26Th Congress of the CPSU in Current Political Perspective
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26th Congress of the CPSU in Current Political Perspective Robert F. Miller & T.H. Rigby 16 Occasional Paper no. 16 Department of Political Science Research School of Social Sciences Australian national University Canberra, 1982 JN6598 K5 1981z This book was published by ANU Press between 1965–1991. This republication is part of the digitisation project being carried out by Scholarly Information Services/Library and ANU Press. This project aims to make past scholarly works published by The Australian National University available to a global audience under its open-access policy. 26th Congress of the CPSU in Current Political Perspective Robert F. Miller & T.H. Rigby Occasional Paper no. 16 Department of Political Science Research School of Social Sciences Australian national University Canberra, 1982 * UBRARY Ä Printed and Published in Australia at The Australian National University © 1982 R.F. Miller and T.H. Rigby This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Printed at: SOCPAC Printery The Research Schools of Social Sciences and Pacific Studies Distributed for the Department by: The Australian National University Press National Library of Australia Card No and ISBN 909779 03 1 CONTENTS Chapter Page LIST OF TABLES V PREFACE Vii ONE THE CONGRESS AS EVENT 1 TWO THE ECONOMY AND ITS PROBLEMS 13 THREE CURRENT FOREIGN POLICY PERCEPTIONS 43 FOUR THE PARTY AND ITS LEADERSHIP 65 TABLES Page 1.1 CPSU Congress delegates 1961-1981 Basic Occupational A ffiliation 7 1.2 CPSU Congress Delegates 1961-1981 Age Structure 9 1.3 CPSU Congress Delegates 1961-1981 10 Period of Admission to Party 4.1 Changes in Party Growth Levels 1961-1981 65 4.2 Age S tructure o f Party Membership 67 4.3 ’Social Position' of Recruits and Current Membership 68 4.4 Changes in CC-CAC 1976-1981 73 4.5 Age D istrib u tio n o f CC Membership 74 4.6 Rational Composition of CC Membership 75 4.7 Posts Held by Voting Members of Central Committee CPSU 77 4.8 P osts held by P olitburo Members 1981 81 4.9 Composition of the Inner Circles as 84 at 26th Congress 4.10 Changes in Full Membership o f Politburo 1971-1981 85 PREFACE At the end of 1980, when we decided to organize a series of seminars in the Department of Political Science, RSSS on the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which was scheduled for late February 1981, it seemed to us, as to many others, that the problems facing the aging Soviet leadership at the end of the seventies were so insistent that major decisions could be expected to be announced at the Congress. Since Party Congresses are now scheduled to coincide with the beginning of a new Five-Year Plan, it seemed likely, in particular, that important economic departures would be proclaimed. Most outside observers were in agreement that the marked slowdown in Soviet economic growth called for vigorous remedial measures and even major structural reforms if the express commitments of the party leadership for 'butter' as well as 'guns' had any chance of fulfilment. Some renovation of the party's leadership also seemed called for if the regime was to prepare for the impending 'succession crisis'. Our idea was, therefore, to publish the papers presented at the seminars as quickly as possible to serve as a focus for wider discussion, since many of the issues presumably to be raised by the Congress would be of relevance to Western policy and interests. The Occasional Paper format suggested itself as the quickest way to achieve this aim, and we had originally intended to bring out the paper in May or June. However, the Congress turned out to be not quite what most of us had expected. At first glance it was remarkable only for how little it seemed to accomplish. There were no significant changes in the cast of main political actors, despite their advanced age and obvious signs of fatigue. The foreign policy pronouncements were cautious and rather tentative. And the recipes for economic change were notably bland and timid. Thus, there seemed to be little reason for rushing into print. Further reflection on the Congress proceedings and the background of the decisions taken confirmed the wisdom of delaying publication. In the process of preparing and presenting the seminar papers we concluded that the patterns of decision-making reflected in the speeches at the Congress and the 11th Five-Year Plan documents fully corresponded to the dilemmas and political preferences of the Brezhnev regime's style of leadership. The Congress, therefore, had to be looked upon as a point on a continuum of problems and decisions. The approach adopted in the papers included below was to place the Congress discussions in the appropriate location on this continuum - Rigby's on internal Party developments and Miller's on the foreign policy and economic tendencies of the Brezhnev era in its waning years. We wish to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for the contribution of our research assistants, Olga Prokopovich and Russell McCaskie, for the always able and efficient secretarial backup by Mrs Kath Bourke, the Departmental Secretary, and the for the valuable discussions and suggestions by our colleagues in the Department, especially Dr Stephen Fortescue, and by others who attended the seminars. Naturally, the responsibility for the papers themselves in their final form is entirely our own. Canberra, February 1982 ONE THE CONGRESS AS EVENT At ten a.m. on Monday 23 February 1981 some five thousand communists from all parts of the USSR rose to their feet and thunderously applauded as Leonid Brezhnev led his Politburo colleagues, followed by several score leaders of foreign delegations, into the spacious hall of the Palace of Congresses inside the Moscow Kremlin. The 26th Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had begun, and with a break of one day on the following Sunday it was to go on till the morning of Tuesday 3 March, reportage on its activities filling the Soviet press, radio and television throughout and for several days thereafter. What's in a Congress? The five-yearly CPSU congresses of the Brezhnev era are a far cry from the annual affairs of Lenin's day, at which great issues of policy were resolved after intense debate and the leadership was forced to defend its record against the open and vigorous attacks of party 'oppositionists'. Even before the great founder of Bolshevism died, the focus of policy-making was shifting from the open forums of the party to the secret conclaves of the dominant clique, and the first steps were taken to outlaw internal party opposition. In the middle and later 1920s party congresses became one of the instruments through which the Stalin machine consolidated its dominance and humiliated its rivals, and thereafter they degenerated into rituals of 'monolithic unity' and of loyalty to the great vozhd'. Convened at ever wider intervals - the 18th was held in 1939 and the 19th in 1952 - the congress as an institution was now clearly in a condition of advanced decay. In the wake of Stalin's death regular congresses were revived by his successors, along with other outward forms of 'intra-party democracy', in order to help bolster up the dubious legitimacy of their rule. At the same time the congresses of 'mature socialism' have preserved and developed the basic functions which they assumed under Stalin. The first of these is the ritual, symbolic function: the party congress is the supreme celebration of the unity of the party and the nation, of the achievements and might of the USSR, and of the loyalty of the various divisions of the Soviet elite and of the population at large to the party, the state, and the leadership ( 1). This function is constantly manifest in the staging of the congress and its accompanying ceremonies, in the content of the speeches, and in the surrounding propaganda and media coverage. At the same time it is the regime's supreme legitimacy ritual. It comes as the culmination of a cycle of meetings, conferences and congresses at successively higher echelons at which local committess are elected along with conference delegates for the next level up. The fact, manifest to all but the politically most naive, that the form of election is devoid of content since the 'candidates' are unopposed and are chosen behind the scenes by those party officials whose job it is to do so, does not vitiate but rather reinforces the effect of this ritual: for the millions participating in these fictions are thereby bound together by shared complicity in a system which also legitimizes their personal privileges, while the monolithic front they present to the 2 rest of society demonstrates to some of the latter, no doubt, the rightness, and to all at least the inevitability, of the established order of things. It is legitimation of this kind that the congress affords when it unanimously and unreservedly endorses the policies of the leadership and 'elects' the Central Committee members picked out by the Politburo and Secretariat, the latter then being confirmed in office by the Central Committee they have chosen. The other main function of the party congress is to provide a maximally authoritative setting for periodic national stocktaking and national goal-setting. As such it does not so much make policy, although some new policy developments in various areas of national life may be adumbrated, but rather reviews achievements in the implementation of established policies and programs and prescribes objectives, priorities and approaches for the period ahead.