Members Of Central Committee Research Articles

Entangled in terror: the Azef affair and the Russian Revolution

Anna Geifman. Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and Russian Revolution. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000. x, 247 pp. Bibliography. Index. $60, cloth; $19.95, paper. In May 1908 Vladimir Burtsev, a Russian journalist and sometime socialist with unusual sources of information within tsarist police, accused Evno Azef of being an agent working for both Russian police and Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR). This charge sent shock waves through Russian revolutionary movement and contributed to temporary collapse of PSR. Azef had been a trusted revolutionary for fifteen years; he was a member of PSR's Central Committee; and for last six years had been a leading figure in their Combat Organization (Boevaia organizatsiia) which in turn had been responsible for a number of sensational political assassinations, most notably that of Interior Minister V.K. von Plehve in 1904 and Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich in 1905. If Azef were a provocateur, then this meant that he had been responsible for arrest of numerous revolutionaries, failure of other plots against regime, revealing of Socialist Revolutionaries' innermost secrets, and discrediting of terror as a political weapon. The party's first response was to defend their longtime colleague. Burtsev was accused of slander and brought before a court of honour. In his defence, he revealed that he obtained confirmation for his suspicions from A.A. Lopukhin, a former Director of Police Department. After verifying this information with Lopukhin, incredulous revolutionaries confronted Azef in Paris in January 1909. Realizing that his denials were unconvincing and fearing for his own safety, he promptly fled to Germany where he lived incognito until his death in 1918. The basic outline of Azef is well known. Burtsev, to enhance his reputation as the Sherlock Holmes of Russian Revolution, published numerous versions of his unmasking of provocateur. The PSR, to salvage something from fiasco, sought to embarrass tsarist government by publicizing terrorist acts Azef allegedly had been involved in at behest of police. The Russian authorities themselves gave credence and publicity to affair by arresting and exiling Lopukhin for assisting revolutionary cause. And Boris Nicolaevsky incorporated much of this evidence and made it accessible to a wider audience in his 1934 biography Azeff Spy: Russian Terrorist and Police Stool. Since then, almost all scholarly accounts of period have followed Burtsev and Nicolaevsky in seeing Azef as classic example of an agent or agent without bothering to explore either his motives or appropriateness of these terms. Anna Geifman, an Associate Professor at Boston University, touched on Azef affair in her Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917 (Princeton, 1993). Now, with aid of material found in State Archives of Russian Federation (GARF), she has provided a much-needed new biography and in doing so has effectively challenged conventional picture of Russia's master spy. To Geifinan Azef was neither a provocateur nor a double agent. …

Truth or Credibility: Castro, Carter, and the Invasions of Shaba

an attempt to oust President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, one of the West's principal allies in Africa, in 1977 and 1978, guerrillas based in Angola invaded the Zairean province of Shaba. In so doing, they exposed Mobutu's weakness, triggered the intervention of foreign troops to bolster up his regime, and showed the limits of the US president, Jimmy Carter's, human-rights policy in Africa. What added spice to the story was the claim that Cuba had helped them.1 In December 1993, the former Cuban ambassador to Zaire, Lazaro Mora, assured me that there was no truth to the claim.2 1 was sceptical and remained so when he was echoed a few weeks later by Jorge Risquet, a senior member of the Cuban Communist Party's central committee who had been the head of the Cuban mission in Angola between December 1975 and May 1979. After Risquet took me to the archives, however, and read to me the contents of an entire folder of documents about the

Chinese Informal Politics

In the study of modern Chinese politics, the informal dimension has always played an extremely important part.1 This is due in part to the unsettled nature of the Chinese political scene throughout the twentieth century, making it difficult for any political arrangement to become securely institutionalized, and in part to the traditional aversion to law and a cultural preference for more moralistic and personalized authority relations. Though usually not part of the explicit analytical framework, the informal dimension has been implicitly taken into account in the biographical analysis of the lives of prominent leaders or thinkers, and in the study of leadership coalitions and cleavages ('factionalism'). Informal politics per se did not, however, become the basis of social science theory on China until the 1970s ? specifically, with the publication of Andrew Nathan's pioneering article and Tang Tsou's rebuttal.2

The Arab-Israeli Search for Peace (review)

Book Reviews 143 Again, Oren's study is an objective, thoroughly scholarly, and carefully researched work. While probably mainly of interest to academicians specialiZing or particularly interested in detailed material on the ArabIsraeli conflict, it is a significant contribution to the field and deserves to be in college and university libraries that have holdings on the subject. Scott D. Johnston Department of Political Science Hamline University The Arab-Israeli Search for Peace,edited by Steven L. Spiegel. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992. 197 pp. $10.95 (p). This collection of essays examines various aspects of the Arab-Israeli peace process. The authors are a mixed group, including Israelis, Palestinians, other Arabs, Americans, Canadians, and Europeans; most are academics. The fact that some of the chapters are exceedingly short and in many cases citations of sources are minimal creates the impression that they were prepared for a conference, but this does not appear to have been the case. In any event, the overall tone of the book is one of policy prescription rather than academic analysis. According to the editor, these essays are intended to concentrate on "contributions that can be made by the regional parties and outside actors to create conditions favoring peace in the Middle East" (p. 4). The three parts into which the book is divided deal respectively with: 1) prenegotiation factors, including Palestinian and Israeli perspectives, as well as analyses of the negotiating process itself; 2) potential economic cooperation among the conflicting parties; and 3) the problem of arms control. The fourteen substantive chapters vary somewhat in quality, as is often the case in multi-authored works. There is also a certain repetitive quality in the contributions that deal with economic cooperation. Of necessity, these chapters deal with such basic problems as water supplies, trade relations, and capital flows. Significantly, some of these issues are the subject of individual working groups which have been established in the ongoing peace process which began at Madrid in October 1991. Finally, the third part of the book underlines the problem of creating an atmosphere of sufficient mutual trust to permit any kind of arms control at all. In these discussions, emphasis falls on the problem of balancing the putative Israeli nuclear arsenal against the stockpile of poison gas and 144 SHOFAR Winter 1994 Vol. 12, No.2 biological weapons which some of the Arab states are trying or threatening to accumulate, as well as possible acquisition of nuclear arms by such renegade states as Iraq and Iran. One of the inevitable vulnerabilities of books on the contemporary Middle East is the danger of rapid obsolescence. Unfortunately, this book in some respects falls victim to this danger. This is especially true of the first section, dealing with conditions leading to negotiations. Repeatedly, several of the authors criticize what they perceive to be the Israeli government's rigidity, especially with regard to settlements in the administered territories. The problem here is obvious: the government in question was turned out of office by the Israeli voters in June of 1992. The government in power at this writing (early May 1993) has assumed a very different posture on this issue, as well as on other critical matters which are cited as obstacles to peace in this book. It is, of course, entirely possible that this government might fall, either because of a breakup of the existing coalition alignment, or possibly (though not likely) new elections, and that a new government might revert to the more hawkish stance of the Shamir government. But given the Clinton Administration's commitment to an active role, and the power of the purse which the United States can still exercise despite budgetary stringency at home, an outburst of Israeli stonewalling seems highly implausible. Notable in this connection is Galia Golan's citation here of opinion polls which showed that a significant majority of pro-likud voters (59%) favored freezing of settlement activity in the territories, and that a majority of likud Party central committee members favored territorial concessions in exchange for peace. Other opinion studies confirm these findings and suggest that the outcome of the 1992 election should not be regarded as surprising. These polls also imply that, despite...

New Directions in Soviet History

Introduction Part I. The Politics Of Soviet History: 1. Gorbachev and history Pierre Broue Part II. Social Change And Cultural Policy: 2. Revolutionary lives: public identities in Pravda during the 1920s Jeffrey Brooks 3. Entertainment or enlightenment?: popular cinema in Soviet society, 1921-1931 Denise Youngblood 4. The centre and the periphery: cultural and social geography in the mass culture of the 1930s James van Gelderen Part III. Politics, Industry and Shopfloor Relations: 5. The crisis of productivity in the New Economic Policy: rationalization drives and shop floor responses in Soviet cotton mills, 1924-1929 Chris Ward 6. The politics of industrial efficiency during NEP: the 1926 rezhim ekonomiki campaign in Moscow John Hatch 7. The Moscow party and the socialist offensive: activists and workers, 1928-1931 Catherine Merridale 8. The demise of the shock brigades, 1931-1936 John Russell 9. Reassessing the history of Soviet workers: opportunities to criticise and participate in decision-making, 1935-1941 Robert W. Thurston Part IV. The Political Elite: From the 1930s to the 1990s: 10. Portrait of a changing elite: CPSU Central Committee members, 1939-1990 Evan Mawdsley Index.

The 1990 central committee of the CPSU in perspective

ON 13 JULY 1990 the XXVIII CPSU Congress elected a new Central Committee (CC). Drastic changes were made to the official posts 'represented' on the CC and to the individuals who held CC membership. The changes can best be judged by comparing the new with the old, and the purpose of this article is to put the composition of the new CC into a historical perspective by comparing it with the CCs elected in 1981 and 1986. The 1990 Congress took place in what might be called the era of 'developed perestroika'; the 1981 Congress in contrast reflected the situation at the end of the Brezhnev period; the transitional 1986 Congress was the product of early perestroika. Taken together, the composition of the three CCs suggests a number of important conclusions about a changing leadership and a changing political system at a critical time in the history of the CPSU. The present article is based on a larger Soviet Elite Project, which is essentially a database on all CC members since 1917;1 for this article I made use of machinereadable biographies of the 1,044 individuals who served in the 1981, 1986 and 1990 CCs. The analysis of the changing composition of the CC has been helped by the release of large amounts of biographical information about individual leaders, a process which actually antedated perestroika. For a number of senior officials there is even 'family' information on wives, children and grandchildren. More important, perhaps, is more complete information than in the past on nationality. Paradoxically, however, the great majority of the CC members of 1990 were entirely 'new people', who had not been documented in earlier Soviet reference sources.2 The general assumption of the Soviet Elite Project has been that from the mid1920s until the mid-1980s the membership of the CC could be taken as the embodiment of the top Soviet political elite. This CC elite included the top Soviet leaders in various spheres: the central party secretaries and state ministers, the key generals and diplomats, as well as the party and state leaders from the republics, and the 'party bosses' who actually ran the country at regional level. The question of the composition of the CC in the pre-perestroika era was perhaps most clearly laid out by Robert V. Daniels.3 Writing in 1976, Daniels complained that there had been little investigation of 'the exact composition of the Central Committee and the specific posts that are associated with Central Committee status'. His fundamental perception was that the 'apportionment of representation operates not in terms of individuals, fundamentally, but of job slots', and he reached the following conclusion.

The Politics of the 19th Party Conference

Reasons for caution in interpreting results of the 19th Party Conference are outlined, but an argument for a continuing consolidation of Gorbachev's power and use of the democratization theme as a screen for acceleration of economic reform is made. Various explanations for the lack of significant change in party rules and in procedures for determining Central Committee membership (defeat for Gorbachev, alternative strategies for membership change, solid Politburo and/or military power base for Gorbachev) are examined, Gorbachev's ability to handle the “lame duck” membership problem in the Central Committee being identified as a feature to watch in the future. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 052, 124, 113.

Standing on Both Feet

The Ecumenical ReviewVolume 33, Issue 1 p. 60-71 Standing on Both Feet Education and leadership training of women in the Methodist Church, Nigeria Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Mercy Amba Oduyoye Ms Oduyoye is a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and a member of the WCC's Central Committee. This article is a shortened version of a research paper written for the Africa Regional Meeting of the WCC Study on the Community of Women and Men in the Church, held in September 1980.Search for more papers by this author Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Mercy Amba Oduyoye Ms Oduyoye is a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and a member of the WCC's Central Committee. This article is a shortened version of a research paper written for the Africa Regional Meeting of the WCC Study on the Community of Women and Men in the Church, held in September 1980.Search for more papers by this author First published: January 1981 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6623.1981.tb02543.x Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume33, Issue1January 1981Pages 60-71 RelatedInformation

Stalin and the Making of a New Elite, 1928-1939

“Cadres decide everything,” Stalin proclaimed in 1935. The slogan is familiar, as is the image of Stalin as a politician skilled in the selection and deployment of personnel. But who were his cadres? The literature on the prewar Stalin period tells us little even about his closest political associates, let alone those one step down the political hierarchy—Central Committee members, people's commissars and their deputies, obkom secretaries—or in key industrial posts. Only the Old Bolsheviks and the military leaders seem to emerge as individuals. The rest are relegated to that servile and faceless bureaucracy about which Trotsky wrote from afar. Their very anonymity (which might also be described as our —and Trotsky's—ignorance) has become part of a sociological generalization.

The Soviet Regional Leadership: The Brezhnev Generation

The secretaries of republic and regional party committees are the most important category of officials in the USSR after the supreme leadership. They formed 36 percent of the full members of the Central Committee chosen in 1976, while the next largest group, comprising members of the Council of Ministers, made up 24 percent. They are also the most important reserve from which members of the supreme leadership are co-opted. A study of the careers of Politburo members in 1971 showed that two-thirds of them had spent at least five years as regional or republic party first secretaries before being promoted to senior jobs at the center. The same applies to nine of the twelve present members of the Central Committee Secretariat.This article focuses on the first secretaries of regional (oblast') and territorial (krai) party committees—the obkom and kraikom secretaries—of the Russian Republic (RSFSR). They make up almost two-thirds of all republic and regional party officials elected as full members of the present Central Committee, but their importance lies not only in their numerical weight within the political elite.

From Ideology to Utopia: Ernst Fischer in Retrospect

When Ernst Fischer died of a heart attack on 1 August 1972, while on holiday in the Styrian village of Deutsch-Feistritz, there came to a close one of the most interesting careers in the history of postwar European communism. (Le Monde 3 August 1972, in its obituary, ranked Fischer close behind the great Hungarian Marxist, Georg Lukacs, for richness and originality of thought). Originally a Social Democrat, Fischer joined the diminutive Communist Party of Austria (Kommunistische Partei Osterreichs, KPO) in 1934 and rose rapidly to become a member of the party's central committee and one of its leading theoreticians. He served this party and the international communist movement in zealous and unquestioning fashion until Khrushchev's revelations at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956 caused his comfortably Manichaen view of the world to crumble. Rather than abandoning the movement, however, he laboured over the course of the following decade and a half both to probe the causes of the disease of Stalinism and to evolve a new Marxist-Leninist vision.

Poland: Against repression

A growing number of Polish intellectuals have been voicing their concern at the abuse of power on the part of the authorities and, in particular, the police. One of the most interesting of the many protests and appeals made in recent months is that by Wladyslaw Bienkowski, which we publish here in full. Wladyslaw Bienkowski is a former Minister of Education (1956–9) who was responsible for the revival of religious teaching in Polish schools. Active in the Communist youth movement before the war and, after 1942, with Gomulka in the Communist underground, he was a member of the Party's Central Committee from 1945 to 1948. Dismissed with Gomulka but not imprisoned, he was appointed Director of the National Library (1949–56). His liberal views led to his dismissal from the Ministry of Education and all his political posts. He is the author of three books of political theory, published by the Polish émigré publishers, Kultura, in Paris.

The Education of Members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

This paper analyzes the levels of education of the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and compares them with the educational levels of the Soviet population as a whole, the white collar labor force, and the Communist Party membership. The Central Committee proves to be the most highly educated group; 79 per cent have some form of higher education, largely technical and professional in nature. At least half the membership was educated during Stalin's initial drive for planned industrial development and agricultural collectivization. This education was initially relevant for entrance to the political power elite, but its relevance for subsequent promotion is questionable. Less than 10 per cent of the Soviet population has an education comparable to that of the Central Committee, but white collar professionals and the technocratic elite have a higher level of education than that of the elite Party membership.

The Soviet Central Committee: An Elite Analysis

This paper is a study of the backgrounds of the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The purpose of its first part is to present and interpret certain quantitative material concerning the background characteristics of the members of the Central Committee. The conclusion elaborates premises regarding the function of co-optation in the higher Party organs and suggests possible relationships of this function to the education and career experiences of the Central Committee membership as discussed in the first part. To pursue an ideal study of this type, we recognize that extensive interviews and depth exploration of the sociological histories of the members would be desirable. In the case of the Soviet political elite such a course is obviously not possible at the present time. Nevertheless, sufficient data exist to make a modest beginning toward what we hope will help to lay a foundation for more extensive analysis of elites in the Soviet system in the future.Two basic assumptions underlie our interest in the backgrounds of the Soviet political elite. First, and more important for this paper, is the premise that persons are co-opted into the Central Committee primarily, though not exclusively, as a result of the group associations they have made during the courses of their careers. These associations are largely career associations, and most of the members become part of the elite of important functional groups before they become members of the Party elite. Educational backgrounds, age, Party status, role associations, occupation, and other factors all converge to influence the development of the careers of the members.

Mongolia: New Soviet Moves to Bolster Ruling Group

The political scene in Mongolia in 1965 was relatively quiet and routine when compared with developments in other recent years. Mongolia suspended polemies against Communist China in line with the early attempts by the new Soviet leadership to improve relations with Peking. Soviet-Mongolian relations were highlighted by the exchange of visits by high-level Party-government delegations. These visits resulted in the conclusion (in April) in Moscow of an agreement for substantial Soviet assistance for the Mongolian Fourth Five-Year Plan (1966-1970). On the domestic political scene, the ruling group followed up its purge of three Central Committee members (December 1964) by tightening the Party and state control apparatus, aimed at isolating nationalists and other critics of Tsedenbal's policies and at ensuring swifter and more effective compliance with national Party economic directives. The economy is believed to be recovering only slowly from the reverses of 1964, but the continued substantial infusion of assistance from the Soviet Union and other CEMA countries probably will speed recovery and bring about further development in the period immediately ahead. The Mongolian People's Republic (MPR) throughout the year continued its lavish praise of Soviet foreign policy and of the Soviet Union's unselfish assistance. Mongolian leaders and the Mongolian press frequently called for the backing of Soviet attempts to achieve within the Communist Movement. Unen on March 16 endorsed the communique issued (in March) by the consultative of representatives of communist parties held in Moscow. Unen called the halting of open polemies an important step toward promoting unity within the international communist movement, thus indirectly criticizing the Chinese for continuing polemies of an abusive nature. Montsame called the March plenum of the CPSU Central Committee clear confirmation of the great efforts by the CPSU to overcome differences in the international communist The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) supports the convening of a new international meeting of communists to overcome the difficulties that have arisen in the movement. In February, at the conclusion of a visit to the MPR by a Soviet delegation led by CPSU Presidium member Shelepin, Tsedenbal said the Mongolian-Soviet talks affirmed a complete unanimity of views on questions of mutual interests. Tsedenbal stated that the Soviet Union bore the