position of the First Secretaries group reflects more stability since 75 of the 139 occupied prominent positions in the party apparatus prior to 1953. Still, almost 40 percent rose to their present rank between 1953 and 1964. In the case of the Central Committee, some 85 percent of the members entered that prestigious body after 1953.

None of these figures, however, accurately portrays the complexion of each group, for the vast majority joined the party and were trained under Stalin's aegis. They were men and women molded in the Stalin era, and their attitudes often reflect their early training. For most of them, the "Great Patriotic War" has been the decisive experience of

their lives.

Resistance to Change

The triumph of the war generation apparatchiki over younger men with new ideas at the 23rd Party Congress was not difficult to predict. Members of the party apparatus clearly remembered the fate of the Stalinist apparatchiki during the Khrushchev regime. While many of them saw the need to reform the Stalinist system and accepted Khrushchev's recommendations to rotate party cadres in order to develop a technological intelligentsia within the party itself, they realized what the consequences might be for their own careers if the reforms went too far. Once Khrushchev was gone, they set about refortifying their position. But five years earlier it looked as if the party apparatus was ready to adopt a radically new structure.

The new party statutes adopted by the 22nd Congress in 1961 were aimed at correcting certain abuses. In his address to the Congress, the late Frol Kozlov explained the reasons for the proposed changes in the statutes as follows:

Previously, in many party bodies a certain number of the executive officials served a very long time without being replaced. The draft statutes preclude this possibility. They specify that members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU shall not, as a rule, be elected for more than three successive terms. Similarly, members of the central committees of the Unionrepublic Communist parties and of territory, province, region, city and district party committees and committees and bureaus of party organizations may not be elected for more than three terms. Secretaries of primary party organizations may not be elected for more than two consecutive terms.

The wisdom of this system of elections to party bodies is plain. New people, party workers who are developing and are full of initiative, should steadily be moving into positions of leadership. At the same time firm steps must be taken to rid the executive bodies of the party of persons who have been in office much too

As for the norms regulating that process [systematic renewal] now in operation, life has shown that they have not justified themselves. Here and there during elections of Communists to leading bodies, the principles of the selection of cadres for their business and political qualities have been replaced by formal attitudes. As a result, excellent workers who might still continue to work actively in party committees are often compelled to step down from work in elective bodies. ... It is more correct and more democratic for Communists to decide for themselves whether a given party member has the political and business qualities to make him worthy to serve in a leading party body.4

34

58

a Of which 6 are believed to have been born before 1921.

The dissolution of the raion party committees and the creation of new party organs did, in effect, compel many party secretaries to leave the political scene. It is significant, however, that the top bodies of the party apparatus resisted the reforms and resorted to various methods to defeat them. Instead of bringing in new functionaries and developing a rational system of rotation, the party apparatus merely sought to create new positions for the veteran functionaries whose privileged position was placed in jeopardy by the new party statutes. Indeed, as many observers of Soviet developments have pointed out, the whole process of rotation was never really put into effect to any important degree.

The first public utterances advocating abolition of the turnover system were made at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee in March 1965. At that time the First Secretary of the Rostov oblast, M. S. Solomentzev, revealed how ineffective the whole system was. "It is very difficult," he complained, "for us to find a secretary for the whole basic party organization because every two

The Conflict of Generations

5

In his March 26 address to the 23rd Party Congress, Brezhnev reported on the composition of the CPSU as of January 1966. According to his statistics, the CPSU is undoubtedly a "young party.” More than 50 percent of its members are not yet 40 years old, and almost one half of the total membership joined the party only after Stalin's death. Politically formed, as it were, in the period of destalinization, these younger men have been trained to regard the problems of modern society differently from those older party members who now constitute the elite of the party in all three groups: the Central Committee, the Politburo and Bureau group, and the 139 First Secretaries' group.

It is quite natural, of course, for leaders to be recruited from among the older and longer-active members, but the structure of the CPSU in this regard is unparalleled among the Communist parties of the Soviet-bloc countries. A large postwar generation has begun to make its presence felt in the USSR, but the party apparatus has done nothing to accommodate it. Instead, the party leaders, acting perhaps out of a bureaucratic instinct for self-preservation, have chosen to limit access to the party apparatus by the rank and file of the party membership and to impede the entry

3 Plenum Tsentralnovo Komiteta Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovietskovo Soiuza 24-26 Marta 1965, Stenograficheskii otchet, Moscow, 1965, p. 120.

4 Pravda, March 30, 1966. 5 Pravda, March 27, 1966.

of younger people into the party itself, thus creating a potentially explosive situation.

The real significance of the 23rd Party Congress is that it demonstrated the determination of the party leaders the war generation-to keep the younger generation out of power. It is reflected in three measures adopted by the Congress. The first, as we have seen, was the amendment to the 1961 party statutes which repealed the rotational system. The second was the decision to force potential party members under 23 to join the Komsomol before becoming eligible for party membership. Under the former statutes, persons over 20 were eligible for party membership without passing through the youth organization. A further obstacle placed in the way of admission was the rule requiring references by party members with at least five years' (formerly three years') membership.

The Educational Gap

Just as there are vast differences in training and education between the generations in any society, the educational background and technical competence of members of the Soviet party apparatus differ significantly from those of the party rank and file. The younger generation now entering the party is composed of a large number of universitytrained individuals. Brezhnev reported to the 23rd Party Congress that over two-thirds of the whitecollar workers who joined the party between the 22nd and 23rd Party Congresses were members of the technical intelligentsia and experts on various phases of the Soviet economy. He further noted that 18.2 percent of the total party membership had completed or nearly completed their university training, and that 30.9 percent had completed secondary schooling.

On the higher levels, however, older party members have not had the benefit of a first-class education, or a level of education that would be considered high today-i.e., regular primary and secondary schooling leading to university study complete with seminars and examinations. In the 1920's and 1930's, young men and women were often admitted to the universities without secondary-school training, and many of them never followed a regular university curriculum. Still others received their technological training only at party schools, including the Party Academy attached to the Central Committee of the CPSU.

-Krokodil, No. 21, 1966.

of-power group by the decisions of the 23rd Party Congress, and the older, less qualified group of apparatchiki in power, seems inevitable. As the Soviet system changes and becomes modernized, highly qualified technical experts whose training reflects the latest standards must eventually be appointed to positions in industry and even in the state machinery. For the present, this is not the case. The party leaders, on the contrary, have opted to consolidate their own ranks and take a breathing spell to prepare for the tasks ahead. Since these tasks will be extremely arduousespecially in the domain of economic reform-the confrontation will probably come sooner than the party leaders expect, and it promises to create friction and conflict. It is worth noting here that despite the Soviet leaders' declared intention to modernize industrial management, only two plant directors, one engineer and four scientists have

been awarded seats on the new Central Committee of the CPSU. The stubbornness with which the party apparatus regards itself as the embodiment of all progressive ideas must eventually give way. When it does, no one can be sure what will happen. Of significance is the fact that the "overaging" phenomenon is a solid feature of the state machinery as well. Of the 76 high-level government functionaries, 48 are between 55 and 65 years old, and 27 of them have been party members for over 35 years. All of these men held high positions during the Stalin era, and there undoubtedly exists between them and the party bureaucracy a feeling of mutual trust and understanding. The relationship between Brezhnev and Kosygin is particularly significant in this regard. It symbolizes the dogged determination of a closely-knit group of people to remain firmly at the helm of the Soviet state and to shape the destiny of their subjects.

1) In "Khrushchev Before and After," by Peter Kenez, published in the NovemberDecember 1966 issue, an error appears on page 72. The sentence, beginning at the bottom of page 71 and reading: "V.T. Sukhorukov, in his study of the 11th Army in the Civil War maintains that in October 1920 Khrushchev was a military commissar in the 9th Division of the 11th Army" should read: "V.T. Sukhorukov, in his study of the 11th Army in the Civil War, maintains that in October 1920 Khrushchev was a military commissar in the 9th Division of the 9th Army."

2) In the same article, the author is identified as "formerly a Visiting Professor at the Russian Research Center, Harvard Univer

sity." It should have read: "formerly a graduate student . . ."

3) On pp. 95-96 ("Pages from the Past"), the name of Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, one-time German Ambassador to the Soviet Union, was misspelled. We are particularly aggrieved by this error, since it appears in a piece following the translation of a Pravda article, whose author, Mr. A. Mikeshin, compliments us however indirectly for our "scholarly apparatus" and scrupulous attention to "sources" and "references." We regret having failed Mr. Mikeshin in this respect, too.

-The Editors

"inimical to talent and hostile to political innovation." Such a leadership, he argues, is incapable of responding to the complex and dynamic needs of the present Soviet state. At the same time, because of the relative stability attained by the Soviet political system, the policy alternatives before the leadership have become commonplace and much less divergent than, for instance, those of the 1920's. Moreover, a large number of new, institutionalized interests have emerged which can no longer be effectively coordinated and supervised by the party and consequently are also engaged in a bureaucratic struggle for power. These factors, in Brzezinski's opinion, are indicative of a political degeneration which can only be checked by a "transformation" of the system. Since there has been a remarkable decline of violence in the Soviet state in recent years, he argues-without ruling out altogether the possibility of a revolution-that "conflicts will be