Party Congress Research Articles

Revolution from Within: Institutional Analysis, Transitions from Authoritarianism, and the Case of Hungary

The Hungarian transition from socialism stands out from other examples of political change in the region, in that the ruling Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP) suffered an erosion of political power generated largely from within the party itself. The study shows how the Communist Party, after its destruction in the revolution of 1956, sought to institutionalize its rule through a course of limited liberalization and the broad co-optation of the populace. This policy helped create a tacit social compact with society, particularly in co-opting younger intellectuals who identified with the goals of reform socialism. However, the party eventually marginalized this group, creating an internal party opposition that supported socialism but opposed the MSZMP. Consequently, when the limits of Hungarian reform socialism became evident in the mid-1980s, rank-and-file intellectuals within the party began to mobilize against the party hierarchy, seeking to transform the MSZMP into a democratic socialist party. These “reform circles,” drawing their strength primarily from the countryside, spread to all parts of the party and helped undermine central party power and expand the political space for opposition groups to organize. Eventually, the reform circles were able to force an early party congress in which the MSZMP was transformed into a Western-style socialist party prior to open elections in 1990.The case is significant in that it indicates that the forms of transition in Eastern Europe were not simply the specific outcome of elite interaction. Rather, they were shaped in large part by the patterns of socialist institutionalization found in each country. Therefore, studies of political transition can be enriched with an explicit focus on the institutional characteristics of each case, linking the forms of transitions and their posttransition legacies to the institutional matrix from which they emerged. In short, the study argues that the way in which an autocratic order perpetuates itself affects the manner in which that system declines and the shape of the new system that takes its place.

Voices from the Twenties: Private Correspondence Intercepted by the OGPU

Lately the quest for first-hand access to historical documents and their independent evaluation has become one of the most important features of the study of Russian history. At the same time, there is a growing understanding that the layers of time conceal from us the history of events, ideas and people, all of which are mutually interconnected yet still distinct from one another. For this reason yet another distinguishing characteristic of recent historical research is the growing emphasis on documents illustrating the daily lives of ordinary people: memoirs, diaries and letters. These sources, in contrast to official documents, are largely free of political concerns or the bureaucratic tendency to please one's superiors. Daily is especially interesting since it reflects the concerns and meditations of ordinary people. Of course, even such letters-these snapshots of time-are extremely subjective. Indeed, popular moods at any given moment depend on many factors, including the personalities of the persons to whom these letters are addressed. But collectively they permit one to understand the concerns, thoughts and moods of the most diverse groups. Listening to this multivoiced Russia has become possible with the opening of previously restricted-access archives. In the files of the former Leningrad Party Archive (the St. Petersburg Central State Archive of Historical-Political Documents) I was able to examine letters which the Politkontrol' of the OGPU monitored for the purposes of political supervision and criminal investigation. The black office (chernyi kabinet)-special sections at post offices for monitoring correspondence, despite the formal existence of laws protecting the privacy of correspondence-represented a tradition going back to Catherine the Great, one which the Bolsheviks not only continued but even expanded upon. Unfortunately, there are materials only for two years, 1924 and 1925. It can be assumed that the Politkontrol' sent copies of intercepted materials in the strictest secrecy to the Leningrad provincial party committee (gubkom) during these same two years, given that the chairman of the Leningrad Soviet, G. E. Zinoviev, not only was a prominent party official who sat on the Politburo and presided over the Executive Committee of the Comintern but also delivered the political report to the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1924. In any event, every month for these two years, one of the five copies of the Summaries of excerpts compiled by the organs of the OGPU from monitored correspondence was sent either to P. A. Zalutskii, Secretary of the Leningrad Gubkom, or to a certain Gusev,

Vietnam: Better Managing Reform

Nineteen ninety-five was an eventful year for Vietnam, as the country marked the twendeth anniversary of its reunification, the fiftieth anniversary of Ho Chi Minh's declaration of independence, and the sixty-fifth anniversaries of the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Vietnam Fatherland Front. It was also the year that Hanoi finally normalized its relations with Washington, and gained full membership status in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). But with these anniversaries now passed, and gready improved external relations firmly secured, government attention has shifted back towards dom estic issues, and the need to look ahead. Having laid the broad foundations of economic reform in Vietnam ? which will be a decade old in 1996 ? and begun to see relatively consistent performance results, better managing the reform process has become Hanoi's primary task. In anticipation of the Eighth Party Congress, provisionally scheduled for mid-1996, Vietnam's leaders have been debating the appropriate pace and parameters of doi moi (renovation), the results of which should become evident in the impending 1996-2000 Five-Year Plan. Whilst few observers question the commendable success of the economic reform programme ? pursued fairly vigorously since 1986, resulting in gready im proved economic growth figures ? there is a perceived desire to take the process further, although the Party wishes to see reform remain contained within fairly fixed socio-political limits. With the gross economic inefficiencies endured under the centrally planned system now largely (although not wholly) removed, the government realizes it must enact new initiatives that will generate new growth if the reform process is not to become mired at its current stage. And there is litde room for complacency, with the perils of excessive bureaucracy and corruption, a worrisome budget and current account deficit, new-found inflationary pressure, widening disparities in income, and numerous other adverse factors, potentially able to stall ? if not actually derail ? the current reform programme. As a result, the discourse of debate has largely shifted from the (now widely accepted) merits of economic reform to the precise strategies and mechanics of economic development and reform, and the extent of its impact on social and political norms.

Doi Moi Policy and the Small-Enterprise Boom in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

For more than a decade after North and South Vietnam were reunified in 1975, the ruling Communist Party attempted to implement throughout the country the socialist precepts of Marxism-Leninism that had been applied in the North since the defeat of the French colonial forces in 1954. But in mid-1985, in a sudden and surprising policy reversal, the Communist Party's Central Committee proposed an economic blueprint called Doi Moi (literally, Renovation), which aimed to reform the economy completely and to lead Vietnam rapidly toward market capitalism. The main goals of Doi Moi were to improve lagging productivity, to raise living standards, and to curb rapid inflation, which reached almost 500 percent a year in the mid-1980s (Kimura 1993, 51). The strategy would reestablish a multisector economy driven by private enterprise under government supervision. It sought to increase foreign investment, curtailed during the United Nations embargo that followed the Vietnamese invasion of neighboring Cambodia in 1978-1979. The government hoped its reforms would end isolationism by expanding external trade and commercial relations. This bold reversal of strategy, almost unprecedented among Marxist nations at the time, was ratified by the Sixth Party Congress in 1986, making Vietnam one of the first Soviet Bloc nations to formally take the capitalist road. Shortly after the Doi Moi policy was announced, economic indicators revealed a spurt of growth in the Vietnamese economy (Table I). Most economists, historians, and political scientists who have analyzed the postreform period in Vietnam, as Adam Fforde and Stefan de Vylder (1996, 246) cogently point out, have taken a topdown approach, crediting Doi Moi with having created the growth spurt. Studies that hypothesize a catalytic role for the Vietnamese Communist Party in generating economic change are usually based on interpretations of official national statistics and the pronouncements of major political figures (Vo 1990; Than and Tan 1993; Vu 1994; Do 1995), rather than on a dose geographical, historical, and sectoral study of the economy itself. Some analysts (Perkins 1993, 9; Sachs and Woo 1994, 274) characterize [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE I OMITTED] Doi Moi as a big-bang economic liberalization that almost overnight transformed a stagnant peasant economy into a vibrant, market-driven, capitalist system. These studies give the impression that the dramatic commercial expansion and diversification in Vietnam in the late 1980s were the consequences of a central-government fiat. Closer scrutiny of relationships and events in the regional economies of Vietnam, both before and after Doi Moi, casts doubt on the big-bang thesis. The dramatic commercial expansion initially bypassed the industrial and political heartland around Hanoi, focusing instead on Ho Chi Minh City and its immediate hinterland, where the petty-enterprise sector experienced almost unprecedented boom conditions (Vokes 1995, 312). This apparent, sudden swelling of the ranks of petty entrepreneurs, whose output is rarely measured in official statistics, gave the impression that this sector had also been created de novo by the Doi Moi policy. Dwight Perkins, for example, pictures the small-enterprise sector as dependent on Hanoi's market reform (1993, 11). But this leaves unanswered the question of why the expansion did not initially diffuse from Hanoi. Although the informal sector in Vietnam has received little explicit attention from those who adopt either a bottom-up or a top-down approach to the transformation, the prevailing policy-centered attitude toward it is perhaps most dearly expressed by Richard Stubbs (1989, 51): [A]fter the Sixth Party Congress . . . the emphasis has been on renovating the mechanisms of economic management. . . . There have also been major efforts to provide new incentives and marketing opportunities which have produced a boom in local markets and the emergence of 'street front capitalism' in urban areas. …

China Opens its Doors: The Politics of Economic Transition.

China Opens Its Doors explains and documents the complex relationship between the politics and economics of China's recent Open Policy, covering the period from 1978 up to the Party Congress of November 1992. Though emphasizing the political essence of this policy process, Howell also looks at the sociopolitical changes that it has engendered, including its impact on the state and labor. Her analysis—illustrated by a case study of the Xiamen special economic zone and set in the broader context of the global spread of liberal democracy—provides new insight into the politics of the Open Door.

Industrial Politics, Peasant Rebellion and the Death of the Proletarian Women's Movement in the USSR

In December 1927 delegates to the XV Party Congress of the Soviet Union adopted the slogan, “Face toward Production.” Over the next five years, as the Party embarked on a massive effort to industrialize the country and collectivize agriculture, this slogan came to define policy in every area of life. The Party daily exhorted the people to speed up production, increase the harvest, reconstruct agriculture. Workers erected behemoths of heavy industry as artists emblazoned the image of belching smokestacks everywhere, symbols not of pollution but of the transformative promise of industrialization. Stalin and his supporters purged the unions, the planning agencies and the Party of “rightists” who were seen as obstacles to the new tempos of production and the collectivization of agriculture.

Rural Education Should Primarily Serve Local Construction

Comrade Zhao Ziyang proposed in his report at the Thirteenth Party Congress that science and technology, and education must be raised to a position of primary importance in the second phase of China's economic development strategy.…

Cuba at a Crossroads: Politics and Economics After the Fourth Party Congress

By October 1991, when Cuba's Fourth Communist Party Congress met, international communism had crumbled, and Cuba, mired in deep recession, faced serious internal pressures and a hostile external economic environment. These essays reflect the political and economic concerns of the Congress.

Cuba at a Crossroads: Politics and Economics after the Fourth Party Congress.

Cuba at a Crossroads: Politics and Economics after the Fourth Party Congress.

Peasants into Russians: The Utopian Essence of War Communism

The Bolsheviks depicted in Komissary were suffering from the Great Hangover that afflicted party members during the period of retreat from the Civil War economic policies to the New Economic Policy (NEP). The retreat began, generally speaking, at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, when grain requisitions and a ban on trade were abandoned in favor of a tax-in-kind and limited trading rights, and it continued until the basic framework of NEP fell into place by early 1922. As Libedinskii's commissar relates, the Bolsheviks' successes on the battlefield led them to overestimate their abilities and achievements on the economic front.

Mao Zedong on contradictions under socialism revisited

This paper explores the political background to, the reasons behind, and the stages through which Mao Zedong reversed the position of the Resolution of the 8th Party Congress of 1956 on the issue of the major domestic contradiction in China. Relying on recently published Chinese sources, both primary and secondary, the paper argues that Mao arrived at his position, in which the primacy of class struggle was once again asserted, principally as a result of his negative assessment of the criticism leveled against the CCP in the Party rectification of May 1957, but in an ambivalent and diffident frame of mind, and one highly sensitive to the question of theoretical orthodoxy. Mao's reversal on this crucial issue both confused his colleagues in the CCP CC and aroused strong arguments within that body.

The decolonization of consciousness: local skeptics and the “will to be modern” in a West African village

During a recent initiation ceremony, the men of Bassarel rewrote customary law. I discuss both the attitudes of the protagonists in the ceremony who likened it to a “Party Congress” and attitudes toward spirits as revealed in ritualized orations. I conclude that a tendency to objectify and manipulate custom, coupled with a pervasive skepticism about spiritual efficacy, reveals a typical West African ethos rather than reflects the ruptures of colonization and revolution. [postcolonial ethnography, belief, religious change, West Africa]

Reform Agenda of Chinese Construction Industry

For many years the construction industry in China has been controlled by the government and used to support China's centrally planned economy. Most construction projects have been financed by the government, designed by state-owned design institutes, and built by state-owned construction companies. This bureaucratic system, combined with the poor project-management skills of the enterprises, has resulted in low-quality work, cost overruns, and the late completion of projects. Since 1979, China has been reforming the country's economy. Construction industry reforms were announced at the Chinese Party Congress Convention in October 1992. These reforms are designed to improve efficiency in the state-owned construction enterprise, to establish a construction market, and to make the Chinese construction firms more competitive with international firms. This paper presents a discussion of the Chinese reform agenda for the overall Chinese economy, and for the Chinese construction industry specifically. It also describes the reform agenda of the Chinese construction industry for the rest of the 1990s, and questions if the Chinese government will be able to meet those goals.

Cuba at a crossroads: politics and economics after the Fourth Party Congress

Cuba at a crossroads: politics and economics after the Fourth Party Congress

Party Revivalism and the Death of Stalin

After the XIX Party Congress…everyone in the orchestra was playing on his own instrument anytime he felt like it, and there was no direction from the conductor.N.S. KhrushchevSome time ago a leading biographer of Joseph Stalin observed with a touch of irony that de-stalinization was a process “not only made possible but actually initiated by the death of Stalin.” Accordingly, some have turned to events in the final months of the dictator's life for evidence that, to the last, Stalin retained a firm grip on the levers of power; others have pointed to the new era of moderation in agriculture, literature and criminal justice which appears to have set in following Stalin's death. It was, so it seems, only with the conclusion of Stalin's reign that the hopes for stability and liberalization first raised at the end of World War II could finally be met. Only the dictator's death, it has been argued, could have put an end to absolute autocracy and opened the way for a new era of oligarchical rule.

Between principle and pragmatism: SPD post–Cold war foreign and security policy

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) has a strong opportunity to win the October 1994 Bundestag elections and return to power. Rudolf Scharping, SPD chairman and chancellor candidate, has brought in new leadership and has set the party on a more moderate course, advocating close transatlantic relations. The SPD still faces tensions between its internationalist outlook and national interests. This was evident during the debate over German military participation in out‐of‐area operations. At the November 1993 Wiesbaden party congress, Scharping and the party moderates succeeded in maintaining the SPD's endorsement of NATO. Generally speaking, the party platform is “more restrictive on the use of force and more oriented toward global responsibility (as opposed to national interest) than an SPD government would be.” In the final analysis, German foreign policy is unlikely to differ greatly from its present form.

China's Transition from Socialism: Statist Legacies and Market Reforms, 1980-1990 (review)

254 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 Westview Press, 1991). Although the present study of Chinese almanacs can stand alone, readers who wish to gain a fuller background to appreciate the role ofalmanacs in Chinese culture should consult this earlier work. This short book is published in the "Images ofAsia" series of Oxford University Press and fits their goal by being "written for the non-specialist reader by an authority on the subject, with extensive illustrations...." Nevertheless, for English readers who have never seen a Chinese almanac, the best introduction is still the translation by Martin Palmer and others, titled TungShu (Boston: Shambala, 1986), which reproduces the size, format, and contents of an actual almanac. However, for those who want a convenient and authoritative historical survey of the genre unencumbered by notes, this erudite and colorful little book by Smith is unsurpassed. David W Chappell University of Hawai'i Dorothy Solinger. China's Transitionfrom Socialism: StatistLegacies and Market Reforms, 1980-1990 Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. vii, 292 pp. Hardcover $49.95, paperback $19.95. copyright1994 by University of Hawai'i Press As it is now more than a decade since the Dengist program of economic reform was first implemented, this collection of essays assessing the political-economic changes brought about by the reform is a timely one. The trajectory of economic reform in the People's Republic of China (PRC) over the last decade is nicely captured in this well-documented, carefully researched, and thought-provoking volume by Dorothy Solinger. In a series of essays written over the span of a decade, the author presents a portrait of a socialist reform program that has its roots in the policy debates of the 1950s, between Mao and Chen Yun, whose reform ideas were never implemented before Mao's death. Solinger's topics range from an analysis of the reform of the commercial sector (chapter 3), to changing relationships between the center and localities (chapter 7), to the new (but not necessarily ideal) relations between the state and emerging private sector (chapter 11). Setbacks and policy reversals notwithstanding, economic reforms which have been adopted in the PRC in the last decade should not be taken lightly by Western social scientists. Beginning with an essay which traces the origins of current reform policies to the economic policies initially raised at the 1956 party congress, Solinger contends that the Dengist reform program of the late 1970s was really, as she calls it, a "reformulation" ofmany of the themes addressed by Chen Yun and Xue Reviews 255 Muqiao some two decades earlier (chapter 1). In so reasoning, Solinger offers a fresh interpretation ofthe Chinese reforms as a reemergence ofimplementation of reform policies that could nothave been carried outbecause ofthe interruption ofradical Maoism from the Great Leap Forward onward. Such an interpretation is certainly not in line with the interpretation ofthose who argue that the reforms were primarily crisis-driven, prompted by the urgent need to solve the problems ofboth a sagging economy and the waning ideological commitment of the masses, nor does it complement the currentlypopular reading ofthe reforms as a "second revolution" in the history of the PRC. Solinger's work represents a stimulating and provocative addition to this debate. Throughout the essays contained in this volume, the author forcefully insists on her contention that the Chinese reform represents "a package ofmeasures valued for their potential to improve the working ofand to increase the state's receipts from national economy," and that"the fundamental commitment supporting reform, then, was a contingent and not an absolute one" (p. 4; emphasis added). The statist intention on the part of the leadership and their commitment to socialism, the author reminds us from time to time, remains basically unchanged (pp. 23, 79, 143-144). This is certainly true of the majority of the CCP leaders, including Deng himself. However, while one is easily convinced of the contingent, pragmatic nature ofthe reform program, one wonders if the original intentions ofthe leadership matter at all once the Rubicon is crossed, and whether or not such shifting contingencies push the threshold ofthe original statist (socialist) commitment. Indeed, as the author herselfhas shown quite eloquently in the later...

The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism and the Politics of Appropriation

The infamous photograph of 1937 in Regensburg (see Fig. 1) is difficult to forget: Adolf Hitler, in full Nazi military dress, stands gazing reverently at a marble bust of the Austrian composer. 1 This likeness, created by Adolf Rothenberger in a style consonant with National Socialist realism, is placed on a dark pedestal bordered in gold and topped with the Nazi seal, an eagle clutching the swastika. Bruckner had at long last joined the other luminaries of German culture in Regensburg's Valhalla, a marble replica of the Parthenon completed in 1841 under the direction of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and filled with images of German cultural heroes of the past. A central goal of the Bruckner occasion was the Austrian composer's elevation to the status of a full-fledged German composer brought into the embrace of the Third Reich, a step that no doubt foreshadowed--and helped prepare for--the AnschluJ3 of Austria eight months later.2 The Regensburg ceremony-which included speeches and remarks by Peter. Raabe (president of the Reichsmusikkammer), Max Auer (president of the Internationale Bruckner-Gesellschaft), Joseph Goebbels, and others-served as a centerpiece for various musicalpolitical events, including a series of concerts, a convention of the Internationale Bruckner-Gesellschaft, and a meeting of the Bavarian District Nazi Party Congress (see Fig. 2). Through the narrow lens of Bruckneriana, this celebration could be interpreted merely as an event capping the festivities of the previous year commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Bruckner's death. But from the wider perspective of Nazi political strategies of the late 1930s, this event should, more correctly, be recognized as a launching point. Beyond this Bruckner anniversary, 1936 marked a time when, according to Goebbels, the 'chains' of Versailles had finally been 'stripped off' ; Germany had once again become a formidable military

The Bankruptcy of the Traditional System

Abstract To describe the traditional socialist system as a repetition of the closed economy on the scale of the whole society is both colorful and appropriate. People also call it a planned economy, or command or centralized economy. Its essence, however, is that it is both closed and on a society-wide scale. This is why it contains a pair of inherent and insurmountable contradictions—as a closed economy, it cannot but possess the most basic and primary characteristic of a closed economy, the direct distribution of labor and material resources, that is, the factors of production. As an economy encompassing the whole of society, labor and material resources have to be distributed throughout the society, and this is most difficult to do when distribution is direct and non-market. This is the contradiction. The imbalance of the socio-economic structure, low efficiency, lack of results or even corruption that we mentioned earlier are all consequences of this contradiction. It is, therefore, inevitable that the traditional system should decline and go bankrupt. The failure of economic reform in East Europe, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the fact that major Chinese economic breakthroughs came not from the state sector, but from the pluralistic sectors not governed by the traditional system, all bear testimony to this. After Comrade Deng Xiaoping's talks in the south, in particular, people have come to the consensus that the traditional planned economic system has to be sublated and the socialist market economic system adopted. The 14th Party Congress has officially affirmed this new system as the goal of Chinese economic reform. This proves that the bankruptcy of the traditional system is no longer just a trend, but becoming a fact.

Let Us, in the Course of Reform and Opening Up, Pay Strong Attention to the Cultivation and Promotion of Women Cadres

Abstract In order to implement the spirit of the Thirteenth Party Congress more fully and in a more penetrating way, last year we conducted an investigation of conditions regarding the cultivation and promotion of women cadres in our province as a whole. According to the results of our investigation, there are 21.851 million women workers in the province, constituting 32.5 percent of the total number of workers in the province as a whole. At the same time, there are 351, 000 women cadres, making up 32.5 percent of the total number of cadres at comparable levels. There are 7, 481 women cadres in leadership positions, making up only 8.4 percent of the number of cadres at that level.