On Motives of the Ruling Bolsheviks Communist Party for Abolishing National Multi-Party System
| 30 January 2025
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Archival funds and collections
Anfertiev I.A., Moscow, Russian Federation
On Motives of the Ruling Bolsheviks Communist Party for Abolishing National Multi-Party System
Abstract
Drawing on archival documents the article assesses motives of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) officials for removal of political adversaries in the early 1920s. The first Soviet Constitution (July 1918) made no mention of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) special place among government agencies, officially the power resided in the people and was implemented through Soviets elections on every level. This was a natural result of the Constitution being designed by two parties, one of the Communists and the other of the Left SRs, while there still remained a multi-party system in the country. Thus, the Bolsheviks could not capture a one-party system in the Constitution. The end of the Civil War saw a duality of power: officially the authority resided in the Soviets, while actually the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) had gained a majority in Soviet agencies and ruled the country. In view of this, studying activities of the R.C.P.(B.) in transit from the period Civil War to that of building of socialism is considered of great significance. The early 1920s are of particular interest for a historian as the sources are understudied and there are some difficulties of analyzing the formation of distinctive party-state authorities, control agencies and the development of effective managerial decisions. The article assesses the Bolsheviks abolishment of the Russian multi-party system at the close of the Civil War and the increasingly larger role of the ruling Communist Party in system of state agencies, their chosen means towards their ends, all of which is of great importance in the crucial period of transit from one socioeconomic formation to another.Drawing on a study of document collections from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), the article identifies grounds for abolishment of the Russian multi-party system and activities highlights of the R.C.P.(B.) leadership.It analyses the composition and content of the documents, as well as their information potential for the period following the merger of the left socialist and social democratic parties and groups within the R.C.P.(B.). The article offers an interpretation of the data in the archival sources and estimates the reliability of some of them. It concludes that following the end of the Civil War the R.C.P.(B.) leadership strived to promote the victory of the Global Socialist Revolution.
Keywords
Archive, source, multi-party system, Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Socialists Revolutionaries (the SRs), Mensheviks, Global Socialist Revolution.
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About the authors
Anfertiev Ivan Anatolievich, PhD in History, associate professor, professor of the department of modern history of Russia of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russian Federation, +7-916-252-28-22, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it