Like other authoritarian systems, the USSR did not adopt a formal system of succession. Over time, the system developed an informal process of succession, which eventually evolved into a predictable pattern. In 1922, at the age of 52, Vladimir Lenin, the first Soviet leader, suffered a major stroke from which he never fully recovered. After his death in 1924, there was considerable struggle within the Politburo of the Communist Party before Josef Stalin emerged as the top leader. Since Lenin had functioned as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (later called the Council of Ministers), the emergence of the general secretary as the preeminent leader was not predictable. Lenin’s position was equivalent to that of prime minister. The general secretary initially had been considered an administrator with little policy responsibility. Despite the fact that Stalin led the USSR for almost thirty years, it was not clear after his death that the position of general secretary of the CPSU would remain the preeminent one. Stalin had been prime minister also since 1941, and it was hard to say where his power base lay.
After Stalin’s death, Georgy Malenkov chose to be prime minister when forced to select between the positions of chairman of the Council of Ministers or general secretary of the Communist Party. The less well-known Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the top leader in the succession struggle that ensued during the next five years through his role as first (renamed from general) secretary of the Communist Party. By 1958 Khrushchev was both prime minister and first secretary, although not with the degree of power that Stalin had had before him.
Leonid Brezhnev also used the position of general secretary to rise to the top position within the collective leadership after Khrushchev was deposed. Although he wanted to be prime minister as well, the Politburo denied him that title in the interest of maintaining collective leadership. In 1977 Brezhnev became president of the USSR (chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet), a nominal position that gave him the position of chief of state in international protocol, even though his power base remained the CPSU.
With the death of Brezhnev (1982), the process flowed smoothly in the appointment of Yuri Andropov as both general secretary and president, and a short time later both titles passed to Konstantin Chernenko after Andropov’s death (1984). Within
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the Politburo there appeared to be agreement on a successor and on giving the top leader both a party and government position.
There was nothing in either the Party Charter or the Soviet Constitution to guarantee that the process would remain the same. After the death of Chernenko in 1985, power passed to a younger generation. Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary, after serving as de facto second secretary under both Andropov and Chernenko. Gorbachev, however, did not become president. The title went to an elder statesman, Andrei Gromyko. Only in 1988 did Gorbachev assume the presidency, which was subsequently restructured as part of pere-stroika (restructuring) and demokratizatsiya (democratization). Gorbachev had the real power, not merely the title, of chief of state and functioned as president in both domestic and international politics.
Had the Soviet system continued, it is fair to say that succession would probably have been institutionalized in the constitution. Even under Gorbachev, however, the Soviet president was not popularly elected. Gorbachev was selected by the restructured parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies; a new Supreme Soviet, selected from the Congress, was a working parliament, not merely a rubber stamp that met once or twice per year.
Even without formal institutionalization, political succession had become predictable, especially by the 1980s when the ailing Andropov and Chernenko were successively chosen to lead the USSR. The selection process was concluded within days of the leader’s death. The selection of Gorbachev seemed to be equally smooth, but when one examines the difficult road that Gorbachev pursued to undertake reform, one realizes how superficial consensus was. Gorbachev faced opposition from the conservatives and liberals within the Politburo and the CPSU throughout his tenure.
Political succession, although never formalized in writing, became, nonetheless, a well-established and even reasonably predictable process in the mature Soviet Union. The failure to establish a constitutional succession process, even after Gorbachev’s democratization, was one of many contributing factors in the rapid demise of the USSR after the 1991 attempted coup. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; GENERAL SECRETARY; POLITBURO; PRIME MINISTER
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Bialer, Seweryn. (1980). Stalin’s Successors: Leadership, Stability, and Change in the Soviet Union. New York: Cambridge University Press. Breslauer, George W. (1982). Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders. London: George Allen and Unwin. Brown, Archie. (1996). The Gorbachev Factor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. D’Agostino, Anthony. (1988). Soviet Succession Struggles: Kremlinology and the Russian Question from Lenin to Gorbachev. Boston: Allen and Unwin. Hough, Jerry F. (1980). Soviet Leadership in Transition. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Hough, Jerry F., and Fainsod, Merle. (1979). How the Soviet Union Is Governed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mitchell, R. Judson. Getting to the Top in the USSR: Cyclical Patterns in the Leadership Succession Process. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Simmonds, George W., ed. (1967). Soviet Leaders. New York: Crowell.
The 1497 Sudebnik was Russia’s first national law code. Unlike earlier immunity charters, which pertained only to a private landholder and his land, and the Dvina Land Charter (1397) and White Lake Charter (1488), which pertained only to particular localities, it promulgated rules of general application for Muscovite courts. Adopted after Ivan III had gathered in the lands of Novgorod, Tver, and other principalities, the Code is usually interpreted as part of Ivan’s policy of nationbuilding. The short preamble states that the Code was adopted by Grand Prince Ivan with his children and boyars. Thus, unlike some of Muscovy’s other legislation, it was not associated with an assembly of important prelates and servicemen.
A single copy of the Code has come down to us, which was found and published by Pavel Stroev in 1817. Most modern editors divide it into sixty-eight articles, but the original also contains thirty-seven chapter headings. Articles 1 through 25, in general, concern courts presided over by boyars and okolnichy, the two highest service ranks, with some attention also to the court of the grand prince. Clerks (dyaki) were to sit with the boyars and okolENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY nichy in these courts, and were to prepare not only a written trial record but also a written judgment. These courts were to exercise jurisdiction over major crimes, such as murder, robbery, and theft, and the death penalty was provided for certain crimes. Articles 26 through 36 concern judicial documents such as summonses, warrants, and default judgments, as well as the duties of judicial officials such as bailiffs. The bailiffs were charged not only with serving such judicial documents but also with interrogating suspected criminals. Articles 37 through 45 concern the courts of the namestniki and volosteli, the grand prince’s vicegerents in rural areas. The jurisdiction of these courts depended on whether the judge was granted full jurisdiction. Many of the provisions of the first section are repeated in the third.
The Code thus either established or confirmed the previous existence of at least three levels of courts: that of the grand prince, that of the boyars and okolnichy, and that of the vicegerents. These were probably not permanent or standing courts in the modern sense, because the officials serving as judges had substantial other administrative and military duties. All courts used documents at nearly every stage of judicial proceedings: to initiate the lawsuit, to summon the defendant, to procure attendance of witness, and to record the judgment. The first three sections of the code are largely devoted to the procedural and more specifically the financial side of litigation. No less than thirty-six articles deal with fees and payments to be made to the court, and another fifteen concern damages and payments to private persons. Prohibition of bribery is mentioned several times. Plainly one of the priorities of the Code was to prevent bribery and the exaction of excessive fees. There are also numerous provisions on judicial duels, but actual court records indicate that such duels were seldom used to resolve litigation. Eyewitnesses and torture are also prescribed to resolve certain types of matters. The 1497 Code thus represents the transition, albeit incomplete, from so-called archaic law, characterized by composition (bloodwite), no judicial officials, and irrational
