PERSONNEL CHANGES AS A TOOL FOR STRENGTHENING THE POSITIONS OF THE LENINIST GROUP IN THE LEADING PARTY BODIES BETWEEN THE X AND XI CONGRESSES OF THE RCP(B)

Abstract

The article analyzes a little-studied issue based on materials from the Urals-personal changes in the governing bodies of the Bolshevik Party aimed at strengthening the positions of Lenin’s faction and isolating its opponents after the 10th Congress of the RCP(b). The mechanisms and dynamics of personnel reshuffles in the Ural Bureau of the Central Committee, provincial, city, county, and district committees of regional party organizations, as well as in its central bodies-the Politburo, Central Committee, Secretariat, and Orgburo of the Central Committee-are examined. These changes radically altered the balance of power at all levels of the party hierarchy and completed the process of concentrating power levers in the hands of Lenin’s faction. It is established that the practice of personnel movements and persecution of party workers for dissent, which acquired a systematic character after the 10th Congress, was accompanied by an increase in bureaucratic methods of party management. This objectively led to the tightening of the intra-party regime, transforming it into a factional dictatorship, which became a defining factor in the evolution of Lenin’s model of power into Stalin’s. Under these conditions, calls for the revival of intra-party democracy, including through Stalin’s removal from the post of General Secretary, as expressed in Lenin’s later works, were illusory. These proposals did not imply a rejection of the “anti-factional” policy pursued by the faction dominating the party after the 10th Congress, which had advanced Stalin to this position. Such restructuring would have required a reconstruction of the entire party structure, profound reform of the entire system of intra-party relations, and, fundamentally, of the entire Soviet political system. The primary source base of the article consists of archival and published documents, materials from the periodical press, memoirs, and correspondence of contemporaries.