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Changing Roles of the CPSU Under First Secretary Khrushchev

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Howard R. Swearer
Howard R. Swearer
Affiliation:
University of California
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Extract

It came as no surprise that First Secretary and Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the 22nd Party Congress predicted the next historical period will witness “the further increase in the role of the Party as the higher form of public and political organization, the strengthening of its directing influence in all sections of communist building….” What is the nature of this projected party role and how does it differ from past practice? What problems have been encountered by the Khrushchev regime in directing the state through the party apparatus and how has it attempted to cope with these difficulties? By focusing on the Party's changing role since 1953, what light can be shed on modifications in the composition, procedures, and structure of the Party during the Khrushchev era?

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , October 1962 , pp. 20 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1962

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References

1 Pravda, October 18, 1961.

2 Towster, Julian, Political Power in the U.S.S.R.: 1917–1947 (New York 1948), 178Google Scholar, quoting the stenographic report of the 8th Party Congress.

3 Vlasov, V. A., Sovetsky gosudarstvenny apparat [The Soviet state apparatus] (Moscow 1955), 201.Google Scholar

4 Gruliow, Leo, ed., Current Soviet Policies: Documentary Record of the 19th Communist Party Congress and the Reorganization After Stalin's Death (New York 1953). 17.Google Scholar

5 Gruliow, Leo, ed., Current Soviet Policies, II (New York 1956), 57.Google Scholar

6 There are approximately 3,200 rural raions in the USSR.

7 Fainsod, Merle, “The Communist Party Since Stalin,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 303 (January 1956), 32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Gruliow, II, 58.

9 “Sel'skii raikom partii i ego apparat” [The rural raion party committee and its apparatus], Partiinaya Zhizn', No. 23 (December 1957), 3–8.

10 Ibid., 3.

11 “Kak raikom nachinaet rabotat' pasle perestroiki svoego apparata” [How the raikom begins to work after the reconstruction of its apparatus], Partiinaya Zhizn', No. 2 (January 1958), 40–41.

12 There are approximately 107 oblasts in the USSR. The oblast administration supervises the raion and in turn is subordinate to the republic. (The smaller republics do not have oblast divisions.)

13 In the republics of Belorussia and Armenia, and the oblasts of Ryazan, Stalingrad, Kirov, Voronezh, and several others, the departments of propaganda and agitation and organization were retained. Even here, however, the great bulk of the staff became instructors reporting to the chief of the organization department.

14 “The rural raion party committee,” 4.

15 Pravda, February 21, 1961,

16 Pravda, March 24, 1962.

17 Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta, May 28, 1961.

18 Pravda, June 25, 1961.

19 Pravda, May 19, 1958.

20 Pravda, September 1, 1958.

21 Schapiro, Leonard, “The Party and the State,” Survey, No. 38 (November 1961), 112Google Scholar, quoting Ivashechkin, M., “Thinking out loud: Diary of a district party committee secretary,” Nash Sovremmenik, No. 3 (1961), 5.Google Scholar

22 Kommunist Tadzhikistana, April 21, 1961.

23 Pravda, July 23, 1961.

24 Sel'skaya Zhizn', May 16, 1961.

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26 Pravda, October 30, 1961.

27 Pravda, October 18, 1961.

28 Ibid. The head of the CC Department of Party Organs in mid-1959 wrote that 8.8 per cent of the primary party organizations had full-time secretaries. This would mean that these organizations have roughly 26,500 full-time secretaries, a figure 2,500 less than that given to a group of visiting Italian Communists in 1957.

29 Pravda, October 29, 1961.

30 Kommunist, No. 12 (August 1961), 12 (Article 42).

31 Spiridonov was demoted in the late spring of 1962. His position was taken by A. P. Kirilenko, former party first secretary of Sverdlovsk oblast, who was promoted to full membership in the Party Presidium and First Deputy Chairman of the Bureau for the RSFSR.

32 Pravda, October 29, 1961.