For a Soviet General Secretary presumably committed to the collectivist principles of Marxism-Leninism, Mikhail Gorbachev has been peculiarly insistent upon the decisive importance of individual leadership. In speech after speech it was not only the socioeconomic order that Gorbachev held to be the source of the Soviet Union's problems: the quality and style of its political leadership were also crucial factors

Mawdsley, E.

White, S.L.

English

Enlighten: Publications

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mawdsley, E. and White, S. L. (1990) Renewal and dead souls: the 
changing Soviet Central Committee. British Journal of Political Science, 
20 (4). pp. 537-542. ISSN 0007-1234 
 
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/62043/ 
 
Deposited on: 2nd  July 2012 
 
 
  
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B.J.Pol.S. 20,537-542
Printed in Great Britain " 7
Notes and Comments
Renewal and Dead Souls: The Changing Soviet Central
Committee
EVAN M A W D S L E Y A N D STEPHEN WHITE*
For a Soviet General Secretary presumably committed to the collectivist principles of
Marxism-Leninism, Mikhail Gorbachev has been peculiarly insistent upon the decisive
importance of individual leadership. In speech after speech it was not only the socio-
economic order that Gorbachev held to be the source of the Soviet Union's problems: the
quality and style of its political leadership were also crucial factors.
For years, Gorbachev told the 27th Party Congress in February 1986, party and
government leaders had lagged behind the needs of the times, not only for objective
reasons, but also for reasons 'above all of a subjective nature'. A curious attitude - 'how
to improve things without changing anything' - had prevailed at local as well as national
level.1 The party and its leadership, Gorbachev explained at a meeting of the Central
Committee (CC) in January 1987, had failed 'primarily for subjective reasons' to grasp
the significance of the changes that were required in Soviet society. The principle of col-
lective leadership had been violated; leaders had placed themselves beyond the reach of
criticism, and some had become 'accomplices in - if not organizers of- criminal activ-
ities'. Whole republics, regions and ministries had been affected.2 In July 1989, once
again, the outbreak of the most serious industrial unrest since the 1920s was held to be
the fault of leaders - leaders who in this case had failed to associate themselves with
popular concerns and who were less than wholeheartedly committed to perestroika.3
* Department of Modern History and Department of Politics, University of Glasgow. The
authors' 'Soviet Elite Project' is currently examining membership of the CPSU Central Committee
(CC) in the whole period 1917-90. The project is still in its early stages, but recent events
have been so striking - especially the resignation of ninety-eight out of 468 CC members at
the April 1989 CC plenary meeting - that scholarly purposes would be served by outlining them
here, using the initial stages of the SEP database and some of the material made available
in the era oS glasnost'.
Especially remarkable is the new CC publication, Izvestiia TsK KPSS, which began to appear in
January 1989. It contains as a regular feature 'SostavTsentral'nogo Komiteta KPSS' ('Composition
of the Central Committee of the CPSU'). The January issue (no. 1, pp. 9-31) gave biographical
details of CC members who were in the Politburo or were CC Secretaries, the February issue (no. 2,
pp. 43-114) the other full members, the May issue (no. 5, pp. 45-53) new full members, and the June
issue (no. 6, pp. 21-70) candidate members and members of the Central Revision Commission. Later
issues gave information on further changes; biographies of new Politburo members published in the
October issue (no. 10, pp. 7-13) broke precedent by providing details about wives and children.
The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council, who
have provided the initial funding for the Soviet Elite Project.
1
 Materialy XXVII s'ezda KPSS (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), p. 4.
2
 Maierialy plenuma Tsemral'nogo komiteta KPSS 27-28 ianvaria 1987 goda (Moscow: Politiz-
dat, 1987), pp. 11-15,24-5.
3
 Praw/a, 27 July 1989, p. 2.
538 Notes and Comments
The Gorbachev administration, for these and other reasons, has placed an unusually
heavy emphasis upon the renewal of political leadership at all levels of the Soviet system.
The party's most senior personnel were rapidly changed: nearly half the members of the
Politburo and Secretariat elected at the 27th Congress had not served in either body
before Gorbachev's election to the General Secretaryship just a year earlier, and by Janu-
ary 1990 only two of the twenty members (Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Shevard-
nadze) had served in either Politburo or Secretariat during the Brezhnev period. There
were scarcely less extensive changes of the party leadership in the Soviet Union's repub-
lics and regions. Two-thirds of the secretaries of regional, territorial (krai) and union-
republican party organizations had been replaced by late 1988, and all of the fourteen
republican party leaders had been replaced by November 1989.4
There was a still more rapid turnover in the Soviet state structure: no more than
twenty-two of the 115 members of the Council of Ministers elected in 1984 were still in
their posts five years later, and only ten of these were nominated to the new government
in 1989.5 Similarly, over 88 per cent of the members of the Congress of People's Deputies
elected in March 1989 had not been members of the outgoing or any previous USSR
Supreme Soviet.6 And in the economy Gorbachev reported in early 1989 that more than
two-thirds of the country's industrial managers and farm directors had been replaced
over the previous three years.7
Personnel renewal, however, has so far proved a more difficult process in one crucial
institution: the CPSU Central Committee.
The CC is an obvious focus of research because it is a key institution mediating rela-
tions between the leadership and the party as a whole. It is true that there has been a dif-
ference between the party's Rules and the reality of Politburo-centred power. It is also the
case that the CC meets in full session, on average, only three or four times a year and then
only for a day or two (although there are more plena per year than in some earlier
periods). Nevertheless, the CPSU Rules state that the CC 'guides the entire activity of the
party and of local party bodies, selects and appoints leading functionaries, directs the
work of central government bodies and public organizations of working people' and
'guides the activities' of other party bodies, institutions and enterprises (Rule 35).8
The CC also has great importance because it formally 'elects' the party's top leader-
ship, the Politburo and Secretariat, and also the General Secretary (Rule 38). Entry into
the top layer of the party hierarchy has in reality involved a large element of co-option;
'election' took on a new meaning in some spheres of Soviet politics in 1989, but even then
this was not the situation at the top of the party. All the same, the influence of the CC
really can be decisive. Khrushchev, in 1957, successfully appealed to the CC against a hos-
tile Presidium (Politburo), but in 1964 it was the CC that confirmed his resignation. Gor-
bachev, in March 1985, was elected by the CC, but in turn it was a CC substantially
inherited from the Brezhnev years, and later it would limit his ability to advance the pro-
cess of perestroika.
4
 Kommunisl, no. 13 (1988), p. 11.
5
 Pravda, 8 May 1989, p. 3; 11 June 1989, p. 4.
6
 Pravda, 26 May 1989, p. 4.
7
 Pravda, 31 March 1989, p. 2.
8
 A new development here is the election of 139 CC members to be People's Deputies of the
USSR (narodnye deputaty SSSR) (lzvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 10, pp. 104-5).
Notes and Comments 539
Crucial to the present authors' research is another important aspect of the CC: it has
included the senior members of the Soviet elite, Politburo members, CC secretaries, re-
gional party chiefs, ministers and other senior central and regional state officials, senior
diplomats and military men.
Members are not in the elite because they are in the CC; they generally become CC
members because they already hold elite posts. One shortcoming of the CC as a measure
of the elite is that it has been renewed only at intervals of about five years (since 1952).
Under the party Rules as they stood in the mid-1980s, the CC was elected by the Party
Congress. Vacancies that arose among CC full members could be filled only by promot-
ing (non-voting) candidate members; there was no mechanism for introducing new
members between congresses.9
In effect the CC elected by the Party Congress has provided a 'snapshot' of the elite,
but this picture has become progressively less accurate as appointments in the Soviet
working elite have led to new people, outside the CC, entering key jobs. Under the party
Rules such new members of the elite have had no opportunity to enter the CC until the
next Party Congress. Likewise officials who had been replaced in their party or state jobs
have normally remained members of the CC until the following congress; these have been
called 'dead souls', individuals whose demotions since a congress made their CC status
no longer appropriate.10 This has been a problem for students of Soviet politics. It has
been even more of a problem for Soviet reformers.
Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU CC in March 1985, and
ideas of reform and renewal were influential in the 27th Party Congress which took place
a year later. The congress duly produced a CC in which there had been substantial turn-
over, certainly in contrast to the last two congresses of the Brezhnev era (see Table 1).
TABLE 1 Renewal of CC Membership at the 25th-27th Congresses
1976 1981 1986
New full members
Promoted candidate
members
New candidate
members
Total 'new'
Total CC
Number
40
46
70
156
426
/ o
9
11
16
37
100
Number
45
44
90
179
470
/ o
10
9
19
38
100
Number
101
33
115
249
477
/ o
21
7
24
52
100
9
 The terms 'full members' and 'candidate members' are used for the Russian terms chleny and
kandidaty v chleny respectively; the term 'members' refers to both.
10
 Elizabeth Teague, '"Dead Souls" in the Central Committee', RL 17/87, Radio Liberty Research
Bulletin, no. 2(3415), 14 January 1987. The idea of'dead souls' is, of course, originally based on
Gogol's 1842 novel of the same name; the hero tries to make his fortune by mortgaging dead 'souls',
male serfs who had died since the previous census but who were formally liable to tax until the next
one.
540 Notes and Comments
TABLE 2 Old and New CC Members, March 1986, by Sector
Central party
Central state
Regional party
Regional state
Military
Foreign affairs
Workers/managers
Other
Total
Old members
Number
23
54
62
16
19
17
11
26
228
%
10
24
27
7
8
7
5
11
100
New members
Number
20
48
85
20
17
7
32
20
249
°/o
8
19
34
8
7
3
13
8
100
All members
Number
43
102
147
36
36
24
43
46
477
/ o
9
21
31
8
8
5
9
10
100
Renewal affected different types of members in different'ways (see Table 2). The two
most notable contrasts between old and new members in 1986 were the relatively greater
weight among new members of regional party officials (mainly oblast' committee first sec-
retaries) and of men and women who were 'representative' workers, collective farmers or
industrial managers. (Two contrasting representatives of the latter group are the General
Director of the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Kombinat, Ivan Romazan, and a 36-year-old
(ethnic German) state-farm machine operator, Natal'ia Gellert.) However, it must be said
that overall there was no drastic change in the profile of CC personnel in 1986.
The problem for Gorbachev was that, given existing party practice, he then had no
apparent alternative but to work with this CC for the next five years, perestroika or no.
This is where the issue of'dead souls' arose, and it was presumably one of the reasons why
Gorbachev proposed at the January 1987 CC plenum to convene an All-Union Party
Conference, the first such gathering since February 1941. Expanding upon the purposes
of such a conference at a further plenum in June 1987, Gorbachev noted that conferences
had met much more frequently in the past and that they had often decided questions that
were far from tactical. Some had even considered changes in the party's Rules and in the
composition of leading bodies." The Conference, in the event, made no such changes,
although it did make provision for drastic changes in personnel selection in future.
There was no precedent for the next development: a mass resignation from the CC of
ninety-eight full members and candidate members, which took place at a CC plenum on
25 April 1989.12 This was based to a large extent on the advanced age of those who
11
 M. S. Gorbachev, Izbrannyerechiistat'i, vol. 5 (Moscow: Izd. politicheskoiliteratury, 1988),
p. 156.
At the little-studied 18th Party Conference (February 1941) six full members and fifteen candidate
members were dismissed from the CC (and a number of members were warned of possible expul-
sion). Six new full members and seventeen candidate members were elected; two of the new full
members (M. A. Suslov and O. V. Kuusinen) and all of the new candidates had not been elected to
the CC at the 18th Congress two years before. The CC elected in February 1939 comprised only
seventy-one members and sixty-eight candidates so these changes were, in percentage terms, sub-
stantial. See Rezoliutsii XVIII vsesoiuznoi konferentsii VKP(b) (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1941),
pp. 21-2.
21
 Four other members had been dismissed between March 1986 and April 1989.
Notes and Comments 541
TABLE 3 Changes at the April 1989 Plenum
Central party
Central state
Regional party
Regional state
Military
Foreign affairs
Workers/managers
Other
Total
Whole CC
1976
Number
43
102
147
36
36
24
43
46
477
V
/o
9
21
31
8
8
5
9
10
100
Retiring CC
April
Number
12
26
27
9
11
4
1
8
98
1989
°/
/o
12
27
28
9
11
4
1
8
100
New full I
April
Number
1
1
4
2
1
1
10
4
24
nembers
1989
0/
/o
4
4
17
8
4
4
42
17
100
resigned. General Secretary Gorbachev stressed in his speech that on the eve of the
plenum eighty-three full members and twenty-seven candidate members were already
retired ('na pensii') from their other party or state posts, and the same point was made in
the joint letter (obrashchenie) of the members who expressed a wish to resign.'3 At the
same plenum twenty-four candidate members were promoted to full-member status.
The most notable trend in the resignations (see Table 3) was the relatively high rate of
resignations among state officials (primarily USSR-level ministers). The low relative de-
cline of regional party officials perhaps reflected earlier turnover at the time of the 1986
congress. The most remarkable feature of the promotions was the relatively large number
of workers and managers, reflecting the current political agenda of perestroika (the four
promotions in the 'other' category were all full members of the USSR Academy of Sci-
ences).
The final result of renewal has been considerable, and as the CC may serve as a polit-
ical ratifier of perestroika or even of the present General Secretary, it is particularly im-
portant to examine the proportion of new personnel among voting (i.e. full) members
after the April 1989 plenum (see Table 4).
Personnel renewal, as Table 4 makes clear, has had a major impact. Some 60 per cent
of CC full members have assumed full membership in the last three years - at the 1986
congress, in promotions between 1986 and 1989 or in the group promotion of April
1989.'* The proportion of new full members is especially strong among regional party
officials, and the growing weight of workers and managers is an interesting new develop-
ment.
13
 Pravda, 26 April 1989, p. 1. The obrashchenie was signed by 110 people: ninety-eight CC
members, plus twelve members of the Central Revision Commission. However, those who resigned
from the CC and the CRC did not include all people who were already retired from their other party
or state posts; some retired officials evidently decided to stay on in the CC or the CRC.
14
 Seven candidates were promoted to full member status between the 27th Congress and the
April 1989 plenum.
The situation changed little at CC level after April; full membership as of October 1989 was 249;
this reflected a further promotion from candidate to full member at the September 1989 plenum and
several deaths (Izvestiia Tsk KPSS, 1989, no. 10, pp. 104-5).
542 Notes and Comments
T A B L E 4 CC Full Members, by Sector, after the April 1989 Plenum
Central party
Central state
Regional party
Regional state
Military
Foreign affairs
Workers/managers
Other
Total
New full members
16
28
42
9
9
6
28
14
152
All full members
26
58
58
14
15
20
37
25
253
New members (%)
62
48
72
64
60
30
76
56
60
The process of change, however, has not been as rapid as it might have been. At the
1986 Congress eighty-three members continued from the previous CC who would in fact
'resign' from the committee three years later. At the 19th Party Conference in 1988 Gor-
bachev was not able to achieve the promotions and demotions he had evidently intended.
At the April 1989 plenum, notwithstanding the unprecedented number of resignations,
no additional members were appointed.15 On the other hand, the June 1988 conference
did approve a resolution on political reform which provided for the replacement of up to
20 per cent of the membership of the CC and other party bodies between the congresses
or conferences.16 The September 1989 CC plenum resolved that the next (28th) Party
Congress would be held in October 1990, some months earlier than normally due; the
March 1990 CC plenum advanced this to July.17 Between the spring of 1989 and October
1989 a further twenty-six full members and fourteen candidate members retired from
their party or state posts - creating forty more 'dead souls'.18 The forthcoming congress
was likely to provide Gorbachev with an opportunity to make still more far-reaching
changes in the Soviet 'selectorate' than those he had so far been able to achieve. It would
also expose to a still more searching scrutiny his assumption that the qualities of leader-
ship were a decisive factor in the achievement of perestroika.
15
 As of this date six republic-level first secretaries and eighty-eight regional first secretaries were
not members of the CC (Pravda, 27 April 1989, p. 3).
In September 1989, Izvestiia TsK KPSS (1989, no. 9, pp. 51-85) gave biographical details of re-
gional leaders who were not CC members. These included six first secretaries at republic level
(Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania and Uzbekistan) out of a total of fourteen.
Also not on the CC were eighty-seven first secretaries at krai and oblast level - out of a total of 144 -
and all ten first secretaries at okrug level.
For a recent critical survey of the pace of change in the CC see V. Sazonov, 'TsK KPSS i peres-
troika', Argumenty ifakty, no. 5 (1990), p. 6.
16
 XIX vsesoiuznaia konferentsiia KPSS: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988),
vol. 2, p. 143. For further discussion of the party rules and the importance of changes in them
see Graeme Gill, The Rules of the CPSU (London: Macmillan, 1988) and Stephen White, Soviet
Communism: Programme and Rules (London: Routledge, 1989).
17
 Pravda, 20 September 1989, p. 1, and 17 March 1990, p. 1.
18
 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 10, p. 107.


Renewal and dead souls: the changing Soviet Central Committee

Enlighten

       Mawdsley, E. and White, S. L. (1990) Renewal and dead souls: the changing Soviet Central Committee. British Journal of Political Science, 20 (4). pp. 537-542. ISSN 0007-1234  http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/62043/  Deposited on: 2nd  July 2012     Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk B.J.Pol.S. 20,537-542Printed in Great Britain " 7Notes and CommentsRenewal and Dead Souls: The Changing Soviet CentralCommitteeEVAN M A W D S L E Y A N D STEPHEN WHITE*For a Soviet General Secretary presumably committed to the collectivist principles ofMarxism-Leninism, Mikhail Gorbachev has been peculiarly insistent upon the decisiveimportance of individual leadership. In speech after speech it was not only the socio-economic order that Gorbachev held to be the source of the Soviet Union's problems: thequality and style of its political leadership were also crucial factors.For years, Gorbachev told the 27th Party Congress in February 1986, party andgovernment leaders had lagged behind the needs of the times, not only for objectivereasons, but also for reasons 'above all of a subjective nature'. A curious attitude - 'howto improve things without changing anything' - had prevailed at local as well as nationallevel.1 The party and its leadership, Gorbachev explained at a meeting of the CentralCommittee (CC) in January 1987, had failed 'primarily for subjective reasons' to graspthe significance of the changes that were required in Soviet society. The principle of col-lective leadership had been violated; leaders had placed themselves beyond the reach ofcriticism, and some had become 'accomplices in - if not organizers of- criminal activ-ities'. Whole republics, regions and ministries had been affected.2 In July 1989, onceagain, the outbreak of the most serious industrial unrest since the 1920s was held to bethe fault of leaders - leaders who in this case had failed to associate themselves withpopular concerns and who were less than wholeheartedly committed to perestroika.3* Department of Modern History and Department of Politics, University of Glasgow. Theauthors' 'Soviet Elite Project' is currently examining membership of the CPSU Central Committee(CC) in the whole period 1917-90. The project is still in its early stages, but recent eventshave been so striking - especially the resignation of ninety-eight out of 468 CC members atthe April 1989 CC plenary meeting - that scholarly purposes would be served by outlining themhere, using the initial stages of the SEP database and some of the material made availablein the era oS glasnost'.Especially remarkable is the new CC publication, Izvestiia TsK KPSS, which began to appear inJanuary 1989. It contains as a regular feature 'SostavTsentral'nogo Komiteta KPSS' ('Compositionof the Central Committee of the CPSU'). The January issue (no. 1, pp. 9-31) gave biographicaldetails of CC members who were in the Politburo or were CC Secretaries, the February issue (no. 2,pp. 43-114) the other full members, the May issue (no. 5, pp. 45-53) new full members, and the Juneissue (no. 6, pp. 21-70) candidate members and members of the Central Revision Commission. Laterissues gave information on further changes; biographies of new Politburo members published in theOctober issue (no. 10, pp. 7-13) broke precedent by providing details about wives and children.The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council, whohave provided the initial funding for the Soviet Elite Project.1 Materialy XXVII s'ezda KPSS (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), p. 4.2 Maierialy plenuma Tsemral'nogo komiteta KPSS 27-28 ianvaria 1987 goda (Moscow: Politiz-dat, 1987), pp. 11-15,24-5.3 Praw/a, 27 July 1989, p. 2.538 Notes and CommentsThe Gorbachev administration, for these and other reasons, has placed an unusuallyheavy emphasis upon the renewal of political leadership at all levels of the Soviet system.The party's most senior personnel were rapidly changed: nearly half the members of thePolitburo and Secretariat elected at the 27th Congress had not served in either bodybefore Gorbachev's election to the General Secretaryship just a year earlier, and by Janu-ary 1990 only two of the twenty members (Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Shevard-nadze) had served in either Politburo or Secretariat during the Brezhnev period. Therewere scarcely less extensive changes of the party leadership in the Soviet Union's repub-lics and regions. Two-thirds of the secretaries of regional, territorial (krai) and union-republican party organizations had been replaced by late 1988, and all of the fourteenrepublican party leaders had been replaced by November 1989.4There was a still more rapid turnover in the Soviet state structure: no more thantwenty-two of the 115 members of the Council of Ministers elected in 1984 were still intheir posts five years later, and only ten of these were nominated to the new governmentin 1989.5 Similarly, over 88 per cent of the members of the Congress of People's Deputieselected in March 1989 had not been members of the outgoing or any previous USSRSupreme Soviet.6 And in the economy Gorbachev reported in early 1989 that more thantwo-thirds of the country's industrial managers and farm directors had been replacedover the previous three years.7Personnel renewal, however, has so far proved a more difficult process in one crucialinstitution: the CPSU Central Committee.The CC is an obvious focus of research because it is a key institution mediating rela-tions between the leadership and the party as a whole. It is true that there has been a dif-ference between the party's Rules and the reality of Politburo-centred power. It is also thecase that the CC meets in full session, on average, only three or four times a year and thenonly for a day or two (although there are more plena per year than in some earlierperiods). Nevertheless, the CPSU Rules state that the CC 'guides the entire activity of theparty and of local party bodies, selects and appoints leading functionaries, directs thework of central government bodies and public organizations of working people' and'guides the activities' of other party bodies, institutions and enterprises (Rule 35).8The CC also has great importance because it formally 'elects' the party's top leader-ship, the Politburo and Secretariat, and also the General Secretary (Rule 38). Entry intothe top layer of the party hierarchy has in reality involved a large element of co-option;'election' took on a new meaning in some spheres of Soviet politics in 1989, but even thenthis was not the situation at the top of the party. All the same, the influence of the CCreally can be decisive. Khrushchev, in 1957, successfully appealed to the CC against a hos-tile Presidium (Politburo), but in 1964 it was the CC that confirmed his resignation. Gor-bachev, in March 1985, was elected by the CC, but in turn it was a CC substantiallyinherited from the Brezhnev years, and later it would limit his ability to advance the pro-cess of perestroika.4 Kommunisl, no. 13 (1988), p. 11.5 Pravda, 8 May 1989, p. 3; 11 June 1989, p. 4.6 Pravda, 26 May 1989, p. 4.7 Pravda, 31 March 1989, p. 2.8 A new development here is the election of 139 CC members to be People's Deputies of theUSSR (narodnye deputaty SSSR) (lzvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 10, pp. 104-5).Notes and Comments 539Crucial to the present authors' research is another important aspect of the CC: it hasincluded the senior members of the Soviet elite, Politburo members, CC secretaries, re-gional party chiefs, ministers and other senior central and regional state officials, seniordiplomats and military men.Members are not in the elite because they are in the CC; they generally become CCmembers because they already hold elite posts. One shortcoming of the CC as a measureof the elite is that it has been renewed only at intervals of about five years (since 1952).Under the party Rules as they stood in the mid-1980s, the CC was elected by the PartyCongress. Vacancies that arose among CC full members could be filled only by promot-ing (non-voting) candidate members; there was no mechanism for introducing newmembers between congresses.9In effect the CC elected by the Party Congress has provided a 'snapshot' of the elite,but this picture has become progressively less accurate as appointments in the Sovietworking elite have led to new people, outside the CC, entering key jobs. Under the partyRules such new members of the elite have had no opportunity to enter the CC until thenext Party Congress. Likewise officials who had been replaced in their party or state jobshave normally remained members of the CC until the following congress; these have beencalled 'dead souls', individuals whose demotions since a congress made their CC statusno longer appropriate.10 This has been a problem for students of Soviet politics. It hasbeen even more of a problem for Soviet reformers.Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU CC in March 1985, andideas of reform and renewal were influential in the 27th Party Congress which took placea year later. The congress duly produced a CC in which there had been substantial turn-over, certainly in contrast to the last two congresses of the Brezhnev era (see Table 1).TABLE 1 Renewal of CC Membership at the 25th-27th Congresses1976 1981 1986New full membersPromoted candidatemembersNew candidatemembersTotal 'new'Total CCNumber404670156426/ o9111637100Number454490179470/ o1091938100Number10133115249477/ o21724521009 The terms 'full members' and 'candidate members' are used for the Russian terms chleny andkandidaty v chleny respectively; the term 'members' refers to both.10 Elizabeth Teague, '"Dead Souls" in the Central Committee', RL 17/87, Radio Liberty ResearchBulletin, no. 2(3415), 14 January 1987. The idea of'dead souls' is, of course, originally based onGogol's 1842 novel of the same name; the hero tries to make his fortune by mortgaging dead 'souls',male serfs who had died since the previous census but who were formally liable to tax until the nextone.540 Notes and CommentsTABLE 2 Old and New CC Members, March 1986, by SectorCentral partyCentral stateRegional partyRegional stateMilitaryForeign affairsWorkers/managersOtherTotalOld membersNumber2354621619171126228%102427787511100New membersNumber204885201773220249°/o81934873138100All membersNumber431021473636244346477/ o92131885910100Renewal affected different types of members in different'ways (see Table 2). The twomost notable contrasts between old and new members in 1986 were the relatively greaterweight among new members of regional party officials (mainly oblast' committee first sec-retaries) and of men and women who were 'representative' workers, collective farmers orindustrial managers. (Two contrasting representatives of the latter group are the GeneralDirector of the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Kombinat, Ivan Romazan, and a 36-year-old(ethnic German) state-farm machine operator, Natal'ia Gellert.) However, it must be saidthat overall there was no drastic change in the profile of CC personnel in 1986.The problem for Gorbachev was that, given existing party practice, he then had noapparent alternative but to work with this CC for the next five years, perestroika or no.This is where the issue of'dead souls' arose, and it was presumably one of the reasons whyGorbachev proposed at the January 1987 CC plenum to convene an All-Union PartyConference, the first such gathering since February 1941. Expanding upon the purposesof such a conference at a further plenum in June 1987, Gorbachev noted that conferenceshad met much more frequently in the past and that they had often decided questions thatwere far from tactical. Some had even considered changes in the party's Rules and in thecomposition of leading bodies." The Conference, in the event, made no such changes,although it did make provision for drastic changes in personnel selection in future.There was no precedent for the next development: a mass resignation from the CC ofninety-eight full members and candidate members, which took place at a CC plenum on25 April 1989.12 This was based to a large extent on the advanced age of those who11 M. S. Gorbachev, Izbrannyerechiistat'i, vol. 5 (Moscow: Izd. politicheskoiliteratury, 1988),p. 156.At the little-studied 18th Party Conference (February 1941) six full members and fifteen candidatemembers were dismissed from the CC (and a number of members were warned of possible expul-sion). Six new full members and seventeen candidate members were elected; two of the new fullmembers (M. A. Suslov and O. V. Kuusinen) and all of the new candidates had not been elected tothe CC at the 18th Congress two years before. The CC elected in February 1939 comprised onlyseventy-one members and sixty-eight candidates so these changes were, in percentage terms, sub-stantial. See Rezoliutsii XVIII vsesoiuznoi konferentsii VKP(b) (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1941),pp. 21-2.21 Four other members had been dismissed between March 1986 and April 1989.Notes and Comments 541TABLE 3 Changes at the April 1989 PlenumCentral partyCentral stateRegional partyRegional stateMilitaryForeign affairsWorkers/managersOtherTotalWhole CC1976Number431021473636244346477V/o92131885910100Retiring CCAprilNumber122627911418981989°//o122728911418100New full IAprilNumber11421110424nembers19890//o44178444217100resigned. General Secretary Gorbachev stressed in his speech that on the eve of theplenum eighty-three full members and twenty-seven candidate members were alreadyretired ('na pensii') from their other party or state posts, and the same point was made inthe joint letter (obrashchenie) of the members who expressed a wish to resign.'3 At thesame plenum twenty-four candidate members were promoted to full-member status.The most notable trend in the resignations (see Table 3) was the relatively high rate ofresignations among state officials (primarily USSR-level ministers). The low relative de-cline of regional party officials perhaps reflected earlier turnover at the time of the 1986congress. The most remarkable feature of the promotions was the relatively large numberof workers and managers, reflecting the current political agenda of perestroika (the fourpromotions in the 'other' category were all full members of the USSR Academy of Sci-ences).The final result of renewal has been considerable, and as the CC may serve as a polit-ical ratifier of perestroika or even of the present General Secretary, it is particularly im-portant to examine the proportion of new personnel among voting (i.e. full) membersafter the April 1989 plenum (see Table 4).Personnel renewal, as Table 4 makes clear, has had a major impact. Some 60 per centof CC full members have assumed full membership in the last three years - at the 1986congress, in promotions between 1986 and 1989 or in the group promotion of April1989.'* The proportion of new full members is especially strong among regional partyofficials, and the growing weight of workers and managers is an interesting new develop-ment.13 Pravda, 26 April 1989, p. 1. The obrashchenie was signed by 110 people: ninety-eight CCmembers, plus twelve members of the Central Revision Commission. However, those who resignedfrom the CC and the CRC did not include all people who were already retired from their other partyor state posts; some retired officials evidently decided to stay on in the CC or the CRC.14 Seven candidates were promoted to full member status between the 27th Congress and theApril 1989 plenum.The situation changed little at CC level after April; full membership as of October 1989 was 249;this reflected a further promotion from candidate to full member at the September 1989 plenum andseveral deaths (Izvestiia Tsk KPSS, 1989, no. 10, pp. 104-5).542 Notes and CommentsT A B L E 4 CC Full Members, by Sector, after the April 1989 PlenumCentral partyCentral stateRegional partyRegional stateMilitaryForeign affairsWorkers/managersOtherTotalNew full members1628429962814152All full members2658581415203725253New members (%)624872646030765660The process of change, however, has not been as rapid as it might have been. At the1986 Congress eighty-three members continued from the previous CC who would in fact'resign' from the committee three years later. At the 19th Party Conference in 1988 Gor-bachev was not able to achieve the promotions and demotions he had evidently intended.At the April 1989 plenum, notwithstanding the unprecedented number of resignations,no additional members were appointed.15 On the other hand, the June 1988 conferencedid approve a resolution on political reform which provided for the replacement of up to20 per cent of the membership of the CC and other party bodies between the congressesor conferences.16 The September 1989 CC plenum resolved that the next (28th) PartyCongress would be held in October 1990, some months earlier than normally due; theMarch 1990 CC plenum advanced this to July.17 Between the spring of 1989 and October1989 a further twenty-six full members and fourteen candidate members retired fromtheir party or state posts - creating forty more 'dead souls'.18 The forthcoming congresswas likely to provide Gorbachev with an opportunity to make still more far-reachingchanges in the Soviet 'selectorate' than those he had so far been able to achieve. It wouldalso expose to a still more searching scrutiny his assumption that the qualities of leader-ship were a decisive factor in the achievement of perestroika.15 As of this date six republic-level first secretaries and eighty-eight regional first secretaries werenot members of the CC (Pravda, 27 April 1989, p. 3).In September 1989, Izvestiia TsK KPSS (1989, no. 9, pp. 51-85) gave biographical details of re-gional leaders who were not CC members. These included six first secretaries at republic level(Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania and Uzbekistan) out of a total of fourteen.Also not on the CC were eighty-seven first secretaries at krai and oblast level - out of a total of 144 -and all ten first secretaries at okrug level.For a recent critical survey of the pace of change in the CC see V. Sazonov, 'TsK KPSS i peres-troika', Argumenty ifakty, no. 5 (1990), p. 6.16 XIX vsesoiuznaia konferentsiia KPSS: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988),vol. 2, p. 143. For further discussion of the party rules and the importance of changes in themsee Graeme Gill, The Rules of the CPSU (London: Macmillan, 1988) and Stephen White, SovietCommunism: Programme and Rules (London: Routledge, 1989).17 Pravda, 20 September 1989, p. 1, and 17 March 1990, p. 1.18 Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 10, p. 107.

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Renewal and dead souls: the changing Soviet Central Committee

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