Not only do we find that the Bolshevist régime rests upon the theory of the hegemony of the Communist Party, but in practice the party functions as a part of the state machinery, as the directing machinery, in point of fact, placing the Soviets in a subordinate position. At times the Communist Party has exercised the entire power of government, as, for example, from July, 1918, to January, 1919. Thus we read in Izvestia, November 6, 1919, “From October, 1917, up to July, 1918, is the first period of Soviet construction; from July, 1918, up to January, 1919, the second period, when the Soviet work was conducted exclusively by the power of the Russian Communist Party; and the third period from January this year, when in the work of Soviet construction broad non-partizan masses participated.”
This condition was, of course, made possible by the predominance of Communist Party members in the Soviet Government, a predominance due to the measures taken to exclude the anti-Bolshevist parties. Thus 88 per cent. of the members of the Executive Committees of the Provincial Soviets were members of the Communist Party, according to Izvestia, November 6, 1919. In the army, while their number was relatively small, not more than 10,000 in the entire army, members of the Communist Party held almost all the responsible posts. Trotsky, as Commander-in-Chief, reported to the seventh Congress, according to the Red Baltic Fleet, December 11, 1919, “our Army consists of peasants and workmen. Workmen represent scarcely more than 15 to 18 per cent., but they maintain the same directing position as throughout Soviet Russia. This is a privilege secured to them because of their greater consciousness, compactness, and revolutionary zeal. The army is the reflection of our whole social order. It is based on the rule of the working-class, in which latter the party of Communists plays the leading rôle.” Trotsky further said: “The number of members of this party in the army is about ten thousand. The responsible posts of commissaries are occupied by them in the overwhelming majority of instances. In each regiment there is a Communist group. The significance of the Communists in the army is shown by the fact that when conditions become unfavorable in a given division the commanding staff appeals to the Revolutionary Military Soviet with a request that a group of Communists be sent down.” Accordingly, it is not surprising to find the party itself exercising the functions of government and issuing orders. In Izvestia and Pravda, during April, 1919, numerous paragraphs were published relating to the mobilization of regiments by the Communist Party.
From figures published by the Bolsheviki themselves it is possible to obtain a tolerably accurate idea of the actual numerical strength of the Communist Party. During the second half of 1918, when, as stated in the paragraph already quoted from Izvestia, “the Soviet work was conducted exclusively by the power of the Russian Communist Party,” there was naturally a considerable increase in the party membership, for very obvious reasons. In Severnaya Communa, February 22, 1919, appeared the following:
At the session of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party, on February 15, 1919, the following resolutions were carried: Taking into account—(1) That the uninterrupted growth of our party during the year of dictatorship has inevitably meant that there have entered its ranks elements having absolutely nothing in common with Communism, joining in order to use the authority of the Russian Communist Party for their own personal, selfish aims; (2) That these elements, taking cover under the flag of Communism, are by their acts discrediting in the eyes of the people the prestige and glorious name of our Proletarian Party; (3) That the so-called “Communists of our days” by their outrageous behavior are arousing discontent and bitter feeling in the people, thus creating a favorable soil for counter-revolutionary agitation—taking all this into account, the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party declares:
(a) That the party congress about to be held should call on all party organizations to check up in the strictest manner all members of the party and cleanse its ranks of elements foreign to the party; (b) that one must carry on a decisive struggle against those elements whose acts create a counter-revolutionary state of mind; (c) that one must make every effort to raise the moral level of members of the Russian Communist Party and educate them in the spirit of true Proletarian Communism; (d) that one must direct all efforts toward strengthening party discipline and establishing strict control by the party over all its members in all fields of Party-Soviet activity.
Yet, notwithstanding the inflation of party membership here referred to, we find Izvestia reporting in that same month, February, 1919, as follows: “The secretary of the Communist Party of the Moscow Province states that the total number of party members throughout the whole province is 2,881.” At the eighth Congress of the Communist Party, March, 1919, serious attention was given to the inflation of the party membership by the admission of Soviet employees and others who were not Communists at heart, and it was decided to cleanse the party of such elements and, after that was done, to undertake a recruiting campaign for new members. Yet, according to the official minutes of this Congress, “the sum total of the Communist Party throughout Soviet Russia represents about one-half of one per cent. of the entire population.” We find in Izvestia, May 8, 1919, that out of a total of more than two million inhabitants in the Province of Kaluga the membership of the Communist Party amounted to less than one-fifth of one per cent. of the population: “According to the data of the Communist Congress of the Province of Kaluga there are 3,861 registered members of the party throughout the whole province.” On the following day, May 9, 1919, Izvestia reported: “At the Communist Congress of the Riazan Province 181 organizations were represented, numbering 5,994 members.” As the population of the Riazan Province was well over 3,000,000 it will be seen that here again the Communist Party membership was less than one-fifth of one per cent. of the population.
At this time various Bolshevist journals gave the Communist Party membership at 20,000 for the city of Moscow and 12,000 for Petrograd. Then took place the so-called “re-registration,” to “relieve the party of this ballast,” as Pravda said later on, “those careerists of the petty bourgeois groups of the population.” In Petrograd the membership was reduced by nearly one-third and in some provincial towns by from 50 to 75 per cent. The result was that in September, 1919, Pravda reported the number of Communist Party members in Petrograd as 9,000, “with at least 50,000 ardent supporters of the anti-Bolshevist movement.” This official journal did not regard the 9,000 as a united body of genuine and sincere Communists: “Are the 9,000 upholding the cause of Bolshevism acting according to their convictions? No. Most of them are in ignorance of the principles of the Communists, which at heart they do not believe in, but all the employees of the Soviets study these principles much the same as under the rule of the Czar they turned their attention to police rules in order to get ahead.”
On October 1, 1919, Pravda published two significant circular letters from the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the district and local organizations of the party. The first of these called for “a campaign to recruit new members into the party” and to induce old members to rejoin. To make joining the party easier “entry into the party is not to be conditioned by the presentation of two written recommendations as before.” The appeal to the party workers says, “During ‘party-week’ we ought to increase the membership of our party to half a million.” The second circular is of interest because of the following sentences: “The principle of administration by ‘colleges’ must be reduced to a minimum. Discussions and considerations must be given up. The party must be as soon as possible rebuilt on military lines, and there must be created a military revolutionary apparatus which would work solidly and accurately. In this apparatus there must be clearly distributed privileges and duties.”
The frenzied efforts to increase the party membership by “drives” in which every device and every method of persuasion and pressure was used brought into the party many who were not Communists at all. Thus we find Pravda saying, December 12, 1919: “The influx of many members to the collectives (Soviet Management groups) comes not only from the working-class, but also from the middle bourgeoisie which formerly considered Communists as its enemies. One of the new collectives is a collective at the estate of Kurakin (a children’s colony). Here entered the collective not only loyal employees, but also representatives of the teaching staff.” Pravda adds that “this inrush of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie that formerly considered the Communists as its enemies, is not at all to our interest. Of course, there may be honest Soviet officials who have in fact shown their loyalty to the great ideas of Communism, and such can find their place in our ranks.” Other Bolshevist journals wrote in the same spirit deploring the admission of so many “bourgeois” Soviet officials into the party.
In spite of this abnormal and much-feared inflation of the party membership, Pravda reported on March 18, 1920, that with more than 300,000 workmen in Petrograd the total membership of the Communist Party in that city was only 30,000. That is to say, including all the Soviet officials and “bourgeois elements,” the party membership amounted to rather less than 10 per cent. of the industrial proletariat, and that in the principal center of the party, the first of the two great cities. Surely this is proof that the Communist Party really represents only a minority of the industrial proletariat. If even with all its bourgeois elements it amounts in the principal industrial city, its stronghold, to less than 10 per cent. of the number of working-men, we may be quite certain that in the country as a whole the percentage is very much smaller.
Even if we take into account only the militant portion of the organized proletariat, the Communist Party is shown to represent only a minority of it. Economicheskaya Zhizn, October 15, 1919, published an elaborate statistical analysis of the First Trades-Union Conference of the Moscow Government. We learn that in the Union of Textile Workers, the largest union represented, of 131 delegates present only 27, or 20.6 per cent., declared themselves to be Communists; while 94, or 71.7 per cent., declared themselves to be non-party, and 3 declared that they were Mensheviki. Of the 21 delegates of the Union of Compositors 13, or 62.3 per cent., declared themselves to be Mensheviki; 7, or 33 per cent., to be non-party, and only 1 registered as a Communist. The Union of Soviet employees naturally sent a majority of delegates who registered as Communists, 45 out of 67 delegates, or 67 per cent., so registering themselves. The unions were divided into four classes or categories, as follows: