Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  PARTY FUNDING

  Officially, the Party was funded through the membership dues that all members paid and the revenues generated by sale of the Party’s publications. However it is clear that, from the time of the Party’s ascension to power, such dues were substantially supplemented by funds from the state. The amount of money that was transferred across in this way in unclear, but it was substantial. The Party owned property in all cities and towns in the Soviet Union, paid salaries to its employees, funded a range of publications, made provision for its own daily functioning, and funded sister parties and movements abroad. The annual budget far exceeded the amount of money brought in through fees and publications. The difference was covered by money obtained from the state. As the Soviet Union fell during the late 1980s to the early 1990s, much of this money was secreted abroad, its whereabouts as uncertain as the dimensions of the Party’s real annual budget.

  The Party’s financial dependence on the state and the way in which it was intertwined with the state at all levels led many to argue that it was not really a political party but more a state organ. There is much to this argument, but it was neither coterminous with the state nor reducible to it. It was the first of the sort of organization that became common during the twentieth century, the ruling single party. As such, the CPSU was the prototype for which many would emulate.

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  COMMUNIST YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS

  See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; KAMENEV, LEV BORISOVICH; LEFT OPPOSITION; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; MARXISM; MOLO-TOV, VYACHESLAV MIKHAILOVICH; NOMENKLATURA; OCTOBER REVOLUTION; POLITBURO; RIGHT OPPOSITION; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; STATE DEFENSE COMMITTEE; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH; UNITED OPPOSITION; WAR COMMUNISM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Gill, Graeme. (1988). The Rules of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Gill, Graeme. (1994). The Collapse of a Single-Party System. The Disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Millar, James R., ed. (1992). Cracks in the Monolith: Party Power in the Brezhnev Era. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Schapiro, Leonard. (1970). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. London, Methuen. Wesson, Robert G. (1978). Lenin’s Legacy. The Story of the CPSU. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. White, Stephen. (1989). Soviet Communism. Programme and Rules. London: Routledge.

  GRAEME GILL

  COMMUNIST YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS

  The Communist Youth Organization (Komsomol) was the major vehicle of political education and mobilization for Soviet youth. Founded in November 1918, and disbanded in 1991, the All-Union Leninist Communist League of Youth was one of a series of Soviet institutions dedicated to educating and regulating Soviet citizens at every life stage- the Little Octobrists, the Young Pioneers (ten to fourteen), the Komsomol (fourteen to mid-twenties), and the Communist Party.

  The Komsomol was founded as an elite and “self-standing” organization of communist youth. Over the course of the 1920s and 1930s the Komsomol was gradually transformed from a select organization of activist proletarian youth into a mass organization subservient to Party policy. By March 1926, there were approximately 1.75 million young people in the Komsomol; more than half of the working-class youth in Leningrad and Moscow were members. A few years later, the Komsomol was almost twice the size of the Party. Nonetheless, as of 1936, still only about 10 percent of eligible youth belonged to the Communist Youth League. In response, and at Josef Stalin’s direction, the Komsomol was formally relegated this same year to the role of a propaganda and education organization open to almost all youth regardless of class background. By 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev acceded to general secretary, the Komsomol reported that it had 42 million members between the ages of fourteen and twenty-seven.

  Young people joined the Komsomol for many different reasons. In the first decades of Soviet power, the Komsomol provided a community of peers for urban youth, especially as all other youth groups-the Boy Scouts, religious youth organizations-were suppressed. Komsomol clubs in factories, schools, and institutes of higher education organized sports activities, drama groups, and concerts, as well as literacy and antidrinking campaigns. The Komsomol offered a new identity as well as new opportunities; some young people experienced the exhilaration of the Revolution, the struggle of Civil War, and the rapid industrialization of the Stalin era, with a sense of great personal involvement. Like joining the Party, becoming a member of the Komsomol could also confer economic and political benefits. It helped pave the way to eventual Party membership, and Komsomol members were often awarded important political and agitational positions. The Komsomol was not equally relevant or available to everybody, however. Proletariat males were at the top of the ladder of Bolshevik virtue, while peasants, students, and women of all classes were on lower rungs. Women of all classes made up just 20 percent of the Komsomol in 1926. Although their numbers increased throughout the Soviet period, they remained underrepresented in leadership positions.

  The energetic participation of some Komsomol members in the dramatic industrialization and collectivization campaigns of the early 1930s did not protect either the rank-and-file or the Komsomol elite from the purges. In 1937 and 1938, the entire Komsomol bureau was purged and the first secretary, Alexander Kosarev, was executed along with several others. During World War II, the Komsomol was deeply involved in patriotic campaigns and was effective in this period of national defense at attracting members and encouraging enthusiastic response to patriotic propaganda. The war was the final high point of the Komsomol, however. After the war, the Komsomol was increasingly trapped between the Party’s demands for political con-formism and young people’s increasingly diverse

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  CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES

  Young Pioneers march on Red Square. © AFP/CORBIS and internationally informed desires for relevance and for entertainment. The conservatism of the Komsomol was reflected in the aging of its leadership. In 1920, the median age of a delegate to a Komsomol Congress was twenty. In 1954, it was twenty-seven. By the years of stagnation (the period of Leonid Brezhnev’s leadership) the Communist Youth League was mired in bureaucracy and corruption, and unable to remake itself; it had become a mass membership organization to which few truly wanted to belong, but many felt they needed to join in order to advance professionally and politically. The Komsomol’s irrelevance to a changing Soviet Union was even more evident during the transition to Mikhail Gorbachev’s presidency. The Communist Youth League lost millions of members per year (1.5 million in 1986, 2.5 million in 1987) and disbanded itself at a final Komsomol Congress in September 1991. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; EDUCATION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fisher, Ralph. (1959). Pattern for Soviet Youth: A Study of the Congresses of the Komsomol, 1918-1954. New York: Columbia University Press. Gorsuch, Anne E. (2000). Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pilkington, Hilary. (1994). Russia’s Youth and Its Culture: A Nation’s Constructors and Constructed. New York and London: Routledge. Tirado, Isabel. (1988). Young Guard! The Communist Youth League, Petrograd, 1917-1920. New York: Greenwood.

  ANNE E. GORSUCH

  CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES

  The Congress of People’s Deputies was a legislative structure introduced in the Soviet Union by CPSU

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  CONGRESS OF RUSSIAN COMMUNITIES

  (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Its purpose was to expand elective representation in policy debate and decision making, while leaving final power at the disposal of the top party leadership. The USSR Congress of People’s Deputies lasted only from 1989 until 1991. It nevertheless marked an important step in the opening of the Soviet system to competitive electoral politics. A Congress of People’s Deputies for the Russian Republic (RSFSR) was also established, but it lasted only from 1990 to 1993.

  Under Gorbachev’s model, the new USSR
Congress of People’s Deputies replaced the USSR Supreme Soviet. The old Supreme Soviet had 1,500 deputies, 750 elected in ordinary territorial districts based on equal population, and 750 elected in “national-territorial” districts representing the ethnic territorial subdivisions of the country. To these the new congress added another 750 deputies elected directly from existing recognized “public organizations” such as the CPSU, the trade unions, and the Academy of Sciences, with quotas set for each organization.

  The congress elected a smaller full-time Supreme Soviet from among its 2,250 members. This inner parliament had 542 members divided into two chambers of equal size and functioned like a democratic parliament, debating and voting on laws. Most of its organizational and agenda decisions were made, however, by its Presidium. The Presidium structure was a carryover from the old regime, where it had effectively controlled the Supreme Soviet through its large full-time staff. The Presidium and its chair continued to direct the congress and Supreme Soviet into the Gorbachev period as well.

  The March 1989 elections to the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies proved to be a turning point in the Gorbachev era. The elections stimulated a surge of popular participation in politics, often directed against the Soviet regime itself. Many senior Communist Party officials who ran for election as deputies were defeated. The elections brought a new wave of democratic and nationalist political leaders into politics. Boris Yeltsin, for example, won a landslide victory from an at-large seat in Moscow. When the First Congress convened in May 1989, the televised proceedings, featuring stirring speeches by famous personalities such as Andrei Sakharov, riveted the public. Soon it became clear that the congress was too large and unstructured to be an effective forum for decision making, but it did give a platform to many politicians and ideas. Moreover, the Supreme Soviet that it elected enacted some significant legislation on such topics as freedom of religion and the press, judicial reform, and local government. A system of competitive political caucuses emerged.

  The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) Congress of People’s Deputies formed in 1990. Like the USSR congress, the RSFSR congress elected a Supreme Soviet to serve as a full-time parliament. Yeltsin was initially elected as chair, but left parliament when he was elected president of RSFSR a year later. An intense power struggle between president and parliament followed. Ultimately, in September and October 1993, Yeltsin forcibly dissolved the congress and Supreme Soviet. The new constitution approved by national referendum in December 1993 replaced the congress and Supreme Soviet with a bicameral Federal Assembly. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; PRESIDIUM OF SUPREME SOVIET

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Remington, Thomas F. (1991). “Parliamentary Government in the USSR.” In Perestroika-Era Politics: The New Soviet Legislature and Gorbachev’s Political Reforms, ed. Robert T. Huber and Donald R. Kelley. Ar-monk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Remington, Thomas F. (1996). “M?nage a Trois: The End of Soviet Parliamentarism.” In Democratization in Russia: The Development of Legislative Institutions, ed. Jeffrey W. Hahn. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Remington, Thomas F. (2001). The Russian Parliament: The Evolution of Institutions in a Transitional Regime, 1989-1999. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  THOMAS F. REMINGTON

  CONGRESS OF RUSSIAN COMMUNITIES

  The Congress of Russian Communities (Kongress Russkikh Obshchin, or KRO), an offshoot of the Union for the Rebirth of Russia, was founded in 1993 by Dmitry Rogozin as the International Congress of Russian Communities for the representation of Russian and Russian-speaking residents of the “nearby foreign lands.” It brought together Russian communities and sociopolitical organizations in the national republics of the Russian Federation and in the former republics of the USSR. In the fall of 1994 the Russian KRO was founded for participation in state Duma elections. Later, in January 1995, the electoral bloc of the KRO was

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  CONSISTORY

  renamed the sociopolitical movement Congress of Russian Communities. Yuri Skokov was elected chair of the National Council. A former secretary of the Security Council (1992-1993), he had once been close to Yeltsin, but fell out with him later. Dmitry Rogozin was elected chair of the Executive Committee. KRO leaders included such famous figures as Stanislav Govorukhin, Yegor Stroyev, Nikita Moiseyev, Viktor Ilyukhin, Sergei Glaziev, and Konstantin Zatulin.

  In the 1995 Duma elections, the KRO, enticing the disgraced and highly popular general Alexander Lebed into the second place on its list of candidates (Skokov was first, and Glaziev third), won 3 million votes and almost reached the required threshold to gain a seat (4.3 percent). The KRO program, a mix of statism and patriotic values, impressed many, but its figurehead was not a brave general, rather an unknown apparatchik. Of the ninety candidates proposed by the KRO in single-mandate districts, only five were elected into the Duma, including Lebed and three candidates of Chelyabinsk Oblast, where the KRO collaborated with the Movement for the Rebirth of the Urals and the former governor Petr Sumin. Later, in 1997, Rogozin, now the sole head of the KRO, entered the Duma by-elections with the slogan “We are Russians! God is with us!” His platform included “the fusion of immemorial Russian values with the attainment of advanced technology”; “a federal, lawful, democratic government”; and a “highly effective and socially oriented market economy.” At the beginning of the 1999 Duma electoral campaigns, along with a few little-known political movements, the KRO constituted the organizational basis for Yuri Luzhkov’s Fatherland movement. As the latter gained influence, the KRO and its leader were edged out of key positions, and they left Fatherland in the summer of 1999. As a result, the KRO entered the elections along with the movement of Yuri Boldyrev and suffered a fiasco, winning only 400,000 votes (0.6 percent). Rogozin was re-elected by his majority district, entered the pro-government People’s Deputy group, and headed the Duma committee on international affairs.

  An extraordinary session of the KRO elected Glaziev chair; he was at the time cochair of the National Patriotic Front of Russia (NPSR). It was announced that the KRO would not participate in upcoming Duma elections, so as not to promote the “further division” of patriotic forces, but was willing to “act as an organizer of a patriotic coalition.” See also: LEBED, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities, and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.

  NIKOLAI PETROV

  CONSISTORY

  The consistory was main diocesan administrative and judicial organ in the Russian Orthodox Church from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth. The 1721 Spiritual Regulation of Peter I marked a new period in the history of the administrative life of the Orthodox Church. Although the Regulation did not refer specifically to a consistory, nineteenth-century Russian church historians cited Clause 5 in the section pertaining to bishops as pointing to the eventual consistory. Diocesan administration changed only gradually in the eighteenth century. In many ways it came to mirror the provincial government administration, as well as the collegial organization of the church’s higher administrative body, the Holy Synod. Although the consistory can be seen as part of the modern institutional church, nineteenth-century churchmen often associated it with an ancient form of church government (a council of presbyters) described in the writings of such early Christians as Ignatius of Antioch, Cyprian of Carthage and Ambrose of Milan.

  During the early decades of the eighteenth century, diocesan boards were referred to by various names. A 1744 directive called for a uniform name-“consistory”-for all such diocesan boards. An 1832 directive reiterated this directive for the Kiev, Chernigov, and Kish
inev dioceses. The responsibilities and rules governing the consistory were finally standardized in 1841. This statute was revised in 1883 and remained in effect until 1918.

  Consistories were organized into two parts: a collegial board (usually three to five members;

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  CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

  more if local circumstances demanded) and a chancery office. The management of the consistory’s day-to-day business fell to a chancery office staffed by lay clerks and overseen by a secretary. At first, members of the consistory’s board were drawn mostly from the monastic clergy. By 1768, that trend was reversed, and a 1797 directive instructed that at least half of the consistory’s members be chosen from among married parish priests. Deacons were not eligible to serve on consistory boards. In theory, the bishop presided over the consistory, and no decision could be put forward without his ratification. In practice, however, the issue of authority was not always so clear. For instance, the diocesan bishop nominated members for the board, but the Holy Synod confirmed them. Similarly, while responsible to the bishop, the secretary was nominated by the ober-procurator and confirmed by members of the Holy Synod.

  The consistory oversaw a wide range of affairs. These included the growth and preservation of the Orthodox faith (and the teaching and preaching that helped to achieve these ends); liturgical schedules; the maintenance and decoration of churches; the recommendation of candidates for clerical positions; the dissemination of episcopal and synodal directives; and the collection of records from parishes. As an ecclesiastical court, the consistory was concerned with certain issues relating to marriage and divorce; birth, baptismal and death records; crimes and misdemeanors involving clergy; complaints against clergy for negligence in their liturgical or pastoral responsibilities; and disputes among clergy over the use of church property. Although the consistory’s judicial concerns lay primarily with clergy, laity became involved when the issue of penance (epitemiya) arose.