Political and Administrative Resources of the Ruling (All-) Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks): Selecting a Model of Social Welfare State
| 29 May 2025
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Anfertiev I.A., Moscow, Russian Federation
Political and Administrative Resources of the Ruling (All-) Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks): Selecting a Model of Social Welfare State
Abstract
The article analyses the efforts of the ruling group of members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the (All-) Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) in setting up a system of total control over the activities of the senior management and rank and file party members, as well as in mobilization of all lines of state machinery management for unconditional execution of all issued directives. Documents of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the RCP(b) allow define the nature of the intraparty relations; particulars of conducting purges in the party; growing influence of the party leadership over every last domain of Soviet, economic, trade union, cooperation agencies and organizations activities. In new circumstances of the mostly ended Civil War and transit to the New Economic Policy Vladimir Lenin built a system of heavy-handed administration centered round himself as sole party and state leader with near absolute power authorization. Still the party cadres did not have the administrative experience necessary for the success of social and economic reforms. A tough guy was needed, as Stalin’s rise to power after Lenin’s illness and death soon proved. And yet archival documents suggest that the embarked upon social experiment proved to be a failure on two counts: Bolsheviks adhered to utopian views of their forerunners and made irredeemable mistakes in governing by repressive methods.
Keywords
Source, archival document, dictatorship of proletariat, (All-) Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks), war communism, party apparatus, social differentiation, opposition.
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About the authors
Anfertiev Ivan Anatolievich, PhD in History, associate professor, professor of the department of modern history of Russia of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russian Federation, +7-916-252-28-22, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it