But it soon became plain – after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks on 7 November 1917, and indeed before – that he envisaged a similar leading role for the Communist Party after the revolution had been accomplished. Lenin's theory of leadership, first formulated in 1902, that the proletariat as a class could never accomplish its historic mission of seizing power without being led and inspired ‘from outside’, logically entailed certain other consequences. One was the rejection by Lenin of what he called ‘spontaneity’; that is to say, the unguided, as distinct from the guided, activity of any mass. Numerical majority as such was not something that Lenin regarded as being decisive. What was important was that all decisions should be taken in accordance with the scientific principles of doctrine; once these principles had been explained to the popular masses by the leaders, the masses would ordinarily accept them. This view was applied by Lenin in practice to his leadership of his party. Hence, in the last resort, if a decision had to be taken, and if it could not be taken by the counting of heads, then logically it had to be taken by one man imposing his authority over the others.