civil war and economic collapse. The Seventh, dubbed “special,” was convened in Moscow in March 1918, with only forty-seven voting delegates, to approve the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ending hostilities with Germany and its allies. Lenin delivered a political report of the Central Committee, a function thereafter distinguishing the party’s chief, while Nikolai Bukharin submitted a minority report for the Left Communists against the treaty (a gesture last allowed in 1925). After bitter debate between the Leninists and the Left, the treaty was approved, and Russia left the war. However, Bukharin was included in the new Central Committee of fifteen members. The Seventh Party Congress also formally changed the party’s name from Russian Social-Democratic Party (of Bolsheviks) to Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks). All subsequent party congresses continued to be held in Moscow.
The Eighth Party Congress met in March 1919 at the height of the civil war, with around three hundred voting delegates. It adopted a new revolutionary party program, approved the creation of the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat, and saw its Leninist majority beat down opposition from the Left, who opposed the trend toward top- down authority in both military and political matters. The first postrevolutionary party conference, the Eighth, was held in Moscow (like all subsequent ones) in December 1919. It updated the party’s rules and heard continued complaints about centralism in government.
Three months later, at the Ninth Party Congress in March 1920, Lenin and Trotsky and their supporters again had to fight off the anti-centralizers of the Left on both political and economic issues. Such protest was carried much farther at the Ninth Party Conference, which met in September 1920. The “Group of Democratic Centralists” denounced bureaucratic centralism and won a sweeping endorsement of democracy and decentralism, unfortunately undercut by their acquiescence with respect to organizational efficiency and a new control commission.
This spirit of reform was soon smothered at the Tenth Party Congress, meeting in March 1921 with approximately seven hundred voting delegates. After some three hundred of its participants were dispatched to Petrograd to help suppress the Kronstadt Revolt, the congress voted in several crucial resolutions over the futile opposition of the small left-wing minority. It condemned the “syndicalist and anarchist deviation” of the Workers’ Opposition, banned organized factions within the party in the name of unity, and supported the tax in kind, Lenin’s first step in introducing the New Economic Policy. The Central Committee was expanded to twenty-five, but Trotsky’s key supporters were dropped from this body as well as from the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat.
Party congresses and conferences during the 1920s marked the transformation from a contentious, policy- setting gathering to an orchestrated phalanx of disciplined yes-men. This progression took place as Stalin perfected the circular flow of power through the party apparatus, guaranteeing his control of congress and conference proceedings. The Eleventh Party Congress, which met in March and April 1922, was the last with Lenin’s participation. It focused on consolidating party discipline and strengthening the new Central Control Commission to keep deviators in line. Immediately after the Eleventh Party Congress, the Central Committee designated Stalin to fill the new office of General Secretary.
The Twelfth Party Congress took place in April 1923 during the interregnum between Lenin’s in-capacitation in December 1922 and his death in January 1924. Trotsky, Stalin, and Zinoviev were all jockeying for advantage in the anticipated struggle to succeed the party’s ailing leader. Debate revolved particularly around questions of industrial development and policy toward the minority nationalities, while Stalin maneuvered to cover up Lenin’s break with him and pack the Central Committee (expanded from twenty-seven to forty) with his own supporters.
The Tenth and Eleventh Party Conferences in 1921 and the Twelfth in 1922 were routine affairs, but the Thirteenth proved to be a decisive milestone.
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At this gathering just before Lenin’s death, the left opposition faction supporting Trotsky was condemned as a petty-bourgeois deviation. Stalin demonstrated his mastery of the circular flow of power by allowing only three oppositionists among the voting delegates.
By the time of the Thirteenth Party Congress in May 1924, the Soviet political atmosphere had changed even more. Lenin was dead; the triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev was trumpeting the need for discipline and unity; and opposition had been virtually outlawed. Stalin’s party apparatus had ensured that among the 748 voting delegates there was not a single voice to represent the opposition, and Trotsky, merely one of the 416 nonvoting delegates, temporarily recanted his criticisms of the party. The Central Committee was expanded again, to fifty- two, to make room for even more Stalin loyalists, especially from the regional apparatus.
The Fourteenth Party Conference, held in April 1925, endorsed Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country and condemned Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. It marked the high point of the New Economic Policy (NEP) by way of liberalizing policy toward the peasants. However, this emphasis contributed to growing tension between the Stalin-Bukharin group of party leaders and the Zinoviev-Kamenev group.
At the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925 these two groups split openly. The so-called Leningrad Opposition, led by Zinoviev and Kamenev and backed by Lenin’s widow Nadezhda Krup-skaya, rebelled against Stalin’s domination of the party and took with them the sixty-two Leningrad delegates. Kamenev openly challenged Stalin’s suitability as party leader, but the opposition was soundly defeated by the well-disciplined majority. The NEP, especially as articulated by Bukharin, was for the time being reaffirmed, although subsequent Stalinist history represented the Fourteenth Congress as the beginning of the new industrialization drive. The Central Committee was expanded again, to sixty-three.
Acrimony between the majority and the newly allied Zinovievists and Trotskyists was even sharper at the Fifteenth Party Conference of October- November 1926. Kamenev now denounced Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country as a falsification of Lenin’s views. Nevertheless, the opposition was unanimously condemned as a “Social- Democratic” (i.e., Menshevik) deviation. When the Fifteenth Party Congress met in December 1927, the left opposition leaders Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev had been dropped from the party’s leadership bodies, and Trotsky had been expelled from the party altogether. At the congress itself, the opposition was condemned and its followers were expelled from the party as well. At the same time, the congress adopted resolutions on a five-year plan and on the peasantry that subsequently served as legitimation for Stalin’s industrialization and collectivization drives. Eight more members were added to the Central Committee, not counting replacements for the condemned oppositionists, bringing the total to seventy-one (a figure that held until 1952).
By the time of the Sixteenth Party Conference in April 1929, the Soviet political scene had changed sharply again. Stalin had defeated the Right Opposition led by Bukharin, government chairman Alexei Rykov, and trade- union chief Mikhail Tom-sky, and was initiating his five-year plans and forced collectivization. The main task of the conference was to legitimize the First Five-Year Plan (already approved by the Central Committee), backdating its inception to the beginning of the annual economic plan that had already been in force since October 1928. A new party purge, in the older sense of weeding out undesirables from the membership, was also authorized by the conference.
The Sixteenth Party Congress, held in June and July 1930, could hardly keep up with events. Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky had been condemned and had recanted, although the congress allowed them to keep their Central Committee seats for the time being. The congress unanimously acclaimed the program of the Stalin Revolution in industry and agriculture. The industrialization theme was echoed by the Seventeenth Party Conference of January- February 1932; it approved the formulation of the Second Five-Year Plan, to commence in January 1933 (even though by that time the First Five-Year Plan would have been formally in effect for only three years and eight months).
When the Seventeenth Party Congress convened in January-February 1934, collectivization had been substantially accomplished despite the catastrophic though unacknowledged famine in the Ukraine and the southern regions of the Russian Republic. Following the accelerated termination of the First Five-Year Plan, the Second had begun. The congress was dubbed “the Congress of Victors,” while Stalin addressed the body to reject the philosophy of egalitarianism and emphasize the au1140
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thority of individual managers and party leaders. Yet there was surreptitious opposition over the harshness of Stalin’s program, and behind-the-scenes talk of replacing him with Leningrad party secretary Sergei Kirov. In the end, nearly three hundred delegates out of 1,225 voted against Stalin in the slate of candidates for the Central
