Воспитание идеального коммуниста: дискурс о партийных собраниях в 1960-е гг.

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The article examines the portrayal of party meetings based on the materials of instructional brochures of the 1960s. These pamphlets were addressed primarily to rank-and-file party members, factory workers or workers on collective farms. It should be noted that the 1960s saw an increase in the publication of such texts covering meetings. It was probably connected with the growth in the number of party members after Stalin's death. The entry of workers and collective farmers into the CPSU, as well as the parallel process of de-Stalinization, required party ideologists to convey to new communists the principles and rules of functioning of party organizations. The textbooks of the brochures did not represent real meetings as much, but rather created an ideal meeting. This was done to give the party’s members meeting an educational function. When analyzing the brochures, we can distinguish three main aspects of the construction of such ideal meetings: a description of their basic functions, criticism of certain shortcomings in their organization and conduct, and the educational component itself. The first aspect, a description of the functions of assemblies, largely echoed the party discourse of the Thaw era, that the CPSU had returned to "Leninist norms" of intra-party life and portrayed the assembly as a space of grassroots democracy. The second aspect, criticism of the shortcomings of the assemblies, also lay within the peculiarities of the Soviet political language. Within its framework, criticism was never meant to question the basic aspects of the system, but it was welcome to criticize some of its imperfections or individual party members who deviated from the accepted norms. When addressing the aspect of education in the texts of the brochures, the author of the article came to the conclusion that the main content of the education of a communist is not even the moral character of a Party member, but above all his attitude to labor. Party ideologues sought to influence the workers, and through arguments about what was acceptable to the communists, called on party members to strengthen mutual control over labor discipline at work.