The Importance and Consequences of Vanguardism for Democracy

An element of distrust is an integral component of liberal democracy, which is based on the doctrine of constitutional law of separation of powers, under which, the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government are kept separate.

This is the system of checks-and-balances, where each branch is granted certain authority- judicial review, executive or congressional powers – to check potential power excesses by the other branches.

Therefore, democracy is about limitation of power to protect rights.

The aim of my blog, however, is to argue that the imposition of socialist ‘democracy’ in the Soviet Union and communist Eastern Europe played rather an abstract role, as, in reality, it was just drowned in ideological nonsense with a clear aim of deceiving the masses and legitimizing dictatorship and poverty.

Socialism, Vanguardism and Democracy

There was no clear definition of socialism in the constitutions of the Soviet Union or its Eastern European satellites.[1]

Soviet history reveals that those who exercised ‘democratic centralism’ exploited the vagueness of the concept of socialism in order to fabricate the real meaning of democracy.[2]

The scientific inevitability of the proletarian revolution, which was predicted by Karl Marx in his social evolution theory, did not materialize during Marx’s lifetime, and the 1905 Russian Revolution was a failure. The masses started to doubt his scientific laws, which a priori could not be called scientific, unless materialized.

However, devout Marxists believed that the ideology was not at fault: it was, rather, “the inability of a majority whose attitudes [had] been ‘warped’ by a ‘debased’ society to realize in thought or deed their full human potential.”[3]

Thus, despite the classical Marxist definition of the socialist consciousness’ formation as a natural and organic product which had to arise from the proletarian involvement in the class struggle, Vladimir Lenin concluded that those who had been ‘infected’ by capitalism could not have been morally revived except by a vanguard-led revolution.[4]

Vanguard was to determine what needed to be done in order to lead the masses’ liberation away from their sufferings caused by the Industrial Revolution and capitalism.

Why, however, should the rule by an enlightened vanguard have been considered democratic?

It should be noted that Marxists viewed the community as a corporate entity, and not as a random assemblage of independent individuals.[5] They believed that in a classless post-revolutionary society it was necessary to create a unified popular consciousness which could have transcended the actual thoughts of mere individuals.[6]

This belief is reminiscent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s conception of the ‘general will’, which maintained that the diversity of opinion arose “only when individuals lost sight of the public good and followed their own private interests.”[7]

Rousseau distinguished between

• the ‘general will’, which is constant and pure,
• and the ‘will of all’, which is no more than a sum of ‘particular’, selfish wills.[8]

The former exists regardless of one’s wish and it denotes the true state of events: “it is the ‘real’, moral will of the individual, in contrast to his or her arbitrary (selfish) will.”[9]

It follows, that by submitting to the ‘general will’, one liberates his/herself by attaining a ‘higher self’.

Thus, per Rousseau, freedom and compliance converge in the selfless attainment of the common good. And in case if an individual resists the submission to the ‘general will’, then he may be rightfully ‘forced to be free’ by a ‘superior intelligence’ and bound to comply with his pure and natural self.[10]

Leninist Contribution to Marxist Thought

Alike Rousseau, Lenin was a moralist who aimed to liberate the masses from their selfish natures and the harmful effects of their disruptive social environments.[11]

The vanguard, alike Rousseau’s ‘superior intelligence’, was thus to determine the ‘true’ (as opposed to the selfish) will of the people.

This notion might seem deeply undemocratic.

How does the vanguard know what is the ‘true’ will of the people to forcibly impose it upon them?

For Marxists, history was an answer, since it provided its own objective recommendations, progressive solutions and unified “‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’.”[12]

The Marxist laws thus inscribed socialism in the historical process- the scientific inevitability of the proletarian revolution, which was to spark in response to the long-term capitalist exploitation.

Thus, socialism was an objective necessity, and as such, it signified unquestionable truth and how people should have lived.

Marxist laws thus legitimized Lenin’s notion that the vanguard could have assumed the workers’ ‘objective’ interests without actually inquiring their opinion.[13]

Since the validity of a scientific theory is free from the notion of how many people actually accept it, it stipulated Lenin to wonder as to why revolutionaries had to pay attention to the spontaneous perceptions of ordinary people. For instance, on a passenger airliner, no one argues that the pilot should surrender navigational issues to the passengers’ democratic critique, for these are technical concerns which require the appropriate knowledge.[14]

Like pilots on passenger airliners, revolutionary scientists (Marxist-Leninisten) possessed the technical knowledge of the solution to proletarian sufferings.

Thus, they were the arbiters of ‘objective truth’ and so it was up to them to discover people’s ‘real’ interests and hence their ‘real’ will.

Lenin believed, if proletarians were perfectly ‘rational’ and not ‘infected’ by capitalist tendencies, then they would have understood Marxism as the most natural or suitable to their material situation.[15] But since capitalism downgraded them to “ventriloquist’s dummies, lacking a genuine voice of their own”[16], the freedom had to be imposed upon them.

Therefore, while the Western interpretation of democracy is based on the rule of the majority, the Russian view was grounded in the interests of the majority: “Not the government by the people, but government for the people”[17], which did not necessitate their consent.

The Consequences of Vanguardism

Lenin and his followers, however, have clearly overexploited their duties as vanguards of communism.

The core liberal democratic principles, such as competitive elections, freedom of speech and majority rule now seemed of no value if people’s interests could be defined by revolutionary scientists, ordained by ‘history’.

However, what was seen in the West as a clear abandonment of democracy, Marxist-Leninisten portrayed as a higher form of democracy – that is, a democracy, which was above the “venal and rotten parliamentarism.”[18]

It should be noted, however, that Karl Marx opposed the imposition of constitutional restraints on collective action.[19] He did not ask for ‘revolution from above’, and by speaking of activists who were to impart a scientific understanding of the historical process to proletarians, he did not imply the establishment of vanguardism.[20]

He proclaimed: “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves, that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule.”[21]

Therefore, he did not envision a post-revolutionary dictatorship by a minority that ruled in the name of the proletariat.

The reality, however, has turned into the tampering of Marxist intellectual elitism by Marxist-Leninist populism. The latter’s populist strategic goal was to ensure regime endurance “by preserving civic apathy, inhibiting mobilization, and legitimizing the ‘scientific’ approach towards governance by the communist nomenklatura.”[22]

The Communist Party As a New Vanguard

In the post-1917 revolutionary period, the communist party became “the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism […], of being the teacher, the guide, the leader”[23] of the proletariat.

This was a key feature that distinguished communist from socialist parties.[24]

As a vanguard, the party assumed complete control over everything, even human rights.

The rights were not upheld, even despite the fact that the basic rights and freedoms of citizens were highlighted in all the Soviet constitutions, and despite Stalin’s proclamation that the Soviet Constitution did not only proclaim equality of rights for people, “but also ensured it by giving legislative embodiment to the fact that the regime of exploitation [had] been abolished, to the fact that the citizens [had] been emancipated from all exploitation.”[25]

Under Soviet law, it was impossible to appeal to any judicial agency in order to uphold one’s rights by referring only to the norms of the Constitution: in order to have such a lawsuit even accepted for review, it was required to refer to specific legislative acts.[26]  If such acts were absent, the constitutional rights became mere decorations.[27]

It was believed that since proletarian democracy was for the majority of the population and “the necessary suppression of the exploiters”[28] was to be forcibly ‘crushed’, there was no need for civil liberties or human rights. Besides, “as the ‘general will’ is the ‘real’ will of every individual, there [was] no sense in the notion that individuals should [have] [been] protected from it through constitutional limitations.”[29]

The masses were thus taught that while the capitalist government defined the freedom of each individual “as a guarantee for the freedom of all, the socialist government guaranteed the freedom of everyone as a guarantee for the freedom of each individual.”[30] Therefore, the rights rested with the Party and not with the people, and communist leaders were ‘granting’ rights instead of recognizing them.

Democracy was further constrained by the Marxist notion of the homogeneity of a classless society: since there would have been no separate class of the wealthy bourgeoisie, which exploited the working class, all people would have developed the sameness of interests throughout society.[31]

Per Marxists, the parties always represented the antagonistic interests of social classes, and, thus, in the homogeneous post-revolutionary society there was no need for multiparty systems.[32] Therefore, the popular will was to be embedded within a single, unchallenged party. The party became ‘polymorphic’, since it assumed many shapes, including ‘the state’, which became inseparable from it.[33]

The Organization of Communist Parties

All communist parties were organized on the basis of democratic centralism, which was defined by the collective leadership, periodic elections of all central party organs, strict party discipline and “the absolute binding force of the decisions of the higher organs for the lower organs and the members.”[34]

Parties were structured in a pyramid fashion, where the lower levels (primary/base party organizations) were organized in work-places, while the higher levels were structured on a geographical basis- in the villages, towns or regions.[35]

The party had five general functions: goal-setting, goal-attainment, socialization, recruitment and linkage.[36]

1) The Goal-Setting Function

The party’s goal-setting function was the maintenance of its aforementioned vanguard role by not only telling the masses “where they [were] going, but also what route they [were] to take”[37] through the establishment of general guidelines.

The impetus for such goal-setting was delivered by the Politburo and approved by the Central Committee and the Congress.

2) The Socialization Function

A Child with Lenin. “Vladimir Lenin was the first leader of the Soviet Communist Party, the architect of the revolution, and the first head of state of the Soviet Socialist Republics. This early Bolshevist hero was one of the most revered people in the Soviet Union. It is therefore unsurprising that Lenin’s “cult of personality” endured following his death.
As with Stalin, Lenin was held up as an exemplar of everything communism and the revolution stood for. Posters like this one held two purposes: to help instil the cult of personality in the minds of schoolchildren, and to encourage values which the state wished their students to hold – like obedience to the government and hard work at school.”
Credits: Top Education Degrees, https://www.topeducationdegrees.org

The party’s socialization function was the inculcation of Marxist-Leninist ideas[38]– that is, the promotion of various indoctrination campaigns aimed at generating “unquestionable conformity to official values.”[39]

For instance, the students were encouraged to be more conscious of the collective by reprimanding each other for misbehaviour, as well as forced to learn facts rather than to question.[40]

• Besides the compulsory study of Marxism-Leninism, even the apolitical subjects such as mathematics or life sciences were taught in a way intended to bring those subjects closer to the official culture.[41]

Furthermore, the media was also highly censured by the party, with far less sensationalist news broadcasts, which mainly depicted domestic events in the positive light intended at portraying how well the party was doing, whereas alternative sources of information, such as Western newspapers, were extremely hard to obtain.[42]

It should not be surprising that socialization campaigns were even more strict against party members, since it was expected that vanguardists were to display much greater knowledge of and commitment to Marxism-Leninism.

3) The Linkage Function

The party’s linkage function was to introduce changes in order to retain the support of those who had favored it as well as to obtain the support of younger generations.[43]

In fact, communist leaders could not have just ignored the Marxist goal of “workers ruling themselves through mass participation in the daily business of politics.”[44] Moreover, as the more time had passed, the more people wondered when all their sacrifices to the party were to pay off to them as consumers.

Thus, the party started to function more in a bi- than in its previous uni-directional manner by not just conveying populist slogans from the leadership to the people, but also by demonstrating a greater willingness to listen to people and to discover what made them dissatisfied with the regime.[45]

• In fact, the mere act of listening to people’s complaints tended to make those people more favourably disposed towards the regime. Besides, responding to those complaints reassured communist officials “in their belief that they enjoyed a spiritual communion with the masses.”[46]

Participation in communist systems thus encompassed two principal forms: direct involvement and voting in elections.[47]

• For instance, village meetings and workers’ councils allowed ordinary citizens to vocalize their opinions regarding the efficiency of local administrations.[48]
  • To be sure, communist parties sought out popular complaints and suggestions only as long as they did not challenge the official policies.[49]

    

    Credits: dreamstime, https://www.dreamstime.com

• Moreover, elections were never used to oppose the communist elites and thus, voters had to elect an officially supported list comprised of one candidate per seat.[50]
  • Despite the fact that voters could have voted against that list, only a small fraction of the population (less than one percent) had enough courage to do it.[51]
    • Ironically, this “unquestioned communist hegemony made fundamental opposition to the party programme unthinkable.”[52]
  • Generally, elections reinforced ‘verticality’, since they had no effect on policies or on important questions of who should have been elected. Instead, they served three main purposes:
    1. the provision of public show of the legitimacy of the regime,
    2. crucial educational and propaganda tool, “affording a golden opportunity to stress the wisdom and achievements of the Party”[53],
    3. and the proof of the unaffectedness of the system of control.[54]
  • Therefore, whereas Western elections were designed to guarantee the government from below, communist elections reinforced the government from the top: not participation in the policy formulation, but in its implementation and celebration.

4) The Recruitment Function

The party’s recruitment function was the enlistment into the party itself and to all important posts in society.[55]

To join a communist party, the application, accompanied by recommendations from three party members of at least two to five years standing, had to be submitted to the primary/base level party organization.[56]

• If the base organization approved the application, then it went to the committee at the next party level for ratification,

  

  The Communist Party of the USSR membership card.
  Credits: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org

  which, in case of further approval, guaranteed the applicant’s admission to the party.[57]

  
• However, a new member did not attain full-membership rights, such as voting rights, since he was first carefully assessed during his probationary period to see whether he was paying his dues, attending meetings regularly and not indulging in excessive consumption of alcohol.[58]
• Only after the candidate met all the aforementioned criteria, the ratification of full membership was completed by the base organization and the committee at the next level.[59]
• The membership did not automatically extend for life, since the behaviour of party members was constantly scrutinized and less satisfactory members could not have been issued a new card or could have been reduced to candidate status again.[60]

It should be noted that most members were not self-motivated, since they were approached by the party.

• For instance, in the 1960s and 1970s, most of the East European countries were calling for ‘reproletarization’ of the communist parties, since many leaders wanted to demonstrate that they were not becoming too remote from the masses as well as aimed to prevent the growing political power of the technical intelligentsia.[61]
• Thus, by appearing to pursue a policy of encouraging more proletarians to join, the party maintained its populist agenda, while removing opposition.
  • It was clear that the reproletarization policy was more for show than a serious objective, since the party membership was likely to be guaranteed to those who were further up the social hierarchy, as the party was supposed to be composed of the ‘best’ members of society:
    • in the USSR, over 99 percent of industrial managers were party members, which was a far higher proportion than the working class’ party membership.[62]
    
  • What is more, “there was remarkably little of a genuinely proletarian aspect to the interwar appeals of communism in Eastern Europe”[63], as more and more communist parties started to be comprised of mostly middle class and disillusioned segments of national intelligentsias dedicated more to agitation against the predominant political elites/ideologies than to efficient leadership of a proletarian movement.[64]
  • As the opposition was systematically demolished, persuasion became less useful as opposed to naked coercion, paving the way to a new ‘purification’ era, reducing the communist parties to those blindly loyal and obedient who lacked critical thinking and imagination.[65] Thus, “instead of being purified in the sense of becoming truly proletarian, [the parties] had really been Stalinized.”[66]
  • The imposition of terror has truly played an important role, as past examples from history proved that communist parties, which were built on this model, instantly become vulnerable and can easily disintegrate once the curbs on the use of terror are employed.[67]

The party was not only responsible for the selection and placing of top party cadres, but also ensured that every key state and social organizational position was held by the most suitable candidate through the nomenklatura system.[68]

• Therefore, the party was responsible for the filling of all important posts in society: both, appointed and elected.
  • In fact, all candidates for election had to be first approved by the communist party, while the top national leaders had already reserved parliamentary seats and stood unopposed.[69]
  
• At every party level, the committee had two lists of posts: the basic nomenklatura and ‘registration and supervision nomenklatura.[70]
  • The basic nomenklatura was a list of the most important posts, such as key party, state and education posts.[71]
    • Thus, those who wanted to climb up the career ladder had to be extremely reliable and politically loyal.
  • The registration and supervision nomenklatura was a list of lower-status posts, such as deputy-headteachers and directors of smaller factories.[72]
    • The party was not directly involved in appointing people to such lower-status posts, however, the departments of the party committee had to be informed of and approve the appointments made to these posts.
    • This list was thus a kind of reserve of cadres for the further promotion to basic nomenklatura.[73]

“Each position in the “pyramid of capitalism” was simply replaced by a communist equivalent. Kings were replaced by secretaries and chairmen, clergy replaced by propaganda ministers, and the bourgeois replaced by members of the party. Maintaining control over a government requires a flow of rewards to one’s followers. Those who support the regime get more than those who do not and then you are back to inequality. Creating equality through violence is self-defeating. The capacity for violence is not a disembodied force, it requires groups of people willing to wield it. They need to be motivated and controlled and that requires hierarchy.”
Credits: Azmytheconomics, https://azmytheconomics.wordpress.com

It should be pointed out that such complicated recruitment procedures have also produced a discussion in the West regarding the elitist nature of the communist parties.[74]

• In fact, since the parties were so difficult to join, they became exclusive organizations.
• Generally, party members had a higher average educational level as compared with the general population, and thus the white-collar workers were heavily over-represented.[75]
• Ironically, populists themselves, who continued to use anti-elite pleas to delegitimize the opponents, were or could become the elite as “they have come to represent the very establishment they attacked.”[76]
  • Party members constituted an economic elite since their average income was way above the mean average income of the general population, and they used to enjoy a vast number of privileges, such as access to special shops and the right to travel abroad which were not available to the rest.[77]
  • As political elites, party members had far more power to influence the making of vital decisions than any other group, since the key decision-making bodies were filled by them.
    • It should also be noted that there was a hierarchical division within a party into full-time professional party functionaries (apparatchiki), who occupied the key positions within a party and thus had much more influence, and the ordinary party (rank-and-file) members.[78]
    • Apparatchiki thus were elite within the elite, since they enjoyed the most privileges and dominated the nomenklatura posts’ filling process.[79] These were the people who truly enjoyed a monopoly over the administration of party and state.[80]
  • Therefore, regardless of the actual constitutional provisions, communist elites (and especially apparatchiki) held real and exclusive powers.
  
  • However, there was a price to pay, as communist vanguards had to blindly submit to Soviet directives, they could never be considered to be in ‘real’ contact with the masses, while the “obedience, discipline, and the ritual discharge of bureaucratic tasks acquired an exceptional ”[81]
    • Moreover, to expand its ranks of experts, instead of recruiting the ablest graduates of the universities, the communist parties mainly drew from the communist youth organization bureaucracy, thus, prioritizing the politically reliable to the objectively more qualified people.[82]

5) The Goal-Attainment Function

Finally, as its goal-attainment function, the party even took over the formal function of the state machinery’s policy detail elaboration and implementation.[83]

In theory, however, the party had only to exercise kontrol (supervision) and thus it was not supposed to be directly engaged in policy implementation.

The division of labor between the party and the state was meant to guarantee that the party was responsible for general policy guidelines, kontrol and nomenklatura, while the state was responsible for legislation, which was based on the general party’s guidelines, as well as for administration of implementation.[84]

Thus, party and state were meant to complement each other.

Instead, party officials were widely criticized for trying to substitute state officials, since it led to blurred divisions and personnel overlap at all governmental levels.[85]

Credits: UI Download, https://www.uidownload.com/free-psd/rubber-stamp-logo-mockup-513572

• For instance, the head of the party was frequently the head of the state and, in some communist countries, the head of the party was also the head of the armed forces.[86]
• Most communist legislatures have also become rubber-stamp bodies- simple tools for the automatic ratification of party policies.[87]
• Moreover, the majority of state officials were also members of the communist party.
  • Therefore, it was argued that the state in its narrow sense- that is, distinguished from the party- was ‘withering away.’[88]

This statement was in conformity with classic Marxist prognosis that stipulated that there would no longer be a distinct state ‘caste’ standing above the general populace, since the state would have been subordinated to the people and thus no longer above them.[89]

In fact, classical Marxists argued that the contemporary Western state was a tool through which the ruling class oppressed the general population.[90] They claimed that in a classless post-revolutionary society government functions would have been converted into simple administrative functions, deputies would have been paid at workers’ wages and the army would have been replaced by people’s militia.[91]

Credits: Reddit, https://www.reddit.com

Despite some ambiguities over whether Marx actually claimed that the state would necessarily disappear, he was adamant that the oppressive state would disappear.[92]

Lenin, too, saw the state as an organ used by the elite to keep other classes suppressed.[93] However, he argued that in the early stages after the socialist revolution, “the vestiges of the bourgeois state machinery”[94] had to remain, but now under the control of the proletariat (‘dictatorship of the proletariat’).[95] Such a concept, in essence, meant an old state system run by the new and (temporary) elite.

Thus, the state in its narrow sense was indeed withering away, while in its broad sense (in conjunction with the party) ‘the state’ was strengthened.

Conclusion

Marxism had thus inevitably failed to produce a coherent and credible democratic solution.

While Marx himself clearly hoped for some aspects of participatory democracy, set free from the ‘parasitic’ politicians, with protected private sphere, personal independence and freedom of opinion, he also preferred a centrally planned, large-scale industrial economy.[96] His followers realized the impossibility of reconciling those two aspects together and thus developed a vanguard conception of democracy, which meant leading the working class away from their sufferings before they could have acquired the Marxist class consciousness to fight for themselves.

Close inspection, however, demonstrates that this socialist ‘democracy’ was a parody- a profound negation of everything that genuine democrats stand for.

The true inner despotic reality of totalitarian regimes was thus conceded by the appearance of the traditional democratic garb, such as elections, mass meetings and representative assemblies.

Therefore, socialist democracy was nothing more but a pseudo-democracy, “in which rituals associated with the democratic idea were preserved on the surface but given an authoritarian content.”[97]

Bibliography

• Bass, Robert. “East European Communist Elites: Their Character and History.” Journal of International Affairs 20, no. 1 (1966): 106–17. https://www.jstor.org.
• Bustikova, Lenka. “The State as a Firm: Understanding the Autocratic Roots of Technocratic Populism.” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 33, no. 2 (May 2019): 302–30. https://journals-sagepub-com.
• Chalidze, Valery. “Perestroika, Socialism, and the Constitution .” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 506 (November 1989): 98–108. https://www-jstor-org.
• Femia, Joseph V. “Marxist Democracy?” In Marxism and Democracy, 68–142. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
• Holmes, Leslie. “Political Culture and Socialization.” In Politics in the Communist World, 76–95. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
• Holmes, Leslie. “The State and Elections.” In Politics in the Communist World, 148–76. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.

• Holmes, Leslie. “The Party.” In Politics in the Communist World, 119–47. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
• Marx, Karl. “General Rules.” For The International Workingmen’s Association, 1864. https://www.marxists.org.
• Stalin, Joseph V. “On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R.” Report Delivered at the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R., November 25, 1936. https://www.marxists.org.
• Vaxberg, Arkady I. “Civil Rights in the Soviet Union.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 506 (November 1989): 109–14. https://search-proquest-com.

Notes:

[1] Valery Chalidze, “Perestroika, Socialism, and the Constitution,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 506 (November 1989): p. 98-108, https://www-jstor-org, 103.

[2] Chalidze, Ibid, 103.

[3] Joseph V. Femia, “Marxist Democracy?,” in Marxism and Democracy (Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1993), pp. 68-142, 118.

[4] Femia, Ibid, 118.

[5] Femia, Ibid, 119.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Femia, Ibid, 120.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Femia, Ibid, 126.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Femia, Ibid, 127.

[15] Femia, Ibid, 121.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Femia, Ibid, 122.

[19] Femia, Ibid, 123.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Karl Marx, “General Rules,” for The International Workingmen’s Association, 1864, https://www.marxists.org.

[22] Lenka Bustikova, “The State as a Firm: Understanding the Autocratic Roots of Technocratic Populism,” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 33, no. 2 (May 2019): pp. 302-330, https://journals-sagepub-com, 305.

[23] Femia, Ibid, 122.

[24] Leslie Holmes, “The Party,” in Politics in the Communist World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 119-147, 130.

[25] Joseph V. Stalin, “On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R,” Report Delivered at the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R., November 25, 1936, https://www.marxists.org.

[26] Arkady I. Vaxberg, “Civil Rights in the Soviet Union,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 506 (November 1989): pp. 109-114, https://search-proquest-com, 111.

[27] Vaxberg, Ibid, 111.

[28] Femia, Ibid, 123.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Vaxberg, Ibid, 111.

[31] Femia, Ibid, 124.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 119.

[34] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 121.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 131.

[38] Holmes, “Political Culture and Socialization”, Ibid, 83.

[39] Holmes, “Political Culture and Socialization”, Ibid, 84.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Holmes, “Political Culture and Socialization”, Ibid, 83.

[42] Holmes, “Political Culture and Socialization”, Ibid, 84.

[43] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 140.

[44] Femia, Ibid, 130.

[45] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 140.

[46] Femia, Ibid, 134.

[47] Femia, Ibid, 130.

[48] Femia, Ibid, 131.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Femia, Ibid, 132.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Femia, Ibid, 133.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 131.

[56] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 132.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 133.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 134.

[63] Robert Bass, “East European Communist Elites: Their Character and History,” Journal of International Affairs 20, no. 1 (1966): pp. 106-117, https://www.jstor.org, 108.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Bass, Ibid, 111.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 134.

[69] Femia, Ibid, 132.

[70] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 135.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Ibid.

[73] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 136.

[74] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 141.

[75] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 143.

[76] Bustikova, Ibid, 307.

[77] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 143.

[78] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 144.

[79] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 145.

[80] Bass, Ibid, 112.

[81] Bass, Ibid, 109.

[82] Bass, Ibid, 114.

[83] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 131.

[84] Holmes, “The State and Elections”, Ibid, 173.

[85] Holmes, “The Party”, Ibid, 131.

[86] Holmes, “The State and Elections”, Ibid, 174.

[87] Femia, Ibid, 132.

[88] Holmes, “The State and Elections”, Ibid, 175.

[89] Holmes, “The State and Elections”, Ibid, 149.

[90] Ibid.

[91] Ibid.

[92] Holmes, “The State and Elections”, Ibid, 150.

[93] Ibid.

[94] Ibid.

[95] Ibid.

[96] Femia, Ibid, 141.

[97] Ibid.