by James Millar
MARIE-PIERRE REY
PARTY CONGRESSES AND CONFERENCES
Party congresses, the nominal policy-setting conclaves of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, were held at intervals ranging from one to five years, and extended from the First, in 1898, to the last, the Twenty-Eighth, in 1990. Made up since the 1920s of two- to five thousand delegates from the party’s local organizations, party congresses were formally empowered to elect the Central Committee, to determine party rules, and to enact resolutions that laid down the party’s basic programmatic guidelines. Party conferences, from the
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Table 1. Communist Party Congresses and Conferences
Delegates Number Date Locale (Voting) (Non-voting) 1st Congress March 1898 Minsk
9
2nd Congress July 1903 Brussels and London
43
14
3rd Congress April 1905 London
24
14
1st Conference December 1905 Tammerfors
41
4th Congress April 1906 Stockholm
112
22
2nd Conference November 1906 Tammerfors
32
ca. 15 5th Congress May-June 1907 London
336
3rd Conference July (August) 1907 Kotka (Finland)
26
4th Conference November 1907 Helsingfors
27
5th Conference January 1909 Paris
16
2
6th Conference January 1912 Prague
12
4
“March Conference” March 1917 Petrograd ca. 120 7th Conference April 1917 Petrograd
133
18
6th Congress August 1917 Petrograd
157
110
7th Congress March 1918 Moscow
47
59
8th Congress March 1919 Moscow ca. 300 ? 8th Conference December 1919 Moscow
45
73
9th Congress March 1920 Moscow
554
162
9th Conference September 1920 Moscow
116
125
10th Congress March 1921 Moscow ca. 700 ca. 300 10th Conference May 1921 Moscow ? 11th Conference December 1921 Moscow
125
116
11th Congress March-April 1922 Moscow
520
154
12th Conference August 1922 Moscow
129
92
12th Congress April 1923 Moscow
408
417
13th Conference January 1924 Moscow
128
222
13th Congress May 1924 Moscow
748
416
14th Conference April 1925 Moscow
178
392
14th Congress December 1925 Moscow
665
641
15th Conference October-November 1925 Moscow
194
640
15th Congress December 1927 Moscow
898
771
16th Conference April 1929 Moscow
254
679
16th Congress June-July 1930 Moscow
1268
891
17th Conference January-February 1932 Moscow
386
525
17th Congress January-February 1934 Moscow
1225
736
18th Congress March 1939 Moscow
1569
466
18th Conference February 1941 Moscow
456
138
19th Congress October 1952 Moscow
1192
167
20th Congress February 1956 Moscow
1349
81
21st “Extraordinary” Congress January-February 1959 Moscow
1269
106
22nd Congress October 1961 Moscow
4408
405
23rd Congress March-April 1966 Moscow
4620
323
24th Congress March-April 1971 Moscow
4740
223
25th Congress February-March 1976 Moscow
4998
non-voting 26th Congress February-March 1981 Moscow
4994
non-voting 27th Congress February-March 1986 Moscow ca. 5000 non-voting 19th Conference June 1988 Moscow
4976
non-voting 28th Congress July 1990 Moscow
4863
non-voting SOURCE: Courtesy of the author. first in 1905 to the nineteenth in 1988, were smaller and less authoritative gatherings, usually held midway in the interval between congresses. Like the congresses, they issued policy declarations in the form of resolutions, but did not conduct elections to the top party leadership.
Before the Revolution of 1917 and for the first few years thereafter, party congresses and conferences were marked by lively debate. The transcripts of those proceedings, published at the time and republished during the 1930s, are important sources concerning the problems the country faced and the viewpoints of the various party leaders and factions. With the ascendancy of Josef Stalin, however, party congresses and conferences became creatures of the central party leadership. As
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described by the concept of the circular flow of power, local officials who were de facto appointed by the center handpicked their delegations to the national congress, which in turn endorsed the makeup of the Central Committee and the central leadership itself, thus closing the circle.
PREREVOLUTIONARY PARTY CONGRESSES AND CONFERENCES
The meeting that is traditionally considered the First Party Congress was an ephemeral gathering in Minsk in March 1898 of nine Marxist under-grounders who managed to proclaim the establishment of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP) before they were arrested by the tsarist police. Before the Revolution, there were four more congresses and numerous conferences, distinguished by struggles between the Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the party that led up to their ultimate split. The Second Party Congress, convened in Brussels in July 1903 with fifty-seven participants but forced to move its proceedings to London under threat of arrest, was the first true congress of the RSDWP. It saw the outbreak of the Bolshevik-Menshevik schism when Vladimir Lenin tried to impose his definition of party membership as a core of professional revolutionaries rather than the broad democratic constituency favored by the Menshevik leader Yuly Martov.
The next congress, later counted by the Communists as the Third, was an all-Bolshevik meeting in London in April 1905, with just twenty-four voting delegates plus invited guests. The First Party Conference (as counted by the communists) was a gathering in December 1905 of forty Bolsheviks and a lone Menshevik in the city of Tammerfors (Tampere) in Russian-ruled Finland. They endorsed reunification with the Mensheviks and supported boycotting the tsar’s new Duma (over Lenin’s objections). At this meeting, Stalin made his initial appearance at the national level and first met Lenin face-to-face.
Following the abortive revolutionary events of 1905, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks came together in Stockholm in April 1906 for the Fourth Party Congress (by the Bolshevik enumeration), styled the Unification Congress, with a Menshevik majority among the 112 voting delegates. The two factions met together again in London in April and May 1907; this Fifth Party Congress was the last embracing both wings, and the last before the Revolution. Small meetings later considered by the Bolsheviks as their Second through Fifth Party Conferences were held between 1906 and 1909, mostly in Finland, with Bolshevik, Menshevik, and other Social-Democratic groups represented. These gatherings continued to revolve around the questions of party unity and parliamentary tactics.
In 1912, going thei
r separate ways, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks held separate party conferences. Twelve Bolsheviks plus four nonvoting delegates (including Lenin) met in Prague in January of that year for what they counted as the Sixth Party Conference. Excluding not only the Menshe-viks but also the Left Bolsheviks denounced by Lenin after the Fifth Party Conference in 1909, this gathering established an organizational structure of Lenin’s loyalists (including Grigory Zinoviev), to whom Stalin was added soon afterwards as a co-opted member of the Central Committee. The Sixth Party Conference was the real beginning of the Bolshevik Party as an independent entity under Lenin’s strict control.
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO WORLD WAR II
Shortly after the fall of the tsarist regime in the February Revolution of 1917 (March, New Style), but before Lenin’s return to Russia, the Bolsheviks convened an All-Russian Meeting of Party Workers of some 120 delegates. Contrary to the stand Lenin was shortly to take, this March Conference, of which Stalin was one of the leaders, leaned toward cooperation with the new Provisional Government and reunification with the Mensheviks. For this reason, the March Conference was expunged from official communist history and was never counted in the numbering.
A few weeks later the Bolsheviks met more formally in Petrograd, with 133 voting delegates and eighteen nonvoting, for what was officially recorded as the Seventh or April Party Conference. On this occasion, by a bare majority, Lenin persuaded the party to reject the Provisional Government and to oppose continued Russian participation in World War I. Unlike postrevolutionary party conferences, the Seventh elected a new Central Committee, with nine members, including Lev Kamenev and Yakov Sverdlov along with Lenin, Zi-noviev, and Stalin.
The Sixth Party Congress, all-Bolshevik, with 157 voting delegates and 110 nonvoting, was held in the Vyborg working-class district of Petrograd
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in August 1917 under semi-clandestine conditions, after the Provisional Government tried to suppress the Bolsheviks following the abortive uprising of the July Days. Lenin and other leaders were in hiding or in jail at the time, and Stalin and Sverdlov were in charge. The congress welcomed Leon Trotsky and other left-wing Mensheviks into the Bolshevik Party, and Trotsky was included in the expanded Central Committee of twenty-one. However, the gathering could hardly keep up with events; it made no plans directed toward the Bolshevik seizure of power that came soon afterwards.
Four congresses followed the Bolshevik takeover in quick succession, all facing emergency circumstances of civil war and economic collapse. The Seventh, dubbed “special,” was convened in Moscow in March 1918, with only forty-seven voting delegates, to approve the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ending hostilities with Germany and its allies. Lenin delivered a political report of the Central Committee, a function thereafter distinguishing the party’s chief, while Nikolai Bukharin submitted a minority report for the Left Communists against the treaty (a gesture last allowed in 1925). After bitter debate between the Leninists and the Left, the treaty was approved, and Russia left the war. However, Bukharin was included in the new Central Committee of fifteen members. The Seventh Party Congress also formally changed the party’s name from Russian Social-Democratic Party (of Bolsheviks) to Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks). All subsequent party congresses continued to be held in Moscow.
The Eighth Party Congress met in March 1919 at the height of the civil war, with around three hundred voting delegates. It adopted a new revolutionary party program, approved the creation of the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat, and saw its Leninist majority beat down opposition from the Left, who opposed the trend toward top-down authority in both military and political matters. The first postrevolutionary party conference, the Eighth, was held in Moscow (like all subsequent ones) in December 1919. It updated the party’s rules and heard continued complaints about centralism in government.
Three months later, at the Ninth Party Congress in March 1920, Lenin and Trotsky and their supporters again had to fight off the anti-centralizers of the Left on both political and economic issues. Such protest was carried much farther at the Ninth Party Conference, which met in September 1920. The “Group of Democratic Centralists” denounced bureaucratic centralism and won a sweeping endorsement of democracy and decentralism, unfortunately undercut by their acquiescence with respect to organizational efficiency and a new control commission.
This spirit of reform was soon smothered at the Tenth Party Congress, meeting in March 1921 with approximately seven hundred voting delegates. After some three hundred of its participants were dispatched to Petrograd to help suppress the Kronstadt Revolt, the congress voted in several crucial resolutions over the futile opposition of the small left-wing minority. It condemned the “syndicalist and anarchist deviation” of the Workers’ Opposition, banned organized factions within the party in the name of unity, and supported the tax in kind, Lenin’s first step in introducing the New Economic Policy. The Central Committee was expanded to twenty-five, but Trotsky’s key supporters were dropped from this body as well as from the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat.
Party congresses and conferences during the 1920s marked the transformation from a contentious, policy-setting gathering to an orchestrated phalanx of disciplined yes-men. This progression took place as Stalin perfected the circular flow of power through the party apparatus, guaranteeing his control of congress and conference proceedings. The Eleventh Party Congress, which met in March and April 1922, was the last with Lenin’s participation. It focused on consolidating party discipline and strengthening the new Central Control Commission to keep deviators in line. Immediately after the Eleventh Party Congress, the Central Committee designated Stalin to fill the new office of General Secretary.
The Twelfth Party Congress took place in April 1923 during the interregnum between Lenin’s in-capacitation in December 1922 and his death in January 1924. Trotsky, Stalin, and Zinoviev were all jockeying for advantage in the anticipated struggle to succeed the party’s ailing leader. Debate revolved particularly around questions of industrial development and policy toward the minority nationalities, while Stalin maneuvered to cover up Lenin’s break with him and pack the Central Committee (expanded from twenty-seven to forty) with his own supporters.
The Tenth and Eleventh Party Conferences in 1921 and the Twelfth in 1922 were routine affairs, but the Thirteenth proved to be a decisive milestone.
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At this gathering just before Lenin’s death, the left opposition faction supporting Trotsky was condemned as a petty-bourgeois deviation. Stalin demonstrated his mastery of the circular flow of power by allowing only three oppositionists among the voting delegates.
By the time of the Thirteenth Party Congress in May 1924, the Soviet political atmosphere had changed even more. Lenin was dead; the triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev was trumpeting the need for discipline and unity; and opposition had been virtually outlawed. Stalin’s party apparatus had ensured that among the 748 voting delegates there was not a single voice to represent the opposition, and Trotsky, merely one of the 416 nonvoting delegates, temporarily recanted his criticisms of the party. The Central Committee was expanded again, to fifty-two, to make room for even more Stalin loyalists, especially from the regional apparatus.
The Fourteenth Party Conference, held in April 1925, endorsed Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country and condemned Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. It marked the high point of the New Economic Policy (NEP) by way of liberalizing policy toward the peasants. However, this emphasis contributed to growing tension between the Stalin-Bukharin group of party leaders and the Zinoviev-Kamenev group.
At the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925 these two groups split openly. The so-called Leningrad Opposition, led by Zinoviev and Kamenev and backed by Lenin’s widow Nadezhda Krup-skaya, rebelled against Stalin’s domination of the party and took with them the sixty-two Lening
rad delegates. Kamenev openly challenged Stalin’s suitability as party leader, but the opposition was soundly defeated by the well-disciplined majority. The NEP, especially as articulated by Bukharin, was for the time being reaffirmed, although subsequent Stalinist history represented the Fourteenth Congress as the beginning of the new industrialization drive. The Central Committee was expanded again, to sixty-three.
Acrimony between the majority and the newly allied Zinovievists and Trotskyists was even sharper at the Fifteenth Party Conference of October- November 1926. Kamenev now denounced Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country as a falsification of Lenin’s views. Nevertheless, the opposition was unanimously condemned as a “Social-Democratic” (i.e., Menshevik) deviation. When the Fifteenth Party Congress met in December 1927, the left opposition leaders Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev had been dropped from the party’s leadership bodies, and Trotsky had been expelled from the party altogether. At the congress itself, the opposition was condemned and its followers were expelled from the party as well. At the same time, the congress adopted resolutions on a five-year plan and on the peasantry that subsequently served as legitimation for Stalin’s industrialization and collectivization drives. Eight more members were added to the Central Committee, not counting replacements for the condemned oppositionists, bringing the total to seventy-one (a figure that held until 1952).