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PARTIES AS GOVERNMENTS
IN EURASIA, 1913–1991
NATIONALISM, SOCIALISM, AND DEVELOPMENT
Edited by
Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia
Parties as Governments in Eurasia,
1913–1991
This book examines the political parties which emerged on the territories of
the former Ottoman, Qing, Russian, and Habsburg empires and not only took
over government power but merged with government itself. It discusses how
these parties, disillusioned with previous constitutional and parliamentary
reforms, justied their takeovers with programs of controlled or supervised
economic and social development, including acting as the mediators between
the various social and ethnic groups in the respective territories. It pays special
attention to nation-building through the party, to institutions (both
constitutional and de facto), and to the global and comparative aspects of
one-party regimes. It explores the origins of one-party regimes in China,
Czechoslovakia, Korea, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and beyond,
the roles of socialism and nationalism in the parties’ approaches to
development and state-building, as well the pedagogical aspirations of the
ruling elites. Hence, by revisiting the dynamics of the transition from the
earlier imperial formations via constitutionalism to one-party governments,
and by assessing the internal and external dynamics of one-party regimes after
their establishment, the book more precisely locates this type of regime within
the contemporary world’s political landscape. Moreover, it emphasises that
one-party regimes thrived on both sides of the Cold War and in some of the
non-aligned states, and that although some state socialist one-party regimes
collapsed in 1989–1991, in other places historically dominant parties and new
parties have continued to monopolize political power.
Ivan Sablin is a research group leader in the Department of History at
Heidelberg University, Germany.
Egas Moniz Bandeira is a researcher at Friedrich-Alexander Universität
Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, and an afliate researcher at the Max Planck
Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia
Revisiting Japan’s Restoration
New Approaches to the Study of the Meiji Transformation
Edited by Timothy David Amos and Akiko Ishii
Rice and Industrialisation in Asia
A. J. H. Latham
China-Japan Rapprochement and the United States
In the Wake of Nixon’s Visit to China
Ryuji Hattori
Japan in Upheaval
The Origins, Dynamics and Political Outcome of the 1960 Anti-US Treaty Protests
Dagnn Gatu
Cultures of Memory in Asia
Dynamics and Forms of Memorialization
Edited by Chieh-Hsiang Wu
Parties as Governments in Eurasia, 1913–1991
Nationalism, Socialism, and Development
Edited by Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
Power and Politics at the Colonial Seaside
Leisure in British Hong Kong
Shuk-Wah Poon
British Engagement with Japan, 1854–1922
The Origins and Course of an Unlikely Alliance
Antony Best
For a full list of available titles please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-
Studies-in-the-Modern-History-of-Asia/book-series/MODHISTASIA
First published 2022
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz
Bandeira; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira to be identied as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.
com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-
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explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-20733-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-20734-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-26497-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972
Typeset in Times New Roman
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
List of gures vii
Author bios ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 1
IVAN SABLIN AND EGAS MONIZ BANDEIRA
1 The birth of Anfu China, East Asia’s rst party-state:
Toward a constitutional dictatorship of the gentry,
1916–1918 26
ERNEST MING-TAK LEUNG
2 The Communist International: A party of parties
confronting interwar internationalisms, 1920–1925 60
VSEVOLOD KRITSKIY
3The Left Opposition and the practices of parliamentar-
ianism within the Bolshevik Party, 1923–1924 85
ALEXANDER V. REZNIK
4 Importing and exporting ideas of nationalism and
state-building: The experience of Turkey’s Republican
People’s Party, 1923–1950 107
PAUL KUBICEK
5 Competing with the marketplace: The Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT)’s Department of Propaganda
and its political publishing program, 1924–1937 127
CHRISTOPHER A. REED
6 Aspirations for a mass political party in prewar imperial
Japan: Conicting visions of national mobilization 151
BRUCE GROVER AND EGAS MONIZ BANDEIRA
7 Constitution-making in the informal Soviet empire in
Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Inner Asia, 1945–1955 178
IVAN SABLIN
8 Work teams, leading small groups, and the making of
modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 223
LONG YANG
9 From revolutionary comrades to “mothers of the
nation”: The Workers’ Party of Korea’s approach
to the role of women in the 1950s–1960s 250
NATALIA MATVEEVA
10 The dawn before one-party dominance: South Korea’s
road to party politics under the Supreme Council for
National Reconstruction, 1961–1963 270
KYONGHEE LEE
11 The Yugoslav federation and the concept of one ruling
party in its nal hour 296
JURE GAŠPARIČ
12 The vanguard’s changing tempo: Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia and government institutions,
1921–1990 316
ADÉLA GJURIČOVÁ
Index 336
vi Contents
Figures
1.1 Organisation Chart of the Anfu Club 48
7.1 A meeting of the constitutional commission under the
presidency of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej during the
Thirteenth Session of the Grand National Assembly,
Bucharest, between September 22 and 24, 1952 (Fototeca
online a comunismului românesc, Photograph #IA172,
172/1952) 188
7.2 “Housewives of Shanghai joyfully welcomed the publication
of the draft constitution of the PRC,” 1954 (Kitai, No. 7,
1954, p. 3) 194
7.3 The Second National Congress of the Party of Labor of
Albania, Tirana, April 10–14, 1950 (Novaia Albaniia, No.
32–33, April–May 1950, front matter) 205
7.4 The Second Party Conference of the Socialist Unity Party,
Berlin, July 10, 1952. Front row, left to right: Walter Ulbricht,
Wilhelm Pieck, and Otto Grotewohl (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-
15410-0097/CC-BY-SA 3.0) 206
7.5 Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (center) and Petru Groza (left)
voting for the Constitution of Romania at the Thirteenth
Session of the Grand National Assembly, September 24,
1952 (Fototeca online a comunismului românesc, Photograph
#IA174, 174/1952) 208
7.6 Mátyás Rákosi and his wife Fenia Fedorovna Kornilova
voting in the local council election, Budapest, October 22,
1950 (Fortepan #126963/Bauer Sándor, CC BY-SA 3.0) 209
7.7 Elections to the People’s Assembly and district people’s
councils of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, December 18,
1949 (State Central Museum of Contemporary History of
Russia (GTsMSIR) 27126/163) 210
7.8 Czechoslovak Ambassador to China František Komzala
giving a speech before the performance of the Czechoslovak
circus troupe, Beijing, December 1953. Portraits, left to right:
Georgii Maksimilianovich Malenkov, Antonín Zápotocký,
and Mao Zedong (Kitai, No. 1, 1954, p. 39) 211
7.9 Delegation of the USSR Supreme Soviet at the session of
the State Assembly of the Hungarian People’s Republic,
November 1955. Mátyás Rákosi is in the front on the right
(GTsMSIR 31111/15) 212
viii Figures
Author bios
Jure Gašparič is a senior research associate at the Institute of Contemporary
History in Ljubljana and formerly director of the Institute and state
secretary for science at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. In
his research, he focuses on Slovenian and Yugoslavian political history
since the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire and the history of political
parties and representative systems. Gašparič is a member of the board
of directors of the European Information and Research Network on
Parliamentary History (EuParl.net) and the editor of Prispevki za novejšo
zgodovino/Contributions to Contemporary History. His recent publications
include Izza parlamenta: Zakulisje jugoslovanske skupščine 1919–1941
[Behind the parliament: Backstage of the Yugoslav Assembly, 1919–1941]
(Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2015).
Adéla Gjuričová (0000-0002-9035-1167) is a senior researcher at the Institute
of Contemporary History at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. In
her research, she focuses on politics and society during the late socialist
era, the 1989 revolutions, and post-communist transformations in
Central Europe. She is the head of the Institute’s Political History
Department and of the Working Group on Parliaments in Transition.
Currently, she leads the Project “City as a Laboratory of Change” within
Strategy AV21 of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Most recently, she co-
authored Návrat parlamentu: Češi a Slováci ve Federálním shromáždění
1989–1992 [The Return of parliament: The Czechs and Slovaks in the
Federal Assembly, 1989–1992] (Prague: Argo – ÚSD AV ČR, 2018).
Bruce Grover is a doctoral candidate at Heidelberg University, Germany. He
received an MA in the History of the Middle East from the School of
Oriental and African Studies, London. He researches left and right
political thought in modern Japan and its global convergences. He is
currently completing a dissertation analyzing continuities in political and
economic ethics from the Meiji to Shōwa periods among leading reformist
total war planners within the military and bureaucracy. The dissertation
also deals with the collaboration of progressive labor leaders and labor
educators with reformist nationalists and ultimately argues that the
reformist social ideals and aspirations for an alternative to liberalism
associated with interwar total war planning in Japan was formed to a
signicant degree before the First World War.
Vsevolod Kritskiy (0000-0002-9527-0788) has a PhD in International History
from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in
Geneva, Switzerland. He received the Pierre du Bois prize for his
dissertation titled “Reorienting the nation: Perspectives from Soviet
Central Asia in the 1920s.” He studied the history of international
communism during the interwar period as a postdoctoral researcher at
the University of Amsterdam within the framework of the Early PostDoc.
Mobility fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He is
currently working on international trade union politics and just transition
as a project manager at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung ofce in Geneva.
Paul Kubicek (0000-0002-1601-2319) is a professor of Political Science and
Director of the International Studies Program at Oakland University
in Rochester, Michigan. He has also taught at Koç University,
Boğaziçi University, and Antalya Bilim University in Turkey. His
research on Turkey has been published in numerous journals,
including Democratization, Political Studies, and World Affairs. He
is the editor of Turkish Studies.
Kyonghee Lee is a member of the Research Group “Entangled
Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China and
Mongolia, 1905–2005,” sponsored by the European Research Council
(ERC) at Heidelberg University. She has a previous academic background
in philosophy and sinology and work experience in publishing and
knowledge management. She defended her doctoral thesis on the concept
and institution of community compact in East Asia in 2022.
Ernest Ming-tak Leung is a PhD candidate at the Department of Japanese
Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He gained his BA in
History and French from the University of Hong Kong and an MPhil in
Japanese Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He
currently focuses on the history of economic planning in East Asia
between 1920 and 1966.
Natalia Matveeva holds a PhD in Korean history from SOAS, University of
London and is currently a Researcher at the Department of Korea and
Mongolia of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of
Sciences, in Moscow. Her research focuses on the early stages of nation-
building in North and South Korea, assessing and comparing the
economic, political, and social development of the two countries in the
broader regional and international historical context.
x Author bios
Egas Moniz Bandeira (0000-0002-8563-0380) is a researcher at Friedrich-
Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, where he works as a
member of the project “Writing History with China—Chinese Concepts in
Transnational Historiography,” and an afliate researcher at the Max Planck
Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt, Germany, where
he is a member of a comparative research project on the emergence of
modern legal practices in Japan, China, and the Ottoman Empire. After
studying Law and East Asian Studies at Heidelberg University, he completed
his PhD program at Heidelberg and Tohoku Universities with a dissertation
on late Qing constitutional history. His main research interest is global
intellectual history with a focus on its refractions in modern East Asia. His
work has been published in The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Global
Intellectual History, the Journal of Eurasian Studies, and others. He also co-
edited Planting Parliaments in Eurasia, 1850–1950: Concepts, Practices, and
Mythologies (London: Routledge, 2021).
Christopher A. Reed received his PhD from the University of California in
1996. Currently, he teaches modern Chinese and East Asian history at the
Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. The focus of his research is
modern Chinese print culture, print capitalism, and print communism.
He is best-known for his book Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese print
capitalism, 1876–1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004) but
has recently published on a wide range of Chinese print culture topics in
the twentieth century, including “From text(s) to image(s): Maoist-era
texts and their inuences on six oil paintings (1957–79),” in Redening
propaganda in modern China: The Mao Era and its legacies, ed. by James
Farley and Matthew D. Johnson (London: Routledge, 2021).
Alexander V. Reznik holds a PhD in Russian History. He is an associate
professor (docent) at the Department of History, HSE University,
Saint Petersburg. His most recent publications include the anthology
L. D. Trotskii: pro et contra (two editions in Russian, published in 2016
and 2017), the monograph Trotsky and the comrades: The left opposition and
political culture of the RCP(b), 1923–1924 (two editions in Russian,
published in 2017 and 2018 by European University at Saint Petersburg
Press), as well as articles in Kritika, Canadian-American Slavic Studies,
Historical Materialism, and other journals. His current research project is
devoted to political culture, communication, images, and languages of the
Russian Civil War in general and the cult of leaders in particular.
Ivan Sablin (0000-0002-6706-4223) leads the Research Group “Entangled
Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China and
Mongolia, 1905–2005,” sponsored by the European Research Council
(ERC), at Heidelberg University. His research interests include the history
of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, with special attention to Siberia
and the Russian Far East, and global intellectual history. He is the author
Author bios xi
of two monographs – Governing Post-Imperial Siberia and Mongolia,
1911–1924: Buddhism, Socialism and Nationalism in State and Autonomy
Building (London: Routledge, 2016) and The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Far
Eastern Republic, 1905–1922: Nationalisms, Imperialisms, and Regionalisms
in and After the Russian Empire (London: Routledge, 2018) – and research
articles in Slavic Review, Europe-Asia Studies, Nationalities Papers, and other
journals. He also co-edited Planting Parliaments in Eurasia, 1850–1950:
Concepts, Practices, and Mythologies (London: Routledge, 2021).
Long Yang is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Freiburg. He is
writing a book on how the personalization of authority shaped the
Maoist bureaucracy and is working with his colleagues on the politics of
information and misinformation in twentieth-century China.
xii Author bios
Acknowledgments
This volume was prepared as part of the project “ENTPAR: Entangled
Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China and
Mongolia, 1905–2005,” which received funding from the European Research
Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation program (grant agreement no. 755504). Most of the chapters were
presented at the Workshop “The Vanguard of Class and Nation: Parties as
Governments in Eurasia, 1920s–1990s,” hosted by Heidelberg University on
April 12–13, 2021. The editors would also like to thank Alexandra Eremia and
Vincent Conway for their assistance with preparing the index to this volume.
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards
to Governments
Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
Over the course of the twentieth century, a broad array of parties as orga-
nizations of a new type took over state functions and replaced state in-
stitutions on the territories of the former Ottoman, Qing, Russian, and
Habsburg Empires. In the context of roughly simultaneous imperial and
postimperial transformations, organizations such as the Committee for
Union and Progress (CUP) in the Ottoman Empire (one-party regime since
1913), the Anfu Club in China (parliamentary majority since 1918), and the
Bolshevik Party in Russia (in control of parts of the former empire since
1918), not only took over government power but merged with government
itself. Disillusioned with the outcomes of previous constitutional and par-
liamentary reforms, these parties justied the takeovers with slogans and
programs of controlled or supervised economic and social development.
Inheriting the previous imperial diversities, they furthermore took over the
role of mediators between the various social and ethnic groups in the re-
spective territories. In this respect, the parties appropriated some of the
functions which dynastic and then constitutional and parliamentary regimes
had ostensibly failed to perform. In a signicant counterexample, in spite of
prominent aspirations, no one-party regime emerged in Japan, for there the
constitutional monarchy had survived the empire’s transformation to a
major industrialized imperialist power.
For most of the twentieth century, one-party and single-party regimes –
regimes led by dominant or single parties in the absence of electoral
competition (Greene 2010, 809–10; Meng 2021, 1) – thrived on both sides
of the Cold War and in some of the non-aligned states. The ideologies of
the ruling parties relied on nationalist and socialist discourses, or, quite
often, their combination. Even though most of the one-party regimes were
based on competing ideologies of state socialism and extreme nationalism,
they demonstrated structural similarities on several levels, including their
appeals to the masses dened in national or class terms. Whereas several
state socialist single-party regimes collapsed in 1989–1991 (Albania,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland,
Romania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia), some of the communist
parties have continued to rule without electoral competition (China, Laos,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-1
North Korea, and Vietnam). Furthermore, new parties managed to es-
tablish controlled political regimes across Eurasia, for instance, in Russia
and Turkey.
Bringing together twelve case studies of one-party regimes from the inter-
connected Eurasian contexts, including Eastern Europe, West and East Asia,
this volume explores the performance of these (in most cases) extraconstitu-
tional organizations as governments and their approaches to development in
global and comparative contexts. It pays special attention to nation-building
through the party (including its multiethnic versions), to institutions (both
constitutional and extraconstitutional), and to the global and comparative
aspects of one-party regimes. The volume addresses the geneses of one-party
regimes, the roles of socialism and nationalism in the parties’ approaches to
development and state-building, as well as the pedagogical and tutelary as-
pirations of the ruling parties in China, Czechoslovakia, Japan, Korea, the
Soviet Union, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and other postimperial and postcolonial
polities. Hence, by revisiting the dynamics of the transition from empire via
constitutionalism to single-party government, and by exploring the internal
and external dynamics of single-party regimes after their establishment, the
volume helps to more precisely locate this type of regime within the con-
temporary world’s political landscape.
Historians have predominantly studied one-party regimes and the parties
at the helm within the respective national contexts (Ciddi 2009; Gill 1994;
Zheng 2009), paying particular attention to leaders (Apor et al. 2004;
Hanioğlu 2017; Khlevniuk 2015; Taylor 2009; Terrill 1999) and violence
under one-party regimes (Conquest 2008; Kaplonski 2014; Lankov 2002;
Naimark 2016; Yan and Gao 1996). Whereas comparative outlooks, as well
as theoretical and institutional studies of one-party regimes have been
common in political science (Hess 2013; Magaloni and Kricheli 2010;
Meng 2021; Rothman 1967; Swain 2011), historians have rarely paid at-
tention to the mechanics of the one-party regimes and the fusion of parties
with governments. There have nevertheless been studies, both involving
diachronous comparisons within the same national contexts (Ayan 2010),
and taking transnational and global perspectives, but mainly on communist
parties (Bergien and Gieseke 2018; Feliu and Brichs 2019; McAdams 2017;
Pons and Smith 2017; Naimark et al. 2017). Broader comparisons, involving
nationalist (and fascist) and state socialist regimes and their institutions have
been especially rare (Jessen and Richter 2011; Paxton 1998).
Political parties entered the global stage in the nineteenth–early twentieth
century, together with the spread of parliamentarism. The turn toward
constitutions and parliamentary institutions was not limited to Western
Europe and the Americas. Japan’s adoption of a constitution and con-
vocation of the Imperial Diet in 1889/90 crowned its process of political
reforms, which had been initiated in the middle of the century through the
clash with the Western imperialist powers, and turned the country into a
major imperialist power. Thereafter, Japan developed into a powerful point
2 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
of reference throughout the globe (Colley 2021). Between around 1905 and
1910, in the wake of Russia’s military defeat against Japan, the ruling elites
and inuential oppositional circles of several large Eurasian empires en-
gaged in a roughly concomitant effort to introduce constitutions and par-
liamentary institutions (Kurzman 2008, Moniz Bandeira 2017). The Russian
Revolution of 1905–1907 took a constitutional turn and resulted in the
formation of the imperial parliament, the State Duma, in 1905/1906. The
events in Russia contributed to the Persian Constitutional Revolution of
1906. Two years later, in 1908, the Young Turk Revolution reinstated the
Ottoman Constitution of 1876. The government of the Qing Empire, trying
to avoid the difculties faced by Russia and Persia, decided to follow suit
after a long reform period of “constitutional preparation,” but published an
outline of a constitution in 1908 and convened preliminary assemblies
thought to be precursors to the eventual imperial assembly.
Given that these Eurasian constitutions and parliaments were established
as answers to existential crises, they were predominantly, although far from
exclusively, aimed at strengthening the state or reorganizing it from the
perspective of the political elites (Sablin and Moniz Bandeira 2021, 3–4).
Constitutions and parliaments were deemed to be the key to transform
dynastic regimes into nation-states (Banerjee 2017; Moniz Bandeira 2022) or
more regulated and cohesive empire-states (Stoler 2009, 49); they helped to
promote nationalism (both inclusionary and exclusionary), imperialism, and
militarism (Grotke and Prutsch 2014). Parliamentary institutions were es-
tablished as political talent pools and as communication avenues between
governments and populations; they served as avenues for political mobili-
zation as well as for the management of imperial diversities.
In these imperial contexts, political parties were only begrudgingly ac-
cepted and struggled to nd their place in the new constitutional systems. In
Eurasia, imperial ofcials and conservative members of the public (who
often cited Western critics of political parties and, by extension, of parlia-
mentarism) tended to view political parties and factionalism as divisive and
ultimately detrimental to their cause of national strengthening (Sablin 2020,
266–68). As Robert A. Scalapino (1962, 68) writes on the Japanese case, the
emerging parties at the time of the Meiji Constitution’s promulgation “still
existed in the political demimonde.” Stringent anti-factionalist laws cur-
tailed their action, the government did not acknowledge their inevitability,
and they had not yet any political or legal signicance. However, the
Japanese case is peculiar among those covered in this volume in so far as the
new constitution promulgated in 1889 remained in force for several decades
to come and witnessed Japan’s economic growth and rise as an expansive
imperialist power. In this context, the political parties which had evolved
since the 1880s came to play a signicant role, and even laid the groundwork
for the country’s postwar party system (Scalapino 1962, 68).
Parties were often successors to and recongurations of various pre-
existing forms of political associations. By 1906, when the Qing Court
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 3
announced its intention to prepare for constitutional government, con-
stitutionalist intellectuals increasingly conceived of themselves as a “party”
united not by personal bonds like the factions of old, but by ideas and an
impersonal, lasting relationship to the “nation” (Blitstein 2018, 177–81, on
the concept of nation in China see Matten 2012). Consequently, they called
for the development of institutionalized parties as an element of political
modernity (Zhu 2002; Chen 2013). Yet, they tended to conceptualize parties
less as pathways to channel particularist interests than as vehicles to increase
societal cohesion and train political elites (Zhu 2002, 96). Like all other
elements of political modernization, the need for parties was interpreted in
light of the country’s political and economic weakness and the ambition to
overcome its internal and external problems. One pseudonymous essay in
the Sein min choong bou (Xinmin congbao 新民叢報), a magazine edited in
Yokohama by the paramount reformist intellectual Liang Qichao 梁啓超, is
illustrative in this respect (Yu zhi 1906). Having dramatically begun with the
statement that China’s very existence depended on the development of po-
litical parties, the essay reected on the relationship between Chinese re-
formers and revolutionaries, and extensively discussed the cases of Russia
and Japan. It narrated that after violently suppressing political parties, the
Japanese government had had to accept parties as a political fact and ac-
knowledge their value for the implementation of constitutional politics,
pointing to a coming parallel development in China (Yu zhi 1906, 13–14; see
also Scalapino 1962, 146–199). The author pondered that a balance between
progressives and conservatives was necessary and stressed the positive
function of politicians outside of government. Thereby, he saw two main
functions of political parties, namely controlling the government and
guiding the people. Yet, while he vociferously criticized the current Qing
government as utterly corrupt, the writer emphasized the common interest
of the constitutional state served by the parties within it, and the function of
the parties to overcome individualism. Concluding his essay by stating that
the state was “the subject and the individuals and factions” were “all the
objects of the state,” the author again adduced the example of Japan. He
was impressed that, as soon as the wars against China (1894/95) and Russia
(1904/05) erupted, all Japanese parties immediately set aside their differ-
ences. Despite still having a multiparty conguration in mind, the ex-
planation of the second function of parties as vanguards of political
development pointed toward what would become one of the main features
of single-party regimes in Eurasia, and which Liang Qichao himself would
forcefully argue for in the early years of the Republic:
Now, as a country’s political thought is not immediately popularized in
the whole country, it needs to rely on visionaries (xianjuezhe 先覺者) to
promote it. Only then will self-aware citizens arise. There is nobody but
political parties to nurture this political thought and to gather these
visionary gentlemen. Therefore, political parties are truly the morning
4 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
stars (shuxing 曙星) of a society’s rst enlightenment, and the harbingers
(xianhe 先河) of constitutional politics.
(Yu zhi 1906, 17)
These words appeared in a paper located in Japan, where thousands of Qing
students and intellectuals across the political spectrum were vying to shape
China’s political future. In fact, many parties in Eurasia emerged as non-
parliamentary, underground or émigré, organizations ahead of parliaments.
Such were the CUP in the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Social Democratic
Labor Party (RSDLP), and the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR) in
the Russian Empire, as well as the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui 同
盟會), the predecessor of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang,
Kuomintang, or KMT), founded in Tokyo in 1905. Although parlia-
mentarism was on their agenda, the members of these organizations did not
shun away from anti-parliamentary considerations. The debates at the
Second Congress of the RSDLP, which took place in Brussels and London
in the summer of 1903, and those around it are illustrative in this regard.
After the members of the Jewish Labor Bund departed the Congress out of
protest, the remaining delegates adopted a program of two parts,
“minimum” and “maximum.” The maximum part set socialist revolution as
the Party’s ultimate goal and the dictatorship of the proletariat as its pre-
requisite. The minimum part aimed at establishing a democratic republic in
Russia and featured inter alia the creation of a parliament. Georgii
Valentinovich Plekhanov, one of the rst Russian Marxists and later a
leader of the Menshevik faction, voiced a rather cynical opinion on par-
liament during the debates.
If, in an impulse of revolutionary enthusiasm, the people had elected a
very good parliament – a kind of chambre introuvable [unobtainable
chamber] – we [the Social Democrats] should try to make it a long
parliament, and if the elections had failed, we should try to disperse it
not in two years but, if possible, in two weeks.
(Shanshiev 1959, 182)
These words evoked protests from some of those present and other imperial
intellectuals. Although Plekhanov eventually changed his position and
called for the RSDLP’s participation in the State Duma elections, the
Ukrainian legal scholar Bohdan (Fedir) Oleksandrovich Kistiakovs’kii later
dismissed such a position as “monstrous” and emblematic of the low level of
the Russian intelligentsia’s legal consciousness (Kistiakovskii 1916, 558–59).
Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, who would come to power at the helm of the
RSDLP’s radical Bolshevik faction, by contrast, applauded Plekhanov’s
1903 statement and quoted it, for instance, when justifying Red Terror in
late 1917 (Lenin 1974, 185).
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 5
The activities of the non-parliamentary parties and their members in-
volved interactions in imperial borderlands, for instance, between Russia
and Iran, and across the whole of Eurasia (Deutschmann 2013; Harper
2021). When an attempt at political reforms was botched in the Qing Empire
in 1898, some of its intellectual leaders, including the aforementioned Liang
Qichao and his preceptor Kang Youwei 康有爲, ed to Japan. For them, the
emerging parties of the Qing Empire were not limited to political borders,
but transcontinental associations resting on a non-territorial Chinese nation
(Blitstein 2018, 181). Kang travelled the world to promote his ideas, espe-
cially among Chinese diaspora communities. In Mexico, whither he intended
to bring Chinese immigrants to build a “New China,” he met with President
Porfírio Díaz, whom he described as an “autocratic” ruler whose dictatorial
government was necessary to develop the nation, a strand of thought which
had also been quite widespread in nineteenth century Latin America
(Blitstein 2016, 241–43). Liang, too, was a persona non grata on Qing ter-
ritory, but nonetheless came to decisively shape the late Qing constitutional
reforms. His Political Information Society (Zhengwenshe 政聞社) was
founded in Japan in 1907 and moved its headquarters to Shanghai in 1908.
Although it was soon disbanded by the Qing government, it became one
of the predecessors of the the Qing Empire’s rst ofcially recognized po-
litical party, the Association of Friends of Constitutionalism (Xianyouhui
憲友會), which was founded in summer 1911.
Kang’s globe-trotting activity rivalled with that of the revolutionary leader
and founder of the Revolutionary Alliance, Sun Yat-sen 孫逸仙. When vis-
iting Europe in 1905, Sun met Belgian socialist leaders Émile Vandervelde and
Camille Huysmans and tried to join the Second International (Spooner 2011).
A year later, in 1906, Sun met Grigorii Andreevich Gershuni, one of the PSR’s
founders, in Japan and discussed the forms of underground political struggle
in person with him (Sablin 2018, 48). Revolutionary leaders like Sun, the
Philippine Mariano Ponce, and the Vietnamese Phan Bội Châu and Phan
Châu Trinh built far-reaching Pan-Asian networks (Bui 2012; CuUnjieng
Aboitiz 2020). Inspired by both Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen, political as-
sociations connected to Phan Bội Châu, like the Modernization Association
and the Restoration Association, fought against French colonialism in
Vietnam, rst promoting constitutional monarchism and later taking in-
spiration in the Republic of China (Bui 2012).
Although most of such organizations became involved in late imperial
and revolutionary parliamentary institutions, the brief global parliamentary
moment of the 1900s–1910s soon gave way to a new form of political or-
ganization, namely the one-party dictatorship. Although the rst one-party
regime had emerged elsewhere, with Liberia’s True Whig Party remaining in
power between 1878 and 1980 (Meng 2021, 7), it was in postimperial Eurasia
that such regimes became especially widespread.
The rst Eurasian one-party regime was established by the CUP in
the Ottoman Empire. The CUP, which started as a secret revolutionary
6 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
organization, played a key role in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and
the reestablishment of the constitutional regime and the imperial parliament.
As argued by Ferdan Ergut, the transition from indirect to direct rule was
especially important for the CUP leadership, and after the 1908 Revolution
the main goal of the CUP regime was to eliminate the intermediary societal
forces (Ergut 2003). While the 1908 Revolution itself was dominated by a
model of a state as a provider of legal liberty and equality, state organicism –
the belief that a state acts like a natural organism – came to play an im-
portant role in the political thinking of the 1910s, elevating the power of the
political elite and rulers (Turnaoğlu 2017, 156–57). The CUP did not seek
unrestricted control of the government immediately after the Revolution,
rst acting as a competitive political party (Ergut 2003, 53, 59). However, it
did not manage to increase its popularity and temporarily lost power in 1912
(Zürcher 2010, 93). In the context of the Balkan crisis of late 1912, the CUP
organized prowar mass rallies and launched a massive propaganda cam-
paign against the government. Alleging that they were “saving the state”
(Zürcher 2010, 117), the CUP staged a coup on January 23, 1913. Later the
same year, it launched a harsh campaign against opposition, including so-
cialists and the ulema, and established total control of the bureaucracy
(Hanioğlu 2008, 156–57, 159).
As noted by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, the CUP developed some features of a
mass party, including broad membership. At the same time, it avoided full
institutionalization, retaining conspirational qualities, and never formally
outlawed other parties and organizations. Initially, the CUP’s main objec-
tive was the preservation of the diverse Ottoman Empire, for which it
adopted a policy of inclusiveness. This made the Party’s platform essentially
conservative and also meant that it had no ethnic or class basis for mem-
bership. Furthermore, the vague notion of Ottomanism undermined the
Party’s internal cohesion. The CUP, however, became increasingly inu-
enced by Turkist ideas, with the difference between “Ottoman” and
“Turkish” becoming ever more blurred, which stimulated particularistic
movements on the peripheries (Hanioğlu 2008, 160–61, 166–67). During the
First World War, its leadership opted for a violent approach to imperial
diversity and organized mass violence, against the Armenians in the rst
place, as part of building a homogeneous Turkish nation in the hetero-
geneous imperial space (Kévorkian 2011; Kieser 2018; Suny 2017).
Simultaneously with the existence of the CUP regime, China saw a period
of political upheaval. The Qing government’s attempt at gradual constitu-
tional preparation was run over by the country’s rapid societal and political
development. In late 1911, a provincial troop mutiny set off a domino chain
of provinces falling off from the empire, eventually forcing the negotiated
abdication of the Emperor in early 1912 (Chen 2017). The newly established
Republic of China tried to build a political system in which the parliament
was of paramount political importance, under a provisional constitution
that took much inspiration from the constitution of the French Third
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 7
Republic. Suffrage was expanded from 0.39 to 10.5 percent of the popula-
tion (Chang 2007, 55, 80 91–96), and political parties proliferated, taking
center stage in the new system (Chang 1985; Wang 1988; Liu and Liu 2015,
45–51). The Revolutionary Alliance evolved into the KMT, while the late
Qing Association of Friends of Constitutionalism evolved into a number of
successor parties, most notably the Progressive Party (Jinbudang 進步黨).
Yet, the political practice of the young republic turned out quite different
from what had been hoped for. It was shaken by traumatizing political
strife, including the assassination of the KMT leader Song Jiaoren 宋敎仁 in
March 1913, possibly at the behest of President Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 (Yao
2008). In 1914, Yuan, a leading gure of the late Qing reforms who had
negotiated the Emperor’s abdication and secured considerable continuity
between the Qing Empire and the Republic, disbanded the parliament and
took steps to consolidate his own power. After passing a new constitutional
compact and creating a new advisory council acting as his private con-
sultative chamber, he eventually attempted to establish the Empire of China
with himself as Emperor (Moniz Bandeira 2021, 164–72). Encountering
unsurmountable resistance to this move, Yuan was forced to abdicate and
died shortly thereafter.
Yuan’s death, in principle, meant a return to the constitutional system of
1912–1913 – but not for long. The resulting power grab of 1916–1917, again,
gave pluralist party politics a bad name. A year later, as a reaction to the
perceived chaos, China saw another short-lived attempt at monarchic re-
storation, this time a coup trying to reestablish the Qing dynasty with
Emperor Puyi at the helm. In the wake of these events, a new and hitherto
understudied force gained prominence in Chinese politics: the Anfu Club,
which appropriated the institutional arrangements laid down by the erst-
while Progressive Party and remained in power between 1918 and 1920.
Whereas it had been judged in overwhelmingly negative ways in historio-
graphy, Ernest Ming-tak Leung (Chapter 1) uncovers its historical sig-
nicance as East Asia’s rst de facto one-party developmentalist regime.
Relying on rarely used and newly discovered sources, Leung offers a revision
of the dominant narrative by addressing the birth, life, and death of the
“Progressive–Anfu System.” Not unlike the Ottoman Empire, organic state
theory had gained a prominent place in Chinese political thought since the
last years of the Qing Empire. Shaped by this intellectual trend, the Anfu
leaders, who were themselves mostly educated at prestigious institutions
abroad, envisioned a societal order in which the old mandarin-literati class
would take the reins of the state and become an industrializing elite. The
Club also set out to change the constitutional structure of the state, coming
to propose an ultimately unsuccessful bill to reform the Senate, which would
have turned the institution into East Asia’s rst corporatist chamber. Due to
its secrecy, the Anfu Club was barely visible to the outside as a political
party at the time, but in fact developed a sophisticated corporatist party
structure, which it was keen to expand to the provinces. Yet, due to its own
8 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
mistakes as well as to external factors, the Anfu regime remained a rather
short episode in Chinese history, being toppled in 1920.
At roughly the same time, an organization of a different kind managed to
erect a more long-lasting single-party regime in the former Russian Empire.
The Bolshevik Party, which emerged as a separate organization from the
RSDLP’s eponymou faction, came to power in Petrograd on October 25–26,
1917, as part of a radical coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionary
Party, formerly a faction of the PSR. The coalition proved short-lived, and
since 1918, the Bolsheviks controlled parts of the former empire as a single
party. By that time, Lenin had developed a dynamic, exible approach to
party-building. As argued by Paul Le Blanc (2015, x), “the political program
of revolutionary Marxism and the living movement and struggles of the
working class” were the two things of fundamental importance for Lenin,
and the function of the revolutionary party was to bring the two together.
He sought to build a Russia-wide party, integrated into an international
socialist movement, whose members worked to realize this dual commit-
ment. In organizational terms, the theme of class leadership was at the
center. As summarized by Lars T. Lih (2011, 14–15), this theme had two
levels: leadership by the class – that is the proletariat’s leadership of the
whole people – and the party’s leadership of the proletariat, that is, its role
as the “vanguard” of conscious revolutionaries.
Over the course of the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), the Bolshevik
Party consolidated its regime in most of the remaining imperial territory and
became the center of a new imperial formation, the Soviet Union (Suny and
Martin 2001). During its rst decade in power, the Party developed from a
small disciplined organization into a hierarchical mass organization, which
fully controlled the government and most spheres of public life. The de-
velopments in the Soviet Union were projected onto the international level,
with world revolution, both in its social and anticolonial dimensions, ex-
pected to unfold along the Bolshevik path (Sablin 2021).
At the same time, Lenin argued that the “vanguard” and its course of
action had to be context-specic:
To seek out, investigate, predict, and grasp that which is nationally
specic and nationally distinctive, in the concrete manner in which each
country should tackle a single international task: victory over oppor-
tunism and Left doctrinairism within the working-class movement; the
overthrow of the bourgeoisie; the establishment of a Soviet republic and
a proletarian dictatorship – such is the basic task in the historical period
that all the advanced countries (and not they alone) are going through.
The chief thing – though, of course, far from everything – the chief
thing, has already been achieved: the vanguard of the working class has
been won over, has ranged itself on the side of Soviet government and
against parliamentarianism, on the side of the dictatorship of the
proletariat and against bourgeois democracy.
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 9
[…] Victory cannot be won with a vanguard alone. To throw only the
vanguard into the decisive battle, before the entire class, the broad
masses, have taken up a position either of direct support for the vanguard,
or at least of sympathetic neutrality towards it and of precluded support
for the enemy, would be, not merely foolish but criminal. […]
The immediate objective of the class-conscious vanguard of the inter-
national working-class movement, i.e., the Communist parties, groups
and trends, is to be able to lead the broad masses (who are still, for the
most part, apathetic, inert, dormant and convention-ridden) to their
new position, or, rather, to be able to lead, not only their own party but
also these masses in their advance and transition to the new position
(Lenin 1920).
Vsevolod Kritskiy (Chapter 2) analyzes the institutional aspects of the
Bolsheviks’ approach to world revolution, focusing on the early years of the
Communist International (Comintern) in the context of interwar inter-
nationalisms. The Bolsheviks sought to control the Comintern’s proceed-
ings, opposing those who preferred a more democratic structure for the
organization. While the Comintern was supposed to facilitate the fusion of
national communist parties with the respective governments, the re-
conguration of the international system after the First World War gave it
an opportunity to stake a claim on the system itself, replacing it with a
party-of-parties. Kritskiy explores these processes of capture – by the
Bolsheviks of the Comintern and by the Comintern of the international
system – in the context of the radical left’s competition with the liberal
internationalism of the League of Nations and the moderate socialist in-
ternationalism of the remnants of the Second International, which con-
solidated into the Labour and Socialist International in 1923. Kritskiy
argues that the lack of unity on the left at the international level facilitated
the growth and establishment of the liberal system of international relations.
For most of the 1920s, there was also a lack of unity within the
Bolshevik Party itself, which Alexander V. Reznik (Chapter 3) explores in
his study of the discourses and practices of “democracy” and “parlia-
mentarianism” within the Party in 1923 and 1924. Rejecting the main-
stream notion of mere factional “struggle for power” among the higher
echelons of the Soviet party-state, he analyzes the actual political practices
of both the leaders and rank-and-le party members during open political
contests. Although the Bolsheviks were famous for their vocal rejection of
(bourgeois) parliamentarianism and democracy, they continuously argued for
“workers’ democracy.” Reznik argues that the controversies in 1923 and 1924
over the meaning of “democracy” are crucial for understanding the limits of
political action and reforms, as they need to be put into the context of the
actual practicing of “intraparty democracy,” a process that included long,
active debates in press and at assemblies, elections of different bodies,
10 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
petitioning and protesting cases of unsatisfactory results, and so on. His
analysis of the Left Opposition’s rhetorical approaches to intraparty democ-
racy reveals their complex ideological and organizational nature, weakening
the Opposition’s claims against “bureaucratization.”
The 1920s and 1930s witnessed the spread of one-party regimes across the
whole Eurasian continent. With the exception of the Soviet Union,
1
na-
tionalism became the ideological foundation of the absolute majority of one-
party regimes during this period. In most Western European cases, single-
party regimes were based on the extreme nationalist ideologies of fascism
(for instance, in Italy and Spain) and Nazism (in Germany). In the post-
imperial settings of Turkey and China, vernacular versions of nationalism,
associated with the mythologized founding fathers of the modern nations,
Kemal Atatürk and Sun Yat-sen respectively, became the main ideological
underpinnings of controlled state-building and developmentalism.
Paul Kubicek (Chapter 4) locates the experience of Turkey’s Republican
People’s Party (CHP) as a single party in 1923–1950 within the global
context by focusing on the historical and intellectual roots of the CHP, its
praxis, and its performance as a model for other single-party regimes.
Kubicek discusses the envisioned tutelary role for the Party, which both
identied with and sought to serve the “general will” in terms of nation-
building and modernization. While the CHP shared some features with the
CUP, the main inspiration for much of its guiding philosophy, featuring
republicanism, nationalism, secularism, and populism, came from Western
sources. The CHP, which served as an appendage to the state, sought to
develop a unifying national identity, one that denied any class, ethnic, or
sectarian divisions, and made the existence of alternative parties unneeded
for the unity of the people. Although the CHP’s regime was celebrated as a
success, its Western origins and orientation limited its ability to serve as a
model for non-Western development.
In China, the KMT established control over most of the country in
1927–1928 and remained the dominant force until the Japanese invasion of
1937. Christopher A. Reed (Chapter 5) explores the themes of “the peda-
gogical state” and nation-building through the party through the KMT’s
propaganda establishment and its political publishing program. Examining
propaganda as a key tool in modern party- and state-building processes,
Reed explores how the borrowing from the Soviet “propaganda state” via
the Comintern led to the emergence of the KMT’s own “propaganda state,”
in which the Party’s Department of Propaganda performed as a propaganda
ministry, supporting the KMT’s more general effort to take over state
functions. Drawing on internal Party documents as well as on published
contemporary sources, Reed focuses on the issues of party-state organiza-
tion, jurisdiction, inner party dynamics, message control, and mobilization
in the late 1920s and 1930s.
Some of the single and dominant parties in Eurasia opted for formalizing
their status in the legal documents of the respective states. The KMT became
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 11
the rst ruling party to formally include itself and its own “political tu-
telage” over the country’s development in the Provisional Constitution of
1931 (Hsia 1931). The Italian National Fascist Party (PNF) was formally
subordinate to the state, but in practice it became a massive bureaucracy
which played an important role in the state architecture, with Party mem-
bership becoming compulsory for teachers and state employees after 1933
(Whittam 1995, 54). The Bolshevik Party was mentioned in the Soviet
Constitution of 1936 (Trainin 1940, 188), but was never formally made the
only legal party, unlike the National Socialist German Workers’ Party
(NSDAP) in Germany. When working on the new constitution and con-
sulting foreign legal documents, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, who chaired the
drafting committee, underlined the opening sentence of the Nazi Law
against the Foundation of New Parties of July 14, 1933, which read “In
Germany, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party exists as the only
political party,” and wrote “ha-ha” on the margin.
2
One can only speculate
about the meaning of this reaction. At the time when the new Soviet con-
stitution was being drafted, it was not yet clear if the new elections would be
contested, while it had never been formally illegal to form political parties
other than the Bolshevik (Communist) Party in the USSR. The Soviet leg-
islative elections of 1937 and all subsequent ones until 1989, however, were
uncontested (Hazard 1974; Velikanova 2021).
In some cases, dictatorial regimes and regimes based on nationalist ideolo-
gies, however, did not have a formal ruling party. The unchallenged National
Union of Portugal, for instance, was created as a “civil association” and “non-
party,” designed to restrain rather than mobilize the “public,” and it was not
mandatory for ofcials to join it (Gallagher 1990, 167). In Japan, the political
parties, which, from their troubled beginnings in the 1880s, had evolved to play
a considerable role in Japanese politics, declined amidst the rising militarism of
the 1930s (Berger 1977). Yet, they managed to maintain a foothold on power,
and the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei yokusankai 大政翼賛会,
IRAA), established in 1940, never quite became a mass political party.
Although most parliamentary leaders accepted posts connected to the IRAA in
the hope of regaining their inuence, the power struggles surrounding the new
organization eventually led it to focus less on political mobilization than on
public spiritual identication with the throne (Berger 1977, 326–329). Bruce
Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira (Chapter 6) discuss the ultimately frustrated
aspirations for the creation of a mass political party in Japan in the 1930s and
the 1940s, focusing on the “Alliance for a New Japan” (Shin Nihon dōmei 新日
本同盟), a group consisting of some of Japan’s most important bureaucrats,
and the writings of the magazine Ishin 維新 (“Restoration”), which brought
together many reform-minded military ofcers. Chapter 6 shows that, while
they did not put the role of the parliament as such into question, the focus of
these thinkers lay on representing the “will of the people” through the Diet
beyond liberal party politics, positioning Japan within the global trend toward
reconstruction of political systems. They envisioned a temporary tutelage of the
12 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
people with the terminal goal being the independent, critical awareness of
politics, and a rule through principle and culture rather than arbitrarily through
bureaucrats.
The Second World War did not mark the end of nationalist one-party
regimes, which thrived in many postcolonial settings, but state socialist one-
party regimes became especially widespread in Eurasia, thanks to the Soviet
efforts in exporting the model (Naimark 2019). Ivan Sablin (Chapter 7)
provides an overview of dependent constitution-making under one-party
regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Hungary, North Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia
during the rst decade after the Second World War. Relying on the concept
of the informal Soviet empire, he compares the adoption and authorship of
the constitutions, as well as their texts, and surveys the role of non-
constitutional institutions in political practices and in propaganda. Sablin
concludes that the standardization of governance in the informal Soviet
empire manifested itself in the constitutional documents only partially, while
nonconstitutional institutions, parties and leaders, as well as the involve-
ment of Soviet representatives in state-building, were especially prominent.
Shortly after the spread of one-party regimes in Eastern Europe, however, a
strong intellectual response to them emerged in the form of vernacular dis-
sident movements, which often had connections across borders. Here,
Milovan Djilas’s book The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System
(1957), which was published abroad while the author was incarcerated in
Yugoslavia, proved especially inuential. Djilas, who was a leading Yugoslav
Communist before becoming a erce critic of the Party (the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia), argued that a new class became dominant in the
state socialist countries, namely the class of privileged party bureaucracy.
Because this new class had not been formed as а part of the economic
and social life before it came to power, it could only be created in an
organization of а special type, distinguished by а special discipline based
on identical philosophic and ideological views of its members. А unity of
belief and iron discipline was necessary to overcome its weaknesses.
The roots of the new class were implanted in а special party, of the
Bolshevik type. Lenin was right in his view that his party was an
exception in the history of human society, although he did not suspect
that it would be the beginning of а new class.
[…]
This is not to say that the new party and the new class are identical. The
party, however, is the core of that class, and its base. It is very difcult,
perhaps impossible, to dene the limits of the new class and to identify
its members. The new class may be said to be made up of those who
have special privileges and economic preference because of the
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 13
administrative monopoly they hold.
(Djilas 1957, 39)
Djilas argued that the rise of the new class of party bureaucracy diminished
the role of party itself. The party transformed from a compact organization
full of initiative into the oligarchy of the new class.
The party makes the class, but the class grows as а result and uses the
party as а basis. The class grows stronger, while the party grows weaker;
this is the inescapable fate of every Communist party in power.
(Djilas 1957, 40)
Critical opinions of the realities of the one-party state socialist regimes were
articulated by members and leaders of the parties themselves. The most no-
table case was the attempted democratization and decentralization under-
taken by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia under the leadership of
Alexander Dubček in 1968, which became known as the Prague Spring and
which was suppressed by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact members.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s Action Program, adopted on
April 5, 1968, celebrated the Party’s role in the country’s development but at
the same time pointed to an acute social crisis, which was stimulated by the
inadequacies in the Party’s rule.
Socialist democracy was not expanded in time, methods of revolu-
tionary dictatorship deteriorated into bureaucracy and became an
impediment to progress in all spheres of life in Czechoslovakia. […]
The main link in this circle was that of remnants or reappearance of the
bureaucratic, sectarian approach in the Party itself. The insufcient
development of socialist democracy within the Party, the unfavorable
atmosphere for the promotion of activity, the silencing or even
suppression of criticism – all of this thwarted a fast, timely, and
thorough rectication. Party bodies took over tasks of State and
economic bodies and social organizations. This led to an incorrect
merging of the Party and State management, to a monopolized power
position of some sections, unqualied interference as well as the
undermining of initiative at all levels, indifference, the cult of medioc-
rity, and to unhealthy anonymity.
(Communist Party of Czechoslovakia 1970, 4)
The reform plan did not, however, downgrade the position of the Party
which was to keep its leading role and become “the vanguard of the entire
socialist society” with “the victory of socialism.” It was, however, not
supposed to be “a universal ‘caretaker’ of the society, to bind all organi-
sations and every step taken in life by its directives” but instead
14 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
was expected to arouse “socialist initiative” (Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia 1970, 6–7). Although the Prague Spring of 1968 was sup-
pressed, it further stimulated transnational dissent in state socialist countries
in Eastern Europe (Alexeyeva 1987; Trencsényi et al. 2018).
Whereas the Soviet Union provided state-building blueprints and advice
to the dependent parties, the degree of dependency and own experience of
such parties contributed to the diversity of vernacular approaches to gov-
ernance. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which replaced the KMT as
the dominant party in the China in 1949, for instance, allowed the formal
survival of several other parties (Rudolph 2021). Long Yang (Chapter 8)
shows that the CCP developed a number of original formal and provisional
bureaucratic institutions over the 1920s–1960s. He traces the origins and
development of replacing formal Party and government organs’ functions
with provisional institutions and argues that the war context shaped the
CCP’s bureaucratic practices. In the 1920s–1940s, the context of the Civil
War proved especially important for such institutions, while in the 1950s
and 1960s, the provisional institutions acquired the characteristics of their
formal counterparts as Chinese leaders restructured the Party and govern-
ment organs in the context of the Cold War.
During the early Cold War, several previously coherent territories became
divided between competing regimes, some of which came to be dominated
by one party. Such was the case of mainland China and Taiwan, which had
come under the control of the Republic of China after the end of the Second
World War and whither the KMT government relocated in 1949, after being
defeated in the Chinese Civil War (Cheng 1989; McCormick 1990), as well as
the case of North and South Korea. Natalia Matveeva (Chapter 9) discusses
the former, exploring the formation and formalization of the Workers’ Party
of Korea’s policies toward women in the 1950s and the 1960s and comparing
them to those in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China
(PRC). She argues that although the North Korean elites followed the
Soviet example, adopting laws on gender equality and emancipation, the
emulation of the Soviet Union of the 1930s did not extend to the social
sphere and to gender policies. In North Korea, the Marxist–Leninist concept
of women as active participants in the public life and an important part of
the labor force was transformed into “mothers of the nation,” tasked with
providing overall support to the Party’s policies and raising the next gen-
eration of revolutionary ghters with loyalty to the Party and ultimately to
the Great Leader Kim Il-sung.
Whereas in North Korea the one-party regime started with the Party,
which soon gave way to a personalized dictatorship (Simotomai 2009), in
South Korea the development of the regime followed the opposite way.
Kyonghee Lee (Chapter 10) offers insights into the party-political formation
initially intended by the South Korean military junta under the leadership of
Park Chung Hee when it founded the Democratic Republican Party in 1963.
South Korea’s rst military junta sought to acquire a popular mandate to
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 15
stay in power by a demonstration of its adherence to the pledge of a swift
return to civilian rule, albeit one in which its members would retire from the
army and run as candidates for its own political party. With anti-
communism becoming the cornerstone of any political program in the
country, the leading members of the junta spoke of an alternative democ-
racy, different from the ill-tting Western democracy, but had to deny labels
like “guided democracy.” What resulted was a political party that spoke
much more frequently about what it did not believe in, namely communism,
Western democracy, and the one-party system, than about what it did.
The relations between state socialism, the notion of an overarching
country-wide community, and substate nationalism proved difcult to na-
vigate for the ruling communist parties, with nationalism playing an im-
portant role in the collapse of socialist federations in the late 1980s and early
1990s (Suny 1993). Discussing the case of Yugoslavia and focusing on
Slovenia, Jure Gašparič (Chapter 11) addresses the contradictions between
the country’s federalist structure and the single ruling party. During the
power monopoly of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia until 1952), the Yugoslav state was re-
formed along corporatist and federalist lines, with the six constituent re-
publics becoming states, while the Party and the state were supposed to fade
away gradually. Gašparič demonstrates that when the Yugoslav political
crisis intensied, the Party started losing its inuence and became increas-
ingly divided along the borders between the individual republics.
Exploring the case of Czechoslovakia, another socialist federation, Adéla
Gjuričová (Chapter 12) takes a longue durée perspective on the ruling
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The Party, founded in 1921, became
the most important radical protest party during the interwar democratic
period and underwent all the key developments of the socialist movement. It
was made illegal in 1938, but its wartime underground activity won the
Party a completely new reputation after the Second World War. Gjuričová
reviews the Party’s rhetorical and practical strategy of gaining full control of
the government and focuses on the institutional aspect of the “twist from
party to government” in 1948–1989, discussing which of the institutions of
the previous democratic framework were preserved and how they were ad-
justed to the regime. Gjuričová pays particular attention to time and speed,
the tempo in the Party and governmental politics that reveal shifts and
unnoticed continuities and ruptures in what has often been described as
“forty years of static Communist rule and general timelessness.”
Perestroika in the USSR and the state’s eventual collapse had a tremendous
effect on the communist parties, both those solely in power and those com-
peting for voters in more democratic regimes (Di Palma 2019). It was itself
also part of a global period of – at least nominal, although not always sub-
stantial – political democratization and liberalization. In the 1970s, several
dictatorships in Southern European countries (Portugal, Spain, and Greece)
crumbled, marking the start of this “third wave of democratization”
16 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
(Huntington 1991). In Latin America, military dictatorships gave way to
competitive presidential systems during the 1980s (Gargarella, 2013,
148–171). In Taiwan, where the KMT government had tolerated and tightly
controlled the presence of two minor parties – the Young China Party and the
Chinese Democratic Socialist Party – President Chiang Ching-kuo 蔣經國
lifted martial law and the ban on the establishment of new parties (dangjin 黨
禁) in 1986. A newspaper commentary of the time, still written in the cautious
tone of a country coming out of the world’s longest martial law regime, de-
monstrates how the political liberalization reected long-standing internal
aspirations as well as the international trends of the time:
In recent years, Taiwan has achieved a considerable level of democratic
politics. Unfortunately, due to the existence of “martial law” and the
“ban of parties,” it has always been difcult in the international
community for the image of democracy to reach perfection. […] The
immediate effect of the lifting of martial law and the allowance of
political parties is that it makes democracy live up to its name. The long-
term goal is to make the substance of democracy loftier!
(Kao 1986)
However, the expectation present in the 1980s and 1990s that competitive
multiparty democracy would prevail as the world’s principal political
system, and that single-party systems were relics of the past bound to gra-
dually wither, proved to be premature. The year 1991 did not mark an end
for the ruling communist parties. Some of them, namely the CCP (which
engaged in market-oriented reforms since the late 1970s), the Communist
Party of Vietnam, and the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, departed from
state socialism. Despite the introduction of capitalist economies, the three
parties retained control over the respective regimes (Bui 2016; Malesky et al.
2011; Schuler 2021; Vu 2016). Some of the previously ruling communist
parties, like the Mongolian People’s Party, also survived in new competitive
landscapes (Smith 2020). Furthermore, the second half of the twentieth
century and the early twenty-rst century in fact witnessed an expansion in
one-party autocracies, with one-party regimes becoming the most common
type of authoritarianism (Magaloni and Kricheli 2010).
In China, where the government of the Communist Party had also un-
dergone a severe crisis in the late 1980s, several decades of strong economic
growth, the country’s increased international power, and the perception that
multiparty regimes are chaotic and unable to tackle the societal and eco-
nomic problems they encounter, have created considerable internal support
for the Party and condence about the country’s political system. This
condence, however, has not fully supplanted insecurities about it nor dis-
pelled fears of a possible “Tocqueville effect” endangering the CCP’s
dominance (Moniz Bandeira 2020, 135–42). Against this background, the
political leadership around Xi Jinping 習近平, who took ofce as the Party’s
Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 17
General Secretary in 2012, has identied ideological weakness as one of the
main reasons for the Soviet Union’s collapse, and put great effort in em-
phasizing the CCP’s leading societal role (Xi 2012, 21). In this vein, Xi
stressed at a ceremony to celebrate the CCP’s 100th anniversary that:
China’s success hinges on the Party. The more than 180-year-long
modern history of the Chinese nation, the 100-year-long history of the
Party, and the more than 70-year-long history of the People’s Republic
of China all provide ample evidence that without the Communist Party
of China, there would be no new China and no national rejuvenation.
The Party was chosen by history and the people. The leadership of the
Party is the dening feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics
and constitutes the greatest strength of this system. It is the foundation
and lifeblood of the Party and the country, and the crux upon which the
interests and wellbeing of all Chinese people depend.
(Xi 2021)
After periods of more competitive politics, one-party dominance also re-
emerged in Russia and Turkey, where United Russia and the Justice and
Development Party (AKP), respectively, have been dominant in a situation
of insubstantial political competition (Babacan et al. 2021; Carney 2015;
Öney 2018; Reuter and Remington 2009). For example, in the elections to
the Russian State Duma held on September 17–19, 2021, only those parties
which openly supported President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin managed
to win seats, while United Russia retained a constitutional majority
(Mislivskaia 2021). Commenting on the then upcoming 2021 election, the
economist Vladislav Inozemtsev maintained that there was no opposition in
Russia anymore, since the term implied that such a group would have legal
and democratic means to come to power, and noted the return to Soviet-
style politics (Inozemtsev 2021, 6).
In Russia, there remains one party [United Russia] and several of its
spoilers – this embodies either the traditional for the Soviet Union
“indestructible alliance of communists and non-party members,” or,
which may be familiar to Putin, the political system of the GDR
[German Democratic Republic], where the Socialist Unity (the mention
of unity is very noteworthy) Party of Germany was assisted by several
other party structures and even (what a coincidence!) the National
Front, “in which mass organizations united all the forces of the people
to move along the path of building a socialist society.” So, we
understand where we are going, and we can only hope for the absence
of a Berlin Wall, in case of an attempt to cross which the soldiers would
shoot without warning.
[…]
18 Ivan Sablin and Egas Moniz Bandeira
The vote on September 19 of this year (which has been clear for a long
time, but with which until recently some opponents of the regime could
not come to terms) will become not an election to the State Duma, but
an appointment of 450 extras who imitate lawmaking in the interests of
the Kremlin.
(Inozemtsev 2021, 7)
Developments like in Russia show that wishful assumptions about a tele-
ological and well-nigh automatic development from single-party to multi-party,
and more generally from authoritarian to democratic regimes were not justied.
Single-party regimes themselves emerged as one of the dominant regime types
in Eurasia in the rst part of the twentieth century to a large extent as a reaction
to the perceived failures of the parliamentary regimes which had been installed
amidst high hopes during the transformations of the Russian, Ottoman, Qing,
and other empires. They were far from uniform in their ideological premises
and internal organization, but they responded to similar situations and made
similar promises of economic and social development. Eventually, they only
partially delivered on these promises, and their subsequent histories saw many
ruptures and shifts which ended in the demise of many of these single-party
regimes. Yet, the democratic backsliding experienced in the rst quarter of the
twenty-rst century shows that the end of history (Fukuyama 1989) has not
been reached, and that single-party regimes will remain a signicant type of
government in the global political landscape for the foreseeable future.
Notes
1 Although the Bolsheviks pursued a state socialist program of modernization in the
Soviet Union, nation-building also remained important, with the establishment
and maintenance of separate institutions for the constituent nationalities of the
multilevel Soviet federation coexisting with the centralized and hierarchical single-
party regime (Suny 1993).
2 RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), f. 558, op. 11, d. 143,
l. 67 (Konstitutsii burzhuaznykh stran [Constitutions of bourgeois countries], vol. 1:
Velikie derzhavy i zapadnye sosedi SSSR [Great Powers and Western neighbors of
the USSR], Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoe izdatel’stvo,
1935, with notes by I. V. Stalin).
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Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments 25
1 The birth of Anfu China, East
Asia’s rst party-state: Toward a
constitutional dictatorship of the
gentry, 1916–1918
Ernest Ming-tak Leung
1
The Anfu Regime has an evil reputation in modern Chinese history, being
the embodiment of the absence of morals, ideals, or achievement, and for
having brought destruction and misery to the country. It was seen as having
begun a long warlord era and was thus a stain on the already dismal record
of China’s Republican era. Despite the many attempts at re-evaluating
events and personages such as Yuan Shikai [Yuan Shih-k’ai 袁世凱] and
Chiang Kai-shek, Anfu has been deliberately and singularly left out.
Yet the Anfu Regime had in fact been greatly misunderstood; the years
1917–20 were indeed marked by brutal internal strife, but the state possessed
a progressive vision of establishmentarian reform. It should be seen as a
classic case of failed developmental state-building, comparable to other
military-dominated, single-party “developmental dictatorships” in the
twentieth century Third World. This paper focuses on the origins of the
Anfu Regime in State Organicism and State Corporatism. Another paper
has dealt with legislation by and political struggles in the Anfu Parliament in
1918–20 (Yan and Leung 2022), and a further article will concern the two
waves of developmentalist economic policies in late-1917 and mid-1920 re-
spectively (for a preliminary treatment see Leung 2021).
The Anfu Club [Anfu Julebu 安福俱樂部] governed in 1918–20 on the
foundations of a political system and economic strategy laid down by men
from the erstwhile Progressive Party in late 1917. The “Progressive-Anfu
System” thus attempted to build a disciplined party with centralized decision-
making, based on a stable alliance between interest groups. This enabled the
emergence of a militarily supported, “constitutional dictatorship” of the
gentry, which in the process of hoping to transform itself into an industrial
class, required support from the state’s expanding corpus of technocrats. With
the help of German legal theories transmitted through Japan, they attempted
to justify greater representation for themselves within government institutions
– most notably demonstrated in a late-1917 attempt to reform the Senate into a
chamber of functional constituencies – which, had it been materialized, would
have been East Asia’s rst corporatist Parliament. Meanwhile, the Anfu
“entrepreneurial regime,” intent on building State Capitalism, was inuenced
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-2
via Japan by early developmentalist theories such as Listianism and German
State Socialism. However, the attempt was inconclusive, as many of these ideas
failed to come to fruition.
Anfu’s reputation owes itself to the fact that the regime alienated and incurred
the wrath of every single subsequently important political force, from rival
factions within the northern military establishment, to Sun Yat-sen’s
Kuomintang, to the CCP and even the Proto-Fascists (the Young China
Party). Historians also seem to have the unfortunate and rarely questioned habit
of using as evidence sensationalist political pamphlets, mostly published under
pseudonyms in the immediate aftermath of Anfu’s collapse in 1920. Many for
instance agree that Anfu was not even a political party, had no concrete orga-
nization, political vision or ideology, nor even a charter (Chang 2007b: 128–129).
This paper intends to provide some evidence to the contrary, focusing on the
construction of Anfu as a party and the ideology of its institutional design. Such
evidence could never possibly be complete – much of the documentation has
been lost or was deliberately destroyed
2
– but it should be able to demonstrate
how Anfu attempted to be a coherent state-building project. Anfu’s highly
disciplined organization was unprecedented in late-imperial early republican
politics, and utterly remarkable considering that the Manchu Empire had been
dissolved only six years prior. Being an alliance of several parliamentary and
bureaucratic factions, its highest executive organ was the 86-member Club
Council, comparable to the CCP’s Central Committee. On the second tier was
the “Club Congress of Parliamentarians of Both Chambers.” These decided all
matters regarding the Club and Parliament, and concentrated all political and
legislative deliberation in the high Anfu elites, chosen on the basis of their ability
to represent interest groups. Anfu MPs were then obliged to follow the Club’s
resolutions and act accordingly in Parliament (Xitang Yeshi 1920: 20–21).
Unlike a Leninist party, Anfu did not control the military; rather, it relied
on it, controlling in turn the civil service and legislature; General Xu Shuzheng
[Hsu Shu-cheng 徐樹錚] once said that “Since the start of the Republic in
1912, government has been puppeted by Parliament, resulting in sheer dis-
order. Why can’t we organize a party for ourselves, like training and orga-
nizing an army? If we have our own army of children, they will be puppeted by
us” (Zhang 1979, 194). This system, whereby the army runs the party, is si-
milar to many developmental dictatorships.
3
But the Club later increasingly
acquired a mind of its own as when it cut the military budget by 20% (see Yan
and Leung 2022). Finally, what also deserves attention is the overwhelmingly
foreign – mostly Japanese – education background of the Progressive and
Anfu elites. Duan Qirui [Tuan Ch’i-jui 段祺瑞] had been trained in artillery at
the Berlin War College and had interned at Krupp in 1889–90. This scientic
training distinguished him from his subordinates, mostly trained in law and
political science, if not only schooled in the classics or even being outright
illiterates. The Anfu Regime had every reason to be highly accomplished, but
fell foul of its own missteps plus the many structural and external problems
which this three-part series will attempt to explain.
The birth of Anfu China 27
In historical institutionalist analysis, the state is seen as “an idea,” “a legal
system” and an “organised expression of hegemony.”
4
In that sense, it is a
natural tendency of the state, quite independently of malice, to be all-
encompassing in its bureaucracy, to assume the guise of absolute authority
in executing the law, to monopolize political decision through its branches
of power, to settle social conict, provide public services, administer the
economy, and ultimately, to repress by force if necessary. Anfu’s fortunes
and defeat were determined by its quest to be an “organised expression of
hegemony” – to alienate everyone in its quest to be hegemon, and to end up
consigned to the dustbin of history when it ultimately failed to deliver that
hegemonic ability. It was never going to be a successful totalitarian regime
even if it wished to be, when it preserved relatively large spheres of freedom
and declined to suppress despite being able to. Anfu never announced what
its ofcial ideological platform was, but it tted well into Juan Linz’ de-
nition of an authoritarian regime:
Authoritarian regimes are political systems with limited, not respon-
sible, political pluralism; without elaborate and guiding ideology (but
with distinctive mentalities); without intensive nor extensive political
mobilization (except some points in their development); and in which a
leader (or occasionally a small group) exercises power within formally
ill-dened limits but actually quite predictable ones.
(Linz 1970, 255)
The “Anfu Era” at a glance
During 1917–20, the Peking (or “Beiyang” [Peiyang 北洋]) Republican
Regime was subordinated to the control of men who created the “Anfu
Club” in 1918, and to Anhui [Anhwei 安徽／Wanxi 皖系] Clique military
leaders such as Premier Duan Qirui and Army Vice Minister Xu Shuzheng,
as well as Beiyang bureaucrats including President Xu Shichang [Hsu Shih-
ch’ang 徐世昌] and Senate leader Liang Shiyi [Liang Shih-i 梁士詒]. The so-
called “Beiyang” (“North Sea”) establishment had been a group of late-
imperial military and bureaucratic modernizers, mostly born and raised
under traditional circumstances, but whom during the late-nineteenth cen-
tury had received an education that was to varying extents western-
inuenced. They had worked under Viceroys Li Hongzhang [Li Hung-chang
李鴻章] and Yuan Shikai to build the “North Sea Fleet,” which was sunk in
1895 during the Sino-Japanese War; subsequently, their focus transitioned
toward establishing a new western-styled army, modern administration, and
promoting state-led economic development.
In the desperation of the 1911 Republican Revolution, revolutionary
leader Sun Yat-sen offered his position as Provisional President to anyone
who could make Emperor Puyi abdicate. Duan Qirui then led a petition of
143 imperial generals to force Puyi to step down, thus becoming his “rst
28 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
making of the republic.” The Empire was dissolved, and the last Imperial
Prime Minister, Yuan Shikai, duly accepted the Republican Presidency; but
by 1915 he had grown disillusioned with Republicanism and attempted to
enthrone himself as the new emperor. Duan bitterly opposed this, and Yuan,
who sacked Duan for being disloyal, reappointed him as Premier during his
dying days in 1916 – thus Duan had made the republic a second time. Duan
revived the Kuomintang-dominated “1912 Parliament” that Yuan had dis-
solved in 1914, and attempted to transition toward a pluralist constitutional
order. That failed when his relations with Parliament ruptured on various
questions surrounding the draft constitution, provincial autonomy, per-
sonnel appointments, corruption accusations, and China’s participation in
the First World War.
At the nadir of the political chaos in June–July 1917, Zhang Xun [Chang
Hsun 張勳] a mid-ranking Beiyang leader, forced a second dissolution of
Parliament and launched a coup to restore Puyi. He was quickly defeated by
Duan’s forces entering from Tientsin. Duan had thus “made” the Republic a
third time, and himself a national hero, sweeping away at one stroke both
the radicals and the ultra-conservatives. Duan then made the fateful decision
that a fundamental reform to the constitutional order was necessary, upon
consulting Liang Qichao [Liang Ch’i-ch’ao 梁啟超], a Statist theorist and
leader of the late-imperial constitutional monarchist movement – which
had become the “Progressive Party” after the Republic was established.
According to him, the 1912 Parliament should not be reconvened; instead, a
new “Provisional Senate” should be organized to redraft electoral legisla-
tion. Duan’s cabinet was made up mostly of ex-Progressives. Yet between
Duan and Liang schisms emerged, and Duan’s cabinet resigned in
November 1917. This was whilst Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang government in
Canton went to war with Peking.
When Yuan died in 1916, both the Kuomintang and the Progressive Party
[Jinbudang 進步黨] had dissolved themselves in a spirit of cordiality, having
opposed Yuan’s monarchism together. Factions then emerged. By early
1917 the resultant factionalism was regretted universally, and the ex-
Progressives (known at the time as the “Research Clique”) worked to reform
itself into a “Grand Progressive Party,” holding a special conference for that
purpose on 27 July, 1917, but nothing came out of it.
5
By late August, news
began to abound that there were plans to create an “all-controlling” party
that would rise above both the Kuomintang and the Progressive Party.
6
From that time, Anfu men started to gain control of the legislature and
executive, whilst the Progressive men faded out by the end of November.
With the help of Xu Shuzheng, Duan began to consolidate his own power
base in the Provisional Senate and various branches of government, and the
“Anfu Club,” named after the alley (hutong) where its Peking headquarters
were based, was created on 8 March, 1918. Various names had been pro-
posed for the Club, including the “Republican Club,” “Democratic Club”
and Popular Constitutional Club” [Minxian julebu 民憲俱樂部],
7
but they
The birth of Anfu China 29
all fell through due to the initial uncertainty over the orientation of the
seemingly provisional organization. When made Premier again in March
1918, Duan oversaw the expansion of a sprawling Anfu empire, which
proceeded to control two-thirds of the new Parliament in August 1918. Yet a
complete “Anfu Cabinet” was never formed, and it did not manage to help
Duan win the Presidency, in the face of competition from his main Beiyang
rival, Acting President and Zhili [Chihli 直隸／Zhixi 直系 ] Faction leader,
General Feng Guozhang [Feng Kuo-chang 馮國璋].
The Presidency went instead to a gure agreeable to the entirety of the
Beiyang establishment, ex-Manchuria Governor and Yuan-era Premier Xu
Shichang, who had been aide to Yuan since the 1890s. Duan and Feng both
“retired” from politics, Duan only nominally, being still in charge of the
“War Participation Supervisory Ofce” [Duban canzhan shiwuchu 督辦參戰
事務處]. The Anfu Regime collaborated extensively with Japan, and re-
ceived substantial loans through the State Socialist thinker Nishihara
Kamezō 西原龜三, aide to Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake 寺內正毅.
These were meant to induce rapid, planned industrial growth and the
creation of an "East Asian Economic League"; the funds went instead to
repay debts and fund the campaign against the south. After a civil war was
declared by the southern military junta based in Canton, directed by Sun
Yat-sen, the Beiyang Government deployed vast forces and resources in a
war that saw widespread atrocities, and was reluctant to come to the bar-
gaining table despite Zhili Faction generals refusing to ght further. During
the May Fourth Movement, the Anfu Club came under widespread con-
demnation for its prior pro-Japanese stance, yet the government quickly
released the students arrested during the violent protests. Two months later
the Anfu Club effectively announced its intention to transition towards
socialism, and by mid-1920 a series of State Socialist reforms affecting a
number of economic sectors had been proposed (see Leung 2021). On 14
July 1920 war broke out between the Zhili and Anhui Factions, resulting in
the defeat of the latter and Duan’s unsuccessful suicide attempt on 21 July
1920 (Hu 2006, 179). The Anfu Regime collapsed and President Xu ordered
Anfu Club’s disbandment on 3 August 1920.
The road to State Corporatism, 1916–17
In what theoretical context should Anfu be understood? “Corporatism,” as
the antonym to “Pluralism,” might be a suitable framework. These
two are opposing solutions to the increasingly diversied interests and dif-
ferentiated structures in the “modern polity”; while pluralists “place their
faith in the shifting balance of mechanically intersecting forces; corporatists
appeal to the functional adjustment of an organically interdependent whole”
(Schmitter 1974, 97). Philippe C. Schmitter has pointed out that all too
often, analysts of corporatist and authoritarian regimes “merely mourn the
passing or degeneration of pluralism and either advocate its return”
30 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
(Schmitter 1974, 95–96). This is precisely the case with Chinese historians,
beginning in the 1930s, who lament how Anfu killed off competitive, plur-
alist parliamentary politics. To Schmitter, this does no justice to
Corporatism as an alternative model (Schmitter 1974, 93–94).
Schmitter proceeds to distinguish between two forms of Corporatism
based on different premises – “State Corporatism,” which happens mostly in
“anti-liberal, delayed capitalist, authoritarian, neomercantilist” (Schmitter
1974, 105) states, whereby the government chooses and appoints re-
presentatives of interest groups to form the government, and consciously
plans the make-up of representative institutions in order to ascertain the
source and composition of state authority, rather than letting this be de-
termined by free, competitive elections. Opposed to this was Social
Corporatism for the “postliberal, advanced capitalist, organized democratic
welfare state,” with competitive elections within interest sectors.
The Anfu Club itself was not explicitly made up of sectors or corporations
beyond provincial ones. It was, however, a powerful corporation in itself
8
that bound together consciously into one centralist organization the re-
presentatives of bureaucratic and parliamentary factions, as well as con-
sciously choosing men of different professions to lead expert committees. By
doing so, it was able to ensure the stable operation of the three branches of
government for almost three whole years, including a legislature that ac-
cording to the original plans would have had an economic and ethnically
corporatist Senate, and which, after the plans were defeated, still ensured
adequate representation for the leading mandarin literati class. It achieved
monopolization through de facto uncontested elections, and made possible
reciprocal support between politicized soldiers and the industrializing lit-
erati. The Anfu Regime was decidedly State Corporatist. Indeed, it could be
seen as the precursor of the mode of political organization after the 1920s,
under the Kuomintang and the CCP, which has been characterized by
Corporatism (Tsui 2018, 37, 41, 73, 231).
Many such Corporatist regimes, including Spain under Franco or
Indonesia under Sukarno and Suharto, have been referred to, or promoted
themselves as “Organic States” or “Organic Democracies” (Linz 1970, 254).
A whole philosophical tradition existed in Germany, notably counting Hegel
amongst its ranks, that sees the state as an organism or body. The “Organic
State Theory” (Bluntschli 1885b) of the Swiss-German jurist Johann Kaspar
Bluntschli from 1875–76 entered East Asian consciousness very early on,
though the works of Katō Hiroyuki 加藤弘之 and Liang Qichao.
Organicism believes that “political communities (or states) function like
natural organisms in which the parts […] exist to contribute to the well-being
of the whole,” and that “collective interests take precedence over individual
or sectional interests and consensus takes precedence over institutionalized
conict” (Bourchier 2019, 600). The late-Qing intelligentsia, such as the
Constitutional Monarchist Yang Du [Yang Tu 楊度],
9
already possessed
Statist, Corporatist, and Organicist inclinations in their idea of political
The birth of Anfu China 31
parties – a corpus with a unied, directional ideology representing universal
interests seeking to be a single group dominating all of politics, as opposed
to parties under pluralism having “broad aggregate goals, low party
discipline and absence of strong partisan ideologies” (Schmitter 1974, 101).
The party must become the leader of the organic national totality thus
formed.
It is true that organicism was against legal theories that threatened to
weaken the state. Yet organicism prioritized clearly dened legislation which
bureaucrats must follow, to prevent them from becoming oppressors.
Organicism greatly inuenced American Progressives at the turn of the
twentieth century, including Woodrow Wilson and the constitutionalist
Frank Goodnow, who provided theoretical support to Yuan Shikai’s
monarchical restoration in 1915. They all saw need to replace rotten
nineteenth-century liberalism, and looked up to the German model of the
strong bureaucratic executive state and the “visible hand” in the economy.
Executive power must be expanded, and since the separation of powers
threatened the organic integration of society, it would have to be modied
(Rosser 2014, 100–101, 103, 106).
The Progressives and Anfu did not seem to have directly quoted State
Organicism in their ofcial documents, but in 1916-17, by the time the
“Progressive-Anfu System” was being set-up, the theory was certainly in
vogue amongst its members, and was in fact so embedded in their con-
sciousness that it often featured without warning in their remarks on various
matters.
10
Lin Baishui [Lin Pai-shui 林白水], editor of Fair Comment
[Gongyanbao 公言報], an army newspaper which later became Anfu’s ofcial
newspaper, wrote in September 1917 that “the state must not lack an or-
ganic composition and a unied hierarchy throughout.”
11
Organicism was
cited on several occasions by L’Impartial 大公報 [Ta-kung Pao] editor and
later Anfu “extra-parliamentary member” Hu Zhengzhi [Hu Cheng-chi 胡政
之], under his pseudonym “Cold Observer” [Lengguan 冷觀].
12
Hu’s edi-
torial A Chance for National Awakening on 16 August 1917, soon after war
was declared, adopted the stance of “Social Organicism” [shehui you jiti lun
社會有機體論] and expounded on what would become the Anfu worldview
of how China should deal with the pressures of imperialism, economic
warfare and national industrial development.
The prelude to the establishment of the “Progressive-Anfu System” was
the failed transition in 1916–17 toward pluralist politics. Since the 1912
Provisional Constitution was modeled upon the 1875 French Third
Republic Constitutional Laws, this had the effect of introducing to Peking
politics all the inherent instabilities of French multi-party politics and the
frequent changes of cabinet, in addition to all sort of constitutional dead-
locks, notably between the Presidential Palace and the Premier’s State
Council (cabinet). Such “Palace-Council Struggles” [Fuyuan zhi zheng 府院
之爭] became a staple of Peking political life until the Anfu Club came
along. Duan Qirui’s battles with President Li Yuanhong [Li Yuan-hung 黎元
32 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
洪] and his allies in the Kuomintang-dominated Parliament, concerned the
make-up of the initial Beiyang-Kuomintang-Progressive coalition cabinet,
provincial autonomous powers in the new constitution, the severance of
relations with and declaration of war against Germany and Austria, and the
composition of the wartime “National Defence Cabinet” meant to be a
grand coalition of political factions. Whilst Duan was allied with the
Japanese civilian government under Prime Minister Terauchi and Nishihara,
Li was under the inuence of the Japanese Army, which did not wish China
to enter the war (Dickinson 1999, 169–171).
The factional situation then was dizzying and ever-changing, with the
Kuomintang split into four factions, each with sub-groups, whilst the
Beiyang Tuchuns 督軍 (provincial commanders) formed a Congress but were
also fractious. Executive-legislative relations were in a protracted deadlock.
In October 1916, the largest Kuomintang faction split on the question of
whether to elect as Vice President a northern general, Feng Guozhang, or a
southerner, Lu Rongting [Lu Jung-t’ing 陸榮廷]; the position went to Feng.
By obstructing cabinet appointments, the Tuchuns prevented Duan from
gaining the support of the Kuomintang, and their relations soured. Matters
improved briey in March 1917, when under Liang Qichao’s encourage-
ment, Duan pushed for the severance of relations with Germany and
Austria, and in a rare stroke of luck for Duan, the bill passed in Parliament.
Duan then decided to promote again the idea of having more Kuomintang
ministers, in exchange for passing the bill to declare war – an initiative
promptly blocked by the Tuchuns’ Congress.
The Kuomintang majority took Duan’s goodwill for granted, perceived
him as a hypocrite, and thought the Tuchuns to be carrying out Duan’s real
plot. With the exception of the Political Science Society [Zhengxuehui 政學會],
the most moderate of the Kuomintang factions, all of them mustered their full
strength to topple Duan. Any compromise was predicated on Duan resigning.
Presidential Secretary Ding Shiyi [Ting Shih-i 丁世嶧], a member of the
Kuomintang radical group, the “People’s Friends Society” [Minyoushe
民友社], reportedly announced that “To be honest, I am for China’s partici-
pation in the war. But since it is Duan’s policy, I will oppose it to the end”
(Tao 1971, 62; in Xu 2005, 221). In addition were corruption charges in Spring
1917 brought forth by multiple factions, including Duan’s Beiyang rivals,
against their opponents, affecting the Finance, Communications, and Naval
Ministries. Matters had become a direct threat to Duan.
The rst State Corporatist solution was suggested at this critical juncture.
Duan proposed a “National Defence Cabinet” that would incorporate all
main factions and lead China’s central government during the world war.
This idea had come from Zhang Shizhao [Chang Shih-chao 章士釗], a
member of the Political Science Society and a personal friend of Duan’s. He
suggested setting up an “Extraordinary State Council” (ESC) [Tebie guowu
huiyi 特別國務會議] composed of ministers without portfolio representing
various parties, on the lines of Herbert Asquith’s May 1915 cabinet
The birth of Anfu China 33
reshufing, which Chang argues had made “Britain’s military plans […]
most swift and exible.” The ESC would also include Chief of Staff Wang
Shizhen [Wang Shih-chen 王士珍], one of Duan’s Beiyang rivals (Zhang
2000 [1917-03-12], 46–47). Duan was wary of this proposal, for it would also
have allowed southwestern political forces to penetrate into Peking. In
March he set up an “International Political Council” [Guoji zhengwu pin-
gyihui 國際政務評議會] that had corporatist functions but included only
second-tier factional leaders, satisfying therefore none of the factions.
With his failure to bring Kuomintang men into the cabinet, Duan by May
had to prevent a dissolution of Parliament, perceived then to be a suicidal
act for the military. He announced on 8 May 1917 to all factions at a
meeting at the State Council that once the War Bill was passed in
Parliament, he would set up the National Defence Cabinet (Ding and Zhao
2010, 426). Yet on the night of 9 May, the Political Science Society held a
heated four-hour meeting to debate the issue, where the motion to support
the War Bill was voted down by a small margin, which meant that the last
moderate Kuomintang faction had decided to give Duan a vote of no
condence. The next morning, when Parliament resumed its session, thou-
sands of thugs and beggars calling themselves the “Citizens’ Corps,” orga-
nized by Duan’s two lieutenants notorious for their brashness, Jin Yunpeng
[Chin Yun-p’eng 靳雲鵬] and Fu Liangzuo [Fu Liang-tso 傅良佐], sur-
rounded the houses of Parliament and beat up Kuomintang legislators.
Some reports suggest that the Kuomintang had sent in their own agent
provocateurs.
13
This became the last straw on executive-legislative relations,
and the whole cabinet save for Duan himself resigned in protest. One
Tuchun, Zhang Xun, then pressured President Li into dissolving Parliament
and restored Emperor Puyi for a week, before he too was defeated by
Duan’s forces entering from Tientsin.
From the point of view of the Beiyang leaders, pluralist politics created a
situation that was as uncontrollable as it was beyond comprehension. Beiyang
ofcials like Zeng Yujun [Tseng Yu-tsün 曾毓雋 ] still insisted, in his old age in
the 1950s and as an advisor to the PRC government, that politicians in 1916–17
“were of too low a quality and were too easily swayed” (Zeng 1988, 32).
Understandably, even the more open-minded amongst them would have
asked why it was necessary to pay an extraordinary political price to maintain
a frequently gridlocked pluralist system, when so much needed to be done.
On the other hand, information ow was incomplete, even when a major
political crisis was at hand. Some bureaucrats showed signs that they only
half understood the ground-level facts in the factional struggle.
14
The task
for Beiyang now was to design a non-factional political system. Any future
political arrangement would need to resemble the ESC proposal, as well
as incorporating the army more organically into it. Duan turned to Liang
Qichao and the Progressives for advice; they had advocated Statism in its
charter as early as 1913, and Liang was widely known since the 1900s for
promoting the idea of an “enlightened despotism.”
34 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
Whom would Duan and Liang’s “National Defence State” have benetted,
beyond the narrow connes of the Beiyang establishment? If we are to trust
the judgment of the historian Chang P’eng-yuan [Zhang Pengyuan 張朋園],
then Liang’s designated ruling class “undoubtedly was the gentry” (Chang
2007a, 19). Facing the chaos of pluralism and anxious about their replacement
by immature political forces such as the young revolutionaries, the gentry, or
mandarin literati, were eager to reinvigorate their political strength by
building a controlling political party, and to foster a German and Japanese-
styled protectionist economic policy (Chang 2007b, 15). Liang detested
pluralism, stating that in competitive politics, “worthless” people uttering
“worthless” words, like certain “self-proclaimed publicists,” would only create
chaos. Liang explained his “theory of the national central core class” [Guojia
zhongjian jieji lun 國家中堅階級論] as thus –
they must be a small, excellent and noble minority, that earns the
respect and adoration of the citizenry, so that their words may carry the
greatest weight in the world […] In fact, majority politics is still
governed by a minority […] any parliament in the world, any party in
the world – are they directed and commanded by a majority or a
minority? […] Where their followers are numerous, every raising of the
hand, and every movement of the foot, carries enormous weight.
(Liang 1936, “Duoshu zhengzhi zhi shiyan” 多數政治之實驗
[Experimentation in majoritarian politics], 35–36)
Liang believed that “since the last generation of mandarin literati possessed
both a traditional Confucian upbringing and up-to-date western knowledge,
they bore the brunt of the mission to save China, and did so without hesi-
tation” (Chang 2007a, 19). But he claims that effective government “de-
pends on whether, for any issue, public opinion could be neatly divided into
two camps, one of which must then assume the majority. […] Only then
could governance be systematic and non-collisional” (Liang 1936, “Duoshu
Zhengzhi zhi Shiyan”, 37).
Liang’s true intentions are only clear when his words are viewed as a
system. He seemed to want a dualistic political system – a two-party system
perhaps – but wanted only one core class, leading if necessary two parties.
As such, what he really wanted was a monist political system. The fact of a
single-party system could be achieved without explicitly calling it as such.
Liang had strict requirements when it came to party discipline. He proposed
something akin to “democratic centralism,” understandable considering that
he wanted nothing less than a vanguard party of the mandarin literati. In
1912–13 he issued these guidelines for his Republican Party (later merged
into the Progressives) –
Rule IV – Party members must refrain from free action. […] For a party
is like an army, and party strategy is like war strategy, […] Thus the
The birth of Anfu China 35
interdiction on free action in the party is the same as the interdiction on
free action in the army. […] Should the citizenry refuse to be the
mechanical apparatus of the nation, the nation would have no founda-
tion on which to stand; should the party member refuse to be the
mechanical apparatus of the party, the party would not live. […] One
can be a mechanical part on one hand and still be the subject on
the other. How? When the party decides its course, its members must all
be in attendance, and freely express their opinions. A vote of majority is
then taken, and once a resolution is made, it should be followed. Much
as there shall be no freedom after the deliberation, there must be
complete freedom during the deliberation.
(Liang 1936, “Gonghedang zhi diwei yu qi taidu” 共和黨之地位與其態度
[The position and attitude of the Republican Party], 26–27)
The concept of incorporating multi-focal interests under a wartime national
unity system had come from Europe to China soon after the outbreak of war
in August 1914, and soon became a “hip” term signifying all that was new
about the age of war.
15
After the outbreak of WWI, Liang deeply admired
the German wartime state, and under the inuence of what he imagined of
Walther Rathenau’s industrially mobilized state, described his ideal state as
being a machine (Liang 1914, 100–101). He analyzed in 1915 the various
European national unity governments, suggesting that declaring war could
help sooth ethnic and socialist struggles as long as it implemented reformist
policies (Liang 1915, 22). Japan’s “national unity system” [J. Kyokoku icchi
taisei; C. Juguo yizhi tizhi 舉國一致體制] naturally also became an in-
spiration. The populist Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu 大隈重信 had
performed poorly during his tenure both domestically and diplomatically, as
shown by the brash Twenty-One Demands for China, an attempt to turn
China into a Japanese protectorate. The Meiji elder Yamagata Aritomo 山
縣有朋 subsequently replaced Ōkuma with Terauchi Masatake, a general
who had studied in France, in the Bluntschlian hope that he would use his
“neutral” position to deepen Japan’s internal strength and to “unite and
guide the people without bias” (Dickinson, 1999, 157).
The anti-pluralist strategy was widely reported to be a success in the
Chinese media, notably Anfu’s own outlets like L’Impartial.
16
Even Vice-
President Feng Guozhang mentioned the concept in his speech when ar-
riving in Peking on 1 March 1917, in the presence of Duan, the State
Council, legislators, and even Wang Jingwei. “In these treacherous times,”
he said, “we must strive under national unity, and place the new Chinese
State amongst the ranks of the powers.”
17
Yet by mid-1917, Liang had given
up on co-opting the recalcitrant Kuomintang “young turks”; only mature
representatives of the gentry were to be included. He blamed the failure of
pluralism on “the defective elements in Parliament” (Ding 1958 [1936] in
Chang 2007a, 81), and opposed any suggestion of reconvening the 1912
Parliament, opting instead to appoint a new, unicameral Provisional Senate
36 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
which would pave way for the domination of power by a new, regrouped
Progressive Party at the head of a monolithic wartime state. Editor of
L’Impartial Hu Zhengzhi still hoped in February 1917 that, with Yuan dead,
different factions might rally under National Unity and seek progress to
“meet the trends of the new world,” despite the existing regime being less
than ideal.
18
After the bitter struggles of mid-1917, Hu had evidently lost his
patience, and exclaimed –
Now if we are to consider the long-term benets of this country, we
should take advantage of the “Third Making of the Republic”, and
establish a national strategy for the next century. We should, in the spirit
of National Unity, seek a solution for our legislature. In the case of the
old Parliament, it has been disbanded twice in the same session, and has
lost all sacred dignity and respect from within and without. One should no
more recover spilled water than to go through this all over again.
19
The Old Guard, the Corrective Revolution, and the New Order
The restoration of Emperor Puyi by Zhang Xun was itself a reaction against
what he perceived to be the republican disorder of the “bad partisan habits” –
pluralism – and in the nine theses announced on July 1st, he promised to
design a political system on the best practices of constitutional monarchies
worldwide. The coup that Duan Qirui in turn launched on 3 July 1917 against
Zhang, with the help of Liang Qichao and a host of early technocrats – the so-
called “Third Making of the Republic” – paved way for a new, renovationist
political system to be designed by a newly appointed Provisional Senate,
dominated by Statist elites. When eets of trains spirited Duan’s troops from
Tientsin into Peking, where they launched East Asia’s rst air raid against
Zhang’s “Pig-tail Army,” it was not only a “revolution” against a tradition-
alist monarchism rendered increasingly anachronistic by the Chinese revolu-
tion of 1911 and the Russian revolution of February 1917 but an act that also
put the nal nail into the cofn of radicalism and pluralism, and as we shall
see, economic liberalism. In the sense that this “Corrective Revolution” – a
term that in Middle Eastern politics refers usually to centrist military coups
defeating rightwing reaction or leftwing adventurism – expelled from Peking
the Kuomintang “young turks” and recalcitrant monarchists and re-installed
the mandarin literati modernizers, though within the institutions of a con-
stitutional republic and in alliance with a rising class of technocrats to pro-
mote a vast programme of modernization, this could be understood as a case
of the “Old Guard, New Order,” which was how Robert O. Paxton (1972)
described Vichy France and Marshal Pétain’s National Revolution. As such,
the “Progressive-Anfu System” was the most class-based of Beiyang-era re-
gimes, and was designed to allow an autocratic republic of gentry landlords to
evolve into a modern bourgeois dictatorship.
The birth of Anfu China 37
To be granted a seat in the Provisional Senate, one would have needed to have a
university degree or its equivalent, or pay in tax Mex $100 or more, or have real
estate of Mex $50,000 or more. In a country rife with poverty, notes Chang
P’eng-yuan, this was equivalent to creating a new aristocracy (Chang 2007b,
112–113). The Provisional Senate was therefore the epitome of an extreme
elitism, and was equivalent to a House of Peers. The number of provincial
deputies decreased from 220/274 in the 1912 Senate (the actual elected total
being 263) to 110/168 in the Provisional Senate. Seats for the clearly corporatist
“Central Academic Caucus” [Zhongyang xuehui 中央學會] increased from 8 to
30, representing “old high-ranking bureaucrats, the rich, Manchu and Muslim
aristocrats, educators, and academics possessing a degree and who had worked
for three years or more in academic institutions or have published academic
works” (Chang 2007b, 113). Given that no elections were held in the South, and
the nal number of senators was only 140, the Central Academic Caucus
constituted 21% of the Provisional Senate, at a time when nationwide literacy
was only around 20%. Property requirements for voters were also vastly in-
creased, with the electoral law passed in late 1917 for the New Parliament sti-
pulating that voters must be males above 25 years of age, having resided in the
constituency for two years or more, paying taxes of Mex $4 or more, or having
real estate of Mex $500 or above, in addition to having graduated from primary
school or its equivalent. In that sense, only the propertied and the educated
would have any political power (Chang 2007b, 115–116).
As a result, in Jilin [Kirin 吉林] Province, where the percentage of voters
was highest, it stood at a mere 0.166%; in Gansu [Kansu 甘肅] Province,
where it was lowest, it was a pitiful 0.01%. These were even lower than
the levels for the late-Imperial elections for the Advisory Council. The
“Progressive-Anfu System” thus totally achieved the purpose of concentrating
political power in the “central core” gentry class through the use, rather than
rejection of, constitutional republican institutions (Xiong 2011, 176).
Liang’s cry of war was echoed by many provincial commanders and local
elites.
20
The next step was to co-opt them permanently; and corporatism,
which could be “the product of a ‘new order’ following from a fundamental
overthrow of the political and economic institutions of a given country and
created by force or special ‘collective spirit’” (Malherbe 1940, 13–14, in
Schmitter 1974, 105) was naturally taken up. Given how the gentry had dis-
covered the merits of investing in modern industry and commerce during the
wartime economic boom, it was clear that any future arrangement would have
to take into consideration the transitional nature of the gentry. In late-1917,
Duan’s cabinet proposed a Parliament Organisation Act Amendment Bill
[Xiuzheng guohui zuzhifa cao’an 修正國會組織法草案], which would have seen
the Senate reformed into a chamber of economic, ethnic, and socio-cultural
corporations, resembling the Irish and Estonian Senates after their 1930s re-
forms. This has its origins in early 1917, when Parliament debated the draft
constitution; some thought it odd that the Kuomintang-dominated Senate
behaved more radically than the House of Representatives. Liang, noting such
opinion, suggested that the Senate should be formed of functional
38 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
constituencies and government representatives, and that the object should be
to prevent revolution
21
(Ding and Zhao 2010 [1936], 420).
The Provisional Senate held its opening ceremony on 10 November 1917,
and Duan spoke on behalf of the State Council, pointing out that the pre-
ceding political chaos had been due to unsatisfactory legislation on elections
and parliamentary organization, and that the task of the Provisional Senate
was precisely to modify such laws. Duan’s speech was a clear manifestation
of his eclectic thinking, using traditional knowledge to support modern aims.
For example, to boost morale, he argued on the basis of the I Ching that
matters progressed in a zig-zag fashion and that setbacks necessarily happen.
Next he switched to using mechanical political discourse, popular since the
French Revolution (which produced terms such as “reaction”). Quoting the
physics that he learnt during his artillery training – in this case statics and
the laws of motion – he encouraged the senators to legislate in the direction of
seeking an equilibrium between political forces, especially between the branches
of power which should complement rather than to check and balance each
other, and thus to determine the proper “track” of forward motion for gov-
ernment, which would bring wellbeing to China’s 400 million population.
22
The bill was however doomed from the outset when Duan and other
Progressive cabinet members resigned at the end of November. Chief of Staff
Wang Shih-chen became Premier, and Jiang Yong [Chian Yung 江庸]
(Waseda) Justice Minister. On 28 November the Senate Review Committee
decided on bicameralism after a two-hour debate.
23
Cabinet Legislation
Bureau Chief Fang Shu 方樞 (Waseda), who had contributed to late-Imperial
reforms, and who would later become an Anfu Extraparliamentary Member,
was responsible for drafting the Amendment Bill. On 13 December the cabinet
voted to send the Bill to the Provisional Senate, where three Legislation
Bureau members explained the document and responded to queries.
24
The Bill, patterned on Liang’s ideas, established the principle that the upper
chamber, by incorporating “classes and forces,” would be more temperate
than the lower chamber. Its “Explanatory Note” appears to have quoted at
length a textbook rst published in 1908 entitled Political Science written by
Satō Ushijirō 佐藤丑次郎, Assistant Professor of Law at Kyoto Imperial
University, especially on vocational representation and bicameralism under
constitutional monarchies (Satō 1908, 380–381). The Note cited the British
legalist James Bryce, best known for his works on the US political system,
that most unicameralist countries revert eventually back to bicameralism.
25
It holds that since China was not a federalist country like Germany or the
US, it did not have to replicate its political design, creating a situation where
the two chambers served the same purpose and “might as well have been
one chamber.” However, unicameralism was proven to be only practical in
small states. Bicameralism would be a brake on the radicalism of the lower
chamber, which could reduce conict between the executive and the legis-
lature. Thus, the two chambers must be “utterly different, with the lower
chamber representing the common folk, and the upper chamber representing
The birth of Anfu China 39
special forces,” elected by “special bodies” including the Central Academic
Caucus or the Overseas Chinese Caucus.
26
The Bill proceeded to propose that of the 134 seats in the Senate, 57
(42.5%) would be “Enterprise Representatives”; 37 (27.5%) would be “High-
ranking Ofcials of the Judiciary and Executive”; 12 (9%) would be
Academic Representatives; 16 (12%) would be chosen by Manchu,
Mongolian, and Muslim aristocrats; and 4 (3%) elected respectively by those
with state honors; by Overseas Chinese; and by the Lhasa electoral college.
The last would be formed of the Dalai and Panchen Lamas and senior of-
cials of the Lhasa government, the precondition being that they understood
Chinese and could participate in parliamentary discussions.
27
Enterprise
Representatives would have been elected by the economic sector –
These deputies will be produced by enterprise bodies in agriculture,
industry and commerce. This is designed with reference to various
countries such as Prussia having Reichstag deputies recommended by
Junkers, and deputies in the Japanese and Italian Parliaments repre-
senting large taxpayers. […] Thus all sectors, agriculture, industry,
commerce and mining could be included. In our case we are different
from these systems in that they provide for overall representation whilst
we propose representation specic to each constituent group. Since the
start of the 20th Century, we have entered an epoch of economic
representation. Politics in any country are always inuenced by the power
of economic bodies. Thus modern academics like Schäfe have advocated
vocational representation as the way of electing parliamentary deputies.
Such vocations may be economic entities or otherwise, and amongst the
economic entities he has specied peasants, industrialists and busi-
nessmen, handicrafts workers, and labourers. This matches the spirit of
our enterprise representatives being produced by agricultural, industrial
and commercial bodies – the rationale for including 57 enterprise
representatives in the Senate, for unless it is as numerous as that, given
the breadth of Chinese territory, with some 26 provinces and special
administrative regions, distribution will be difcult.
28
The intention of this Bill to introduce corporatist representation, and con-
sidered even the issue of representation for laborers, in the context of
stemming extra-parliamentary conict, is no coincidence considering the
State Socialist “economic spurt” (a concept explained in Gerschenkron
1962) that Duan and Liang were planning at the time. Albert Schäfe, a
German legalist and sociologist quoted in the Explanatory Note, was a State
Socialist vocal in his opposition against Marxism and Communism. In the
1880s he had participated in the drafting of social legislation under Bismarck
(Siewert 2020, 311), and as the author of The Theory and Policy of Labour
Protection (Schäfe 1893), advocated the establishment of a “rational social
state.” To build it and to establish the right kind of socialism, the state in the
40 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
eyes of Schäfe would need to balance various interests and bring the var-
ious parts of the organism into harmony. Neither large-scale nationalization
nor universal suffrage, as demanded at the time by the Social Democrats,
would therefore be advisable. Universal suffrage to him over-emphasises the
individual, creating imbalance.
Schäfe pointed out that education, church, art, and science – the “major
branches of the national economy” (and indeed the sources of productivity
according to Friedrich List) – were unrepresented in constitutions; in proper
socialism, however, both functional and local representation would be ne-
cessary.
29
(Schäfe 1894, 146; 1896, 585). Bluntschli had also complained
earlier on about universal suffrage providing incomprehensive representation,
(Bluntschli 1885a, 58) and this would have been an inuence on Schäfe, who
argued that half of any legislature (or two-thirds, even three-fths) should
comprise of Berufskörperschaften, or “vocational corporations”; only such
bodies make up the socio-economic organic fabric, and only when they were
represented, would “complete representation” be achieved. (Schäfe 1894,
133) This was known as the “Principle of Functional Representation.” It was
Satō’s book which rst suggested the formula “peasants, industrialists and
businessmen, handicrafts workers and labourers” taken up by the 1917
“Explanatory Note,” in an elaboration of Schäfe’s ideas.
30
Schäfe’s principles appear to have been immediately defeated. In con-
trast to the Note, the Bill stipulated not a system like future Fascist Italy
whereby legally prescribed vocational corporations produced deputies, but
one large electoral college for eligible voters from all sectors electing
Enterprise Representatives – in effect an “economic aristocracy.” This was
far from Schäfe’s State Socialist vision, which would have also included
labourers and handicraft workers. The Note made instead reference to the
property requirements of the Belgian and Swedish upper chambers.
31
The
new non-economic sectors included the Academic Electoral College de-
signed on the basis of Spanish, Italian and Peruvian practice, and was much
stricter in its provisions than the Central Academic Caucus of the 1918 New
Senate.
32
Representatives of “High-ranking Ofcials of the Judiciary and
Executive” was an extension of Liang’s idea of having ofcial members of
parliament, and partially satised some calls in 1916-7 for a “Chamber of
Elders” [Yuanlaoyuan 元老院]; this is whilst the actual points of reference
were Hungary and Italy, and proposed to “net in conservatively inclined
talent with rich experience and knowledge.” They were to be produced from
electoral colleges at central and local levels for ofcials appointed by the two
levels of government. Yet the candidates could not be ofcials in active duty,
and this meant that the system was reserved for retired ofcials, or that it
was meant to be some sort of “revolving door.”
33
All this suggests that the December 1917 Parliament Organisation Act
Amendment Bill was a complete manifestation of the conservative vision of
the late-Imperial Constitutional Monarchist movement under Liang, as re-
vised for the Republican era – the belief in a hierarchical society and the
The birth of Anfu China 41
need for an aristocracy, and thus the need for a House of Peers idealistically
made up of conservative, experienced men. Had this Bill been voted into
existence, this could have been the start of China’s march toward a
Corporatist Developmental State, and was in every way a milestone for
intellectual history. Had the system survived into the 1920s, it could have been
the very point of embarkation of the proto-Fascistisation of the Anfu Regime.
It already resembled, in its 1917 form, the Irish Senate from 1936 to the
present; and with minor modications it could have turned into an Italian or
Estonian-styled legislature. In fact, the concept of Functional Representation
was still popular after WWII, as shown notably in Indonesia.
Yet the Bill suffered a miscarriage. On 18 December the Provisional Senate’s
Committee of the Whole convened, and the intentions of the Senate Reform
were immediately discerned. Hu Jun [Hu Chün 胡鈞] (Berlin) pointed out after
the Legislation Bureau representatives had spoken that the Senate “would, I’m
afraid, in this sense create a caste system.”
34
On 23 December the Provisional
Senate decided that the New Senate would still be elected from Provincial
Assemblies and local or other electoral colleges.
35
This provided Anfu men and
the Progressives with greater political certainty, given their existing hold on
many Provincial Assemblies. The two parties continued to confront each other
over the method for electing Senators, where both suggested different cor-
poratist solutions. The Progressives argued that the 1912 election law should be
maintained, with direct elections from the Provincial Assemblies, where it was
sure of its dominance. Anfu MPs instead proposed local election colleges by-
passing existing Provincial Assemblies. The Progressives, outnumbered in the
Provisional Senate, changed tact and began to issue “policy papers” to arouse
public attention – whilst the Anfu bribed its way through the weaker elements of
the Progressives, and struck out the names of the paper authors from an internal
list of supported candidates for the 1918 election (Liu 1998).
Eventually, a compromised was reached and the method of local electoral
colleges was adopted, on the understanding that the Kuomintang elements
which remained in the Provincial Assemblies would need to be eliminated
from the process (Xiong 2011, 96–100). In the elections of May–June 1918, the
Anfu Club took a total of 330 seats in both chambers; the allied New
Communications Clique another 20 seats; the Old Communications Clique,
which was at the time on good terms with Anfu, 50 seats; whilst the
Progressives (now known as the “Research Clique”) took only 20 seats (Mao
1991, 118). Electoral irregularities were widespread. Numbers in voter regis-
ters were often inated, and on election day, beggars and even children turned
up to vote. The Research Clique spent huge sums of money aiming at be-
coming the governing majority but was still defeated, and Liang Qichao bit-
terly regretted his involvement in setting up the political system (Chang 2007b,
116). Yet one must also see that this election achieved what Liang set out to
accomplish, and that the beggars and children served only as “voting cattle”
(as Engels would have called them) for the deputies of the gentry, and for the
military, which lent them support. The legislators voted in were almost all
42 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
from lists predetermined by local commanders or even Xu Shuzheng at the
Army Ministry and his Anfu headquarters (ZKJYJZB 1963, 205–206, in Zhou
2011, 229–230).
These lists were not made up of random, unrepresentative names; the men
chosen were often the equivalent of Japanese local leaders or meibōka. In
this sense, compared to Japan’s attempt in 1940 to build a single-party state,
which failed due to its strategy of circumventing the local leaders, Xu’s strategy
of incorporating such elements by means of “non-competitive nominations”
was much more successful. On 24 March 1918, Xu telegrammed Anhui com-
mander Ni Sichong [Ni Ssu-ch’ung 倪嗣沖], one of the three generals who led
troops to crush Zhang Xun, asking him to make sure that pro-military can-
didates would “yield total victory in a dozen provinces,”
36
and sent Anfu staff
armed with huge sums of money to the provinces to control election results.
The Club also “secretly liaised with heads of local administration to control
nominations.”
37
Yan and Leung (2022) believe that the socio-economic back-
ground and relative maturity of the Anfu MPs were later conducive to efcient,
“conservative legislation.”
Also accused of vote-buying, the Central Academic Caucus actually
carefully vetted its voters and asked for certication of their qualications,
not forgetting in the process to eliminate potential radicals. The qualica-
tions held included the French Army Cavalry School, the Belgian École des
mines de Mons, Cornell University and in China, the Peking, Beiyang, and
Shanxi Universities.
38
The industrialist Chen Jihua [Ch’en Ch’i-hua 陳濟華]
sponsored a banquet where Anfu member and former Minister to Belgium
Wu Zonglian [Wu Tsung-lien 吳宗濂 ] and Zhejiang Education Association
Chairman Sun Zengda [Sun Tseng-ta 孫增大] were invited to make spee-
ches.
39
Some voters invented a new form of protest, of deliberately casting
awed ballots. In a way not dissimilar to late-Soviet voters who also wrote
their dissatisfactions on the ballots, voters in 1918 with their wry sense of
humor wrote the names of prostitutes, or dead politicians like Yuan Shikai,
or the wrong characters for the candidates’ names, and even the insult “big
turtle” (bastard) or drawing a turtle on it (Xiong 2011, 191–192).
To this, one might ask why Duan and Xu did not scrap elections altogether,
and appoint another Parliament as they had done in 1917. It has been recently
argued that authoritarian states including the Soviet Union also hold elec-
tions, not only to preserve a façade of constitutionality but also as one me-
chanism to maintain the scarcity of places in the “winning coalition” – the
group that would benet from being in government. This would make such
identity – be it the membership of a party, government, or parliament – a
valuable commodity, and something to be held onto precariously; it could also
be terminated anytime when the person in question “misbehaves.” Support
for his re-election could be withdrawn, or he could be shunted aside in a
controlled campaign, and replaced by someone else from the “talent pool”
(de Mesquita 2003, 54–55). Indeed, this was how the Research Clique was
eliminated, and the same could have been done for any unruly Anfu elements.
The birth of Anfu China 43
The design of the Anfu Club
The design of the Anfu Club’s internal organization also served to bolster the
gentry’s monolithic rule, by being a corporatist organ co-opting all political
factions, save for the Progressives (Research Clique), and the Zhili Faction
military leaders, who hated Duan’s Anhui Faction. This was both Anfu’s main
strength and the fatal weakness. The factions that were co-opted were not
random associations of politicians, which congregated only because of personal
reasons, as some suggested, but were interest groups differentiated according to
their functions and properties. The Anfu Club Charter, which has usually been
assumed to have been lost or never to have existed, actually stipulated that
“The Headquarters holds monthly congresses, but where major issues arise, the
Chairman, or Councillors, or 20 or more club members, can request an ex-
traordinary congress” (“Anfu Club Charter,” Xitang Yeshi 1920, 4).
The Club Council – Anfu’s de facto central committee – “holds meetings
twice a month, but an extraordinary meeting can be convened by the President
of the Council, or ve or more Councillors, or 10 or more club members”
(“Provisional Regulations for the Club Council,” in Xitang Yeshi 1920, 22).
The councillors came in two categories – parliamentary and extra-
parliamentary, the second having one-third of the number of seats of the rst
(“Anfu Club Charter,” in Xitang Yeshi 1920, 3). Every ve legislators chose
one Parliamentary Councillor (PC), and the Parliamentary Councillors then
elected the Extra-Parliamentary Councillors (EPC). It would seem that al-
though inner-party democracy was proclaimed, the PCs did no more than to
approve a pre-determined list of EPCs. The qualications of the leading
members of the Club Council and the EPCs reveal that most of them had been
trained in modern administration or studied abroad, mostly in Japan. A glance
at the list of EPCs also shows them to be representatives of different factions, of
which the most important were the Old Communications Clique [Jiu jiaotong xi
舊交通系, OCC], which controlled the railways and their associated nancial
institutions such as the Bank of Communications before Yuan’s death in 1916.
This was in addition to the New Communications Clique [Xin jiaotong xi
新交通系, NCC ], which took over the reins of such departments and nances
when Yuan and his proteges fell from power. These men had been educated in
Japan as legalists, and had been appointed to the late-Imperial political reform
planning agency and facility for training new bureaucrats, the humbly named
Constitutional Compilation Commission [Xianzheng biancha guan 憲政編查館].
As new intellectuals who worked under huge constraints – notably ethnic – to
reform the Empire, they possessed an ultra-realistic worldview that permanently
prepared them for setbacks, as well as being pro-Japanese as a conditional reex.
In addition to them were pro-Duan (D) men who were at the head of the
military, judiciary, and even the Metropolitan Police, in addition to the legis-
lature. Anfu’s attempts to co-opt the OCC, notably its leader Liang Shiyi who
briey served as Senate President, did not turn out to be particularly successful,
but another of its leaders, Ye Gongchuo [Yeh Kung-cho 葉恭綽], served as Vice
Minister of Communications and took part in deciding the lists of provincial
parliamentary candidates in 1918.
44 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
Anfu Club Council Leaders and Extra-Parliamentary Councillors [yuanwai pingyiyuan 院外評議員]
40
Name Education/training Portfolio
Tian Yinghuang [T’ien
Ying-huang]
田應璜 Late Imperial New Civil Service
Examination – Special Subject of
Economics
Council President; Vice President of the
Senate
Wang Yinchuan [Wang Yin-
chuan]
王印川 Political Economy, Waseda; LLB,
Hōsei. Ex-Progressive. Council Vice President; Speaker, House
of Representatives
Xu Shuzheng (D) [Hsu Shu-
cheng]
徐樹錚 Imperial Japanese Army Academy Army Vice Minister; Anfu Organizer
Duan Zhigui (D) [Tuan
Chih-kuei]
段芝貴 Imperial Japanese Army Academy Army Minister; Peking Regional
Commander
Wu Bingxiang (D) [Wu
Ping-hsiang]
吳炳湘 Imperial Qing New Army Metropolitan Police Commissioner
Li Sihao (D) [Li Ssu-hao] 李思浩 Peking Grand Academy (now Peking
University) Finance bureaucrat
Yao Guozhen (D) [Yao
Kuo-chen]
姚國楨 Transport Academy (Jiaotong
chuanxisuo 交通傳習所, now
Jiaotong University)
Railway technocrat
Yao Zhen (D) [Yao Chen] 姚震 Waseda University Chief Justice of the Supreme Court;
Magistrate, Higher Tribunal for PoWs
Zeng Yujun (OCC) [Tseng
Yu-tsün]
曾毓雋 Traditional Civil Service Examination Railway technocrat
Cao Rulin (NCC) [Tsao
Ju-lin]
曹汝霖 Tokyo Vocational School (Tōkyō
senmon gakkō 東京專門學校, now
Waseda University)
Minister of Finance
Lu Zongyu (NCC) [Lu
Tsung-yu]
陸宗輿 Waseda University Finance bureaucrat and diplomat
Ding Shiyuan (NCC) [Ting
Shih-yuan]
丁士源 Shanghai St. John’s University; Legal
training in Britain. Railway technocrat and police
administrator
Wu Dingchang (O/NCC)
[Wu Ting-chang]
吳鼎昌 Tokyo Higher Commercial School
(now Hitotsubashi) President of the Government Mint
The birth of Anfu China 45
The term “Club” certainly did not mean that Anfu was any less serious
about itself; Clause 22 of the Club Charter stipulates that anyone who had
contravened the orders of the headquarters or had committed criminal of-
fences would be expelled after a vote in the Club Congress (“Anfu Club
Charter,” in Xitang Yeshi 1920, 4). Yet certain behaviors in the Club would
be difcult to comprehend today; for example, some sources insist that the
Anfu headquarters had been a place to “hold banquets and summon
prostitutes,”
41
and had recreational facilities. By extension therefore, it was
argued that Anfu was never a serious political organization. But this had less
to do with the Club’s politics than most historians from a Marxist tradition
would imagine. Early political parties both in the West and Japan often
doubled as elite social clubs, or had been evolved from them. This was
particularly the case with French political parties before the Third Republic
and for a short time after its establishment, which had begun life mostly as
salons or elite clubs for politicians and intellectuals.
42
These clubs soon
began to discover, during their foray into parliamentary politics, the im-
portance of public speaking and debate training. The fact that Anfu had a
special panel in its Recreational Section for that purpose, is a clear sign that
Anfu was the inheritor of these traditions.
As for its political manifesto, especially with regard to economic policy,
Anfu remained hesitant until its nal days to show its State Socialist in-
clinations. As we have seen, it was not until July 1919 that Anfu began to
openly warm up to the idea of building socialism; this was followed by a
package of proposed reforms until the regime was toppled in mid-1920 (see
Leung 2021). The Charter contained only the slogans “Guarding national
unity, consolidating republicanism, exercising constitutionalism, and pro-
tecting popular livelihood.” This shows that Anfu deliberately adopted, as a
“big tent” strategy, an indistinct platform that offended no one, and which
contained only values that could no longer be disputed after the fall of
Zhang Xun (republicanism, constitutionalism, and unication) or which
scarcely required debate (statism). This was a strategy appropriate for the
1918 elections, but which would become anathema after May Fourth. The
internal organization of Anfu displayed inuences from Japanese political
parties, and indeed terms such as Liaison (J. kōsai, C. jiaoji 交際) appears to
have been taken directly from them. Its think tank was the very Japanese-
sounding Political Investigation Committee [zhengwu diaocha hui 政務調查
會] of which the sub-committees – Industrial, Communications, Military
etc. –
…resembled the ministries of the state, and the President of the Political
Investigation Committee (PIC) mirrored the Premier of the State
Council, whilst the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the sub-committees
could be regarded as the ministers and deputy ministers of state. Its
research methods were even more comprehensive than cabinet meetings,
to the point where any matter that was not deliberated by the PIC was
46 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
thought to be the cause of quarrels and disputes. Its source
of support came from the Congress of Parliamentarians of Both
Chambers. Any important resolution would have to be passed by the
Congress before it could be adopted by the Club. […] The Speakers of
both chambers of Parliament, Li Shengduo [Li Sheng-to 李盛鐸], Tian
Yinghuang, Wang Yitang [Wang I-t’ang 王揖唐] and Liu Enge
[Liu En-ko 劉恩格 ], and the secretaries of both chambers of Parliament,
Liang Hongzhi [Liang Hung-chih 梁鴻志], Wang Yinchuan and Zang
Yinsong [Tsang Yin-sung 臧蔭松], all belonged to the Anfu Club.
(Xitang Yeshi 1920, 17)
Li Shengduo, Presidentof the PIC, had been one of ve ministers sent in
1905–6 by the Imperial Qing Government to some 14 countries to “investigate
constitutionalism.” PIC Internal Affairs Sub-Committee Chairman, Senator
Zhang Yuanqi [Chang Yuan-ch’i 張元奇 ] would be appointed as President of
the Economic Investigation Bureau in 1920, the “Economic General Staff” of
the Anfu Regime responsible for proposing a substantial number of State
Socialist reforms. Some of the panels were run by professionals. Wu Zesheng
[Wu Tse-sheng 烏澤聲], (Waseda) “Acting Full-time Executive” [daixing
zhuanren ganshi 代行專任幹事] of the Secretariat’s Press Division, had been a
legislator since 1912, and was President of the New People’s Daily 新民報 in
Peking. Translation Division Executive Chen Huanzhang [Ch’en Huan-chang
陳煥章] had earned his PhD from Columbia University, and had written a
work in English, The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School (1911),
praised by John Maynard Keynes (1912) (Figure 1.1).
Other Anfu executives achieved notoriety or legendary status. Wang
Zhilong [Wang Chih-lung 王郅隆], the main Anfu benefactory who had a
“rags to riches” story unusual for the era, was Accounting Section Chief. He
was the well-known General Manager of Yuyuan 裕元 Textiles Mill in
Tientsin, the city’s largest, built with Japanese loans and counting amongst
its shareholders Duan and many other Beiyang leaders. Zang Yinsong,
Secretary of the House of Representatives, was Planning Division Full-time
Executive under Wang. The Liaison Section was responsible not only for
dealing with domestic and foreign politicians and businessmen but also
according to the Charter had to “investigate” matters, which likely meant
assembling intelligence.
The Liaison Section’s subsidiary, the Diplomatic Liaison Division (DLD),
was led by Li Guojie [Li Kuo-chieh 李國杰], a late-Imperial diplomat and
constitutional monarchist friend of Liang Ch’i-ch’ao’s. DLD Executive Wei
Sijiong [Wei Ssu-chiung 魏斯炅] (Chūō) was best known as the husband of the
politically conscious former courtesan Sai Jinhua [Sai Chin-hua 賽金花], who
was previously married to a Chinese diplomat sent to Germany. She had re-
portedly met Bismarck, spoke several European languages, and had saved
Wei from Yuan Shikai during the Second Revolution in 1913. Bian Yinchang
[Pien Yin-ch’ang 卞蔭昌], also a DLD Executive and a late-imperial ofcial,
The birth of Anfu China 47
had led the Chinese delegation to the Panama World Exposition in 1915 re-
presenting Tientsin’s industries and businesses. In 1916 when French autho-
rities detained Chinese police and forcibly expanded their concession, Bian led
the Tientsin Council for the Upholding of National Rights and Territory
[Tianjin guoquan guotu weichi hui 天津國權國土維持會] to rally against the
French (Bian 1917). Anfu’s choice of these accomplished and experienced men
was well-considered, reecting the growing clout of what is today called the
“foreign policy public” – a globally informed community in high politics; their
placement in Parliament was therefore a strategic act.
Anfu was intent on establishing branches on both provincial and pre-
fectural levels, and drafted the corresponding provisions, but they appear to
have never materialized. The Club intended to establish “Correspondence
Ofces” at each province prior to the formal establishment of a branch, and
stated in its Charter that the “Ofce Establishment Commissioner” would
be elected by Anfu members in Peking. A formal branch would be set up
when each Ofce reaches 100 members, pending approval from the Peking
HQ. The Chairman of each branch would be appointed by the superior
party organization, but the rest of the branch’s leaders (eg. Executive
Commissioner, Executives, Council President, and Councillors) would be
Figure 1.1 Organisation Chart of the Anfu Club.
48 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
elected from amongst its members, and they would then appoint the
branch’s staff. The branches would need to report to the HQ (and pre-
fectural branches to the provincial HQ) regularly on its affairs, the mem-
bership roll, the list of staff, resolutions passed, budget and expenses, and
other matters. These were subject to a number of detailed charters and
regulations (Xitang Yeshi 1920, 6–9).
However in the end Anfu appeared to have settled on commanding over
satellite organizations at provincial level, such as the Chenglu Club [Chenglu
julebu 澄廬俱樂部] in the Zhejiang [Chekiang 浙江] Provincial Assembly, es-
tablished with Mex $2,000,000 of funds provided by the Peking HQ. This
fought against the “Society of the Good” [Liang she 良社] set up by ex-
Kuomintang members. They were also divided on prefectural lines, with
Chenglu representing legislators from Taizhou, Wenzhou, and Chuzhou in
eastern Zhejiang, and the “Society of the Good” representing west Zhejiang.
Yet the satellite organizations appeared to have never reached the level of
discipline seen in Peking. When the election for the Zhejiang Assembly
President was held on 22 October 1918, Ruan Xingcun [Juan Hsing-tsun 阮性
存], the candidate supported by Chenglu, was observed to be distinctly lack-
lustre in his campaign, refusing to treat his supporter to banquets or to buy
votes. As a result, the Wenzhou legislators defected and Zhou Jiying [Chou Chi-
ying 周繼潆], the “Society of the Good” candidate, was elected instead; Zhou
would later come to regret that his own campaign had been dirtier than Ruan’s,
despite the latter being an Anfu politician (Shen 2005, 225–228). It was a rare
defeat compared to Anfu’s hold on the vast majority of Provincial Assemblies.
Concluding remarks
The lack of press coverage on the proceedings of the Anfu Club Council
meetings and the lack of any documentation whatsoever on the functioning
of its sections, panels, and sub-committees makes it very difcult to analyse
the efcacy of Anfu operations. Yet it should be evident by now that the
Anfu Club bore the hallmarks of a modern political party, and rather than
being a “faction,” it was the rst Chinese party to actually attempt to
dominate all of government and its operations. It is my intention however to
insist that we should be careful not to judge it using the standards of a
Leninist Party, as would be appropriate for Soviet-inspired parties such as
the Kuomintang after the 1920s, but to parliamentary caucuses. Any pro-
gress toward being a Leninist organization was a plus, and that could partly
explain the rapid expansion of Anfu abilities by 1920, when it tried to direct
a second economic lift-off. Yet we must above all be wary of a “factionalist
historiography” popular in China and which has centrally gured in the
work of Andrew Nathan –
…the failure of the republic taught the need for a strong, unambiguous
single focus of loyalty. “Equality groups,” in Lyon Sharman’s phrase –
The birth of Anfu China 49
non-hierarchical forms of organisation, with ambiguous loci of power –
did not work in early twentieth-century China. The politicians were
uncomfortable in such settings and, when thrust into them, arranged
themselves in the congenial form of factions, which provided some sense
of hierarchy and stable afliation. […] A small elite with a political
culture framed largely in the traditional society knew just enough about
constitutions to believe that they were easy to operate and efcacious in
supplying stable government. The early republicans hoped to avoid
conict by gathering consensus around a constitutional process. But the
process mandated by any republican constitution is precisely a process
of conict. Not unnaturally, practicing politicians fell back on the tools
at hand […] They formed factions…
(Nathan 1976, 224)
Nathan’s judgment is not entirely without ground, for it described the events
of 1916–17 much better than the three Anfu years, which was the bulk of the
period he covered in his book. When it came to the Anfu years, Nathan’s
conclusion serves only to confuse. Pluralism did not fail in early Republican
China because politicians had a love for authoritarianism and that, being
uncomfortable without it, had to form factions; rather, factions were the
staple of pluralism, a process which some legislators found liberating,
especially when it allowed them to challenge and attack the establishment
for the rst time in years without fear of reprisals. It also facilitated various
regional interests. Yet Pluralism failed because it became a shambles, giving
rise to all sorts of rent-seeking in 1917, and it was evident even then, to a
country eager to enter into a war and to resolve all of its international
problems at once, that it provided no basis on which China’s many urgent
problems could be solved. World War I and the initial success of National
Unity governments across the west, compressing pluralist politics and
phasing in monopolistic government, was to Anfu-era politicians the best
evidence there was that having a unied and unambiguous focus of loyalty
would deliver a much better deal for China. Pluralism simply presented no
convincing case and did not create the conditions for its own success.
Nathan judged that “the early republic was the last traditional Chinese
polity – the last in which the legitimate political voice belonged to a nar-
rowly circumscribed elite” (Nathan 1976, 224). In this, he was only mar-
ginally correct. In the sense that Liang and Anfu sought to build a
constitutional dictatorship for the gentry, rather than being a traditional
Chinese polity, this was a traditional class asserting itself via modern means,
rejecting in the course of it the need for a monarch. Also, rather than being a
cluster of imperial mandarins who had minimal knowledge of con-
stitutionalism, many Anfu-era politicians as we have seen, had studied law
in Japan or even in the west, and were highly informed on legal and con-
stitutional matters. The situation where a dazed Yuan Shikai asked the
diplomat Wellington Koo [Gu Weijun 顧維鈞] “What exactly is a
50 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
Republic?” had evaporated a year after his death. The pluralism that these
men witnessed in Japan was of course a limited one, and the system that they
most looked up to, Imperial Germany, was no better at tolerating dissent.
Various National Unity Governments in erstwhile liberal countries also
served as examples for Chinese politicians. Thus, the miraculous act of
looking so incredibly outward for resources for political design – a sign of
the deep internationalization amongst political circles at the time and
something that a decade earlier might have been unimaginable – led them in
the direction of creating a monopolistic party regime (Linz 1970, 252) that
helped the “conscience of the nation” – the mandarin literati – to re-emerge
at the “Corrective Revolution” of 1917 as the guiding force of the country.
That it subsequently had to resort to the most corrupt means to make sure
the monopoly would be maintained as a matter of course but also a tragedy
and irony.
China’s ofcial view holds that “The Anfu Parliament was a mutation of
western parliamentary politics, and betrayed the principles of a democratic
republic. This shows that the parliamentary system, appropriate for western
capitalist politics, economics, and historical circumstances, was unworkable
in China dominated by feudalistic production methods, feudalistic thinking,
and the warlord-bureaucratic hegemony” (Zhou 2011, 238). Such views are
simply what Lenin would have called an embarras de richesses (Lenin 1974
[1920]). One cannot insist enough that the Anfu Parliament, far from being a
feudalistic product, was a product of high modernity, envisioned by thinkers
like Liang Qichao, inspired by the discipline and efcacy of wartime states,
notably again Germany and Japan. That it represented the declining gentry
did not conceal the fact that Liang had wished to provide the conditions for
the gentry’s transition into being a class of entrepreneurs, as the December
1917 Senate reform would have helped induce. In this sense Liang, born of a
gentry family that had declined in its fortunes and was mired in poverty, was
China’s François Guizot – and perhaps just as prejudiced and blinkered by
his self-made success – guarding piously the system of electoral property
requirements, telling the people that if they wished to enjoy political re-
presentation, they should work hard, save up and “enrich themselves.”
It also seems in that “ofcial view” that parliamentary politics were
progressive as long as they functioned in the bourgeois West. That would in
fact be a double standard – that somehow the “one-class democracy” Liang
envisioned for an industrializing gentry was any worse than what they would
have called “bourgeois dictatorships” of the west at the time. The fact is that
corporatist constitutionalism became the key to the successful operation and
indeed survival of many western republics. Taking into account how
Schmitter also argues that State Corporatism also included the planning of
the use of resources, and the expansion of bureaucratic institutions, a con-
demnation of Anfu vote-buying should not conceal the fact that it was a
successful, modern political operation that was meant to deliver a State
Corporatist system – one where the industrializing gentry would have a
The birth of Anfu China 51
stable environment in which to invest, and to receive technical support from
technocrats, to emulate the practices of model factories and state farms, and
to receive government guarantees of interest in the rst years of investment,
and to be reliant on the state’s planned investment of Social Overhead
Capital – to be explained in a future paper on Anfu’s developmental policies.
Such an arrangement could only have been guaranteed under the condi-
tions of a global war by a military-supported single-party regime, which
sheltered these gentry elements from the challenge of a young generation of
Kuomintang revolutionaries. And much as matters alienate themselves in
the course of motion, the regime came eventually to harm the interests of
some local gentry, as was the case of the army’s atrocities in Hunan in 1918.
Yet no successful attempt was made in Parliament to raise taxes for the
gentry, even when domestic war spending far exceeded expectations. This
alone explains the very nature of the Anfu regime – a conservative-
revolutionary regime, and an Old Guard in a New Order. Yet the quest for a
corporatist developmental state would continue under vastly changed cir-
cumstances. Given how many of them would contribute to the formation of
the PRC – Yang Du became a CCP member – and would be appointed to
executive, legislative or advisory positions after 1949 – including but not
limited to quite a number of gures mentioned in this paper: Fang Shu,
Fu Dingyi,
43
Jiang Yong, Li Sihao, Shao Cong’en, Ye Gongchuo, Zeng
Yujun, Zhang Shizhao, etc. – Anfu was not the last New Order they created.
Notes
1 Many people have helped me research this topic over the past decade. I thank in
particular Egas Moniz Bandeira, Simon Angseop Lee, Yan Quan, Jeremy Yellen,
Benjamin Ng, Clemens Bűttner, Andrew Levidis, Xu Guoqi, Kwong Chi Man,
and Zhang Yan for their enormous help and constant encouragement.
2 A pamphlet entitled “Anfu Club” [Anfubu 安福部] written by an unknown au-
thor, Xitang Yeshi 西塘野史 (The Unofcial Historian of the West Pond), has
quoted many of Anfu’s internal documents, including its organizational charter
and various membership rolls, which ll a huge historical gap. Compared to
others’ emphasis on Anfu’s impotence and disorganization, Xitang Yeshi has
depicted a political organization that dealt with huge destruction due to its dis-
ciplined and strategic behavior. The Anfu Club also controlled the newspaper
Fair Comment [Kung-yen Pao or Gongyan Bao 公言報], which was founded by
Hsu Shu-cheng in July 1916 as an army-backed newspaper, becoming at some
point in 1918 Anfu’s de facto party newspaper and started to report in detail its
various congresses and the texts of the speeches delivered, in addition to being
even more precise-worded than the Government Gazette about the contents of
cabinet meetings and the various pieces of legislation decreed, in addition to Anfu
Club Congresses. What were intriguingly never reported were the meetings of the
Anfu Club Council much as the Pravda or People’s Daily would not usually
report the contents of politburo meetings. Wang Zhilong [Wang Chih-lung 王郅
隆], the Anfu Club’s main sponsor and the chief of its Accounting Section,
controlled the Ta-kung Pao 大公報, at the time known ofcially as L’Impartial.
There was also the Japanese-owned Shuntian Shibao [Shun-t’ien Shih-pao 順天時
報], which supported Anfu at times. The latter two are better known amongst
52 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
historians; only one historian, Deng Ye 鄧野, appears to have used Fair Comment
in any meaningful way. One set of microlms is known to exist at the Beijing
National Library.
3 Notably Park Chung-hee’s “Democratic-Republican Party” in South Korea;
Suharto’s “Golkar” in Indonesia; and the “Popular Movement of the
Revolution” under Mobutu in Zaire.
4 Theda Skocpol’s argument as summarized in Young and Turner (1985, 13–14).
5 “Jinbudang Huifu zhi Niyi” 進步黨恢復之擬議 [Proposals to Resurrect the
Progressive Party], Fair Comment 1917-08-14, 3.
6 “Xinzu Dazhengdang Jiang Chuxian” 新組大政黨將出現 [A Newly Assembled
Grand Political Party Will Soon Appear], Shuntian Shibao 1917-08-26, 2; see also
“Zuzhi Dazhengdang Shuo You Fuhuo” 組織大政黨說又復活 [Rumours
Resurrect Regarding the Formation of a Grand Political Party] Shuntian Shibao
1919-11-03, 2.
7 The Anfu called itself a Club, and was descended from the “Moderate Club” set
up in 1916-17 by Xu Shuzheng as a pro-military parliamentary group. Yet this
was at the time a proper name for political parties, when by 1916 the word
“party” had been disgraced by the failure of partisan politics in 1912–14. It re-
ects inuence from the Jacobin Club of the French Revolution. This was in turn
adopted by Japanese political parties, where it remained in use into the 1920s
with Inukai Tsuyoshi’s “Reform Club” and Ōzaki Yukio’s “Shinsei Club”
[Shinsei kurabu 新正俱樂部].
8 Mihail Manoilescu, leader and nancier of the Romanian Fascist “Iron Guard”
Movement dened, in the 1930s, a “Corporation” as “a collective and public
organization composed of the totality of persons (physical or juridical) fullling
together the same national function and having as its goal that of assuring the
exercise of that function by rules of law imposed at least upon its members”
(Manoilescu 1936, 176, in Schmitter 1974, 94).
9 Yang Du, in his 1908 article on L’Impartial and in his book A Theory of Gold and
Iron [Jintie zhuyi shuo 金鐵主義說] quoted legalists including Edmund Burke and
Bluntschli, who advanced that parties, being a “union of comrades,” should
adopt a consistent ideology to take-over, when the chance comes, “all of poli-
tics,” implement specic policies for national interest and popular livelihood, and
to advance the benet of all society. “Zhengdang zhi yiyi” 政黨之意義 (The
Signicance of Political Parties), L’Impartial 1908-04-15, 1; Yang 2015).
10 It was quoted by future Anfu MP Huang Yunpeng [Huang Yun-p’eng 黃雲鵬]
during the Constituent Conference of early 1917, at a time when he was a
member of the pro-military “Moderate Club.” [Zhonghe julebu中和俱樂部] It was
a speech in support of ex-police bureaucrat Sun Runyu [Sun Jun-yu 孫潤宇] who
argued that “sovereignty rests in the state” [zhuquan zai guo 主權在國] and op-
posed direct democracy modeled upon Switzerland. (“Xianfa qicao weiyuanhui
kaihui jishi” 憲法起草委員會開會紀事 [Minutes of the Conference of the
Constituent Committee], L’Impartial 1917-02-01, 2).
11 “Gongyan bao zhounian zengkan” 公言報周年增刊 [Fair Comment 1st
Anniversary Supplement], Fair Comment 1917-09-02.
12 Editorials by “Cold Observer” on L’Impartial include – “Zhengzhi zhi zhong-
xindian” 政治之中心點 [The centre-point of politics], 1916-12-20, 2; “Zhengfu yi
zhengdun gesheng zhengzhi” 政府宜整頓各省政治 [The government should
shake up provincial politics], 1917-03-02; “Guomin zijue zhi jihui” 國民自覺之機
會 [A chance for national self-awakening], 1917-08-15 and 16.
13 “Zuori Zhongyiyuan bei wei ji” 昨日眾議院被圍記 [An Account of the Siege on
the House of Representatives Yesterday], Morning Bell 1917-05-11, 2.
The birth of Anfu China 53
14 Zhang Guogan [Chang Kuo-kan 張國淦], for example, tried to persuade Tuan to
incorporate in his National Defence Cabinet two men from the Kuomintang, two
from the Progressives, and two from amongst the State Council bureaucrats. This
totally ignored how the Kuomintang was itself a cluster of four factions – the
Good Friends [Yiyoushe 益友社], the People’s Friends, the Recreation Club, and
the Political Science Society – all of which could be further subdivided. Only
Zhang Shizhao’s broadly corporatist Extraordinary State Council proposal could
have resolved the problem, yet it was not taken up (Ding and Zhao 2010 [1936],
426–427).
15 For example, “Qingkan Ouzhou lieqing zhi juguo yizhi (1)” 請看歐洲列強之舉國
一致 (一)” [Please look at the national unity of the European powers], Shuntian
shibao 1914-08-13, 2; “Lieqiang zhi jingjizhan zhunbei” 列強之經濟戰準備
[Preparations for economic warfare among the powers], L’Impartial 1917-08-29.
16 See for example “Waijiao xingshi jinpo zhi zuowen” 外交形勢緊迫之昨聞 [News
yesterday of the emergency on the diplomatic front], L’Impartial 1918-03-02.
17 “Zhengtuan huanying Feng fuzongtong zhi shengkuang” 政團歡迎馮副總統之盛況
[The spectacle of the reception for Vice-President Feng by political parties],
L’Impartial 1917-03-02.
18 Cold Observer, “Ribenbao zhi guaifengshuo” 日本報之怪風說 [Strange rumours
in the Japanese press], L’Impartial 1917-02-28.
19 Cold Observer, “Shanhou wenti” 善後問題 [The problem of the settlement],
L’Impartial 1917-07-14.
20 “Gesheng zancheng Canyiyuan laidian xuzhi” 各省贊成參議院來電續誌
[Continued reports on telegrams of support for the new Senate from the pro-
vinces], L’Impartial 1917-08-04.
21 “Liang Rengong zhi xianfa zijian xuzhi ” 梁任公之憲法意見續誌 [Continued
report about the constitutional opinion of Liang Rengong], L’Impartial 1917-01-
15. Incidentally the Kuomintang had, in 1913, been briey advocates of a cor-
poratist arrangement for the Senate. Their recommendations, published in July
1913, included a Senate that had representatives elected by local self-governing
bodies, chambers of commerce, chambers of agriculture, chambers of industry
and commerce and the Central Academic Caucus, whereas the Congress would
have been elected by the common voter. The justication for this system was that
the Senate should absorb “special social forces”. But this was quietly dropped
soon afterwards, and in August 1913 the Kuomintang Constitution Discussion
Committee [Guomindang xianfa taolun hui 國民黨憲法討論會] resolved to abolish
this recommendation, on the grounds that voter categorisation would be difcult
especially when such professional bodies did not already exist, and suggested that
the existing property requirements system for the Senate elections would be
adequate. See Xianfa xinwen 憲法新聞 [Constitutional News] 1913, no. 13, 108-
109 and 1913, no. 15, 133.
22 “Ji Linshi Canyiyuan kaimu qingxing” 記臨時參議院開幕情形 [On the opening
ceremony of the Provisional Senate], Fair Comment 1917-11-11, 2.
23 “Guohui zuzhifa yu zhengfu” 國會組織法與政府 [The Parliament Organisation
Act and the government], L’Impartial 1917-11-03; “Zuori liangfa shenchahui
jiwen” 昨日兩法審查會紀聞 [Report on the deliberation cCommittees for the two
bills], L’Impartial 1917-11-29.
24 These were Shao Cong’en [Shao Ts’ung-en 邵從恩 ] (Tokyo Imperial), a late-
Imperial Ministry of Justice director; Zhong Gengyan [Chung Keng-yen 鍾賡言]
(Tokyo Imperial), and Cheng Shude [Cheng Shu-teh 程樹德] (Hōsei). See “Zuori
geyi jiwen” 昨日閣議紀聞 [Report on yesterday’s cabinet decisions], L’Impartial
1917-12-14; “Canyiyuan kaihui pangting ji, Liu Enge dangxuan weiyuanzhang”
54 Ernest Ming-tak Leung
參議院開會旁聽記，劉恩格當選委員長 [Auditing the Senate conference; Liu
Enge elected chairman], L’Impartial 1917-12-19.
25 The Explanatory Note quoted a US legalist whose name is given as “Gerui” 格芮
and it is a mystery as to who this is. It could refer to the turn-of-the-century US
legalist John Chipman Gray, but he was not known to have made any judgments
on the merits of bicameralism. However, many Japanese legal works at the time
quoted James Bryce’s American Commonwealth, which argued that most US
states which tried unicameralism later found it to be brash, dictatorial and cor-
rupt, and mostly reverted to unicameralism. This appears to have led to a mis-
quote, whereby a corruption of Bryce, ブライス, led to “Grai” グライ. The
Japanese legalist Hozumi Yatsuka, a major inuence on China, quoted the works
of Bryce, for example in Uesugi (1913, 523) and Minobe (1930, 112–113). I am
greatly indebted, on this and the research about Albert Schäfe, to the help of
Egas Moniz Bandeira and Simon Angseop Lee, who helped me with interpreting
the German legal works.
26 “Qingkan xiuzheng Guohui zuzhifa cao’an quanwen” 請看修正國會組織法草案
全文 [Please read the full text of the Parliament Organisation Act Amendment
Bill], Fair Comment 1917-12-16, 3.
27 “Qingkan xiuzheng Guohui zuzhifa cao’an quanwen (xu)” 請看修正國會組織法
草案全文 (續) [Please read the full text of the Parliament Organisation Act
Amendment Bill (continued)], Fair Comment 1917-12-17, 3.
28 “Qingkan xiuzheng Guohui Zuzhifa Cao’an Quanwen,” 3.
29 It deserves to be mentioned that the formula “school, church, art and science”
came from Bluntschli, who in turn took it from the early promoter of social
policies and the rst to suggest social insurance, the French economist Jean-
Charles-Léonard Sismonde de Sismondi, in his Études sur les constitutions des
peuples libres (Bluntschli 1885a, 58-59; Chisholm 1911, 25:159).
30 It is strange that the Explanatory Note matched what Satō wrote in the 1935
edition of his 1908 book, which probably suggests that it made reference to Satō’s
lecture notes or other publications `during this period (Satō 1908, 465–468; 1935,
330–335).
31 “Xiuzheng Canyiyuan yiyuan xuanjufa’an liyoushu” 修正參議院議員選舉法案理
由書 [Explanatory Note for the Senator Election Act Amendment Bill], Fair
Comment 1917-12-18, 6.
32 One would have needed to be university teaching staff for two years or more (or
three years, if one did not possess a degree), or had “specic academic inven-
tions”, by which what was probably meant were publications or patents. (Ibid.)
33 “Qingkan xiuzheng Guohui Zuzhifa Cao’an Quanwen,” 3–4.
34 “Zuori Canyiyuan kaihui ji” 昨日參議院開會記 [The Senate proceedings yes-
terday], Fair Comment 1917-12-19, 6.
35 “Zuori Canyiyuan quanyuan weiyuanhui jiwen” 昨日參議院全院委員會紀聞
[Proceedings of the Senate Committee of the Whole yesterday], Fair Comment
1917-12-25, 6.
36 “Zhi Ni Sichong dian” 致倪嗣沖電 [Telegram to Ni Sichong], 1918-03-24, in
ZKJYJZB 1963, 64.
37 Chang 2007b, 135.
38 Zhengfu Gongbao 政府公報 [Government gazette] May-June 1918, in Xiong
(2011, 169–173).
39 “Zhongyang xuanju di 1 bu zhi lianhuahui” 中央選舉第一部之聯歡會 [Party
organised by the Central No.1 Caucus], Shenbao 申報 1918-05-23, 3, in Chang
(2007b, 137).
40 Wu Wenhan has been left out of this table since no background information on
him is available.
The birth of Anfu China 55
41 The accusation comes from Zhou (2011, 222).
42 For studies of these salons and elite clubs, see Joana (1999).
43 Fu Dingyi [Fu Ting-i 符定一] was an Anfu Club Councillor and MP whom as
Principal of the Hunan Higher Normal Academy was mentor to a young Mao
Zedong.
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The birth of Anfu China 59
2 The Communist International:
A party of parties confronting
interwar internationalisms,
1920–1925
Vsevolod Kritskiy
Introduction
Throughout the interwar period, new and existing political parties set themselves
the task of capturing state power to bring about a utopian nationalist vision by
fusing themselves into the structure of the state. At the same time, the inter-
national system was in ux: new international organizations, movements,
arenas, and solidarities emerged, seeking to participate, control, or oppose these
processes of capture. The Communist International (Comintern), birthed out of
the embers of the October Revolution and spearheaded by the Bolshevik Party,
was designed to unite communist forces and scrap existing international rela-
tions entirely. It was a unique historical project that sought to establish itself as a
sort of party-of-parties, a single centralized organization that was explicitly
based on communist parties as its members (Thorpe 1998, 637). In so doing, it
reproduced the goals of national parties represented across this volume at the
international level. As with the Bolsheviks who successfully captured state power
at the national level and fused the party into the Soviet state, the Comintern
sought to encourage the capture and fusion of states with their national com-
munist parties, and the creation of an entirely new international system based on
these new party-states as its building blocks.
The Comintern, however, was not the only international organization
seeking to remake the world in its image at the time. The League of Nations,
birthed out of the Versailles Peace Treaty and spearheaded by the Allied
powers, was designed to create a new international system based on the co-
lonial and imperial international relations that dominated the previous era but
also an organization that acted as an entirely new space for these relations to
be conducted in. The building blocks of the international system that the
League was designing were instead nation-states: exclusive members of a
global system within which every territory was supposed to be represented. As
such, both the Comintern and the League engendered new approaches
to international relations, embodying at once the status of international or-
ganizations, internationalisms, arenas, and political projects.
Moreover, the Comintern was not the only international political project on
the left – the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) sought to unite the more
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-3
moderate socialist and independent parties that could potentially have joined
the Comintern, while the Amsterdam International (International Federation
of Trade Unions) explicitly opposed the Comintern by uniting worker orga-
nizations on the basis of pursuing workers’ economic rights primarily via
political and economic reform, rather than the more radical pursuit of re-
volution. International women’s, peace, anti-colonial, anti-communist, fascist,
and other organizations sprang up across the world, recognizing that inter-
national relations were being reforged in post-war Europe. As such, the
questions asked within this volume of national parties can not only be applied
to the international arena(s) but can also reveal new transnational connections.
In this chapter, I explore these processes of capture – by the Bolsheviks of
the Comintern, by the Comintern of the international system – and the at-
tempts to oppose these processes within the Comintern and at the interna-
tional level, where other organizations presented different visions of world
order. I focus on the Labour and Socialist International as the Comintern’s
main rival for leftist international legitimacy and the working class, and the
League of Nations as the Comintern’s main rival in the ght for a new world
order. At the same time, the party remains central to this inquiry as the
building block of leftist international organizations, and of the system that the
Comintern sought to build. The question of political action, membership, and
the place of the political party was at the core of all leftist organizations from
the First International onwards – something that I explore at the beginning of
the chapter.
After this historical note, the main body of the chapter focuses on the rst
few years of the 1920s in order to interrogate these processes of capture as
they were being initiated, providing the global backdrop and context to the
actors and events discussed in this volume in an effort to better understand
the international political climate of the period. Furthermore, in tracing the
creation of the global system of international relations between nation-states
as we know it today, and in positioning the League of Nations at the same
analytical level as the Comintern and the LSI, this chapter introduces the
foundational principles that led to the establishment of this global system. In
so doing, I show specically that the leftist internationalisms failed to mount
a signicant challenge to the liberal system being built with and by the
League of Nations due to in ghting, the heavy-handed approach utilized by
the Bolsheviks, and their inability to recognize the League as their main
competitor for international legitimacy and status.
For this chapter, I delineate the organizations into three camps: the liberal
League of Nations, the reformist socialist Second International and the LSI,
and the communist Comintern. This categorization is dened by the stated
internationalist goals of these organizations that this chapter explores. The
Western liberal movements sought full control over international relations
and were inherently anti-communist, the socialist organizations promoted
long-term reforms to what they implicitly accepted as the liberal interna-
tional order, while the communist internationalisms existed to overturn it.
The Communist International 61
These organizations and their goals, however, changed with time –
something that is apparent by the fact that the Soviet Union was accepted to
the Council of the League of Nations by 1934, for example. As such, this
chapter explores the early, explosive years of these internationalisms, a
formative period during which they dened themselves against each other,
laying the foundations for their policies and directions. One of the goals of
this chapter is to make connections between these movements, focusing on
the Comintern as the self-proclaimed vanguard of the international working
class, contextualizing it in a history of completing internationalisms. As
such, after a brief historical note, this chapter discusses the degree to which
the Bolsheviks directed the early Comintern policy – a well-trodden path in
the literature, but one that remains broadly unexplored in this context.
The fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of the Comintern archives
allowed historians an opportunity to analyze the institutional dynamics from
the perspective of the Executive Committee (ECCI) and other bodies loc-
ated in Moscow. As such, historians focused on the degree of control that
Bolsheviks were able to exercise over the organization. Historiographic stu-
dies and overviews generally agree that the literature on the early history of the
Comintern revolves mostly around interpretations of congresses, center-
periphery relationships, and the degree to which Moscow controlled the
Comintern agenda (Petersson 2007; McDermott 1998; Datta Gupta 2012).
Authors working in the post-Soviet period also began to overturn the as-
sumptions that the Soviet Union had full control over the Comintern
Secretariat, as well as over the parties that formed part of the organization,
highlighting the independence of local agents. These histories tend to focus
largely on specic parties in specic countries, such as Sobhanlal Datta
Gupta’s and Sanjay Seth’s explorations of Comintern and India, or taking a
broader regional approach such as Michael Weiner’s discussion of Comintern
presence in East Asia (Datta Gupta 2006; Seth 1995; Weiner 1996). An
even more recent turn toward transnationalism instead highlights that the
Comintern presented an opportunity for local agents to use the organization
as a source of radical legitimacy (Makalani 2011). Other scholars explore si-
milar ways that individuals and groups used the Comintern, as a way of
connecting diasporic communities in the work of Anna Belogurova, or as
ways of creating radical networks by traveling to Soviet Russia in the work of
Joy G. Carew on Africans in the USSR (Belogurova 2017; Carew 2015). From
the Comintern perspective, this chapter focuses on the ECCI and the con-
gresses, thereby returning to a more traditional subject – but at the same time
providing a different approach by situating the central machinery of the or-
ganization in a global history of internationalisms, rather than in a history of
(international) communism or the Soviet Union.
Consequently, along with the literature that is strictly focused on Comintern
as an actor and space for action, this chapter is also in conversation with a set
of literature on international organizations in the interwar period, specically
one that focuses on the League of Nations. In this literature, authors approach
62 Vsevolod Kritskiy
the League from a variety of angles but hold in common an explicit rejection of
the traditional understanding of the League as an organization that was nar-
rowly dened by its failure to maintain peace (Pedersen 2015; Clavin 2013;
Fink 2004). Instead, Anthony Anghie, for example, traces the colonial roots of
the League, and how it maintained colonial relations throughout the interwar
period, thereby transferring the colonial mentality into the United Nations
development agenda (Anghie 2001–2002). These works are inspiring new re-
searchers to question fundamental traits of the League, such as its status as a
“liberal” organization, for instance (Petruccelli 2020). Glenda Sluga, on the
other hand, approaches the League from a normative perspective that focuses
on its signicance in the transition to a new “international order.” In this
chapter, leftist internationals emerge within the context of the establishment
and construction of the League of Nations, and as such I am explicitly inter-
ested in the League’s legitimacy as a space for the conduct of international
relations, something that is explored by both Sluga and Patricia Clavin (Sluga
and Clavin 2016; Sluga 2019).
As a result, this chapter lies between the two camps that focus on the
League and the Comintern, and can be situated in the literature on burgeoning
leftist internationalisms of the interwar period as explored by a variety
of scholars focusing on anti-fascism, transnational connections between
European socialist parties, colonial issues and relief (Dogliani 2017; Imlay
2018; Drachewych 2019; Brasken 2015; Brasken et al. 2021). National, colo-
nial, and racial issues represent an important entry point into transnational
and international communism in the literature, as shown by the diversity of
the authors and subject matter in Left Transnationalism, a recent volume
edited by Oleksa Drachewych and Ian McKay (2020). Another pertinent
example is Daniel Laqua’s work, connecting socialist and liberal orders, but
focusing on the Second International’s relationship with the League of
Nations, rather than on the Comintern (Laqua 2015).
All these authors represent a new approach to international communism
and socialism in the interwar period, one that focuses primarily on under-
standing the transnational and international connections made during this
time, rather than a more traditional focus on organizational dynamics of the
Comintern, or a political explanation of the failure of international com-
munism. This chapter contributes to the discussions held within these vo-
lumes, analyzing the degree of control exercised by the Bolsheviks and the
contributions by non-Bolshevik actors, and investigating the transnational
connections between these organizations against the backdrop of the es-
tablishment of the League of Nations and the ongoing construction of the
international system.
The role of political parties in an international
The interwar internationalisms identied above did not arise out of a va-
cuum – they were informed by predecessors that had already wrestled with
The Communist International 63
the key problems in organization, political action, and membership. The role
of the political party in particular was central to these debates ever since the
second half of the nineteenth century, with The Manifesto of the Communist
Party drafted by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels specically for the for-
mation of the Communist League in 1847. It took almost twenty years,
however, for the rst socialist international organization to form in Europe
due to the 1848 revolutions and the long-term political, social, and economic
upheaval they caused.
The International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), established in
London by a variety of European socialist activists, trade unionists, and
workers in 1864, was the rst international seeking to unite workers at the
global level, in practice limited to Western Europe and the United States.
IWA was originally conceived by the English trade unionists who sought to
create an international network of workers in pursuit of specic economic
goals such as the nine-hour day: its stated overall goal was the establishment
of “a central medium of communication and co-operation between work-
ingmen’s societies existing in different countries and aiming at the same end;
viz., the protection, advancement, and complete emancipation of the working
classes” (Nepomnyashchaya et al. 1964, 288–289).
The IWA could thus hardly be described as a party-of-parties; at its
founding the socialist movement was still at an early stage of political devel-
opment. The General German Workers’ Association, established a year prior,
was the only socialist political party that took part in the rst meeting in
London. French and English parties did not yet exist, and their workers were
instead represented by trade unions. As a result, political organization, es-
tablishment, and coordination of political parties represented one of the
central issues faced by the IWA. Its General Rules and the Inaugural Address
to workers clearly laid out a vision in which the party was not the only method
of organization, however, due to the importance of trade unions as re-
presentatives of the working class and the desire to attract anarchists and
revolutionaries who aligned themselves with various leftist currents of the
time, in particular those led by Ferdinand Lassalle, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
and Louis Auguste Blanqui. As a result, membership was based on country
sections and any person or organization could join the Association.
The IWA’s position on this issue changed with time, however, due to internal
disagreement and debate, mainly between Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, even-
tually leading to an impasse that resulted in the collapse of the Association.
Marx was highly inuential and active in the IWA from the outset, having
authored both the Rules and the Address, supporting a more centralized ap-
proach to organization, and emphasizing the importance of political struggle
(Comninel 2014, 74–79). Bakunin, on the other hand, promoted economic
action rst and foremost, standing against centralized political organization
and political action by workers, including the formation of political parties.
From 1868 onwards, he employed a variety of tactics including estab-
lishing a secret alliance of his supporters within the International to
64 Vsevolod Kritskiy
undermine, split and question the strategies and goals of the IWA, seeking
to take over and/or redirect the Association toward his agenda. At the 1871
London Congress, the organizational matter of political action by workers
and the importance of the political party was put on the agenda, and Marx
was able to convince the underattended Congress of changing direction. The
IWA focus shifted from economic questions to the creation of a more
centralized organization that was to support, and direct, the establishment
of political parties across Europe. In the aftermath, Marx and Engels then
drafted the revised General Rules adopted at the 1872 Congress, stating that
“the working class cannot act as a class except by constituting itself into a
political party” (Karmanova et al. 1976, 282).
This was a seminal moment: the rst call for the creation of mass political
parties to represent the working classes of Europe, later taken up by the
Second International and the Comintern. At the same time, Bakunin was
expelled from the Association at the 1872 Congress as his campaign against
the IWA and Marx became more aggressive. His followers questioned the
change of direction as well, leaving the Association and creating a parallel
Anarchist International that cemented the formal split between communist
and anarchist tendencies. With Bakunin and his followers gone, the IWA
itself quickly faded and disbanded in 1876 (Nimtz 2015; Musto 2014, 22–25).
It is important to note that I used a traditional interpretation of the
chronology and activity of the IWA as an international here. Recent studies
began to question the importance of the congresses and focus more on
broader processes through which workers began to manifest international
solidarity in the 1860s and onwards (Cordillot 2015). Workers in England
and France certainly established close ties in this period, as debates and
action began happening on the international scale in the European space
(Dogliani 2017, 38–40). For this volume, however, the focus remains on
internationals as organizations that sought to unite political parties, ne-
cessitating a more traditional approach.
In the aftermath of the IWA’s dissolution, internationalism remained on
the agenda, but European workers were unable to immediately unite under a
new banner. Again, the issue of political parties was at the center of the
disagreement: the majority of the French workers as well as those in smaller
European countries preferred to follow in the footsteps of the IWA and
create a similar organization out of its ashes, while German workers in
particular sought rst the establishment of national political parties that
could later be united into a fully functioning international with parties as
members. The two groups met in 1889 at two separate congresses in Paris,
eventually joining forces at the rst united Congress in Brussels in 1891 and
establishing the New International (only re-interpreted as the Second
International after the outbreak of the First World War).
Up until the early 1900s, it could hardly be described as an international
organization, however: instead, it was originally conceived as a set of peri-
odical meetings of socialists at an international stage without a secretariat or
permanent body, and was not designed to direct action of its members at the
The Communist International 65
national level. With the birth of mass political parties in the 1890s and beyond,
such as in Italy in 1892, Portugal in 1893, and France in 1904, the
International coalesced into a more concrete organization, forming a standing
Secretariat and Bureau at the Paris Congress in 1900, and establishing an
interparliamentary commission and a press coordination body by 1904.
The IWA focused on creating a medium of communication and was
hampered by a lack of political organization at the national level to un-
dertake international action, while in contrast by the outbreak of the First
World War the Second International was a robust organization of national
parties that sought to represent a “parliament of the proletariat” (Dogliani
2017, 43).
1
Certainly, socialists in the International ascribed signicance to
the nation and national culture, seeing them as wholly compatible and re-
quired for the progress toward the emancipation of the working class,
making the national party an important tool (Mulholland 2015, 623–624).
The integration of national political parties into the structure of the Second
International at once gave a powerful voice to socialists across Europe, as well
as an authority and prestige never reached by a leftist movement at an in-
ternational level. Traditional interpretations of its history generally argue that
it failed to prevent the First World War, however that argument presumes that
it could do so in the rst place (Haupt 1972, 218–225). More recent research
presents a nuanced picture of an organization that was active and robust
because of the presence of socialist leaders from all major European parties
and nations. Most of these leaders, however, have through their contributions
to the International made known on numerous occasions that they were
committed to national defense above the ideological ties that bound together
the parties at the international level. This was shown expertly by Marc
Mulholland, who pointed out that even the Resolution against War and
Militarism passed at the 1907 Stuttgart Congress implicitly approved defen-
sive wars (2015). As such, given the complex political situation in the lead up
to 1914, socialists across Europe, whether German, French, or English, could
argue convincingly that they were, in fact, defending their nation from ag-
gression, remaining true to their principles.
The Second International was not a monolith, and debates on funda-
mental issues by members with widely different views took place at every
congress. The organization’s position on imperialism, for instance, was in-
tensely debated by Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and
many others in the years before the First World War (Haupt 1972, 135–160;
Gaido and Quiroga 2020). Nevertheless, most European parties did not
oppose the war after its outbreak and participated in it actively. At a crucial
point in European and global history, the agency and goals of the Second
International were subsumed by those of the belligerent nation-states.
Rather than seeking to capture state power, either at national or interna-
tional levels, the Second International was disbanded. The collapse and
inability to maintain an identity that superseded the national identity of its
individual party members thus makes it difcult to interpret the Second
66 Vsevolod Kritskiy
International as a party of parties. Fundamentally, it was a federation of
autonomous parties, leading Haupt to argue that parties “clung jealously to
the principle of autonomy [that] did not undergo any fundamental change”
throughout the life of the Second International (Haupt 1972, 15–16).
In contrast, as I show in the next section, the Third International was
designed at the outset in opposition to its predecessor: the call for workers to
assume the responsibilities of the state, of course through national com-
munist parties, united in a centralized international party-of-parties, was the
reason for its existence. The Communist International was created not only
in a completely new international postwar environment that required a new
set of tactics, but it was also created with the explicit goal of capturing state
power and establishing a new international system of party-states.
Communist International: A party of parties
The Second International was not disbanded only because its member parties
took up arms against each other but also because the left wing declared its
opposition to the war and all belligerent parties. Lenin quickly recognized the
existential threat that the First World War posed to the Western Powers and
the capitalist system as a whole, disavowing the Second International com-
pletely and drawing a line in the sand between the communist and socialist
approaches at the international level. The break from the more moderate
socialist forces and his consistent opposition to the war in principle were not
insignicant in the Bolsheviks’ rise to power, and thus greatly informed the
establishment and organization of the Communist International.
The First Comintern Congress took place on March 2, 1919, in Moscow,
with only nine delegates representing parties outside of Soviet Russia. It
provided a clear statement of intent in its inaugural call:
The war and revolution has nally shown not only the complete
bankruptcy of the old socialist and social-democratic parties as well
as the Second International, not only the inability of transitional
elements of the old social democracy (the so-called “center”) to carry
out active revolutionary action; [but also] right now, the outline of a
truly revolutionary International is becoming clear.
The Comintern was set up with a simple goal – in order to pursue world
revolution and destroy the capitalist world order, an international tasked
with assisting the proletariat to “capture state power” was needed.
2
At the
national level, it would assist parties in their efforts at home, and at the
international level create a party-of-parties and the infrastructure of a new
global system of governance that would eventually replace what was left of
postwar capitalism.
The Comintern’s position on the preceding and contemporary interna-
tionals was similarly clear cut from the outset. Referring to the reformist
forces of the Second International, the Theses on the Main Tasks of the
The Communist International 67
Communist International clearly stated that “any thought about peaceful
submission of capitalists to the will of the exploited masses, about a peaceful,
reformist transition to socialism is not only extremely philistine dumb-
headedness but also a clear deception of the workers.”
3
In the opening
statement of the rst session of the Second Congress, Grigorii Zinov’ev
sharply criticized both the prewar and postwar incarnations of the Second
International, claiming that “already by the end of the war, [it] sought to link
its fate with the bourgeoisie: with the League of Nations, the cat that was the
strongest of the beasts.”
4
Adopted at the Second Congress, the terms of ac-
ceptance of new parties into the Third International claried the Comintern’s
stance on the League as well: “no ‘democratic’ reorganization of the League of
Nations [could] save mankind from new imperialist wars.”
5
In contrast to the League, the rst two Internationals, and the Labour and
Socialist International, the Comintern bodies and congresses operated
within the national boundaries of one state, Soviet Russia, as the Bolsheviks
retained signicant inuence over its operation. Historiography of the
Comintern is in broad agreement that the Bolsheviks eventually came to
dominate and control Comintern congress proceedings as well as its internal
bodies (Petersson 2007). Within the narrative of this volume, this process
can be interpreted as part of the broader pursuit by political parties to co-
opt state power, conducted at three distinct levels. At the national level, the
Bolsheviks captured state power in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution,
fusing themselves into the state. At the international level, the Comintern
was established to facilitate the capture of other states by like-minded
parties and eventually create an entirely new international system of parties
as states. At the same time, the Bolsheviks also sought to co-opt the process
at the international level via its evolving control of the Comintern, seeking
to fuse into the international system itself.
A Bolshevik internationalism
The Second Congress is widely considered to be the true beginning of the
Third International in the literature; taking place between July 19 and
August 8, 1920, across Petrograd and Moscow, it brought together over
200 delegates from 37 countries and set up a number of important
rules, guidelines, and precedents (McDermott and Agnew 1996, 12–13, 17;
Pons 2014, 19). Despite the arrival of representatives of various parties
from across the world, some of whom stayed to staff the Executive
Committee, the Bolsheviks maintained their inuence. At the rst ECCI
meeting, Paul Levi’s proposal to seat four non-Russian and three Russian
members on the Small Committee of the ECCI to limit the Bolshevik
inuence was shot down immediately by Nikolai Bukharin and Zinov’ev.
They argued that the Small Bureau was a technical committee in charge of
bringing to life the decisions of the ECCI, and as a result should be staffed
with Russians who could quickly deploy local resources. Zinov’ev in
68 Vsevolod Kritskiy
particular was dismissive of any criticism, stating that Levi’s proposal
surprised the session and dismissing John Reed’s concerns about the no-
mination of Mikhail Kobetskii as Secretary of the Bureau because he was
not a member of the Bolshevik Party.
Levi countered by noting that if the twenty‐person ECCI was to meet
frequently, as was the wish of the Bolsheviks, then it was inevitable that the
Small Bureau would be drafting theses and establishing agendas, hence by
denition conducting crucial political work. One of the interesting moments
of this debate came when Zinov’ev attempted to argue that Karl Radek,
who Levi proposed as a member of the Bureau, should not be in Moscow
working in the Comintern, but in Poland, “where a lot of things [were] being
resolved right now,” since Radek was Polish. Arguing that his presence in
Poland was signicant while his place in the Small Bureau could be taken up
by someone else, Zinov’ev noted that Levi must interpret this issue “from an
internationalist point of view.”
6
This line of argumentation reveals a few important details. First of all,
while Zinov’ev and Levi disagreed, both of them were using internationalist
perspectives – they were just not identical. Zinov’ev was clearly informed by
the Bolshevik insistence that capitalism was on its death bed and it was
important to act quickly to pursue the momentum of the Russian
Revolution by instigating revolutions in Europe. As a result, for Zinov’ev,
Radek’s authority and knowledge were better used to ensure the revolution
in Poland succeeded, thereby strengthening world revolution as a result,
rather than to ensure the foundation of the Comintern was well set.
Capturing state power at the national level took priority.
Levi’s point of view is clear as well: a Small Bureau that was not dominated
by the Bolsheviks would by denition be internationalist, and its ability to set
the agenda of the ECCI meetings would thereby inuence the Comintern at
large toward a more internationalist perspective, regardless of the efciency
with which non-Bolsheviks were able to command local resources. Radek
himself also agreed with Levi that the nature of the Bureau’s work would
be political.
Secondly, Levi and the German delegation foresaw the difculties in-
herent to a Bolshevik-ran Small Bureau, revealing their priorities did not
end with pursuing revolutions at a breakneck pace. Instead, they sought to
ensure that the Communist International, as an international organization,
was set up correctly, without overdue Russian inuence, becoming a truly
legitimate internationalist institution that was able to direct parties across
the world and protect them as they gained power, in the long term.
In the end, the composition remained at three Russians (Zinov’ev,
Kobetskii, and Bukharin) and two non-Russians: Ernst Meyer and Endre
Rudnyánszky.
7
The importance of the Small Bureau, and the inevitably
political nature of its work, was evidenced immediately. The second ECCI
session began with Zinov’ev announcing that the Bureau was tasked with
determining the composition of a special commission to review the text of
The Communist International 69
the Comintern call to trade unions and selecting individuals to sign the call.
8
Within a few months, the ECCI members were complaining that the Small
Bureau had too much inuence and acted outside of its “technical” remit.
The Austrian Karl Steinhardt, for example, noted that members would
routinely receive nal decisions from the Small Bureau they had no context
for, even seeing their signatures on calls and manifestos that they had not
read, as well as seeing signatures of individuals who were not members of the
ECCI. Dismissing Zinov’ev’s counterargument that foreign members had to
be more proactive, he maligned that every time he tried to participate in
important work, such as setting up better communication lines between the
ECCI and parties in other countries, he was thwarted by the Small Bureau,
in this case not even being invited to participate in its meeting on this issue.
Steinhardt went as far as claiming that at times he felt like the “Executive
Committee was just a side show for the Russian comrades.”
9
While it is certainly possible to argue that the Bolsheviks merely sought to
control the Comintern, it did not represent all their motivations. This discus-
sion reminds historians of a crucial feature of our work that is often taken for
granted – the transplanting of meaning into the past. Both Levi and Zinov’ev
had two different understandings of “internationalism” and its priorities,
perhaps representative of certain camps within the Comintern but also high-
lighting the idea that the meaning of these terms was up for grabs during this
period. Certainly, Levi’s argument ts more neatly with our contemporary
understanding of “internationalism” – but that does not necessarily mean that
Zinov’ev was being disingenuous in his argumentation to obfuscate the “real”
motivation of packing the Small Bureau with Russians. Instead, as historians
we must be open to the interpretation that these debates reected a time during
which the idea of “internationalism,” to take this example, was not fully set-
tled. It is in these types of disagreements and arguments that these motivations
can be unearthed and analyzed, rather than dismissing the entire endeavor
simply as a dominant party seeking to retain control over proceedings.
At this early stage of the Comintern’s development, Bolshevik leaders
were still optimistic about the success of world revolution – hence their
impatience and the necessity of swift action in support of edgling revolu-
tions, in Europe in particular. The Comintern was being set up with a
particular Bolshevik understanding of internationalism. It was still also an
international organization, however, and as with its two predecessors, it was
host to a wide diversity of views. Many members openly challenged the
Bolshevik dominance, disagreed with their leaders’ proposals, and sought to
combat Bolshevik attempts to control the co-optation of the international
system via the Comintern.
Pushback against the Bolsheviks in the Comintern
At the subsequent congresses, debates with Bolshevik leaders were held out in
the open. In order to further demonstrate the early ambitions of the
70 Vsevolod Kritskiy
Communist International as an organization that was proactively seeking to
create a new system, I focus here in particular on the debates around the
international situation, and the ways in which the Comintern members related
to the other international organizations that could provide competition and
alternatives to world revolution. The deliberation of Comintern’s policy and
rhetoric toward other internationalisms is ripe for analysis not only with the
aim of better understanding the history of internationalism but also as a point
of tension between the Bolsheviks and representatives of other parties.
The presentation and discussion of Lev Trotskii’s report on the global po-
litical and economic climate at the Third Congress in 1921 presents ample
opportunity to analyze not only the attitudes of the Comintern members to-
ward the international situation and international organizations but also
highlights the ways in which the Bolsheviks communicated with the rest of the
members. Trotskii noted in the presentation of this report that “[c]apital still
holds the reins of power in most parts of the world, and we must consider
whether, on the whole, our conception of world revolution is correct, under the
circumstances.” He acknowledged that during the previous two congresses, the
Third International failed to act, instead drawing up “great plans” in the
anticipation of the revolution, trying to pinpoint exactly when it would take
place. At the same time, while the hope of a quick revolution after the war did
not come to pass, that did not equate to an irreparable failure of world re-
volution conceptually, nor of the Comintern itself. Using Marx’s and Engels’s
statements about the importance of crises in leading up to revolutions, he
argued that worker exploitation would continue to increase in intensity due to
the inherent logics of capitalism, eventually leading to a true revolution as
more and more brutal suppression of workers by the bourgeoisie would take
place. In the meantime, the world situation was one of “unstable, temporary,
and most limited equilibrium,” rather than a full-blown restoration of the
capitalist world order. Instead, Trotskii argued, both Europe and the United
States would continue undergoing deepening economic crises because capit-
alism itself was “in the midst of a period of a long and deep depression” that
would lead to an eventual revolution with the collapse of international trade.
10
The discussion of Trotskii’s report showed the range of opinions of the
Comintern members, and the ways in which they sought to push back against
the Bolshevik attempts at controlling the International. Some delegates, for
instance, brought up the internationals competing with the Comintern for the
allegiance of the working class. Alexander Schwab, one of the founders of the
Communist Workers’ Party of Germany, noted that Trotskii’s theses had to
undergo signicant review before publication to show “due allowance for the
necessity of controversy with the reconstruction of the Second and the
Two-and-a-Half Internationals.” With the alternative socialist internationals
(re)emerging, members of the Comintern recognized not only the potential
danger of splitting the base of leftist support but also the fact that the
Comintern itself had to be more precise in its statements. In 1921, two years
before the First Congress of the Labour and Socialist International and a year
The Communist International 71
before the failure to unite the three internationals in Berlin, some members of
the Comintern clearly saw a possible future in which their support would
dwindle in favor of the less radical socialist organizations, and as a result
advocated for public statements to be more theoretically sound. As such,
Schwab argued sharply that the theses were “not adequate for the analysis”
which the Comintern had to present to its global audience, and that they
should instead focus on the fact that the postwar economic system was based
on the pursuit of prot rather than production, with the latter being simply
one “accidental” way to achieve the former, going on to explain in depth
exactly how this was occurring.
11
The theses were further questioned by Bernhard Reichenbach, a co-
founder of the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany. In his reply, he
noted that Russia, as a market for Western European products, represented
an outlet for capitalists to maintain their ever-intensifying pursuit of prot.
Reichenbach reassured his Bolshevik colleagues that it was Russia’s moral
prerogative to use Western capital for post-Civil War restoration, but
warned them that this must not “injure the revolutionary movement and its
progress” in Europe as a result.
12
Making the point that these economic
fundamentals were not part of the theses, he requested them to be addressed
explicitly so that the tactics of the Communist International could be based
on solid theoretical footing that reected international material relations.
This economic argument was also implicitly a warning to the Bolsheviks that
the non-Russian members were monitoring Soviet foreign policy and were
ready to criticize it if the relations with Western powers became too close.
József Pogány, a Hungarian delegate and former People’s Commissar of
War in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, criticized the theses from a
different angle. He noted that Trotskii’s analysis of the global state of com-
munist insurrection was erroneously based on the idea that it would follow
the Russian example: an inevitable victory that would be caused by the
strengthening of the working class as a result of the increased postcrisis eco-
nomic activity, ascribing the 1905–1919 period in Russia to the post-1919
world situation.
13
This criticism directly challenged not only this economic
point but the broader Bolshevik internationalist vision of an inevitably quick
world revolution that guided their strategy to dominate the Comintern.
Thomas Bell, the founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was even
more direct in attacking Trotskii, accusing him of overexaggerating and mis-
representing the failure of unions to revolutionize the working masses, since
unions faced signicant intimidation from the police, especially in England.
14
M. N. Roy, the Indian communist who at the time was the head of the
Turkestan Bureau of the Comintern, was the rst delegate to point out a
rather obvious discrepancy – while the report and discussion was supposed to
reect the world situation, the focus had been exclusively on Europe and the
United States of America.
15
As such, he argued that the theses must include a
passage about the importance of the colonial issue, a proposal that was echoed
by the next speaker Wilhelm Koenen, another German representative, who
72 Vsevolod Kritskiy
explicitly pointed out the discrepancy between discussing the “world situa-
tion” using the particular Russian and German point of view adopted by
Trotskii. Taking a more conciliatory tone, he argued that while the overall
debate around the severity of the crisis and the varieties of its character was
important, it was more pertinent to the discussion to focus on tangible steps
that the Comintern should be taking within the next year given that the
congress accepted that the crisis did exist.
16
The traditional argument that explains the failure of the Comintern, and
broadly its modus operandi, points out that as an organization it was
dominated by Bolshevik leaders, with congresses taking place in Moscow
and most of the funding for holding them coming from the Soviet budget
(Thorpe 1998: 637–639). Trotskii’s replies to the criticisms heard during the
discussions add another dimension to this argument. It is clear from his
somewhat mocking tone throughout and a dogmatic refusal to admit any
mistakes that Trotskii was uninterested in participating in the Congress as a
peer – instead he was there to educate its members and direct them to do his
bidding. Even when responding to M. N. Roy’s comments regarding the
importance of the colonial issue, comments that were fully in line with the
Lenin-inspired Bolshevik conception of imperialism as the last stage of ca-
pitalism, Trotskii neither agreed nor disagreed. Instead, he simply noted that
Roy “reminded” the Congress that the revolution was progressing along
three routes of Europe, America, and the colonies, briey characterizing
each, without committing to any edits.
17
The theses were then delivered to the committee in charge of the question,
which presented the nal edited version during the sixteenth session. This
version reected the bulk of the comments, with the most signicant change
being a compromise between Trotskii and the German delegation, wherein
references to the possibility of the current crisis enduring longer, rather than
breaking out into an open conict between the bourgeoisie and the working
class in the short term, as well as references to the tactics that communist
parties must be adopting, were included. While the German delegation was
the second largest in number and inuence behind the Russian contingent, this
was nevertheless an important development, showing that the Bolshevik-
dominated Congress was still willing and able to compromise with other de-
legates and was not simply stonewalling every possible edit or proposition.
Bell’s comments on the English trade unions were included, while Roy’s wish
to see more emphasis placed on the colonies was not.
18
As such, the discussion of the world situation at the Third Congress
showcased the various dynamics of the Comintern operation: a diversity of
opinions in regards to other emerging internationalisms among its delegates,
a willingness to oppose fundamental Bolshevik ideas, as well as a Bolshevik
willingness to compromise. In this early period, the Bolsheviks dominated as
a result of their interpretation of what a communist internationalism must
represent, but the Comintern was clearly still reecting the aim of creating a
party-of-parties, both by replicating a constant struggle along the hierarchy,
The Communist International 73
as well as the exibility of the center that is required to maintain allegiance
of party members.
Labour and Socialist International as a Comintern competitor?
While some Comintern members pushed back against the Bolshevik control
of the organization from within, European socialist parties began to put
aside their wartime differences, seeking to provide a common front to push
back against the Comintern attempts at creating a new international system.
Prior to the establishment of the Labour and Socialist International in 1923,
socialist and communist forces attempted to come to a mutual under-
standing. In April 1922, representatives of the prewar Second International,
the Communist International, and the Vienna Union gathered in Berlin in
an attempt to smooth over their differences and work toward common ac-
tion, while explicitly stating at the outset that there would be no discussion
of organizational fusion. The Vienna Union consisted of representatives of
various European socialist parties, which would later go on to establish the
Labour and Socialist International, such as Friedrich Adler and Otto Bauer.
While the representatives were unable to unite in any meaningful way, the
rhetorical reasons why are signicant.
At the outset, Vienna Union delegates sought to smooth over differences
by explicitly referring to the limits of the Congress, and the fact that there
was no need to delve into existing arguments but rather look forward to try
and accomplish the goal that all leftist internationals shared. Quickly,
however, it became apparent that the Comintern representatives saw the
Congress as a way of asserting their dominant position and reiterating their
criticisms of the other attendees. The Second International representatives
played their part in the way the discussions unfolded, focusing on the Soviet
government’s imprisonment of socialists and anarchists, as well as of their
annexational policies in Georgia, as the wedges that split apart the broader
international leftist movement.
19
It took Giacinto Menotti Serrati, invited as a guest representative of the
Italian Socialist Party, to ask the delegates about the purpose of this con-
ference, noting that instead of working on practical goals, the discussion
devolved into name-calling and judgments of past actions, by all sides. He
was also one of the only speakers who attempted to unite the sides by ex-
plicitly noting that “We have all committed many errors” – referring to
himself, as well as the Second, Two-and-a‐Half, and Third Internationals –
admittedly going on to explain why the Comintern’s intensity of argu-
mentation and attack on the Second International was justied, yet also
showing his understanding for the position taken by the latter.
20
This se-
mantic device was not used by the representatives of the internationals, who
made sure to distinguish themselves from each other and outline their own
positions on existing disagreements before providing a few platitudes with
regards to moving toward common action.
74 Vsevolod Kritskiy
The congress was able to agree on a statement in which the Comintern
made promises on behalf of the Soviet government with regards to Georgia,
imprisoned socialists, and the work toward uniting the Amsterdam and Red
Trade Union Internationals. However, the experience of the Paris congresses
in 1889 was not repeated and the sides were unable to agree on a date for the
next congress. Any goodwill and momentum that the Berlin Conference
mustered quickly disappeared as the Vienna Union representatives, as well
as some Second Internationalists, set up the Labour and Socialist
International expressly in opposition to the Comintern.
The LSI emerged as a socialist alternative to the uncompromising max-
imalism of the Bolsheviks and hence was governed somewhat more demo-
cratically. The Bureau of the LSI included members from Great Britain,
France, Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, and Georgia, as its composition was
designed specically to ensure that a diversity of voices was represented. A
report from an early meeting even explained in detail why some of the re-
presentatives were unable to attend the session, afrming that a new meeting
that would include more members was scheduled as a result.
21
At its First Congress in 1923, the LSI cemented the crucial division be-
tween it and the Comintern. The ideological differences between a reformist
socialism of the former and the more leftist communism of the latter were
clearly stated from the beginning by both parties and were discussed at
length in Berlin. The more interesting difference, however, was their atti-
tudes to the League of Nations – a liberal, capitalist international that al-
ready by then represented the de jure world order. The LSI passed a
resolution that condemned the Versailles Peace Treaty, demanded the
League to “cease to be the instrument for the imposition of the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles,” requested it to open its membership to “all the nations
of the world” and rework its constitution based on democratic principles. At
the same time, it voted to approve the existence of the League, also sup-
porting “all efforts to advance labour legislation, put forth by the [League’s]
Labour Ofce.” In the resolution on the League, the LSI also acknowledged
the need for “some international authority [to preserve] peace and the or-
ganization of the economic life in the world.”
22
Hence, while the criticism of
the League was motivated by the fact that it was currently unt to become
this authority, it was clear that the League was considered as the only or-
ganization that was able to fulll that role – at least before a vaguely dened
global Socialist Commonwealth would form to take up its place.
This was made clear in another resolution, with the LSI declaring that “all
international conicts [must] be settled by impartial arbitration.” In the
context of a changing international system in the aftermath of a world war
that plunged traditional Great Powers into chaos, this declaration certainly
refers to the idea that “impartial arbitration” should replace bilateral di-
plomacy and treaties in which victors set the post-conict peace terms. This
statement also expresses a curious hope that impartiality in arbitrating in-
ternational conicts was even possible in the rst place. The only body that
The Communist International 75
had the authority and the capacity to conduct such arbitration was the
League of Nations, and the LSI’s support for it clearly aligned it with a
reformist view of international relations, rather than the more radical
transformational view that was evident in the Comintern’s rhetoric.
23
Before the Second Conference, the LSI Bureau met several times to dis-
cuss the most pressing issues, revealing that the League was also accepted
from an operational day-to-day perspective. In one of the rst meetings in
July, representatives from the German and British parties welcomed the fact
that the attitudes of both their governments to the League improved, as both
were more open to the idea of Germany joining the League of Nations. In
October 1923, as a result of a request from French and Belgian re-
presentatives, the Bureau adopted a resolution that argued for the re-
formation of the Versailles Peace Treaty with regards to its treatment of
Germany and reparations, claiming that the workers agreed on a peace and
reconciliation plan but “the Governments refused to.”
24
This is where the difference between the Comintern approach and the LSI
approach to the League as an organization can be seen at its most apparent.
Both internationals recognized that the peace was inherently compromised
by the reparations and restrictions applied to Germany by the victorious
Allied powers – it is their conclusions that differ, however. Since the goal of
the Comintern was to effectuate widespread state capture, bringing about
the world revolution and a new international system, the League of Nations
was treated as an extension of that awed peace, to be dismissed and at-
tacked. State capture was not on the LSI’s agenda as it was instead focused
on step-by-step gains while working within the existing system stewarded by
the League of Nations. As a result, its criticism of the League stopped short
of condemning it wholly, seeking only to reform the way it applied the
conditions of Versailles.
As with the Comintern, the membership of the LSI also held different
opinions on this issue. The Dutch representative Pieter Troelstra succinctly
summarized the situation by pointing out that the diplomatic route taken by
the Bureau in 1923 was unsuccessful, noting that this effort had been “so
absolutely ineffective” that a new strategy should be adopted, one that fo-
cused on engendering an anti-reparations and pro-peace movement within the
masses, rather than seeking to accomplish these goals strictly via diplomatic
means.
25
Unlike the Comintern, however, the diversity of views was discussed
openly within the executive Bureau itself, as it was composed of representatives
of various European parties specically in order to ensure that important
decisions were made by a representative committee rather than by a single
powerful party. The Bureau did not meet often, seeking the attendance of as
many delegates from as many parties as was feasible, even issuing explanations
when certain parties were not represented – more akin to a parliamentary
cabinet rather than the party-of-parties approach of the Comintern.
At the following Conference in 1925, this reformist view and an accep-
tance of the League’s existence and its role as the arbiter of international
76 Vsevolod Kritskiy
relations was cemented. The broader attitude remained the same – the
League was necessary but insufcient. However, by now the criticism was
much more muted in character. Instead of highlighting that the League was
unt to carry out its duties, C. R. Buxton, a British Labour Party member
who played a central role in designing the LSI policy toward the League,
noted that it would “not fully accomplish its task” unless it accepted all
peoples equally, fully recognized the LSI peace program and created “a
sound economic foundation” for itself.
26
Overall, the same demands from
the First Conference continued, but the existence and authority of the
League of Nations was no longer questioned.
Buxton’s ideas and perception of the League were based on his experience
of being a member of an opposition party in Great Britain, where “blaming
the League for ‘doing nothing’” was a common public refrain from the Tories
in power. By 1923 the Labour Party had already established a complex po-
sition on the League of Nations as a fusion of its domestic and foreign policy,
creating a specic set of goals and instructions for its members under an
umbrella of a “League of Nations policy.” At its core, Labour sought to create
a League foreign policy instead of a traditional balance of power foreign
policy which it ascribed to the British cabinet. This policy was driven by an
agenda that sought to reform the League’s covenant while promoting its
multilateral and technical cooperation. Labour accepted the League’s legiti-
macy as a space for the conduct of international relations but also sought to
strengthen it by encouraging the United States and the Soviet Union to be
admitted as members. This perception of the League clearly bled into the
position of the LSI, with Buxton being an inuential gure.
27
As such, during a discussion on disarmament at the 1925 Conference,
Buxton called for parties to ensure that any new measures taken by their
governments would remain “under the control of the League of Nations.”
Moreover, he criticized the security pacts that existed outside the remit of the
League, arguing that they must be supervised by the League because it can
provide “a system which will lend itself to never being turned against any
other Power […] and which consequently will not lead to a possible revival of a
false balance of power.” Buxton also called for Russian workers to pressure
the Soviet government into applying for League membership. In a similar
vein, when condemning the actions of Spain and France during the Rif War in
Morocco, the LSI stated that the League of Nations “should provide a regime
similar to that of the international mandates it has already established.”
28
These claims further conrm the broader perception that existed within
the LSI ranks that the League represented the sole legitimate international
political arena through which states and other organizations could act, ra-
ther than an internationalism with which the LSI was competing for the
future of international relations – in direct contrast to the Comintern.
Another important conclusion one can draw from these statements is a
combination of Eurocentrism and an inability, or unwillingness, to confront
the assumed neutrality of the League. Based in Geneva and designed by the
The Communist International 77
Great Allied Powers, winners of the First World War, clear biases in favor
of Great Power Western liberalism were baked into not just the operation
and decision-making processes of the League but also its structure, purpose,
and identity. The mandate system, for instance, was largely based on a
combination of existing colonial relations and the aspirations of Western
powers to expand their colonial territories – yet was accepted at face value as
neutral due to the presence of the League of Nations (Pedersen 2015, 17–44).
Comintern and the League of Nations: A missed opportunity
Having established the difference between the Comintern and the LSI, it is
important to further elaborate on the peculiar similarities between the
Comintern and the League of Nations, as well as the peculiar absence of the
liberal internationalism from the discussions between communist party re-
presentatives. There was a distinct lack of references to the League in the
debate about the international situation at the Third Congress, for instance,
especially one that had such a narrow focus on Europe and the United
States. During the discussion of Trotskii’s report, the Polish representative
Henryk Brand argued that the rebuilding of the capitalist economy could
only be accomplished
in the sphere of the imperialist Peace of Versailles [that] caused the
creation of a number of articially established states, all of whom have
proved their inability to exist, and have always, and will always have to
keep ghting one another.
29
In making this point, Brand built on Trotskii’s argument by insisting that
capitalist reconstruction was impossible in the current circumstances be-
cause of this inghting and the absence of a true peace. At the same time,
this statement is a judgment of the League of Nations – the organization
responsible for enacting the Versailles Treaty and maintaining the peace.
Here, the League is portrayed as an inherently awed capitalist creation,
established to maintain an impossible peace between the constantly quar-
relling capitalist states. Its role and failure were predetermined from this
perspective, yet at the same time this established its importance as the
overseer of the international system – “the sphere of the imperialist peace”
being a clear reference to the League.
This was an isolated argument, however, as members avoided discussing the
League of Nations. The Comintern congresses focused more often on ideo-
logical issues with regards to party compositions and how far could the
membership of the international lean to the right or the left. It is important to
emphasize that the membership of the Comintern was solely comprised of
parties, and as a result it had a limited amount of inuence over the national
policies of the countries where these parties existed since most of them were
not in power. The only communist party that had solidied its position in
78 Vsevolod Kritskiy
power at the time was the Bolshevik Party. As a result, it was rational for the
communist members to look inward and concentrate on facilitating state
capture at the national level. On the other hand, the Comintern’s stated goal
as a party-of-parties was fundamentally international – the spread of world
revolution, creating the international space where these party-states could
conduct international relations. In other words, fundamentally, the
Comintern was conceived as the equivalent of the League of Nations before
the latter was even created.
In contrast, the League’s membership was comprised of states, thereby
being theoretically “apolitical,” but in practice representing a particular
Western, liberal Great Power internationalism when compared with the
Comintern’s communist ideals and the socialist base of the Labour and
Socialist International (Sluga 2019, 29–31). As such, at the outset it claimed
to be the new arbiter of international relations, as the space where states
discussed international affairs – as the organization that the Comintern
sought to become. Consequently, it is somewhat surprising that neither the
relations between these two nor the theoretical underpinnings of their
complimentary approaches to international relations had been covered in
depth by secondary literature.
30
While there were many differences between them, at a fundamental level
both were created to establish a new world order, which they would ad-
minister, and wherein they would be considered as the sole legitimate arbiter
of international relations. To ensure their status, however, their claim to
legitimacy had to be convincing enough for other states and parties around
the world. Key to ensuring this status was the extent to which governments
and peoples would accept the internationals’ ability to recognize and bestow
statehood. The League of Nations was able to do so due to its association
with the Great Powers that, despite the devastation of the First World War,
remained in the driving seat of international relations. Susan Pedersen put it
most succinctly, stating that the League’s core contribution to international
relations was displacing some political functions from national and imperial
centers to the international arena: “the work of legitimation moved to
Geneva, as imperial powers strove to defend – and others to challenge – their
authority” (Pedersen 2015, 4–5). In contrast, the Comintern was just one of
many international organizations and movements of varying political af-
liations, goals, and sizes that all competed for the attention of the global
population. The Third International could not even claim all socialist par-
ties, as the previous section showed. The Comintern’s goals were informed
by the Bolsheviks’ faith in the end of the capitalist world order, in the im-
minent world revolution, and as such they were grandiose in nature.
At the same time, perhaps partly because of this faith, the Comintern did
not seek to actively confront the process through which this international
“work of legitimation” was transferred to the League. This was a mis-
calculation, as the lack of attention afforded to providing fundamental cri-
tiques of the League’s uneven application of the national self-determination
The Communist International 79
principle and its use by Western powers as a tool to maintain colonial relations
allowed the League to substantiate its claims to legitimacy without elding
any signicant resistance from a potentially powerfully disruptive interna-
tional organization such as the Comintern. Instead of focusing its efforts on de
delegitimizing the League of Nations as a consequence of the Versailles Peace
and a reection of oppressive imperial and colonial power, the Comintern
delegates looked inward and focused on attacking the legitimacy of the
Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals, as well as the Amsterdam
International as organizations that sought to recruit parties and worker
groups that the Comintern set its sights on.
From this perspective, the failure of the Comintern and other leftist
internationalisms to pursue world revolution and make signicant gains
across the world in the interwar period can largely be attributed to their
inability to present a common front against an emerging nation-state-
based international system. It is important to note that while the leftist
groups were occupied with inghting, the League carried on setting up
various international institutions such as the mandate system that main-
tained colonial relations, the Labour Ofce that was able to put forward a
liberal claim on the working class, the minorities section that designated
national minority status, thereby further entrenching the League as a
source of international legitimacy, and more. The League was backed,
albeit timidly, by Western powers united in their experience of the First
World War and by their general liberal ideology, one that remained deeply
rooted in colonial and imperial materialities, but one that was also in the
process of transition toward a neoliberalism that provided certain political
freedoms to its populations.
Conclusion
The early 1920s represented a period of intense transition and change at the
international level. On the left, emerging internationalisms navigated complex
political positions, as well as even more complex political relations. With trust
broken by the First World War and enthusiasm strengthened by the Russian
Revolution, socialists and communists were unable to cooperate and present a
united front – not only in the face of Great Power liberalism but also Great
Power internationalism. The subsequent years of declining autonomy of the
Comintern under Iosif Stalin’s regime revealed that the early years represented
an opportunity missed. Despite the fact that the Bolsheviks sought to dom-
inate the Third International from the outset, they did so as part of an in-
ternationalist vision that prioritized building a nimble organization that could
react quickly to support state capture at the national level, sacricing demo-
cratic decision-making and alienating socialist reformers. A Comintern
without allies on the left was powerless before a Bolshevik Party that was
reforming around a single individual, while the Labour and Socialist
International was unable to command signicant resources or authority and
80 Vsevolod Kritskiy
continued to cooperate with the League of Nations that was emerging as the
avatar for the liberal world order.
Consequently, the League was able to wield its legitimacy at the interna-
tional level – assigning mandates, promoting international technical coopera-
tion, deciding whether or not certain groups “deserved” national minority
status, and sharing this legitimacy with new nation-states by selectively ap-
proving certain claims to nationhood. Despite the glaring failure to prevent
another world war and arrest the spread of fascism worldwide, the League
existed largely unopposed as an international organization of states, so much
so that public opinion in Western countries welcomed the idea of the United
Nations in the aftermath of the Second World War (Sluga 2019, 36–40).
The Bolshevik vision of a communist international as a party-of-parties
proved to be based on a faulty assumption that the capitalist system was
unable to persevere. In remaining narrowly committed to that particular
Bolshevik type of internationalist vision and seeking to dominate, rather
than creating a democratic system of governance that would allow plural
visions and broader ownership over the international by communist parties
around the world, the Comintern was unable to portray itself as a source of
legitimacy at the international level. At the same time, the refusal to ac-
commodate any demands of reformists in the Labour and Socialist
International shut down potential sources of international solidarity and
cooperation, resulting in a divided international left that was similarly un-
able to pose a threat to a liberal international system emerging out of
the League of Nations. This chapter acts as one of the rst steps in relating
these internationalisms together, and I hope that other researchers will
pursue further the connections discussed here in an attempt to establish a
more thorough understanding of the internationalist landscape of the
interwar period across the political spectrum.
Notes
1 Dogliani here is quoting Adéodat Compère-Morel’s introduction to the rst history of
the Second International in French written in 1913 by Marx’s grandson, Jean Longuet
(1913).
2 Komintern Archive (ARCH01862) at the International Institute of Social
History archive, Amsterdam, originals at the Russian State Archive of Socio-
Political History (RGASPI), f. 488, op. 1, d. 1, l. 1b.
3 RGASPI, f. 489, op. 1, d. 21, l. 95 (Theses on the Main Tasks of the Communist
International, Second Congress, July 1920).
4 RGASPI, f. 489, op. 1, d. 2, l. 3 (Stenographic report of the rst session of the
Second Comintern Congress, July 19, 1920).
5 RGASPI, f. 489, op. 1, d. 21, l. 108 (Terms of acceptance of new parties to the
Communist International, Second Congress, July 1920).
6 RGASPI, f. 495, op. 1, d. 7, l. 16–19 (Stenographic report of the rst session of
the Executive Committee of the Communist International, August 7, 1920).
7 RGASPI, f. 495, op. 1, d. 7, l. 16–19.
The Communist International 81
8 RGASPI, f. 495, op. 1, d. 8, l. 54 (Stenographic report of the second session of the
ECCI, August 8, 1920).
9 RGASPI, f. 495, op. 1, d. 27, l. 25. “Порой мне чудится, что Исполком является
только кулисами для русских товарищей” (Stenographic report of the seventeenth
session of the ECCI, January 14, 1921).
10 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 45, l. 2, 27, 34, 41 (Stenographic report of the second
session of the Third Comintern Congress).
11 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 48a, l. 6–7. Schwab was speaking under the pseudonym
“Sachs” (Stenographic report of the third session of the Third Comintern
Congress on Trotskii’s report on “World situation and our tasks,” June 24,
1921).
12 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 48a, l. 13.
13 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 48a, l. 14–17.
14 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 48a, l. 22–24.
15 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 48a, l. 28–29.
16 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 48a, l. 31.
17 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 48a, l. 43–44.
18 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 109, l. 4–10 (Stenographic report of the sixteenth
session of the Third Comintern Congress on the report by the commission on the
“World situation and our tasks” theses, June 4, 1921).
19 See (The Second and Third Internationals and the Vienna Union 1922, 7–28).
20 See (The Second and Third Internationals and the Vienna Union 1922, 48).
21 Labour and Socialist International, and Sozialistische Arbeiter-Internationale
(SAI) archive ARCH01368 (hereafter: LSIA), International Institute of Social
History, Amsterdam, item 3390, image 9 (Meeting of the Bureau of the LSI in
Brussels, July 11, 1923).
22 LSIA, item 7, image 3 and 4 (Resolution on the Treaty of Versailles, reparations
and war debts, and Resolution on The League of Nations, International Labour
Congress of Socialist Parties, Hamburg 1923).
23 LSIA, item 7, image 9 (Motion 7: Resolution of the Committee on point (1) of
the agenda, International Labour Congress of Socialist Parties, Hamburg 1923).
24 LSIA, item 3390, image 16–17 (Meeting reports, International Party Conference
on the Ruhr question, July 22, 1923); 34 (Resolutions passed at Brussels, October
5, 1923).
25 LSIA, item 3390, image 45 (Letter to the Bureau of the LSI from Comrade
Troelstra, November 14, 1923).
26 LSIA, item 27, image 20–21 (C. R. Buxton’s theses on disarmament and danger
of war, Second Congress in Marseilles, 1925).
27 LSIA, item 3083, image 22 (Labour and the League of Nations: The need for a
League Foreign Policy memorandum, July 9, 1923).
28 LSIA, item 27, image 26–27 and LSIA, item 29, image 2 (LSI Resolution on
Morocco, July 28, 1925).
29 RGASPI, f. 490, op. 1, d. 48a, l. 2.
30 According to Patricia Clavin, “quite how international communism related to
liberal internationalism in the interwar period is still unclear” (Clavin 2013, 9).
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84 Vsevolod Kritskiy
3 The Left Opposition and the
practices of parliamentarianism
within the Bolshevik Party,
1923–1924
1
Alexander V. Reznik
Six years after the October Revolution, in the autumn of 1923, a political
contest broke out in Soviet Russia. Commonly referred to as the “struggle
for power and for Lenin’s legacy,” it began as a conict within the Party
leadership, but eventually involved the Party as a whole. A heterogeneous
coalition – headed by Lev Trotskii – challenged the majority group of the
Party’s Political Bureau of the Central Committee, led by the Triumvirate
(“Troika”) faction of Iosif Stalin, Grigorii Zinov’ev, and Lev Kamenev. This
conict triggered one of the most fundamental crises faced by the Bolshevik
Party while in power. Initially beginning within the intraparty regime –
having been started by a group which advocated a reform in the context of
the deepening bureaucratization of the Party’s leadership and having been
made worse by the latter’s monopolization of power – the conict spread
and ruptured the links between the top tier of the Party and its grassroots,
leading to political passivity among many lower-level members.
The roots of this conict go back to the early 1920s, before the death of
Vladimir Lenin. According to ofcial Party statutes, the intraparty regime was
to function according to the norms of “workers’ democracy,” which included
considerable opportunities for deliberation and leadership renewal. The
members of the intraparty (Left) Opposition argued that the effectiveness of
the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was also in crisis, depended on the
success of the Party’s reforms. In the end, the Opposition lost and faced
condemnation on a number of fronts. The symbolic consolidation of this
defeat came with the death of Lenin (the Party’s undisputed leader) on
January 21, 1924, as the sacred image of Lenin was deployed in a rhetorical
attack against the threat to “Party unity” personied by the Opposition. The
importance of these few months of intense confrontation can hardly be
overestimated in the communist project’s subsequent evolution. As the power
of the Party apparatus strengthened, the constant denunciation, demoniza-
tion, and ultimately repression of the Opposition became the foundation for
Stalin’s regime. These factors inuenced not only the USSR, but became the
norm in Soviet-styled parties and regimes globally. While the history of the
power struggle and the so-called “Trotskyist Opposition” has been the subject
of numerous studies (Carr 1956; Deutscher 1959; Daniels 1960; Olekh 1992;
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-4
Demidov 1994; Kruzhinov 2000; Haln 2007; Pirani 2008), this inquiry goes
further by exploring the practices of intraparty parliamentarianism.
2
Intraparty discussions were a signicant political event; although they
occurred within the framework of a single-party system, they were com-
parable in their importance and intensity to the government crises experi-
enced in Western democracies of the time. Émigré newspapers generally
framed the political struggle within the Russian Communist Party
(Bolsheviks) or the RCP(b) as analogous to parliamentary debates in the
West. However, what made the Soviet case peculiar was the practice of
limiting the discussions to “only the Party members,” as a caption on one of
the discussion pamphlets stated (Diskussionnyi sbornik 1923, 1). “What is
settled within a bourgeois democracy by voting, by a discussion of the whole
people,” the de facto Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Rykov pointed out, “in
our [system], under the dictatorship of the Party, is settled by the intraparty
order, and every peasant, every worker, every spets
3
and nepman
4
– they
know that this discussion […] determines the structure of the government
and all of its policy.”
5
In fact, public sentiment was sometimes alarming to Party functionaries.
The editor-in-chief of the newspapers Krest’ianskaia gazeta (“The Peasant
Newspaper”) and Bednota (“The Poor”) claimed to have received letters
from peasants, which, according to him, “fundamentally” contained the
message “give us democracy!” He appealed to a “sense of responsibility” of
his fellow Party members in the face of the danger of “the formation of class
consciousness in the corresponding strata [of the petty bourgeoisie] which
read in the discussion articles” that the working class was losing its power to
bureaucracy.
6
The members of the Opposition were charged with discussing
bureaucratization in a manner that threatened the Soviet system; in re-
sponse, they acknowledged this threat but did not change their approach, as
they saw the strengthening of “workers’ democracy” as the best solution.
Although the Soviet system did not solicit public sentiment, democracy was
integrated into the Party system in a variety of ways – most notably through
the regular conferences, at which pressing issues were debated, reports were
heard, and the leadership was elected or reelected. Many members of the
Opposition saw the Civil War period as the ideal time for the Party due to the
frankness of the discussions among its members, and noted that these demo-
cratic Party traditions began to gradually stagnate in the years that followed.
In 1922, the Twelfth Party Conference amended the Party Statute. Provincial
and district conferences were to be held every six months instead of every three
months; the all-Party conferences were to be held once a year instead of twice
(as had been resolved by the Tenth Congress a year before). Viacheslav
Molotov, a secretary of the Central Committee and a close associate of Stalin,
justied these changes by arguing that they matched the existing practices and
claiming, “the implementation of parliamentarianism in our Party has not, in
fact, been carried out” (Nazarov 2000, 71). The Party’s “parliamentarianism”
was supposed to be revived with a new course within intraparty politics. The
86 Alexander V. Reznik
resolution “On Party Construction” of the Central Committee and the Central
Control Commission, adopted on December 5, 1923, stated that at future
elections “the Party apparatus should be systematically refreshed from below,
by promoting into decision-making positions those members who are capable
of ensuring intraparty democracy.”
7
What did the Opposition mean by parliamentarianism, and how did they
take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Party’s turn toward it? In
order to answer this question, one needs to understand the dual practices of
“electoral” mobilization and the nomination of their supporters at the con-
ferences of all levels, as well as to explore the relationship between the lea-
dership of the Opposition and the grassroots of the Party, and the
Opposition’s perception of their ght for a majority in the Party.
8
The discourse on intraparty parliamentarianism was primarily inuenced
by the principle of anti-parliamentarianism, as established in the RCP(b)
program (Vos’moi s’’ezd RKP(b) 1959), and reinforced by the norms of
political rhetoric (Iarov 2014). While commenting on the conict over the
composition of the Credentials Commission at a Party conference, Timofei
Sapronov, an especially vocal Opposition leader, noted that “it is totally
inappropriate for the conference to be turned into a historic bourgeois
parliament.”
9
Alongside the perceptions of the institutional obsolescence of
parliaments, the members of the Opposition cited the objective realities in
the Party politics. David Riazanov, one of the sharpest critics in the Party,
stated, “We all understand that [we have] the conditions of a military en-
campment; the conditions of the Communist Party itself do not allow any
referendum, any direct voting rights.”
10
Some members of the Opposition
even came up with ad hominem arguments against those whom they accused
of participating in parliamentarianism. For Karl Radek, a member of the
Central Committee and Trotskii’s supporter, the point was “not that
C[omrade] Trotskii is a greater democrat than comrades Tomskii and
Zinov’ev; each of them is a democrat of the same kind, good or bad.” To
prove his orientation toward compromise, he could unleash criticism on the
“overzealous” Opposition members and state:
Comrades, I have never been a democrat in my entire life. I was a left-
wing communist, but not a democrat […] And if ten resolutions were
adopted that said: you must become a democrat, I would not become
one, because I cannot.
11
Trotskii, whose articles were essential to the intraparty discussion, carefully
steered clear of the metaphors of parliamentarianism. In the amendments to
the draft resolution of the Thirteenth Party Conference of January 16–18,
1924, the resolution which denounced the Opposition, Trotskii wrote that
the Party’s “governing institutions” both at the center and in the provinces
“could never be” turned into a “parliament of opinions” in addition to
stressing that “democracy is neither an end in itself nor a single means of
The Left Opposition 87
salvation.” Nevertheless, he considered it essential to defend the “free opi-
nion” against the “bureaucratic regime,” as well as to protest the “liquida-
tion of all discussion and any democracy.”
12
In his public statements, the
Opposition leader spoke out more often on the issue of voting rights, which
was the most visible part of the discourse on the Party’s parliamentarianism.
For example, when speaking about the practice of “renewing the appa-
ratus,” Trotskii reminded that those who were “renewed” were “elected” by
the Party.
13
There were nevertheless important nuances and differences in the context of
Riazanov’s “conditions of a military encampment” and Radek’s democrats
“of the same kind.” In a lengthy discussion in a Moscow printing house, a
certain Cherniak polemicized with a more cautious comrade, stressing that the
“intraparty democracy is nothing similar to the state democracy” in European
countries. Neither this nor other arguments in favor of a more decisive im-
plementation of democracy were supported by the majority. Equally vigorous
debates were held at the Party cell of the Moscow State Tram Depot, where
one of the Opposition leaders, Vladimir Smirnov, spoke to an audience of just
46 people. The minutes registered opposing views: while Smirnov argued that
the transition to the NEP required a simultaneous transition to “democracy,”
a supporter of the Central Committee (who eventually attracted most of the
votes) stated the opposite – that the NEP was associated with “a limitation of
democracy.” The discussion in the Party cell of the Gosspirt [State Alcohol]
factory lasted until two in the morning, and after 18 of the 29 being present
had spoken, an Opposition resolution demanding “the steadfast im-
plementation of Party democracy” was adopted with all but one vote.
14
The
brief form of the minutes hides a subjective and perhaps a more nuanced
interpretation of democracy. While each of these meetings had common
features, they also illustrate the important nuances and differences in what
might be called the practical meaning of democracy.
Some Party members did not merely express their thoughts in the circle of
their comrades in one Party cell. A Party member, who authored one of the
many oppositional articles that polemicized with Stalin and went un-
published in Pravda (“Truth”), defended the “democrat” Georgii Piatakov
(a member of the Central Committee and a moderate member of the
Opposition), while at the same time questioning Trotskii’s alleged “demo-
cratism.” His conclusion was that among the Opposition “there are, without
a doubt, also some bureaucrats. But the Opposition’s line is democratic,
antibureaucratic.”
15
An anonymous note submitted to Zinov’ev at a meeting
at the Communist University maintained that Lenin’s authority could only
be replaced by “the Party bodies endowed with the maximum trust of the
vast majority of the Party, as revealed in free elections.” Another one relied
on symbolic authority:
I think of “workers’ democracy” as Rosa Luxemburg thought of it. If the
Party mass does not participate in the discussion and elboration of issues
88 Alexander V. Reznik
[…] then the “top leaders” are nothing more than a “withering sect,” to
quote Rosa. This leads to bureaucratism, careerism, and so on.
16
Indeed, the “red” students formed a particularly active part of the
Opposition. The memoirs of Isai Abramovich, who in 1923 was a student at
the Moscow Institute of National Economy, are illustrative in this regard.
My institute mates and I rst comprehended the values of democracy
when, in the twenties, we began to study the works of Marx and Engels
under the tutelage of such teachers as D. B. Riazanov. We could not, of
course, fail to see that the principles proclaimed by the founders of
scientic communism were sharply at odds with the policies pursued by
our Party. But we believed that the centralization of power, the
prohibition of “dissent” and so on were temporary phenomena, caused
by the fact that the country was under siege. We believed that with the
transition to peacetime, the democratic methods of governing the
country would be implemented.
And so, when the republic entered peacetime, in 1923–1926, disagree-
ments arose and intensied within the Party, precisely on the question of
democracy. Perhaps many of us (myself included) joined the Opposition,
which proposed to rebuild the Party in a democratic way, under the fresh
impression of having read the works of Marx and Engels.
At the same time, it must be admitted, we did not even think of granting
any rights to other socialist parties […] we did not go that far. But we
believed that, within the ruling Party, there should be complete freedom
of criticism regardless of persons, freedom of factions and groupings,
free speech in the press and at meetings, unrestricted elections of Party
organs and so on. (We did not yet understand then that freedom based
on privilege is not freedom).
(Abramovich 2004, 68)
Certainly, common sense suggested a skeptical attitude to the prospects of
the Party’s democratization under the tutelage of its own apparatus. Stalin,
the chief of this apparatus, warned against the “extreme” reliance on elec-
tions, which, as he put it, “consists in the fact that some comrades seek
elections ’till the end.’ If there are elections, then elect all the way! Party
record?! What is it for? Elect whoever pleases your soul. This view, com-
rades, is erroneous.”
17
Speaking in the Zamoskvoretsky District of Moscow
on the newly adopted resolution on intraparty democracy, Kamenev chided
“the comrades who said with a sneer: the freedom of election was granted,”
referring to the “liberal manifesto” of October 17, 1905, which declared but
did not guarantee liberties. Kamenev promised the opportunity “to renew
the entire apparatus of the Party at the forthcoming elections.”
18
Speaking
The Left Opposition 89
after Kamenev, Evgenii Preobrazhenskii joked that he was not thinking of
blaming “the Central Committee the same way as they blame the next
ministry to be brought down in Italian parliamentary elections, which is
even blamed for the fact that goats do not give enough milk.”
19
But the accusations were not ungrounded. The further away from
Moscow, the less friendly the system of intraparty democracy was toward
potential opposition. Zinov’ev, speaking at a conference of the Petrograd
Provincial Party organization on December 1, 1923, felt no need for the
liberalism of his Moscow colleague in the Triumvirate:
We might have been told: the Central Committee of the Party, just
before the congress at which it will be criticized [and] reelected, picks its
own delegates and cuts the voting rights of Party members. From the
point of view of abstract workers’ democracy, this is a mockery of
“democracy.” But we needed this from the point of view of the
fundamental interests of the revolution, from the point of view of the
benets of the revolution, to allow only those who are the real Party
guard to [get] elect[ed].
20
Apparently, even in Petrograd, a city where the Opposition was barely
supported, Zinov’ev decided to secure his position by holding a conference
before the publication of the resolution “On Party Construction,” one
month before the All-Union Party Conference and ve months before the
Party Congress. Shortly afterwards, speaking to Moscow cell leaders,
Zinov’ev maintained that one must wait for the next congress, if it was to be
convened immediately, “in a disciplined manner, and not go running
[‘snooping’ in the version in Pravda] through cells and undermine condence
in the Central Committee.”
21
The fact that there was applause in response is
deeply symbolic. Sapronov interpreted Zinov’ev’s words as a demand for
keeping silent until the congress and a prediction that the Opposition “will
not get the support of even three percent at our Party congress,” and then,
for a newspaper publication, extended the phrase to “will not get the sup-
port in our Party.” Later Sapronov “assured” Zinov’ev that “if this congress
is elected without pressure from the apparatus,” then “there will be a few
dozens of those you do not like.”
22
Overall, the members of the Opposition
did not appear to be overly optimistic about their electoral prospects.
Speaking at the aforementioned meeting of Moscow cell bureau members,
Sapronov expressed his understanding of the electoral freedom: “One must
elect without recommendations, without reinforced testimonials, without
prior arrangements, and elect the cells of one’s bureaus without any pressure
[…].” The same understanding can be seen in the Central Committee
resolution proclaiming a “new course,” although the emphasis which
Sapronov placed when speaking to this particular audience was different.
Public discussions were pervaded by mistrust and, as a consequence, there
was a demand for “safeguards.” For example, Georgii Andreichin, a former
90 Alexander V. Reznik
activist in the Bulgarian and American socialist movements, noted that “the
strongest guarantee is open debate, open elections.”
23
There is at least one
letter, which Sapronov addressed directly to factory cells, calling for the
immediate reelection of the apparatus. Curiously, a week later, a response to
Sapronov’s letter with an expression of condence in the Central Committee
was adopted by a vote of nine to four.
24
The Opposition’s “campaigning” inuenced both the Party “electorate”
and the candidates for the Party bodies. On December 29, 1923, in response
to the “hesitation” of the subordinate apparatchiks (apparatus function-
aries), the members of the Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee ap-
proved a letter to a narrow circle of the Party staff, in which they claimed
that the Opposition had the aim of seizing the apparatus for themselves and
that “they want to do this under the guise of reelecting the apparatus, de-
posing its members, and so on while dressed up in a ‘democratic’ garb”
(Demidov 1994, 22). Articulating the same argument to an audience in
Moscow, Zinov’ev exclaimed, “Everything else is empty gibberish, all the
words about democracy – this is not worth a jigger.”
25
Zorin, a supporter of
the Central Committee, argued that “democracy” meant settling “personal
debts” for the Opposition.
26
Feliks Dzerzhinskii made one of the most
spectacular juxtapositions of different projects of “democracy.”
Our democracy is not about people coming and saying that the Central
Committee is not good at all, that there are such-and-such mistakes and
such-and-such mistakes, and so on and so forth. All the more reason for
the Party organization to express the unanimous opinion and the
unanimous will that we ought to continue the struggle to solve the
problems which history has put before our Party. And we shall be
promoting democracy, but not that of which Comrade Preobrazhenskii
and Comrade Rafail are the heralds (applause).
27
Negative examples of democracy were drawn from the Party’s history, with
the 1920–1921 debates being particularly often used for that purpose. For
Kamenev, for instance, it was a time when
there was a race throughout Russia for the co-rapporteurs and
rapporteurs, and [when] some voted for the Lenin line and others for
the Trotskii line. We tried to avoid this by all means. We realize that if
this was dangerous under Lenin, it is ten times more dangerous without
Lenin.
28
Such a “race” was avoided in 1923–1924, when, unlike their opponents, the
members of the Opposition made very few attempts to mobilize support
across the country and never succeeded. Preobrazhenskii also offered to
recall the facts of the “trade union discussion” in order to be “justied in
saying: we do not want democracy winded up or wrapped up in a paper
The Left Opposition 91
resolution.”
29
Vagarshak Ter-Vaganian, speaking at the same meeting with
Preobrazhenskii, referred to earlier years to emphasize the lost democracy of
the Party. “In 1917 I was secretary here and often did not know what was
being put forward [at the Party meetings].”
30
Such a kind of leadership style
seemed anachronistic in 1923.
As represented by its leaders, the Central Committee apparatus took an
active part in the intraparty struggle. Lazar Kaganovich, the head of the
Organizational Department, for instance, had earned the nickname
“Commissar of the Central Committee” among the Opposition members in
the Zamoskvoretsky District (Rees 2013, 37). But the Opposition in the
capital’s Party organization also gave the impression of an organized force.
According to Rykov, the Opposition group’s “apparatus for connecting
with the district, apparatus of speakers, apparatus for recruiting speakers”
were “better than ours.”
31
This was largely due to the energetic activity of the Opposition leaders in
ghting for the votes of rank-and-le Party members. For example, as early
as November 30, 1923, at a joint meeting of the cell of the Central Executive
Committee and the Auto-Military Unit of the Central Executive Committee,
a resolution by Rikhard Rein on Sapronov’s report was adopted with only
two votes against and several abstentions. It was no coincidence that many
of the cells that voted for the Opposition had leaders of the Opposition
among their ranks; such examples included the Ikar Factory (Ivan Smirnov),
the Sixteenth Printing House (Petr Drobnis), and the Paris Commune
Factory (Boris Breslav) (Ignat’ev 1969, 149). Most importantly, many of the
signers of the “Statement of the Forty-Six” (which was seen as the program
of the Opposition) spoke in the cells. Lev Sosnovskii, for instance, opposed
Rykov and Mikhail Kalinin and received 200 votes in favor and only 68
against at the Mining Academy; Vladimir Kosior and Ter-Vaganian re-
ceived 400 votes from students at the Institute of National Economy.
32
At the same time, of course, the Opposition also suffered many defeats.
For instance, Sapronov’s resolution was rejected at a numerous meeting of
workers’ cells of the Sokolniki workshops in Moscow, the Geozika
Factory, the Hosiery Factory, and the Posadchik Factory.
33
On December
19–20, 1923, at a joint meeting of the cell of the Joint State Political
Directorate and other agencies, Nikolai Bukharin, who was opposed by
Preobrazhenskii, received an overwhelming majority out of 1,500 votes.
34
These and many other facts were later used against the Opposition as a
proof of its rejection at the grassroots level.
On December 14, 1923, it was announced at the Plenum of the Moscow
Committee that the Opposition had its own agitation department (Garniuk
2014, 165). The rumors of an Opposition apparatus soon spread to other
regions. The main task that such a “center” would perform was sending its
speakers to discussion meetings in order to replicate the actions of the Party
committees. “They know that they have to attract votes, that they need to
have communication, that they need to select speakers, to select resolutions,
92 Alexander V. Reznik
to prepare cheat sheets for speakers, which are sent out to the provinces.”
35
Speaking at the district Party conference, Radek unequivocally supported
the notion that there was a “center,” admitting, “It is clear that I was not
called by the district committee. I got a phone call today and was told to
come to the conference […] I felt that it was not an invitation from the
district committee (applause).”
36
Being a moderate member of the
Opposition, Radek was being ironic about the mutual accusations of “fac-
tionalism” in this case. However, very few members of the Opposition could
afford making such risky jokes, as the consequences could be very serious.
Breslav, one of the “forty-six” signers, had to refute the accusations that
he was involved in adopting the most radical and critical resolution in
Moscow by several military organizations on December 14. In his statement,
which he demanded to be read out before the delegates to the Moscow
Provincial Conference, Breslav pointed out that the Moscow Military
District cell was “just as much a Soviet cell as, for example, the apparatus
cells of the Central Committee and the Moscow Committee of the RCP,”
that is, a cell of employees, and its decision was entirely independent.
Breslav, the Head of the Moscow Military District, claimed that he was
attached to another cell and did not take part in the meeting, and that
therefore “the members of the Central Committee are trying in vain to use
this resolution against the Party members of the Staff.”
37
These Central
Committee members were Molotov and Zinov’ev, who specically referred
to the December 14 resolution during the district Party conferences in early
January 1924 in order to fully defeat the Opposition.
38
Here is the most
problematic point of the resolution on intraparty democracy.
The cell believes that the All-Russian Conference, scheduled for the
middle of January, which will be composed mainly of the Party
functionaries who have actively pursued an antidemocratic policy within
the Party, cannot be considered fully competent in resolving the questions
relating to the implementation of the principles of workers’ democracy.
Therefore, provided it is not possible to reelect the district [uezd]
committees and provincial committees before this date, it is necessary
to try to intensively inuence the delegates at the Conference from below
by means of a resolution [“On Party Construction”], by submitting voter
instructions [nakazy], and via the Party press.
39
Having thereby expressed distrust of the supporters of the Central Committee,
the meeting considered “it necessary to extend the discussions until the
Thirteenth Party Congress (concerning the questions regarding the genuine
implementation of the workers’ democracy).”
40
While Kamenev could say that
“any democracy is an organized distrust and that democracy is no good if it is
not an organized distrust,”
41
for Molotov the Opposition’s points were no
good. He said that by articulating them the “rampant” members of the
Opposition were “presenting an unheard-of challenge […] by juxtaposing
The Left Opposition 93
themselves to the forthcoming Conference in advance.”
42
One of the authors
of the resolution was given the opportunity to respond to Molotov’s criticism.
Insisting on his correctness, he expressed the concern that “the Central
Committee might overestimate the importance of the [January] Conference.”
43
It was this controversial point that Molotov latched on to, arguing that it was
impossible to “protect the authority of the Central Committee” from the
Conference delegates, many of whom had previously been appointed or re-
commended to leadership positions by the same Central Committee.
Certainly, this was outright self-defense of the apparatus, but the facts were in
favor of the Central Committee’s secretary: a week before the All-Party
Conference, no Party organization had “demanded an immediate change of its
provincial and regional Party committees.”
44
The Central Committee supporters were concerned not only by individual
vociferous statements but also by the signicant presence of the Opposition
members at assemblies. During an exchange of accusations of violating the
principles of “workers’ democracy” at the Khamovniki District Party
Conference, for instance, a Central Committee supporter stated that “a
number of Opposition comrades” were bringing “staffs” of supporters to
Party meetings, “who were inuencing the elections” (the response was:
“lies,” noise in the hall).
45
Such an accusation was also heard at some other
meetings in Moscow, but it is impossible to determine the scale of this
phenomenon. There were also accusations which allegedly came from the
workers: “Comrade Ter[-Vaganian] travels around and votes in all dis-
tricts.” “Some of the indignant, like the Georgian deviators, go to all uni-
versity meetings and vote,” claimed another Central Committee supporter.
46
The intraparty struggle was sometimes seen as a kind of “election cam-
paign.”
47
One of the most straightforward dialogues on this subject occurred
during Kamenev’s speech at the Military Academy:
Why do you go to meetings, do you want to have your resolution
adopted? (applause). What did I come for? To win a majority (applause).
I say: let us not cover ourselves. The question is clear. The question is
who will hold the majority at the next congress (voice: you). If you know
in advance that we will, then don’t forget that we have won […] (Radek:
far too much). Comrade Radek says we won too much at the last
congress. I believe that if we are to win, we must win to the end. Your
task is to win a majority in Moscow, because with a majority in Moscow
[…] you will win in general. As we are used to looking at what is being
done in the organization, we can see that Comrade Serebriakov is
undoubtably a tsekist [Central Committee member] by nature (voice: are
there any?), he is campaigning in the Baumansky District. I. N. Smirnov,
a member of the Central Committee […] is suddenly operating in the
Baumanovsky [Baumansky] District […] Of course, district committees
must be won, because this is the rst step to winning a majority in the
Moscow organization.
48
94 Alexander V. Reznik
Sapronov recounted a speech made by the Kauchuk Factory worker at a
Party meeting: “I want to criticize, but I am afraid they will think I want to
get into the Central Committee.”
49
Nikolai Nemtsov, an honored Party
ofcial from amongst the workers, a member of the Supreme Court cell,
reected on the group of “forty-six” in the following way: “I will die rst,
but I will never vote for them.”
50
However, curiously enough, Nemtsov, like
the majority in his cell, was on the side of the Opposition. Most likely, he
needed such a turn of phrase to once again refute the idea that there was a
ght for seats in the Central Committee. In support of his words, Nemtsov
went on a long historical excursus, explaining how he was offended by the
Opposition leaders of a district committee in 1921.
The actual campaign at the grassroots level manifested in the reelections of
cell bureaus. The transition from theory to practice was expressed in the fact
that reelections were either held or planned at the meetings at which the re-
solution on intraparty democracy was discussed. The election of cell delegates
to Moscow district conferences were held in the middle of December 1923.
According to the statistics compiled by the Moscow Party Committee, in the
Khamovniki District there were 44 tsekists and 15 supporters of the Opposition
among the 67 delegates from the workers’ cells; among the 21 delegates from
the soviet cells there were 11 tsekists, 4 supporters of the Opposition, and 6
vacillators; among the 111 delegates from the university cells there were 51
tsekists, 47 supporters of the Opposition, 11 vacillators, and 2 uncertain;
among the 78 military delegates there were 35 tsekists, 37 supporters of the
Opposition, 2 vacillators, and 4 uncertain. According to other data of the
Moscow Party Committee, there were almost twice as many tsekist delegates as
supporters of the Opposition.
51
If the functionaries were guided by this data,
they should have been surprised by the Opposition’s majority at the
Khamovniki District Conference. In any case, these facts show that the com-
petition between various factions was real.
Finding themselves in the minority at the Moscow Provincial Conference,
the members of the Opposition ostentatiously exercised their democratic
rights. During a discussion of the members of the new Moscow Committee,
the members of the Opposition were not allowed to put their candidates
forward. However, they managed to put the removal of ten other candi-
dates, including Bukharin and Kaganovich, to vote. It was then decided to
discontinue individual voting “in view of the fact that the counting produced
the same gure.”
52
In the midst of this intraparty struggle, Pravda named an important as-
pect of the Opposition’s parliamentarianism: the demand for “proportional
representation” in the Moscow Party Committee (obviously, in the district
committees as well). According to the supporters of the Central Committee,
this constituted the Opposition’s “minimum program.” Pravda’s editorial
board based its assertion on a letter by Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov recounting
Preobrazhenskii’s speech at a meeting of the State Power Plant on December 21,
although it was noted that Preobrazhenskii immediately stated that he had
The Left Opposition 95
been misinterpreted.
53
An interpretation of this pricniple was also given by
Rykov, who said that it meant
a coalition of two parties in all Soviet organs, a reorganization of the
Central Committee on the basis of an agreement between the two
factions […] and that means organizing a joint committee, as it was
under the Mensheviks, and that means a split.
In this quote, Rykov is referring to the prerevolutionary period of Party-
building, during which the Bolsheviks had been in the minority.
Preobrazhenskii, who spoke next, conned himself to a simple promise, to
“set an example of loyalty to the Party” for his opponents: “If we get a
majority, then we will pick them as we would under normal circum-
stances.”
54
At the Moscow Provincial Conference, when there was no longer
any doubt that the Central Committee majority would prevail, the
Opposition member Nazarov put forward the idea of proportional re-
presentation in a most transparent form:
I ask […] is it necessary to take into account the proportion of the
opinions that have been revealed in this discussion? […] I am sure that
only by the joint work of the representatives of these two opinions in the
organization will you build that old steel apparatus which the Party
yearns for and which we had while we were underground and which the
Party masses so persistently demand. Do not ostracize the Opposition,
but draw it into the apparatus, make it responsible, as you are, for
everything you do.
(XI Moskovskaia gubernskaia konferentsiia RKP(b) 1924, 78)
But already then, the supporters of the Central Committee called the
Opposition “unprincipled.” An article titled “What They Promise and What
They Give” appeared in Pravda on January 11. Its author referred to the case
of the Voskresensk District Party Conference, at which the Opposition, “led by
Sapronov,” did not allow the minority of people who supported the Central
Committee to join the delegation to the Provincial Party conference. Thereby,
the author argued, Preobrazhenskii’s promise had been broken.
55
Whatever
circumstances might have played a part at this conference, the attitude of the
Opposition members to proportional representation had its nuances.
“Comrades, we in the Party are not federalists, we are not putting forward any
slogan advocating for proportionality,” Radek said, not clarifying on behalf of
which group he was speaking.
56
However, rejecting this slogan did not mean
rejecting proportional representation. A statement by a minority of delegates
to the Zamoskvoretsky Party Conference, for instance, read:
We believe that we indeed do not uphold any principle of proportional
representation, and we have always endeavored to form our executive
96 Alexander V. Reznik
bodies in a homogeneous manner, so that they are able to implement the
majority line of our congresses and conferences, but we have always
sought to ensure that all shades of sentiments and opinions within our
Party have the ability to reveal themselves […].
57
At the cell level, this aspiration was expressed in the following election results
for delegates to the Conference: the tsekist candidates were elected most often
unanimously, while the Opposition candidates got through by a “ratings
vote,” often accompanied by the tsekists second to them and the vacillating
ones.
58
The results of the elections to the Moscow Conference appeared
miserable to the Opposition (Hincks 1992), making Preobrazhenskii draw the
following reasonable conclusion regarding the technology which would be
used to prepare a future “unanimous” condemnation of the Opposition:
At the Krasnopresnensky District Conference, the Opposition had 188
votes and we were denied representation on the list. In Zam[oskvor-
etsky] District we have a ratio of 260 to 230 votes. Furthermore, in
Rogozhsko-Simonovsky district we have 127 to 90, and yet only
4 Opposition representatives were elected. When we see such politics,
what can we count on? In Moscow, according to the Central
Committee’s estimate, it [the Central Committee] has slightly more
than a half, and it seems to us that we have a half, we won’t debate this,
but the ratio roughly stands at that level, yet at the conference elections
this ratio has been reduced in all places. At the provincial conferences
there will apparently be a similar method of electing delegates, which
hides the actual proportion [of votes] in our Party. This is nothing but
the preparation for the bureaucracy’s wellbeing, a conference of 600
members will gather with only 50 or 60 representatives from the
Opposition. This does not represent the real balance of forces.
59
The actual All-Union Conference turned out to have even fewer Opposition
members, and they sent statements to the Moscow Provincial Conference
protesting the disproportionately low number of their delegates.
60
“We have
never previously, even [during the] trade union discussions, had the
Opposition excluded from representation in an organized manner,” pro-
tested Preobrazhenskii.
61
Addressing the more friendly atmosphere of the
Conference, Sapronov said that in the Rogozhsko-Simonovsky District not
a single Opposition delegate was picked for the Moscow Provincial
Conference, even though the supporters of the Central Committee had a
majority of only 30 votes; in the Zamoskvoretsky District, where the sup-
porters of the Central Committee won by 31 votes, 3–4 Opposition members
were delegated to the Provincial Conference out of 40 in total. In response to
the shout that “this was proportional,” Sapronov replied that the number of
delegates did not have to reect the abstract total strength of the
Opposition, but that it should be appropriate for the particular assembly,
The Left Opposition 97
“so that its opinion is reected in its entirety.” “Is this an atmosphere of
concessions and agreement on issues within the Party?” Sapronov resented.
“This is a schismatic arithmetic (applause).” He ironically suggested that the
Opposition could only get a majority if 95 percent in the Party supported it,
and that 80 percent was no longer enough.
62
At the Krasnopresnensky District Conference, the Opposition was denied
proportional representation in the District Committee and to the Provincial
Party Conference, but this was a peculiar conict. In reference to another
member of the Central Control Commission, Emel’ian Iaroslavskii told the
Political Bureau members that after this:
[…] Rafail proposed that a meeting of the Opposition be opened and
declared the session open to discuss the situation and to elect delegates
to the Provincial Party Conference and to the District Committee from
the Opposition. But the meeting could not in fact take place because of
the continuous roar and noise which lasted from two to four in the
morning, after which everyone dispersed in an incredibly angry mood.
63
The Opposition won virtually no majority in the elected bodies anywhere.
This relieved the Central Committee’s anxieties only partially. Shortly after
this triumph, Bukharin requested that Zinov’ev did not
overestimate the size, character or strength of the victory. We fought
essentially only in Moscow. We had the entire apparatus in our hands.
We had the press, and so on. Finally, we had – very importantly – in our
hands the ideals of unity and of continuing the tradition of the Party,
personally embodied [in Lenin]. And yet the Opposition proved to be
quite considerable in Moscow, to say the least.
(Iakushev 1990, 61–62)
But Bukharin naturally publicly denied the importance of “formal democ-
racy” for intraparty affairs during the debate (Vilkova 2004, 400). Against
all odds, political pragmatism prevailed.
It was not only the Opposition leaders but also its rank-and-le supporters
in the cells who initially remarked that “many people do not know what de-
mocracy means.”
64
The worker Okhapkina exclaimed in her overemotional
and confused speech during a conference in the Khamovniki District of
Moscow: “Here is a meeting of the Central Committee, the Moscow
Committee, the District Committee, the Comintern, but there is not a single
worker.”
65
It was then that dozens of Party members signed up to participate
in the debate, and the question of whether to stop giving speeches altogether
or to limit them to ve minutes was repeatedly being raised. Eventually,
however, a decision was reached using a class-based approach: to give the
oor only to worker delegates “from the machine.” One of them, a worker
from a printing house, based his whole speech on the rhetoric of confusion:
98 Alexander V. Reznik
what was such an obscure struggle about?
66
A woman worker who spoke next
expressed it literally: “[…] we cannot work out which of them is right and
which is wrong, the devil knows, they are probably ghting over their min-
isterial posts, and they are messing with our heads. We don’t have a clue about
it.” The worker did not question her class status, on the contrary, she stressed
it in order to urge the “upper class” to stop “ghting” on behalf of her class.
67
As one of the Joint State Political Directorate’s intelligence reports shows,
even those workers who had been Party members since 1900 could also per-
ceive this discussion as a question of “who would be in power: Zinov’ev or
Trotskii.”
68
It was not surprising that the political conict was perceived
through the traditional framework of the “struggle for power.” Not only a
participant at a small meeting in Petrograd could say that “the hype raised by
writers and newspapermen creates the opinion that someone aspires to
power,” but the old Bolshevik Matvei Muranov could also not resist ex-
claiming:
[…] Our leaders had launched the revolution as a people’s revolution, a
proletarian one, and now they are ending it as a palace revolution
(shouting, noise). This is why it is necessary for the leaders to come to an
agreement, and there will be no discussion in the grassroots either.
69
One could reasonably assume that the majority was also resentful when
one of the workers in his speech openly and insistently persuaded his
audience that “democracy,” as the word was being understood by the
members of the working class, would only bring “harm.” From his point
of view, the workers “do not support democratic centralism.” It is not
important whether what was being referred to was specically “worker’s
democracy,” here the keyword is “democracy.” The Central Committee
supporter was emphatic: “Comrades, the workers know very well that they
are underdeveloped, they understand this very well (loud noise). Comrades,
the workers know very well that they are underdeveloped (noise: enough).”
The solution, according to the speaker, was to maintain the regime.
However, when the worker began to speak of the need, as opposed to
“Sapronov’s methods,” for the State Political Directorate to be employed,
“loud” and “prolonged” laughter began to sound throughout the hall.
However, one of the other “grassroots” Party members who spoke also
stated bluntly that the workers did not have the necessary knowledge of
Marxism and needed “a higher level of socialist consciousness” in order to
implement Sapronov’s suggestion to replace the apparatchiks.
70
It is possible that some members of the Opposition walked out of the
room during speeches of this kind. This served as an opportunity to contrast
the working-class grassroots with the elite of the Opposition. Iaroslavskii
added a phrase in Pravda which was absent in the transcript of his speech:
“You only talk about democracy, but when the workers from the
The Left Opposition 99
neighborhood spoke here, you did not want to listen to them and you left
the hall like herds (voices: right; applause; noise).”
71
One of the sharpest and somewhat paradoxical juxtapositions between the
“tops” and the “bottoms” was voiced by the head of the Soviet government,
Kalinin, who stated that “the people, the working class are not in fact
suffering from a lack of democracy, rather, it is the Party which is suffering
from a lack of it.”
72
One of the workers’ Opposition activists from the
Kauchuk Factory would probably not agree with this, as he claimed that the
Moscow Committee had twice canceled the results of their cell’s reelection.
Being certainly aware of such controversies, Bukharin, at a closed-door
Central Committee Plenum on January 14–15, 1924, stated that the
Opposition was heterogeneous and set the objective: “The workers who
express a healthy tendency should be isolated from the Opposition leaders”
(Vilkova 2004, 400).
Lenin’s death on January 21, 1924, triggered a series of resolutions from
factories and plants, which were aimed not so much against the Opposition
as against discussion in general. Thus, the Communists and the Komsomol
members of the Yaroslavl Plant Trud i Tvorchestvo demanded from the
Central Committee to “concentrate all forces and ban all discussions”; all
discussions were deemed “self-destructive” for the Party. A meeting of
thousands of workers at the Sormovo plants supported the demand “to put
an end to these incomprehensible differences of opinion” (Ennker 2011,
120). In his report, the secretary of the Vasileostrovsky District Committee
of Leningrad wrote: “The disputes over the [Opposition] platform’s cor-
rectness have quickly faded after receiving the news of Comrade Lenin’s
death, and now many ardent supporters of the so-called Opposition are
publicly admitting their mistake.”
73
On rare occasions, Party members inclined toward the Opposition con-
tinued their activities. At a city-wide meeting in Kaluga on January 7, 1924,
where the majority supported the Opposition, after the Party Conference’s
decision to end the discussion, “a few comrades […] did not calm down and
brought democracy from the Party to the non-partisan masses.” Following
an investigation by a special commission, “some comrades were transferred
and some were expelled [from the Party].”
74
The members of the Opposition
in Krasnoyarsk had been elected to one of the district committees while the
Thirteenth Party Conference was in progress. There they gained a foothold
and continued their work. The chairman of the Siberian Bureau of the All-
Union Central Council of Trade Unions, Iurii Figatner, described in a letter
to a colleague that a Communist who had previously been transferred from
Tula for “squabbling” had been elected as the new secretary. From then on,
Figatner wrote:
[…] the work [of the Opposition] went into full swing, the cell secretaries
in the First District were thoroughly treated, as the Siberians say, “to
perfection,” the secretaries are all workers, good, energetic lads, the
100 Alexander V. Reznik
Opposition spent all their time in the District, they not only worked in
cells, they worked the public individually, they spent all their free time in
the District, sleeping in the District, drinking with the lads, in short,
doing everything possible to make the District their own, and they more
than succeeded in this.
75
The victory of the Central Committee’s supporters cemented the trend of
contrasting the “word and deed.” Dzerzhinskii, for example, was applauded
during a discussion after saying that criticism of the Opposition does not
simply take place under the Party’s “democracy,” but leads to “arch-
democracy, because no other party would allow such idle talk to take
place.”
76
By the end of 1924 no one would be any longer surprised by what
Mikhail Kharitonov, the head of the Ural Bureau of the Central Committee,
had to say:
I attended two okrug [area] conferences, one in Perm and the other in
Yekaterinburg. In Perm I did not hear a single word about intraparty
democracy and I heard very little about it in the Yekaterinburg okrug. I
think it is correct to say that in each individual district, the more they
talk about democracy, the less they carry it out.
(RKP(b) 1924, 110–111)
Not only could democracy’s defeated supporters be blamed for talking
about it, but also for being silent about it. Three members of the defeated
Opposition who were located in a cell within the People’s Commissariat of
Finance, for instance, made a statement at a district Party conference which
read, “Objectively, the Opposition has been cultivating among its followers,
politically speaking, a dog’s senility (passivity and unprincipledness) and
organizational formlessness (abstention from voting, conscious maintenance
of ‘calm’ at Party meetings), and so on and so forth” (RKP(b) 1924, 75).
Whether this statement corresponded to reality is difcult to judge.
However, one can ascertain that, even if the Opposition had not been de-
prived of their seats in the governing organizations (there were none of its
members at the level of the district committees anymore), they would have
still completely lost the initiative in implementing democracy.
For a while the intraparty struggle led to the formal democratization of
the Party apparatus: electoral recommendations and “transfers” were re-
duced, and the leadership was partially renewed (Pavliuchenkov 2008, 327).
The Tomsk Regional Party Committee democratized the election to district
Party organizations to such an extent that it soon regretted it, as its secre-
taries became markedly “younger” and “intellectual” (Kulikov 1991, 120).
Democratic practices were used in order to defeat the Opposition and to
legitimize the domination of the apparatus, which had returned to the old
path of bureaucratic centralism. What worried the apparatchiks was the
atmosphere of uncertainty which democratic procedures, elections, appeals,
The Left Opposition 101
and endless discussions created. The members of the Opposition initially
conditioned their “electoral” successes on the “terms” of the intraparty
democracy resolution, being rightfully concerned about their opponents’
technologies. The latter, in turn, were condent that the Opposition had the
ability to “ght for power.” The ordinary electorate was often unable to
grasp the essence of this debate and perceived it as a “struggle over seats.”
Notes
1 This chapter is a revised version of a chapter from the author’s book on the Left
Opposition, published in Russian (Reznik 2018). I want to express here my
sincere gratitude to my friends and colleagues Deirdre Harshman and Misha
Lerner for their help with translation, and to Ivan Sablin for the kind invitation
to contribute to this volume.
2 For more details on the current state of research of the Left Opposition, see
(Reznik 2019).
3 A non-Party specialist.
4 A private entrepreneur within the NEP system.
5 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 36, l. 3 (Transcript of the meeting of the Sokolniki
District Conference, January 7–8, 1924).
6 Ia. Iakovlev, “Iz neotlozhnykh prakticheskikh zadach partii,” Pravda, January
11, 1924.
7 Pravda, December 7, 1923.
8 The situation in the Army Party cells differed from the others, which requires a
separate inquiry. According to the report of the Political Department of the
Moscow Military District, “[…] the tendency toward electability of political or-
gans and commissars, or rather toward the excessive broadening of the rights of
the party organs at the expense of the commissar and political apparatus, took
Place in a small number of cells” (RGVA (Russian State Military Archive), f.
25883, op. 2, d. 512, l. 64). As was noted in that and many other reports, this
debate was attended almost exclusively by political commissars.
9 RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), f. 323, op. 2, d. 39, l. 2
(Transcript of the meetings of the Khamovniki District Party Conference, Vol. 2,
January 8–10, 1924).
10 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 38, l. 189 (Transcript of the meetings of the
Khamovniki District Party Conference, Vol. 1, January 7, 1924).
11 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 37, l. 31, 33 (Transcript of the meeting of the
Baumansky District Conference of the RCP(b), January 7–8, 1924).
12 RGASPI, f. 325, op. 1, d. 105, l . 7 (Trotskii’s amendments to the draft resolution
of the Thirteenth Party Conference, January 16–18, 1924); d. 84, l. 2–3 (Trotskii’s
project of the resolution for the Thirteenth Party Conference, January 16–18,
1924).
13 Lev Trotskii, “Gruppirovki i fraktsionnye obrazovaniia,” Pravda, December 28,
1923.
14 TsGA Moskvy (Central State Archive of Moscow), f. 67-P, op. 1, d. 229, l. 37ob
(Minutes of the general meeting of the RCP(b) cell of the First Model Print Shop,
December 5, 1923); Ibid, l. 76 (Minutes of the general meeting of the Moscow
State Electric Tram Station and Substation, December 19, 1923); Ibid, l. 105ob
(Minutes of the general meeting of the RCP(b) Gosspirt cell, December 12–13,
1923).
15 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 171, d. 27, l. 73 (S. Pestkovskii, “Regarding the letter of
Comrade Stalin”).
102 Alexander V. Reznik
16 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 171, d. 26. l. 95, 107 (Anonymous notes to Zinov’ev).
17 I. Stalin, “Zadachi partii,” Pravda, December 6, 1923.
18 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 33, l. 11–12 (Transcript of the Zamoskvoretsky District
Party Conference, December 6–9, 1923).
19 Ibid., l. 13.
20 Pravda. December 7, 1923.
21 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 40. l. 81 (Transcript of the general meeting of the
bureau of Moscow RCP(b) cells, December 11, 1923); “Rech’ tov. Zinov’eva”
Pravda, December 16, 1923.
22 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 40. l. 92 (Transcript of the general meeting of the
bureau of Moscow RCP(b) cells, December 11, 1923).
23 TsGA Moskvy, f. 67-P, op. 1, d. 248, l. 98 (Transcript of the Zamoskvoretsky
District Party Conference, January 4, 1924).
24 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 171, d. 26, l. 221–223 (Sapronov’s letter to the cell of the
former Dedovskii enterprise, December 15, 1923).
25 TsGA Moskvy, f. 67-P, op. 1, d. 248, l. 98 (Transcript of the Zamoskvoretsky
District Party Conference, January 4, 1924).
26 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 33, l. 40 (Transcript of the Zamoskvoretsky District
Party Conference, December 6–9, 1923).
27 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 36, l. 83 (Transcript of the meeting of the Sokolniki
District Conference, January 7–8, 1924).
28 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 38, l. 25 (Transcript of the meetings of the Khamovniki
District Party Conference, Vol. 1, January 7, 1924).
29 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 33, l. 24 (Transcript of the Zamoskvoretsky District
Party Conference, December 6–9, 1923).
30 Ibid., l. 42.
31 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 36, l. 14 (Transcript of the meeting of the Sokolniki
District Conference, January 7–8, 1924).
32 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 11, d. 204, l. 82, 84, 86 (Discussion material in the
Zamoskvoretsky district cells for the Central Committee).
33 “Rezoliutsii,” Pravda, December 21, 1923.
34 Pravda, December 22, 1923; “V iacheike OGPU i MGO,” Pravda, December 23,
1923.
35 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 36, l. 124 (Transcript of the meeting of the Sokolniki
District Conference of the RCP(b), January 7–8, 1924).
36 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 34, l. 4 (Transcript of the Rogozhsky-Simonovsky
District Conference of the RCP(b), January 3–6, 1924).
37 TsGA Moskvy, f. 3-P, op. 5, d. 43, l. 57 (Breslav’s statement to the Conference
Presidium).
38 V. Molotov, “So stupen’ki na stupen’ku,” Pravda, January 3–4, 1924; V.
Molotov, “Zhertvy fraktsionnosti?” Pravda, January 12, 1924; RGASPI, f. 323,
op. 2, d. 37, l. 87–88; TsGA Moskvy, f. 67-P, op. 1, d. 248, l. 28.
39 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 11, d. 205, l. 26 (Resolution of the Cell of the Political
Administration Staff, the Special Purpose Unit Headquarters, and the Moscow
Military District’s Military Communications Headquarters, December 14, 1923).
40 Ibid.
41 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 33, l. 135 (Transcript of the Zamoskvoretsky District
Party Conference, December 6–9, 1923).
42 V. Molotov, “So stupen’ki na stupen’ku,” Pravda, January 3–4, 1924.
43 N. Durmanov, “V poiskakh fraktsionnosti,” Pravda, January 12, 1924.
44 V. Molotov, “Zhertvy fraktsionnosti?” Pravda, January 12, 1924.
The Left Opposition 103
45 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 39, l. 2 (Transcript of the meetings of the Khamovniki
District Party Conference, Vol. 2, January 8–10, 1924).
46 Rabochii S-ev. “Rezoliutsii. V raionakh. V Rogozhsko-Simonovskom raione
(Vpechatleniia rabochego),” Pravda, December 14, 1923; “Otkliki s mest,”
Pravda, December 23, 1923.
47 See Rykov’s speech: RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 36, l. 5 (Transcript of the meeting
of the Sokolniki District Conference, January 7–8, 1924).
48 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 66, l. 64 (Kamenev’s report to the Military Academy,
December 1923).
49 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 38, l. 69 (Transcript of the meetings of the Khamovniki
District Party Conference, Vol. 1, January 7, 1924).
50 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 39, 58 (Transcript of the meetings of the Khamovniki
District Party Conference, Vol. 2, January 8–10, 1924).
51 TsGA Moskvy, f. 3-P, op. 11, d. 85а, l. 122–126 (Khamovniki Conference); Ibid.,
l. 10 (Summary of the debate on the intraparty situation and on the elections to
the district Party conference through December 29, 1923).
52 TsGA Moskvy, f. 3-P, op. 5, d. 43, l. 4–5 (Minutes of the Eleventh Moscow
Provincial Party Conference, 10–12 January 1924).
53 I. Skvortsov-Stepanov, “Partiinaia diskussiia i moskovskaia organizatsiia,”
Pravda. December 25, 1923.
54 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 36, l. 15, 49 (Transcript of the meeting of the Sokolniki
District Conference, January 7–8, 1924).
55 [K. Ia.] Kadlubovskii, “Chto obeshchaiut i chto daiut,” Pravda, January 11, 1924.
56 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 37, l. 131 (Transcript of the meeting of the Baumansky
District Conference of the RCP(b), January 7–8, 1924).
57 TsGA Moskvy, f. 3-P, op. 5, d. 43, l. 79 (Petition to the Moscow Provincial Party
Conference).
58 TsGA Moskvy, f. 3-P, op. 11. d. 85а, l, 122–126 (Khamovniki Conference).
59 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 37, l. 116 (Transcript of the meeting of the Baumansky
District Conference of the RCP(b), January 7–8, 1924).
60 TsGA Moskvy, f. 3-P, op. 5, d. 43, l. 36, 40, 42, 60–61, etc. (The Opposition
members’ statements to the Conference).
61 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 36, l. 53 (Transcript of the meeting of the Sokolniki
District Conference, January 7–8, 1924).
62 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 38, l. 53, 71–72, 78–77 (Transcript of the meetings of
the Khamovniki District Party Conference, Vol. 1, January 7, 1924).
63 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 171, d. 29, l. 102 (Iaroslavskii to the Politcal Bureau, January
5, 1924).
64 For example, Kramarov, at a closed-door meeting of the Gosstroi cell on
December 12, 1923, claimed that the failure to implement the resolutions of the
Twelfth Congress lay with the “literate” upper classes, who “had not explained
the resolutions to the lower classes.” TsGA Moskvy, f. 67-P, op. 1, d. 229, l. 114.
65 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 39, l. 99 (Transcript of the meetings of the Khamovniki
District Party Conference, Vol. 2, January 8–10, 1924).
66 Ibid, l. 82, 99.
67 Ibid, l. 101.
68 RGASPI, f. 76, op. 3, d. 74, l. 67 (OGPU report).
69 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 39, l. 63 (Transcript of the meetings of the Khamovniki
District Party Conference, Vol. 2, January 8–10, 1924).
70 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 40. l. 34, 49 (Transcript of the general meeting of the
bureau of Moscow RCP(b) cells, December 11, 1923).
104 Alexander V. Reznik
71 “Rech’ tov. Iaroslavskogo.” Pravda, December 18, 1923.
72 “Rech’ tov. Kalinina.” Pravda, December 14, 1923.
73 TsGAIPD SPb (Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documents of
St. Petersburg), f. 4, op. 1, d. 123, l. 8 (Report on the activities of the
Vasileostrovsky District Committee of the RCP(b) in January 1924).
74 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 33, d. 215, l. 38 (Survey of the situation and activities of the
Kaluga Party organisation for the period from April 1923 to March 1924).
75 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 33, d. 205, l. 1 (Figatner to Dogadov, April 28, 1924).
76 RGASPI, f. 323, op. 2, d. 36, l. 82 (Transcript of the meeting of the Sokolniki
District Conference, January 7–8, 1924).
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106 Alexander V. Reznik
4 Importing and exporting ideas of
nationalism and state-building: The
experience of Turkey’s Republican
People’s Party, 1923–1950
Paul Kubicek
For over a quarter-century after its foundation in 1923, the Republic of
Turkey was ruled by the Republican People’s Party
1
(Cumhuriyet Halk
Partisi, CHP) in a single-party regime. The CHP, founded in the same year
as the Republic, grew out of the nationalist-resistance movement in the
Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922). It was the creation of Mustafa
Kemal (later Atatürk),
2
who served as its chairman as well as the country’s
president until his death in 1938. Although it competed (usually without
opposition) in elections, the CHP was conceived less as an institution to win
votes or compete for power, but more as an instrument to uphold and ad-
vance the fundamental policies and principles of what would eventually
come to be known as Kemalism (sometimes rendered Atatürkçülük in
Turkish). The CHP, in many ways, was fused with the state, and also
supplanted various civil society organizations. It implemented Atatürk’s
revolution from above that sought to fundamentally transform Turkey into
a secular, Western-oriented republic. While precepts of democratic cen-
tralism technically governed the party, in practice the CHP presided over a
system of “democracy with unanimous vote” (Tunçay 1981: 304) and
eventually elevated its leader to hero/cult status. However, unlike other
single-party regimes at that time, the CHP did eventually allow political
opposition and, in 1950, cede power to a rival party.
Much has been written on the early years of CHP.
3
One of the primary
historiographical debates is whether the early CHP should be understood as
a proto-democratic party or whether it was akin to totalitarian parties that
ruled Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union during the same time (Ete 2019).
Some scholars have celebrated the CHP and Kemalism as creating “at least
a precondition for liberal democracy” (Özbudun 1988: 14), developing a new
identity that is compatible with a “European value system” (Kili 2011: 274),
and setting Turks “rmly on the road not only to independence but to that
rarer and more precious thing that is freedom” (Lewis 2002: 293). According
to Andrew Mango (1999: 536, 534) Atatürk was a “democrat in theory”
who, upon his death in 1938, “left behind him the structure of democracy,
not of dictatorship.” Other accounts are more ambivalent, noting that the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-5
CHP’s single-party rule is best understood as a pragmatic response to par-
ticular conditions, and that its rule, although authoritarian, was more tu-
telary than rigidly ideological (Özbudun 1981, Ete 2019). Maurice Duverger
even carved out a unique category for the CHP as tutelary or “potentially
democratic,” based on what he considered its non-totalitarian nature and
that it eventually peacefully ceded power (Duverger 1959: 280). Others are
less generous, casting Kemalism and the early CHP as fundamentally anti-
democratic, with either inherent (Parla and Davison 2004) or evolved
(Zürcher 2010) fascist and totalitarian “tendencies” that elevated the state
and nation above that of the individual, or suggesting that the establishment
of one-party rule was not conceived as something temporary or purely tu-
telary in nature (Tunçay 1981).
Mindful both of the comparative focus on this volume as well as Atatürk’s
own admonishment that “We can only be likened to ourselves,”
4
this chapter
will delve into this debate (among other topics), looking at both the in-
tellectual and philosophical roots of the CHP’s program, in particular
Western inuences, as well as its organizational structure and practices. While
aware of similarities and suggestions that various regimes in the early twen-
tieth century “copied” from one another, it will seek to highlight some fun-
damental differences between the CHP regime and those of more ideologically
oriented totalitarian states. Finally, bearing in mind the relative success of
Turkey and its status (unlike that of Germany, Italy, and even the Soviet
Union) as a semi-peripheral, anti-imperialist, and non-Western state, this
chapter will extend the comparative approach by suggesting the appeal and
limits of the Turkish “model” of the CHP under Atatürk to other contexts.
The intellectual roots of single-party rule in Turkey
The CHP was the primary institutional vehicle through which Atatürk – who
served as party leader from its founding until his death in 1938 – and his allies
sought to transform the new Turkish republic. It was, in Kemal Karpat’s words,
the “epitome” and “reection” of the various conicts and aspirations of
Atatürk’s revolutionary agenda (Karpat 1991: 42). The six primary pillars or
“arrows” (Alti Ok) of what would later be called Kemalism featured promi-
nently in the CHP’s rst-party program in 1931, and were added to the
second article of the Turkish Constitution in 1937. These were republicanism
(cumhuriyetçilik), nationalism (milliyetçılık), secularism (laiklik), populism
(halkçılık), étatism (devletçilik), and revolutionism (inkilapçılık). Ataturk, as
party leader, enjoyed control over the party, including nominating its candidates
for the Grand National Assembly, where it enjoyed a near-monopoly of re-
presentation. As explained more below, the CHP was a cadre/elite-dominated
party, one that served more of a tutelary role in guiding society toward fulll-
ment of Ataturk’s goals.
Much has been written on Kemalism, and there is a long debate about
whether it is coherent enough to be deemed an ideology (Hanioğlu 2011, 2012).
108 Paul Kubicek
Sinan Ciddi (2009: 6) concedes that Kemalism is a “fuzzy” and “problematic”
concept. Certainly, one could contend that it neither produced a dening text
nor assumed some of the more dogmatic, deterministic, or universalistic fea-
tures of totalitarian ideologies of German National Socialism or Soviet com-
munism. It was “designed,” if that is the proper word, for the specic
circumstances of Turkey. Arif Payaslioğlu (1964: 418) and Ergun Özbudun
(1981: 87) both suggest that the praxis (one-party rule) came rst, with guiding
components/ideology codied later, and Atatürk himself repeated on nu-
merous occasions that one needed to develop principles from real life, not
abstract theory (Dodd 1991: 27). On this point, it is notable that the CHP
lacked a fully-edged party program until 1931, eight years after its formal
creation. Even so, one can question how coherent Kemalism really was. As a
reection of its elements of ambiguousness or incompleteness, various gures
(leftist, rightist, even Islamist) have tried to appropriate Atatürk’s legacy.
5
However, as Paul Dumont (1984: 25) noted, Kemalism was more than a vague
prescription; it became a “network of doctrinal options” that emerged out of a
series of various exegeses. Irrespective of how one chooses to label it, our
aim is to understand Kemalism’s intellectual roots and rationales, which
provided, eventually, both the basis for the CHP’s legitimacy as well as its
policies and programs.
Kemalism did not appear overnight, nor can be considered wholly ori-
ginal, a matter of Ataturk’s unique genius, as has been interpreted in tra-
ditional Turkish historiography (Zürcher 2010; Hanioğlu 2011, 2012).
6
It evolved in many respects in response to the limited success of various
reforms in the late Ottoman period and was inuenced by numerous
Ottoman-era thinkers (Deringil 1993). Its most immediate institutional
antecedent was the Union and Progress Party, formed in 1909 as an out-
growth of the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), which spear-
headed the 1908 “Young Turk” Revolution to re-instate the Ottoman
Constitution. In 1913, after a brief period of pluralism and competition
among various parties, the CUP effectively established single-party rule over
the Empire, becoming, arguably, the rst single-party regime in history. The
CUP presented itself as movement for reform and modernization and re-
jected notions of social classes and class struggle in favor of presenting a
unifying, tutelary role to ensure the salvation of the Empire. These notions
were later articulated by the CHP (Kiriş 2012). This should hardly be sur-
prising, as many cadres of the CHP were active in the CUP; Atatürk himself
joined the CUP in 1908 and remained a member until its dissolution in 1918
(Zürcher 2010: 124–125).
This does not mean, however, that one should view the CHP as a full-
edged successor to the CUP. While they did share some common ideological
elements, the CHP did not embrace the CUP’s pan-Islamism or pan-Turkism,
and Ataturk was far less sanguine than most CUP leaders on reconciling Islam
with modernization (Hanioğlu 2012: 62). The CHP enthusiastically promoted
secularism and favored a citizen-based conception of Turkism over the CUP’s
Ideas of nationalism and state-building 109
embrace of Ottoman Muslim nationalism. Erik Zürcher (2010: 149), while
cognizant of broad similarities between the CUP and CHP, contends that
Atatürk and his closest allies identied themselves with the “most extreme
‘Westernists’” of the Young Turk period, which was reected both in their
staunch secularism as well as their broader goals to radically change Turkish
society. In terms of practices, one might also note that under the CUP power
effectively resided in a secret, extra-parliamentary committee, whereas the
CHP, as we’ll develop more below, the party became an appendage of the
state. Notably, Atatürk, as part of an effort to legitimize his own leadership,
tried to distance his movement from the CUP, which, by the 1920s, was
viewed as a failure. He remarked upon the poor example set by all political
parties – he deemed them “factions” – of the “Young Turk” period (Dodd
1991: 27–28) and explicitly denied any connection between the CUP and CHP
(Kiriş 2012: 398).
However strongly one wishes to draw an intellectual or institutional con-
nection between the CUP and CHP/Kemalism, a larger point, more salient for
this chapter, is that both drew inspiration from the Western/European
sources. Indeed, as M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (2012) emphasizes, both tended to
view the West (Europe) as the singular form of modernity. Thus, it should
hardly be surprising that numerous elements of Westernization were manifest
both in CUP reform programs and were embedded in Atatürk’s reforms.
Karpat (1991: 44) is most explicit on this issue, declaring that the CHP “was
established to pursue a path of modernization according to a predetermined
model, which in this case was that of the Western type of the national state.”
More specically, France, in terms of the solidaristic ideology behind the 1789
Revolution and the institutions of its Third Republic (1870–1940), as well
as thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Gustave Le Bon
(1841–1931), and Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), stands out as an important
source. Selim Deringil (1993: 165) argues that Kemalism was the “epitome” of
the “ideological transplantation” of the ideals of the French Revolution. It is
worth emphasizing, however, that this French inuence, which was far more
grounded in ideas of social unity, laicism, national will, collective conscious-
ness, and radical republicanism than in liberalism, democracy, separation of
powers, and individual rights,
7
provided the basis for one-party rule and strict
limits on political competition and the cultivation of pluralism.
This can best be demonstrated by focusing on the Kemalist ideas of re-
publicanism, nationalism, and populism, all of which were tightly linked
together and central to aspects of CHP rule (Parla and Davison 2004:
87–88).
8
Republicanism emerged as an alternative to rule by the sultan or caliph,
and Atatürk himself, in a copy of Du Contrat social, highlighted Rousseau’s
contention that “every legitimate government is republican” (Hanioğlu
2011: 110–111). By the 1920s, republicanism was widely understood to mean
popular sovereignty – thus justifying the abolition of the sultanate – but
what this meant in terms of institutions or balancing individual rights and
110 Paul Kubicek
state powers was contested (Turnaoğlu 2017). Ultimately, a “radical” re-
publican vision, grounded in the vocabulary of the French Revolution,
prevailed. From Rousseau, Atatürk and his allies embraced the idea of equal
citizens, who collectively constituted a sovereign, general will. The 1921 Law
on Fundamental Organization, declaring that “sovereignty belongs un-
conditionally to the nation,” copied directly from Declaration of the Rights
of Man of 1789 (Zürcher 2010: 238). However, sovereignty and freedom
were always viewed through the prism of the collective (the nation); little
emphasis was placed on individual freedom or rights (Dodd 1991: 28). In
this regard, the orientation of Le Bon – whose works on secularism and
rationalism as well as crowd psychology and the guiding role of political
elites had been inuential in the CUP but also with Atatürk himself – had a
“glaring inuence” on the “republican elitism” (Hanioğlu 2011: 45) that was
exemplied by the tutelary role envisioned for the CHP (developed more
below). For Atatürk, the primacy of the sovereign or general will also justify
the use of violence to crush opposition. In practice, however, this meant the
creation of a political power that not only assumed upon itself the power to
establish this general will as the source of legitimacy but also the power to
interpret it and delegitimize or suppress those who offered a different in-
terpretation of what is expected or required. Banu Turnaoğlu (2017: 241)
concludes that
although [Ataturk] and his devoted deputies and journalists claimed
that the sovereignty of the nation had been conferred on the people, the
people were given no genuine opportunity to exercise their sovereignty,
and laws and reforms were whatever the Kemalist elite pronounced
them to be.
Nationalism, or, more precisely, “Turkism” (Türkçülük), was envisioned as
a core substantive element within this general will. However, this was not
simply emancipatory nationalism directed at freeing Turks from foreign
inuences and allowing them to chart their own political destiny. Rather, it
was a state-led, nation-building process, predicated on the construction of a
new identity, one in which loyalty was given to the national territory and
political culture as opposed to the Sultan, Caliph, or the larger Muslim
umma (Karpat 1991). Turkism, as expressed by Atatürk and the CHP,
embraced a holistic, corporatist, and solidarist view of Turkish society, one
that elevated the (ostensibly unied) collective over the individual and owed
much to the inuence of Durkheim. In particular, scholars have pointed to
the inuence of Durkheim on Mehmet Ziya (1875–1924), better known as
Ziya Gökalp, a sociologist and poet who was inuential both in the CUP
and an intellectual force behind the Kemalist movement (Spencer 1958;
Parla and Davison 2004; Nefes 2013; Özvacı, 2014; Turnaoğlu 2017). For
Gökalp, Turkish (or, more precisely, Anatolian) society was organically
united by its own collective consciousness, having no need for elements of
Ideas of nationalism and state-building 111
Ottomanism, pan-Turkism, or pan-Islam (the last two of which featured
prominently in the CUP) to bind it together. Non-Turkish ethnic identities,
9
particularly Kurdish identity, were downplayed or actively repressed as the
assumption was that every citizen was or should assume a monolithic
Turkish identity.
10
Class divisions also had no place; instead, the underlying
culture and “spirit” were envisioned as the bases for an essentially homo-
geneous society. From the very beginning, solidarism thus became a central
tenet in Turkish republicanism. This was later reected in core documents of
the CHP. At its 1935 congress, for example, the CHP dened the fatherland
(vatan) as a “sacred country,” a “Unity which does not accept separation
under any circumstance” and that the nation (millet) was bound together by
“language, culture, and ideal” (quoted in Spencer 1958: 652). In this respect,
nationalism and republicanism were sacralized and became inviolate, ser-
ving the role as a new secular, civic religion, analogous to Durkheim’s no-
tion of moralité civique (Hanioğlu 2011: 181).
These ideas were also reected in the CHP’s denition of populism. In the
early 1920s, populism had assumed some anti-capitalist elements, and the
very choice of the word “halk” (as opposed to “millet”) captured some of
this leftist orientation.
11
Over time, however, populism came to mean legal
equality, social unity, and solidarism, thereby aligning it with both repub-
licanism and nationalism. The 1935 CHP Congress, for example, when de-
ning populism, noted that “The source of all Will and Sovereignty is the
Nation” and that the people of Turkish Republic are not composed of
different classes, but instead – with a clear nod to Durkheim’s vision of a
corporatist, organic society – are “a community divided into the various
professions according to the requirements of the division of labor.”
Accordingly, the aims of the party would be to “secure social order and
solidarity instead of class conict, and to establish a harmony of interests.”
(quoted in Özbudun 1981: 88). Şerif Mardin (1981: 212) adds that soli-
darism, “the ofcial ideology of the French Third Republic,” thus became
the “social ideology of Kemalism,” one that not only informed the CHP’s
developmental and redistributive socio-economic program but also its very
theory of citizenship, which was predicated on the notion of all Turks
working together for the good of the Turkish nation. In this sense, one can
argue that development of solidaristic populism was designed to “penetrate
individual consciences” and “drag” them (to use Durkheim’s term) into the
broader whole by xing their public identity as members of the Turkish
nation in order both save and resurrect it (Parla and Davison 2004: 250).
What should be clear, however, is that invocations of “populism” or “the
people” did not translate into their democratic empowerment. On the
contrary, as noted more below, the idea of a singular united people, bound
together by nationalism, would become a central justication for creation of
a single-party regime, which would be empowered to uphold the people’s
sovereign will.
112 Paul Kubicek
CHP rule in practice
The People’s Party (later the CHP) was formally established in September 1923,
a month after the second Grand National Assembly was convened. All
members, save one, of this Assembly were CHP members and with very minor
exceptions, all members of the Turkish legislature and executive until 1950 were
members of this party. In this respect, Turkey was a single-party state, and over
time elements of the party and state were melded together. However, while
Turkey shared some features with regimes in, for example, Nazi Germany or
the Soviet Union, the CHP never became a totalitarian party.
As suggested above, the CHP aimed to be representative of all of Turkish
society. In this respect, it corresponded to Atatürk’s Burkean vision of a
political party that represented the national interest, as opposed to a faction
that represented a more narrow or particular interest (Dodd 1991). In
particular, Atatürk wished to avoid the in-ghting, instability, and occa-
sional violence that marked the (brief) period of competition among various
parties (1909–1913) in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution. Karpat
(1991: 50) thus notes that “the concept of an interest-oriented political party
was thus rejected from the start.” Instead, the CHP reected a holistic,
“populist” vision of Turkish society, as dened above. In Atatürk’s words,
the CHP was to be a “sacred association,” one that would avoid “base
politicking” or “ordinary street politics” as it fought to “secure the interests
of the people of all classes” (quoted in Parla and Davison 2004: 210–211).
Single-party rule in this solidaristic, anti-pluralist rubric was not, from the
CHP’s perspective, restrictive or repressive. On the contrary, it was a
guarantor of freedom. A 1943 CHP document declared that
our Party has shown to all the world that the principle of ‘freedom’ that
is fundamental to democracy to democracy can be maintained without
the existence of parties that are based on class interests and without the
necessity of struggle among them.
(quoted in Parla and Davison 2004: 218)
This conception of “freedom,” one should note, is not grounded in liberalism
or individual rights; rather, it is nested within and dependent upon the unity
and order ensured by corporatist solidarity. In this vein, leaders of the CHP
viewed it as more authentically representative. One boasted in 1938 that
No party in the civilized world has ever represented the whole nation as
completely and as sincerely as the Republican People’s Party. Other
parties defend the interests of various social classes and strata. For our
part, we do not recognize the existence of these classes and strata. For
us, all are united. There are no gentlemen, no masters, no slaves. There
is but one whole set and this set is the Turkish nation.
(Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, quoted in Dumont 1984: 33)
Ideas of nationalism and state-building 113
It is worth emphasizing, that the representative role of the CHP was far
more aspirational than substantive, meaning that its overarching goals –
Westernization, secularization, modernization – and its leadership – over-
whelmingly drawn from the bureaucratic and military elite – reected less what
the Turkish people of the time wanted and more the vision of what Atatürk
and his circle wished Turkey to become. In other words, the CHP was “for the
people, with or without the people” (Kazancıgil 1981: 51). One of its primary
goals was to serve a tutelary, educational function, to be a “teacher of the
people” (Karpat 1991: 48), and bring enlightenment (tenvir) and guidance
(delȃlet) to those in an ignorant, “raw state” and transform them into genuine
citizens whose values would align with those of the (enlightened) party (Dodd
1991: 28–29). While Atatürk extolled the potential of the Turkish nation, he
was rather less sanguine about the nation as it was prior to being “en-
lightened.” He noted, “if we leave the people to themselves, there will be no
longer any steps forward” (quoted in Dodd 1991: 29). Özbudun (1970: 393)
suggests that the “Ataturk Revolution exploited [emphasis added] the basic
bifurcation between the educated elite and the uneducated masses, rather than
deploring it or immediately attacking it.” Ahmet Demirel (2011) notes that two
features of this elite/mass divide were that, from the late 1920s onward, elected
deputies increasingly had higher education credentials and “localism” –
meaning that one was born in and resided in one’s constituency – among CHP
deputies in the National Assembly became less common, particularly in the
less-developed and more Kurdish-populated provinces in eastern and south-
eastern Anatolia.
However, it would be a mistake to assume the CHP was a truly auton-
omous, empowered actor with a powerful mandate for social mobilization.
It was the creation and tool of Atatürk, who was able to exercise control
over it, preventing any challengers to his rule while ensuring his priorities
were carried out. In practice, this meant that CHP nominees for political
ofce at the national, provincial, and even local level were determined by the
central leadership, that parliamentary elections were indirect, meaning vo-
ters would choose electors or secondary voters who would formally ratify
the election of the CHP nominees (in most cases there was no competition at
all), and that the CHP, particularly in its rst few years, became more a
means to organize the Assembly and assure state control and legitimize the
actions of the government and less an institution to engage in political
mobilization (Karpat 1991: 49). While debate among party members was
allowed on some issues, democratic centralism prevailed, so that once a
decision was reached, all members were expected to publicly support it and
refrain from any critique of the party (Koçak 2005). Furthermore, while the
Turkish Grand National Assembly remained, formally, the repository of
legislative and executive power (echoing the notion of “All power to the
Soviets!”), because of the CHP’s near-monopoly within it and the CHP’s
hierarchical structure, power was effectively put in the hands of Atatürk,
who served as party head and as president. Zürcher (2010: 252) noted that at
114 Paul Kubicek
the zenith of the reform period in the 1920s, the CHP played “hardly any
political role at all,” as its primary purpose was to serve as a platform
through which Atatürk could implement his agenda.
While it might be tempting to place the CHP in the same category as the
German National-Socialists or the Soviet Communist Party, this overlooks
some fundamental differences. Spencer (1958, 646–647), for example, while
acknowledging that Kemalism and the CHP emerged out of the same “si-
tuational matrix” of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Jozef Stalin, em-
phasizes that their methods and national aims differed: there was no external
imperialism, no quest for Lebensraum, no “missionizing assertions of moral
or historical superiority,” no plans to create a new Homo Sovieticus or re-
ferences to laws of History. At most, the CHP was a tutelary party, focused
on raising Turkey up to the standards of contemporary civilization (the
West) while guaranteeing Turkish unity and independence (Özbudun 1981:
90). Furthermore, as suggested above, the Durkheimian vision of society
precluded any sort of class-based vision of society or the creation of class-
based enemies. This provides a clear contrast not only between the CHP and
Marxist-oriented parties but it also marks a difference with fascist parties,
which arose in capitalist settings and tried to defuse class contradictions,
whereas (at least in the ofcial Kemalist discourse) Turkey was essentially
pre-capitalist and had no clearly-dened social classes, thus rendering both
fascist and Marxist ideology irrelevant (Ahmad 1993: 66).
Moreover, in principle at least, Turkism was not racially exclusive
12
;
anyone living within the borders of Turkey could become a Turk (language
acquisition and embrace of “Turkish” ideals were requirements), although in
some cases (e.g. the Kurds) one was simply declared or mandated to become
a Turk. Although Kemalists defended such policies on the grounds of
creating national unity and combatting the “backward” tribal and feudal
elements of Kurdish society in eastern and southeastern Turkey – which was
the center from 1925 to 1930 for several religious-ethnic rebellions that were
brutally crushed
13
– state policy toward the Kurds was often repressive.
Public use of the Kurdish language was banned, and inuential Kurdish
leaders were forcibly re-settled to other parts of Turkey. Beginning in the
late 1920s, most “elected” representatives from Kurdish-populated regions
were (ethnic) Turkish bureaucrats from the CHP (Demirel 2011). Hakan
Özoğlu (2009) even suggests that the state manipulated and used the re-
bellions in order to suppress political opposition more broadly. While the
CHP was able to consolidate its own power, Kurdish identity persisted, and
its continued existence has provided a counter-identity to the monolithic
“Turkishness” propagated by the CHP, creating a division that continues to
affect Turkish politics and society.
Most signicantly, the CHP neither developed the strong, well-
institutionalized features of totalitarian parties nor their monolithic com-
position. Özbudun (1981: 82), for example, notes that because the CHP was
an amalgamation of various local resistance groups, it retained, despite
Ideas of nationalism and state-building 115
centralizing efforts, pluralistic characteristics associated with its origins.
This was manifested in the short-lived experiments with ofcially-blessed
“opposition” parties – which would have been unthinkable in Nazi
Germany or the Soviet Union – in 1924–1925 (The Progressive Republican
Party) and 1930 (The Free Republican Party), whose leaders largely came
from the CHP itself but were shut down when the regime felt they might
present a real threat to its power (Zürcher 1991). There were also few efforts
directed at ideological indoctrination or purges within the CHP (reecting,
in part, the “looseness” of Kemalist “ideology”), debates within the CHP on
various policy measures (primarily over economic questions), and, even-
tually, splits in the party between the civilianized military leaders and gen-
uine civilian ofcials, the later of which eventually constituted the basis of
the Democrat Party, which formed in 1946 and won power in elections four
years later. Payaslioğlu (1964: 421) therefore speaks of “plurality within a
single party.” Furthermore, the CHP never developed a doctrine to justify
any permanency to single-party rule. Duverger (1959: 277) notes that the
party was “always embarrassed and almost ashamed of the monopoly [of
power]. The Turkish single party had a bad conscience.”
What is interesting is that despite the presence of various groups (and
interests), conict within the CHP was rather low. In part, this was because
the CHP gradually narrowed its base, jettisoning various factions or groups,
including Islamic-oriented actors, who were part of the nationalist move-
ment in the early 1920s (Karpat 1991: 47). Later, the CHP primarily served
more of a role to unify the “enlightened” elite and educate the broader
public but not mobilize the “unenlightened” masses who, if brought into the
political arena, might challenge the regime (Zürcher 2010: 251).
14
It was, in
this sense, a “cadre” party (Özbudun 1981). Berk Esen (2014) also highlights
the lack of intra-elite conict within the CHP, and contends that this miti-
gated the need to turn the CHP into a more empowered, institutionalized
organization.
One should note that over time, the CHP did begin to engage in more
mobilization, and, according to some (Zürcher 2010; Ete 2019) move in a
more totalitarian direction. In the early 1930s, the creation of People’s
Houses (Halkevleri) and People’s Rooms (Halkodaları), meeting places run
by the CHP that promoted education, social work, sports, and cultural
events, all directed to advance the regime’s modernizing program, can be
seen as an example of mobilization as well as an implicit admission by the
CHP that it needed to do more to win the support of the masses, and, in
Atatürk’s words, “eliminate the drawbacks of [being] an oppositionless
party” (quoted in Parla and Davison 2004: 215).
15
The People’s Houses
and Rooms replaced clubs run by the Turkish Hearths (Türk Ocakları), a
reection of a broader takeover of other civil society organizations (e.g.
Turkish Women’s Union, Turkish Teacher’s Union) by the CHP. However,
it is notable that these programs were not totalitarian in scope or centered
on violence or the physical elimination of potentially troublesome or
116 Paul Kubicek
“undesirable” social actors. Overall, building connections with the people
through the People’s Houses was part of the CHP’s tutelary project to
“enlighten” the masses, broaden political participation,
16
and bridge the gap
between the center and periphery (Özbudun 1981: 95). Its impact, however,
was arguably limited. Erik Zürcher (2010: 254) contends that the vast ma-
jority of peasants and workers did not participate in the activities of People’s
Houses or People’s Rooms; at best, these organizations re-enforced the
notion that the CHP catered to a narrow, middle-class cadre of supporters.
Özbudun (1970: 393) similarly observes that the CHP made “no notable
effort” to broaden its social base. Payaslioğlu (1964: 420) concludes that
“large segments of the population remained aloof from politics.”
Signicantly, more explicit efforts in the 1930s, led by the CHP’s
Secretary-General Recep Peker, an admirer of fascist regimes in Europe, to
turn the CHP into something more closely resembling a totalitarian party,
one that would sponsor and control a vast array of social organizations as
well as control more of the country’s economic life, met with Atatürk’s
disapproval. Peker was unceremoniously demoted from his position in 1936
(Karpat 1991: 56–57). Still, it is worth noting that in 1938, after his death,
Atatürk was declared the CHP’s Eternal Chairman and the party adopted
the slogan “One party, one nation, one leader,” which at the time would no
doubt have found echoes in Berlin and Moscow. Hanioğlu (2011: 187–192)
suggests that the cult of personality around Atatürk, which only grew in the
immediate aftermath of his death, helped undergird a “Turkish version of
totalitarianism” that envisioned the state, under rule of a single-party,
pushing forward its social and cultural transformation of society. However,
he notes that there was a tension between a potential “cult of the party” and
the cult of Atatürk, one that the CHP was not able to resolve in its favor.
Ultimately, Atatürk’s successors were unable and, it is likely fair to say,
unwilling to institutionalize a totalitarian regime. Indeed, within eight years
opposition parties were again legalized and in 1950 the CHP ceded power
after losing elections, thus ending the single-party period and ushering in
Turkey’s (sometimes rocky) experience with democracy. The transition to a
multi-party system was a signicant event – one that clearly distinguishes the
CHP from its totalitarian contemporaries – and has been extensively ex-
amined (Karpat 1959). While 1950 thus marks the end of the temporal scope
of this chapter, one point worth re-emphasizing is that the creation of a
multi-party system that was, in part, shepherded into existence by the CHP
itself, was later used to argue that the CHP under the single-party period,
despite various forms of repression and explicit bans on competing parties,
was nonetheless proto-democratic in nature (Ete 2019).
The CHP’s legacy beyond Turkey
While the CHP’s period of single-party rule created an important legacy
within Turkey – one that was both full of noteworthy accomplishments in
Ideas of nationalism and state-building 117
terms of state and nation-building but also increasingly challenged and
questioned over time by liberals, Kurds, and Islamic-oriented actors – can
we say that, in comparative terms, it is particularly noteworthy or stands out
as a model for others? What broader lessons might be drawn from the CHP
and the Turkish experience during the single-party period?
These questions can be answered in a variety of ways. One approach
might be to focus on the idea of Turkey as a whole constituting a model for
developing and/or Muslim-majority countries. Certainly, there is a large
literature on this topic, one that focuses in particular on Turkey’s secularism
and post-1950 democratic experience as fundamental components of this
model (Kubicek 2013).
17
Concomitantly, one might also focus on Atatürk
himself as a “model,” and certainly upon his death in 1938 there was an
outpouring of praise for him from both Western leaders and those in the
developing world, including Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Muhammed Ayub
Khan and Mohammad Jinnah (Pakistan), and Habib Ali Bourguiba
(Tunisia) indicating that other countries might derive useful lessons from
what he accomplished in Turkey.
18
For our purposes, however, it is worth considering whether there is
anything particular about the CHP itself – as opposed to the broader
Turkish “revolution” under Atatürk – that assumes larger, comparative
import. While it may be true that Kemalism in general and the CHP in
particular were “specically designed to oversee the development of Turkey
alone” (Ciddi 2009: 6) one can easily imagine how the CHP’s experience
could be drawn upon by others in different contexts. For example, in the
1930s the leftist-oriented Kadro group within the CHP extolled its ideology
as a model for national liberation movements that could be used by peoples
across Asia and Africa (Hanioğlu 2012: 35). Certainly, one could imagine
how the idea of a holistic people, not beset with class or sectarian divisions
but unied under the banner of a single tutelary party, could have resonance
in struggles to achieve national independence and, for elites in particular, to
legitimize their rule. In this respect, one could argue that there are at least
echoes of the CHP in India’s Congress Party or what would become
Pakistan’s Muslim League. In a somewhat different vein, Esen (2014) views
the CHP less an institution for national liberation and more one for
“national developmentalism,” comparable in broad terms to similar regimes
in Lazaro Cardenas’s Mexico, Juan Peron’s Argentina, Getulio Vargas’s
Brazil, Sukarno’s Indonesia, and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt.
Among its contemporaries, perhaps the most fruitful line of comparison
might be between the CHP and China’s Nationalist Party (Kuomintang),
which established its own single-party state in 1927. Like the CHP, the
Kuomintang clearly saw itself as a tutelary party leading, as Christopher
Reed describes it in his contribution to this volume, a “pedagogical state.”
Sun Yat-sen, the party’s co-founder who was later, like Atatürk, dubbed
“Father of the Nation,” explicitly developed this tutelary vision in his
Fundamentals of National Reconstruction (1924), and the subsequent 1931
118 Paul Kubicek
Constitution drafted under Chiang Kai-shek has been labeled “the Tutelage
Constitution” (Ch’ien 1961: 133–137). The Kuomintang, like the CHP, had a
democratic vision of sorts, but it prescribed that realization of this vision
would be predicated on strong, one-party rule that would lay the institutional
and cultural groundwork to make democracy successful (Eastman 1974:
143–149). The Kuomintang’s ideology also prioritized the state and society
over the individual, based around a solidarist, populist vision articulated in
Sun’s “Three Principles of the People.” Of course, the Kuomintang had sev-
eral possible “models” to draw upon: Sun himself looked to the Soviet Union
for assistance in the early 1920s, and “Blue Shirt” leaders in the Kuomintang
as well as Chiang, who cultivated himself as the supreme, infallible leader,
openly admired fascism (Eastman 1974: 179; Eastman 1980: 41). Atatürk,
potentially, presented a possible model, and early Chinese writings on the
Turkish Republic praised it as an example of a modernizing state (Dong
1998). Jozef Stalin even acknowledged, albeit in a disparaging manner, the
possibility of Chiang becoming a “Chinese Kemal” (Ter-Matevosyan 2019:
191). How far he actually moved in this direction is subject to debate. Under
his leadership, the military’s political role was far more pronounced than in
Atatürk’s Turkey, and the Chiang’s Nanking government, although subject to
some Western inuence, ultimately adopted a more culturally conservative
orientation and did not pursue the far-reaching social transformation that
Turkey pursued under the CHP. In terms of the party itself, Lloyd Eastman
suggests that it remained weak, beset by factionalism, bereft of a mass base,
and unable to overcome both the military and Chiang’s personal ambitions.
He suggests that by the early 1930s it had “atrophied” and became “im-
masculated” (sic), a “hollow shell” (Eastman 1980: 31).
The relative failure of the Kuomintang, however, does not necessarily
tarnish Turkey or the CHP as a potential model. Compared to its con-
temporaries with single=party regimes, Turkey’s CHP was relatively suc-
cessful: it established and preserved the country’s independence; it advanced
social and economic development; it avoided defeat in World War II; was
overall far less repressive; and eventually, peacefully ceded power to an
opposition party. However, I believe there are several reasons to be more
critical of this assessment, as a more detailed view of some aspects of the
CHP’s orientation and organization point to its limitations.
One point that bears emphasizing is that the CHP can hardly be described
as ideologically innovative. True, the idea of establishing a republican, se-
cular government in a Muslim-majority country was novel, but the under-
lying principles of CHP were not. Furthermore, as noted above, Atatürk
and his allies explicitly borrowed many of their ideas from the West/Europe
and aspired to join what they viewed as the universal (Western) civilization.
Even the development in the 1930s of the Turkish History Thesis, which was
used to bolster Turkish nationalism, was designed to show that Turks, de-
spite their origins in Central Asia, were part of Western civilization and were
central to the latter’s development (Hanioğlu 2012). There was no exposition
Ideas of nationalism and state-building 119
of any alternative, non-Western vision of modernity or invocation of
something akin to what later would be called “Asian values” or “African
socialism.” The CHP, at its core, was designed to Westernize Turkey. As
Özbudun (1970: 393) notes, the party’[s goal was the “extension and con-
solidation of the precarious beachhead won by the Westernized intellectuals,
to make it secure beyond all possible challenges.” It is perhaps not sur-
prising, therefore, that many of the quotes praising Ataturk from the de-
veloping world come from leaders (e.g. Nehru, Nasser, Jinnah) who, if not
wholly Western in outlook, were nonetheless rather secular in orientation.
On this score, it is notable that the two earliest and most comprehensive
efforts to emulate the Turkish “model” – those in Iran under Reza Shah
(1925–1941) and Afghanistan under Amanullah Khan (1919–1929) – failed,
in large part because of Islamic-oriented resistance in societies that, com-
pared to Turkey, were geographically and culturally further removed from
Europe. Similarly, Ira Lapidus (2014: 535, 830) makes the point that while
the Turkish “revolution” had some initial appeal to modernizers in the
Muslim world in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, and Syria, this
inuence did not last, as Islamic notions of identity arose to challenge the
claim of the intelligentsia that it had a “right to rule as the enlightened
exemplar of modernity.” Put somewhat differently, one could suggest that
the CHP’s secularism was too radical a program to allow it to be hailed as a
durable model for many Muslim-majority countries.
On other fronts, however, one might suggest that the CHP’s program was
not radical enough. While the notion of state-led development (étatism) was
a major feature of CHP rule (particularly in the 1930s), this was funda-
mentally a state capitalist model. As Dumont (1984: 33) suggests, its po-
pulist vision of a united, classless society “aged quickly” as Turkey began to
experience social and economic development. Thus, while it is true that some
of the early national liberation movements/ruling parties did embrace the
étatist model (India’s Congress Party comes to mind), by the 1950s and
1960s a more radical, Marxist-inspired model (often backed with weaponry
from the Soviet Union) was far more inuential in the developing world
than any invocation of Ataturk or a Turkish “model.” Not coincidentally,
Soviet and Chinese interpretations of Kemalism, which viewed it more as a
progressive, anti-colonial ideology in the 1920s, became far more critical
over time, in part because it reconciled itself both to the West and to ca-
pitalism (Dong 1998; Ter-Matevosyan 2019).
Finally, one might point to limits of the CHP as an organization, which
affected both its staying power in Turkish politics and its ability to act as a
model for other ruling parties. Despite its rhetoric of representing the en-
tirety of the Turkish nation, it never aspired to be a mass party. It did not
expand its social base to include peasants or workers – the CHP notably did
not pass signicant land reform or implement a progressive labor policy – or
even business leaders. Despite corporatist rhetoric, it never created large-
scale organizations (as the PRI did in Mexico) to help advance its program
120 Paul Kubicek
(Özbudun 1970). Most signicantly, perhaps, it, like the Kuomintang, never
gained autonomy from the bureaucratic-military elite and a powerful chief
executive. On this point, Esen (2014: 611) notes that Peker’s dismissal as
General Secretary of the CHP was less because of his open sympathies with
fascism and due more to his efforts to strengthen the party as an autono-
mous, empowered institution, thus potentially giving Atatürk’s rivals an
independent, institutionalized power base to challenge his supreme, charis-
matic authority. In the end, Peker’s defeat
thwarted the possibility for the rise of a strong ruling party, however
authoritarian, which could promote its agenda over both the civil
bureaucracy and the social classes. Instead, the state–party fusion
enhanced bureaucratic tutelage over the already weak CHP provincial
organization, thereby limiting its institutional presence in the ensuing
years.
As noted above, (Hanioğlu 2011: 187–189), efforts to construct a “cult of the
party” ran aground against Atatürk’s desire to develop his own charismatic
authority around his own personality cult. Further evidence of the CHP’s
weakness was its rapid decline after a multi-party system was introduced in
1946. The eventual defeat of the CHP in elections in 1950, while perhaps
allowing its supporters to contend that it had helped democratize Turkey,
reected its limited social base and limited its appeal as a model for sub-
sequent national-developmental leaders.
Conclusion
In the spirit of this volume, it might be fair to conclude briey by reecting
upon what broader lessons the CHP’s experience in Turkey demonstrates
about single-party regimes, particularly in the context of nation-building
and economic modernization in Eurasia, and well as the legacy of the CHP
in Turkey today.
One prominent theme that emerges from the CHP’s experience (as well as
that of other single-party regimes) is the aspiration to be representative of
the entire society. In other words, there is the intention or assumption –
whether this is self-justifying or not can clearly be debated – that single-
party rule is “democratic” in the sense that it intends to represent the entire
society and serve the “general will.” While the precise denition of the
“general will” may vary from country to country, common elements are
economic and socio-cultural modernization. This conception denies class
interests or antagonisms and is intended to be “progressive” by looking
forward to a more developed future instead of celebrating a mythical past.
Opposition to this vision is rejected as a reection of benighted elements of
the population, whose genuine interests the tutelary party leadership has
both identied and is committed to serve.
Ideas of nationalism and state-building 121
From a twenty-rst-century perspective – particularly one informed by
contemporary Western standards – such an approach sounds self-serving
and/or naïve. Few would recognize it as “democratic,” although some
single-party regimes, such as China’s, continue to cloak themselves in a
version of this discourse. What the Turkish case makes clear, however, is
that many of the basic tenets of tutelary, single-party states were actually
Western in origin, offering an alternative to a more liberal and in-
dividualistic ethos that would eventually be upheld as “the” Western path of
development. Moreover, at least in the Turkish case, the desired endpoint
was actually to “become” Western, even if, from the perspective of the CHP
leadership, the country would be unable to follow the exact path of Western
countries. In the early part of the twentieth century, as highlighted in several
chapters in this volume, this liberal Western path actually found few ad-
vocates in Eurasian states where leaders prioritized nation-building and
economic development, relying upon a more statist approach to unify the
population and make the most of the “advantage of backwardness”
(Gerschenkron 1962).
Nearly a century after the founding of the Turkish Republic, many of the
basic tenets of liberal democracy are again widely questioned (both in
Turkey and beyond), often by nationalist/populist forces who seek to unify
“the people” while denying the legitimacy of more pluralistic visions of the
nation. Whether these forces can take positive inspiration from previous
single-party regimes is an interesting question. Certainly, in the end many
such regimes failed, often due to the emergence of indigenous actors who
questioned the wisdom and legitimacy of single-party rule. The Turkish
case, perhaps more so than most of the others in this volume, illustrates that
single-party rule can succeed for a time, particularly when there is unied
leadership, low levels of economic development, and a relatively un-
mobilized population, but eventually the CHP also fell from power, al-
though it did so through democratic elections that it had denied in the rst
two decades of its rule. Today in Turkey the legacy of the CHP is often
rigorously questioned, particularly by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
who claims he is building a “New Turkey,” one that will transcend the
country’s longstanding center-periphery division and that is less enamored
with Westernization while favoring greater expression of Turkey’s Islamic or
Ottoman identity. What is interesting, however, is that despite clear differ-
ences between “Erdoğanism” and Kemalism, the former still holds onto a
tutelary role for the state and governing party and regularly makes appeals
to the “national will” (milli irade), even as its vision of what the Turkish
nation is (or should become) is quite different from the one once advanced
by the CHP (Yilmaz 2021). To invoke one last French expression, “plus ça
change, plus c’est la même chose.”
122 Paul Kubicek
Notes
1 The party was founded in 1923 as the Halk Firkasi (People’s Party), but a year
later it became the CHP.
2 Mustafa Kemal was given the name Atatürk (“Father Turk”) in 1934 upon
passage of a law mandating surnames. I will use Atatürk throughout this chapter,
as he is best known by this name.
3 Denitive sources on the CHP in Turkish include Tunçay 1981 and Yetkin 1983.
The best source in English, at least for the period considered here, is Karpat 1991.
4 Quoted in Hanioğlu 2011, 190.
5 This is well captured by Akyol 2008, whose title can be translated as “But Which
Ataturk?”
6 This interpretation was encouraged by Ataturk himself, who, in his monumental
six-day speech (Nutuk) in 1927 before the Second Congress of the CHP, docu-
mented his singular contributions to the Turkish Revolution while criticizing
many of his erstwhile comrades.
7 This is not to say that there were no debates in Turkey about alternatives.
Turnaoğlu 2017, in particular, highlights that there was a more “liberal repub-
lican” faction that challenged some aspects of Ataturk’s program. Many ex-
pounders of this viewpoint, however, were expelled from the CHP and, in some
cases, later put on trial for sedition.
8 Among Atatürk’s reforms, it is perhaps secularism that has received the most
attention and arguably on this element his program represented the most sig-
nicant break with the Ottoman past. While not denying the importance of se-
cularism/laicism to the larger Kemalist project, it is more peripheral to the CHP
and single-party rule itself, which is the focus of this chapter.
9 The Lausanne Treaty (1923) did carve out special recognition for non-Muslim
minorities (e.g. Greeks, Jews) still living in Turkey. This stipulation did not apply
to (Muslim) Kurds. However, Christian and Jewish Turkish citizens were often
treated as “outsiders” with uncertain loyalty to the Republic. See, for example,
White 2013.
10 The latter is perhaps best exemplied by a popular saying attributed to Atatürk,
“Happy is he who can call himself a Turk” (Ne mutlu Türküm diyene).
11 Zürcher (2010: 251) notes the echoes of the Halka Doğru (Toward the People),
campaign of the Young Turks in 1917 that had clear echoes of the “to the
people” movement of Russian narodniki.
12 Zürcher 2010; In the 1930s, the Turkish History Thesis, which posited a central
role for Turks in human history, did acquire some racial elements.
13 For more on these rebellions, see Zürcher 1991.
14 In this respect, the relative unity of the CHP merely reected the unity of the
“center,” as opposed to the masses on the “periphery.” This center-periphery
division, which assumed more importance when the single-party period ended,
would become a prominent theme in Turkish politics (Mardin 1973).
15 Dodd (1991) and Zürcher (2010) both make the point that the development of
People’s Houses arose after the challenge posed by the short-lived Free
Republican Party in 1930 revealed weak support for the CHP, particularly in
rural areas. Esen (2014) adds that these efforts by the CHP should be seen not as
a move to totalitarianism but as an admission of weakness, as it was too weak to
create its own institutions to compete successful with existing civil society orga-
nizations.
16 Membership in the party reached over 1,2000,000 by 1936, even though the party
lacked organizations in several provinces (Karpat 1991: 64 n. 19).
Ideas of nationalism and state-building 123
17 For a provocative work that suggests how Turkey was a “model” for Hitler and
the Nazi Party, see Ihrig 2014. Ihrig is careful to argue, however, that the Nazi’s
use of Ataturk is based on a selective and often faulty interpretation, and that the
parallels between the CHP and Nazi Party are actually limited.
18 A collection of tributes to Atatürk from world leaders and the international press
can be found at https://ataturktoday.com/AtaturkWorldPressLeadersTribute.htm.
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126 Paul Kubicek
5 Competing with the marketplace:
The Chinese Nationalist Party
(KMT)’s Department of
Propaganda and its political
publishing program, 1924–1937
Christopher A. Reed
*
Introduction
The past three decades have seen an outpouring of studies on the print
culture of the late Qing (1644–1911) and Republic of China (ROC, 1912–49)
along with its political, cultural, economic, and social effects. In most of
these publications,
1
analysis of market-driven publishing has allowed his-
torical and literary scholars to expand discussion of the political, literary,
and news marketplaces. The social and political impact of mostly privately
or corporately owned sales-oriented publishing facilities (whether operated
by newspaper, journal, or book publishers) has generally been the focus of
this work. The bounty of sources – from archival materials to the publica-
tions themselves – has opened doors for all kinds of scholarship from PhD
dissertations onward.
What has gotten lost in this celebration of Chinese print capitalism and the
commercial printing and publishing realm (with implications for a public
sphere) is that, by the mid-1930s, privately owned and market-driven publishing
of the sort characterized by Shanghai’s Wenhuajie (publishers’ and booksellers’
district)
2
and other urban centers was already becoming an anachronistic relic
of the “golden age” of Chinese print capitalism (1912–28). Indeed, by the early
1930s, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Zhongguo Guomindang 中國國民黨,
hereafter KMT)’s statist and disciplinarian agenda
3
was coming to dominate
key sectors of the publishing economy organizationally
4
and also through its
Department of Propaganda (Xuanchuanbu 宣傳部, hereafter XCB).
5
Unlike
others, this unit of the party never was duplicated in the state structure. Instead,
as with other state- and nation-building regimes across Eurasia, this party
department (or bureau) effectively substituted for a state ministry of propa-
ganda. In this case, and in pursuit of its hegemonic aspirations, the XCB also
took charge of national and international political, economic, and cultural
information ow – and access to it.
Drawing on a combination of primary and secondary historical sources,
this chapter will address, in a preliminary way, issues of party-state organi-
zation, jurisdiction, inner-party dynamics, message control, and mobilization
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-6
during Republican China’s Nanjing Decade (1927–37), so-named in re-
cognition of the ten years that the KMT spent in its national capital along the
Yangzi River before withdrawing westward ahead of the Japanese army in
December 1937. The social history of the KMT’s ofcial print culture – the
party’s political publishing program – is revealed in Republican China’s
propaganda dynamics. So, too, are the early stages of the KMT’s propaganda
establishment in creating what has been called “the pedagogical state.”
6
Both
of these topics shed light on the broader theme of state- and “nation-building
through the party (including aspects of its multiethnic versions).”
7
In particular, we will nd that, by the 1930s, the KMT’s publishing
program was competing vigorously against the ROC’s private publishers,
mostly based in Shanghai, to advance its ofcial “Three Principles of the
People” (Sanmin zhuyi 三民主義) ideology and other aspects of its peda-
gogy. By the early 1930s, under the impact of “parti-cation” (danghua 黨化)
of society (Fitzgerald 1996, 19; Nedostup 2009, Ch. 1, esp. 36ff.), the Three
Principles of the People was being taught in all public and denominational
schools, in universities, in the army, and throughout society. As a result, the
XCB’s raison d’être now extended well beyond the central party to include all
sectors of society. Thus, with respect to print media, the XCB actually came
to operate much like the modern publishing houses with which it increasingly
competed for readership. Such was true even as the KMT beneted from its
imposition of single-party rule from the national capital of Nanjing outward
toward China’s provincial capitals and commercial cities.
Scholarly context
From its earliest days, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT, 1895/1919-
present) was, as Hans J. van de Ven once characterized the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), “a text-centered party.”
8
In van de Ven’s view, the
CCP was made possible by the expansion of the modern print media at the
end of the Qing dynasty and during the early Republic. As a political party
with its roots reaching back into the late Qing (conventionally, 1895), what
became KMT doctrines were long advanced via cause- and public-oriented
newspapers,
9
pamphlets, and magazines. In 1921, after Shanghai’s and in-
deed China’s leading publisher, the Commercial Press, refused to publish
Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen (Sun Wen xueshuo 孫文學說), Sun
sought out an alternate publisher to print and distribute the work for him.
However, the experience alerted Sun to the limitations of China’s non-
political and market-driven modern publishing sector. Further, it led the
KMT to establish its own party publishing rm, Minzhi shuju 民智書局,
10
that same year with capital raised from overseas compatriots.
Even more important, the Soviet- and Comintern-sponsored reorganiza-
tion of the KMT in the early 1920s yielded a more expansive party printing
and propaganda operation. In the decade after October 1927, when the
128 Christopher A. Reed
Nationalists rst established their government at Nanjing, in tandem with
other KMT government units, the party issued thickets of laws restricting the
activities of non-KMT printers and publishers and favoring its own. KMT
government ofcials were insinuated onto the boards of public corporations
to weaken the economic independence of the market-driven sector. Ofcial
bookstores such as Zhengzhong shuju 正中書局, Zhongguo wenhua fuwushe
中國文化服務社 (Chinese culture service association), Bati shudian 吧提書店
(“Party” bookstore), Duli chubanshe 獨立出版社 (Independent publishing),
and Tiefeng chubanshe 貼風出版社 (On the wind publishing) also advanced
the government’s political, economic, social, and cultural causes, particularly
its anti-factional and anti-Communist propaganda.
Recent social science studies of Chinese cultural organizations (both of-
cial and NGOs), the contemporary Chinese print media, and the modern
nation-state suggest that relations between these three entities continue to
form a critical axis for scholars’ understanding of the development of
China’s modern political culture. At the same time, this pronounced interest
in China’s contemporary print media cries out for historically balanced
studies of related phenomena, which is one rationale for this chapter.
11
In addition, however, as suggested by the 1965 translation from French of
Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, the English-
language scholarly world has long been aware of the importance of propa-
ganda services in modern politics and state-building, particularly of the kind
that Ellul termed “integration propaganda” in his taxonomy of propaganda
systems. To Ellul, unlike the more familiar “agitation propaganda,”
12
in-
tegration propaganda “is a propaganda of conformity”
13
that contributes to
state-building. Somewhat later, Peter Kenez in The Birth of the Propaganda
State: Soviet Methods of Mass Urbanization, 1917–1929 advanced our un-
derstanding of the sophisticated state-dominated and state-building propa-
ganda apparatus in Soviet Russia.
14
Although scholarship on the CCP’s and
the PRC’s propaganda apparatus is extensive, and has been selectively in-
uenced by both Ellul’s and Kenez’s ideas, by and large, the KMT’s role, both
as a one-party state (or “party-state”; dangguo 黨國, but see Harrison 2000,
220) and in anticipating and laying the foundation for the eventual CCP
propaganda system, has been nearly absent from existing scholarship.
In 1974, a monograph by Lee-Hsia Hsu Ting
15
did examine KMT control
of the press through 1949, but Ting’s work became outdated as new sources
appeared in both the PRC and Taiwan. Stephen Mackinnon, for example,
was able to build on new materials for his study of the 1930s Chinese press.
16
John Fitzgerald’s Awakening China; Politics, Culture, and Class in the
Nationalist Revolution discussed fundamental aspects of the KMT’s propa-
ganda system but chiey as they related to his larger theme. My own
Gutenberg in Shanghai; Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876–1937 examined
market-oriented printing and publishing both prior to and during the
Nanjing Decade (1928–37) but touched only in passing on aspects of the
KMT’s efforts to dominate the independent Shanghai publishers both
Competing with the marketplace 129
organizationally and politically. The KMT state appears again in the early
work of Robert Culp, who studied the ideological overlap between the KMT
state and local society via schools, textbooks, and citizenship, and also in his
more recent research.
17
The Nationalist Party-State
Although Western social scientists and historians have generally ignored the
KMT’s propaganda system and the ways in which it supported the party in
its state-building efforts, the same cannot be said of early Western jour-
nalists who interacted with those institutions. In 1946, for instance,
American journalist Theodore White explained the nature of the Nationalist
ROC’s wartime government to his readers with commentary directly re-
levant to the goals of the KMT party-state outlined above. In particular,
White wrote, the Executive Yuan 行政院 “administered civilian affairs, in-
troduced legislation, drew up budgets, made appointments, declared wars,
and framed treaties.” To Westerners, its eleven ministries made the
Executive Yuan seem like a conventional government cabinet. However,
wrote White, “the [XCB] was not included in the war cabinet [at all,] but was
directly responsible to the Kuomintang” (White and Jacoby 1946, 98) itself.
In fact, this pattern had been developed in the middle of the 1920s,
following Sun Yat-sen’s establishment in Shanghai on October 10, 1919 of
the KMT as an oppositional and revolutionary party. John Fitzgerald,
author of a pioneering study of the emergence of the KMT’s one-party state,
observes that, already in Spring 1920, Sun began to revise the party con-
stitution. By November 1920, a draft emerged that included an oath to be
sworn by every member to the party itself.
18
Anticipating the party’s
eventual policy of the late 1920s, Sun also called for government by “tu-
telage” (xunzheng 訓政). However, this early version of tutelage was sup-
pressed, partly through the intervention of party elder and longtime Sun
stalwart, Hu Hanmin 胡漢民 (1879–1936) (Fitzgerald 1996, 197).
19
Before departing Shanghai for the new revolutionary base in Guangzhou in
December 1920, Sun also extended the future party-state’s writ to include a
propaganda department to be based at the Shanghai party headquarters.
When Sun and a large number (38/84) of propaganda workers left for
Guangzhou, the Shanghai ofce defaulted to taking temporary responsibility
solely for international fund-raising duties (Fitzgerald 1996, 198). From
January to September 1921, those responsible for domestic propaganda fol-
lowed Sun, rst to Guangzhou and then, in January 1922, to Guilin
(Fitzgerald 1996, 199–200). Meanwhile, Zhang Ji 張繼 (1882–1945), former
head of the Guangzhou ofce, returned to Shanghai in October 1921 to open
the KMT’s rst true central propaganda department, laying the foundation
for what would follow, ve years later, in Nanjing (Fitzgerald 1996, 200).
Then, in August 1922, following the collapse of his Guangzhou base-area
government that he had expected to liberate China’s other provinces from
130 Christopher A. Reed
the grip of the Beijing-based Warlord Era (1916–28) government, Sun
himself followed Zhang Ji back to Shanghai. Soon, reecting Sun’s dis-
illusionment with the corrupt liberal politics of parliamentary con-
stitutionalism and the compromises needed to cultivate ckle public
opinion, Sun embraced Comintern sponsorship of the KMT. Now, Sun and
his party changed emphasis, with a turn to party rule and top-down mass
propaganda aimed at the public (Fitzgerald 1996, 206). An informal as-
sembly under Zhang Ji’s leadership led to unanimous endorsement of Sun’s
plan to reorganize the KMT to allow the Chinese Communists, with whom
Sun and the KMT had interacted informally in Guangzhou, to join the
KMT as individuals. Zhang Ji himself took on the sponsorship of CCP
leader Li Dazhao 李大釗 (1889–1927) as the rst Communist to join the
KMT (Fitzgerald 1996, 203, 204). Thus was born the short-lived 1st United
Front (1924–27) of the KMT and the CCP.
In Fitzgerald’s telling, the next year, “1923[,] marked the nadir of liberal
politics in the Republic” (Fitzgerald 1996, 185) formed after the 1911 re-
volution. Early that year, Sun had begun to distinguish “political activity” in
the liberal sense from “party rule,” which in his mind transcended politics and
political activity. Having long advocated “using the party to govern the state”
(yidang zhiguo 以黨治國), early in the next year, at the 1st Nationalist Party
Congress (January 1924) held in Guangzhou with the new CCP members
mixed in among the KMT membership, Sun pushed the issue farther, calling
now for “using the party to build the state” (yidang jianguo 以黨建國)
(Fitzgerald 1996, 185; Ma 2015, 15). Simultaneously, essential to building the
new party was its National Revolutionary Army (Guomin gemingjun 國民革
命軍, NRA), founded on May 1, 1924 with the opening of the Soviet-nanced
Whampoa Military Academy at Guangzhou.
Half-way through 1924, in an important symbolic move in August, Sun
ordered the old ve-bar, multi-racial, liberal-constitutional Republic of
China ag that dated to the very early republic (Harrison 2000, 101–106)
lowered throughout southern China in favor of the KMT’s own ag. This
“Blue Sky and White Sun” (Qingtian bairi 青天白日) ag exhibited a can-
toned party ag overlaid onto the red ag of revolution, signaling the rising
preeminence of the single-party state.
20
As Fitzgerald observes, the new
national ag was also monoracial: “Sun felt that the [ve-bar ag] betrayed
the most fundamental principle of the [1911] revolution: racial unity”
(Fitzgerald 1996, 183).
21
Just as “the party ag was to be converted into a national one by making
the Nationalist party (sic) identical with the national state,” so too was “the
party to duplicate the organization of the government and oversee its op-
erations at every level” (Fitzgerald 1996, 185). Predictably, the KMT and
Sun now also reorganized the party’s XCB. Right-wing ideologue Dai Jitao
戴季陶 (1891–1949) was appointed rst head of the restructured XCB; Dai
was later replaced by Sun’s former right-hand man and once-presumed
successor, Wang Jingwei 汪精衛 (1883–1944). Wang, in turn, appointed
Competing with the marketplace 131
Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893–1976) to run the department on his behalf from
October 1925 to March 1926 (Fitzgerald 1996, 226–33). Borrowing from the
Soviet “propaganda state” via the Comintern, Sun and the KMT had now
laid the foundation for China’s Republican pedagogical propaganda state.
22
While Sun was alive, says Fitzgerald, he “was” the revolution in the minds
of those who mattered. He monitored the party’s messages himself and so
the XCB remained relatively inactive in this regard. Inner-party discipline,
says Fitzgerald, involved little more than guaranteeing that Sun was not
attacked by either party propaganda or by the commercial popular press.
With Sun’s death in March 1925, however, bureaucratic forces began to take
over some of Sun’s activities. In particular, Mao Zedong, acting on Wang
Jingwei’s behalf, introduced a new and heightened level of central control to
the party’s message.
23
According to Fitzgerald, when Mao took over
the XCB,
…a more detailed form of internal communication came into circula-
tion. The propaganda outline (xuanchuan dagang 宣傳大綱), as it was
called, offered ready-made analyses and prescribed slogans for adoption
by all party, military, and government agencies under the jurisdiction of
the issuing authority.
(Fitzgerald 1996, 240; also Harrison 2000, 215)
24
The 1st United Front had been promoted by the Comintern as part of its
worldwide anti-imperialist strategy. In China, in order to unify the country’s
commercial and laboring classes against Western and Japanese imperialists,
Communists had been urged to join hands with Nationalists in what
Comintern agent Henk Sneevliet (Maring, 1883–1942) was the rst to call
the “Nationalist Revolution” (guomin geming 國民革命) (Fitzgerald 1996,
167). The United Front alliance would endure, albeit precariously, until
Spring 1927, when it ended in a hail of bullets in Shanghai and beyond,
directed by Sun’s heir now directing the KMT, Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石
(1887–1975). What transpired then was, in the view of the KMT, a Party
Purication Movement (Qingdang yundong 清黨運動); conversely, the CCP
called it the White Terror (Baise kongbu yundong 白色恐怖運動).
25
Regardless of its name, the movement occurred in the middle period of the
Northern Expedition (Guomin gemingjun beifa 國民革命軍北伐, 1926–28),
Chiang Kai-shek’s effort to nally realize Sun Yat-sen’s dream, never
achieved in the senior revolutionary’s lifetime, of freeing Central and North
China from the grip of the warlords—and then reuniting China militarily.
By February 1928, with Sun long dead, conict with the Communists out
in the open, and Nanjing proclaimed the new capital, at the second session
of the 4th Party Congress, party units and departments were re-organized
yet again. According to researcher Ma Rui, in Spring 1928, Chiang Kai-shek
and Hu Hanmin worked together to apply Sun Yat-sen’s “stage theory of
history” to the KMT’s present situation. Sun’s stage theory of history, which
132 Christopher A. Reed
postulated the need for the party leadership to direct China’s progression
through military, tutelage, and constitutional government stages, dated back
at least to 1905, but was given its nal form in a series of lectures delivered
between January and June 1924 that were then published that year as Three
Principles of the People (Sanmin zhuyi 三民主義). Chiang and Hu now de-
clared the end of the Military Stage and the start of the Tutelage Stage
(1929–47). Sun’s former associate Hu Hanmin, working together with Sun’s
son, Sun Ke 孫科 (1891–1973, aka Sun Fo), and others wrote the Draft
Outline of the Tutelage Stage (Xunzheng dagang cao’an 訓政大綱草案).
Among its main ideas was that of “using the party to unify the nation [or
state, and] using the party to train [or instruct] in politics (yidang tongyi,
yidang xunzheng 以黨統一，以黨訓政)” (Ma 2015, 11).
In March 1928, the party’s Central Propaganda Department (Guomindang
zhongxuanbu 國民黨中宣部) was reorganized (again) with Ye Chucang 葉楚
傖 (1893–1967), long-time party leader and respected party journalist, as
department head and Zhu Yunguang 朱雲光 as party secretary (Zhu 2001,
36.a.). The KMT’s internal party propaganda department now expanded its
reach sufciently to substitute for the party-state’s propaganda ministry,
supporting the KMT’s more general effort to “take over state functions and
replace state institutions” (CFP).
The Tutelage Stage of state-building began informally in August 1928
with its declaration by Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang’s declaration was followed
by that of party elder Tan Yankai 譚延闓 (1880–1930). On October 10,
1928, with the KMT’s Party Congress substituting for the national as-
sembly, similar declarations were made, this time somewhat more formally
(Harrison 2000, 220; Ma 2015, 12). Finally, the landmark 3rd Party
Congress in March 1929 formalized the plan by making Sun Yat-sen’s own
writings, including his Last Will and Testament (Zongli yishu 總理遺囑), the
core of the party curriculum and public rituals during the Tutelage Phase.
Organizing the KMT’s Nanjing Decade media system
To anyone viewing a copy of the new party-state’s internal instructional
organ, Zhongyang zhoubao 中央週報 (Central weekly journal, hereafter
ZYZB), in late winter 1928, the overlap between party and government
would have been suggested immediately. Adorning the journal’s cover was
an artist’s image of the main, cupola-topped, KMT party headquarters. It
was located in Nanjing’s former Hunan Road Jiangsu Provincial Assembly
buildings dating from 1910.
26
The XCB itself was located along the side of
the party headquarters – and the ZYZB journal was directly managed by the
XCB. The party’s print shop was located nearby.
ZYZB was in fact just one part of the increasingly comprehensive party-
controlled national media system implemented by the KMT starting in 1928.
The groundwork for the public-facing apparatus had been laid in April 1924
with the establishment of the Central News Agency (Zhongyang tongxunshe
Competing with the marketplace 133
中央通訊社), which was directly administered by the XCB from the start. In
1927, Yin Shuxian 尹述賢 (1897–1980), erstwhile head of the XCB’s pub-
lishing department, became the agency’s new director. In July of that year,
the KMT announced that the Central News Agency would take on both
propaganda/publicity and “inspection responsibilities” (shencha zhi ze 審查
之責) (Ma 2015, 12), assuming the duties previously performed by Sun and
Mao, among others. In effect, it would become the soon-to-be ruling party’s
news monitoring and censorship bureau.
The creation of the Central News Agency was followed by that of the
Central Broadcasting Station (Zhongyang guangbo diantai 中央廣播電台)
in August 1928. Initially, for technical reasons, the radio service’s geo-
graphical coverage was limited to the two provinces of Jiangsu (where
Nanjing and Shanghai were located) and Zhejiang, of which Hangzhou was
the capital. By the middle of 1932, however, a new, far larger transmitter
was erected outside Nanjing’s Jiangdong Gate 江東門, giving the KMT’s
radio broadcasting service the most expansive coverage of any in East Asia
and access to all of the ROC’s 23 provinces (Ma 2015, 13).
The third pillar of the KMT’s public-facing media system was the Central
Daily News (Zhongyang ribao 中央日報). Early efforts in Wuhan (March to
September 1927) and Shanghai (February to September 1928) to establish
such an organ were eventually aborted for political reasons. Then, in late
1928, in response to a motion by then-Standing Committee member and
XCB head Ye Chucang, the party nally brought the paper to Nanjing. Its
rst issue went on sale on February 21, 1929 (Ma 2015, 13).
Hence, by about mid-1932, the KMT was able to achieve a far-reaching,
outward-facing, and comprehensive print and electronic media system
aimed at China’s vast national public and guided by the XCB. Not sur-
prisingly, given the trauma of the 1927/28 showdown with the CCP, KMT
party members at that time were deemed by the party leadership still po-
tentially vulnerable to Communist and left-wing persuasion. In fact, such
concerns were the reason that the inward-facing ZYZB was established in
the rst place. According to publication information on the journal itself, it
was published weekly in Nanjing from June 1928 to June 1937,
27
leading
over that period to a total of 473 issues.
Rather than bring about the suspension of the journal following the com-
mencement of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War in early July 1937, the war with
Japan actually tightened the relationship between the central authorities of the
KMT and its XCB. After a brief delay while its staff evacuated Nanjing, the
ZYZB resumed publication, rst in Changsha, Hunan province, and then, a
month later, in what would eventually become the ROC’s long-term wartime
capital, Chongqing, in the western province of Sichuan. The fact of the party-
state’s chief propaganda journal arriving in Chongqing some 14 months prior
to the government’s own relocation there following the fall of the short-term
capital Wuhan in October 1938 is indicative of the journal’s importance to
party-state leadership for maintaining KMT morale and discipline.
134 Christopher A. Reed
The political publishing program of the KMT’s Department
of Propaganda
Despite his absence from standard biographical dictionaries of twentieth-
century KMT politics, Zhu Zishuang 朱子爽 became a well-known central-
party propagandist. Zhu worked in the party-state’s XCB from 1928 to
1946, the key Tutelage Stage years when the party was striving to build the
nation, suppress the CCP, and, eventually, resist the Japanese invasion. In
2001, he published a short article with his recollections of how the editorial
ofce of the XCB operated.
28
He provides a y-on-the-wall perspective with
insight into some of the XCB’s research, writing, and publishing activities
that would otherwise remain hidden.
Zhu grew up in the same (unnamed) town as the recently appointed
(March 1928) XCB party secretary, Zhu Yunguang, whom we met earlier as
new department chief Ye Chucang’s associate. The two men surnamed Zhu
were apparently not related by blood. They had, however, been classmates
at some point. Zhu Zishuang also says Zhu Yunguang did recommend him
for employment at the XCB. Afterwards, Zhu Zishuang writes, “I gladly
consented and threw myself into this work for [the next] 18 years” (…wo
xinran lejiu, cong ci toushen xuanchuan shi you ba nian 我欣然了就，從此投
身宣傳十有八年…) (Zhu 2001, 36.a).
When Zhu Zishuang started work, he reports, the department was very
simple and had just seven units: general affairs, supervision, editorial, news,
publication, overseas affairs, and international matters. As the general ad-
ministrator of the editorial ofce, he determined that the most important
part of that work was having access to reference materials. When he pro-
posed a project to create an editorial research library to XCB head Ye
Chucang, Ye authorized him to hire a few people to establish a materials
collection and catalogue them (Zhu 2001, 36.a).
Initially, Zhu focused on the very basic activity of clipping articles from
newspapers. The department was then receiving important contemporary
newspapers from throughout China, including the big ones from Nanjing,
Shanghai, Beiping,
29
Tianjin, and Guangzhou. All were essential to the
writing and editing of ZYZB, says Zhu. Editors rst surveyed the news-
papers and circled items deemed useful. Zhu’s news-cutting room clipped
and pasted the articles into binders, which were then shelved for future re-
ference (Zhu 2001, 36.b).
In addition to monitoring and rescuing important articles from the con-
temporary periodical press, Zhu’s unit was also responsible for keeping
track of new books generated by China’s private-sector publishers, most of
which were concentrated in Shanghai. Issued in 1928, the new Publications
Law required all Chinese publishers to submit pre-publication manuscripts
for approval to the XCB, making the information-collecting part of Zhu’s
job relatively straightforward when it came to new or impending publica-
tions. The problematic part of the job “was collecting previously published
Competing with the marketplace 135
books and periodicals,” an issue on which he spent a great deal of time (Zhu
2001, 36.b). Even Sun Yat-sen’s early publications,
30
which were clearly
essential for the KMT to have on hand, were hard to locate, not to mention
related ones such as Zou Rong 鄒容 (1885–1905)’s Revolutionary Army
(Geming jun 革命軍, 1903) and Huang Zao 黃藻’s Spirit of the Yellow
Emperor (Huangdi hun 皇帝魂, 1903). Periodicals such as Sun’s early Tokyo-
issued Revolutionary Alliance newspaper Minbao, early issues of the
Commercial Press’s nationally important general-purpose journal, Eastern
Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌, 1904–1949), and many others were
also hard to come by in Nanjing (Zhu 2001, 36.b).
Thus, in pursuit of materials for the XCB’s editorial library, Zhu had no
choice but to visit second-hand bookstores and old-book stalls. On Sundays
and holidays, he writes, he typically went to Nanjing’s Huapailou 花牌樓
and the historic Confucian Temple (Qinhuai 秦淮) districts. He also visited
the old bookshops on Mochou Road 莫愁路. In each locale, he searched for
relevant revolutionary books and periodicals. He bought what he could and
carted them back to the XCB ofces. Sometimes, when he saw multi-volume
collections such as runs of Eastern Miscellany, he had no choice but to head
over to the XCB and ask his colleagues to help him carry them back on their
bicycles. Zhu did long-term business (changqi jiaoyi 長期交易) with many of
these establishments and developed relationships with as many as possible.
Not surprisingly, once the proprietors learned what he wanted, they were
willing to save treasures for him (Zhu 2001, 36.b).
In 1934, Zhu even wrote letters to provincial, county, and municipal
governments throughout China, asking them to send the XCB all post-
Guangxu emperor (i.e. post-1908) gazetteers (local histories) for the de-
partment’s consultation. Within a year, the XCB received nearly a thousand
of them (Zhu 2001, 37.a). Thus, by 1936, says Zhu, the XCB, which had
started with merely two book-stack rooms, had built up eight of them. Zhu’s
subordinates had created a detailed catalogue that covered nearly everything
in detail. They had also produced an index that made nding sources very
convenient.
Then, tragically, after nine years of collective effort by Zhu et al., the 2nd
Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) broke out at the Marco Polo Bridge, some
twelve miles from Beiping’s Forbidden City. It spread quickly south to
Shanghai and the lower Yangzi River area that autumn. Few of the mate-
rials the XCB had painstakingly assembled under Zhu’s leadership could be
moved from Nanjing. In fact, in December 1937, when Nanjing fell to the
Japanese army in what became known as the Rape of Nanjing, these pro-
paganda materials of the KMT’s pedagogical state were mostly destroyed.
Before then, however, in the days just before he left Nanjing, Zhu con-
sidered various ways to transport at least some of the reference materials. He
decided that the best approach was to reduce his own personal luggage to a
minimum, wear his winter clothes (in the steamy central China summer!),
136 Christopher A. Reed
and then use his suitcases and baskets (wanglan 網籃) to create room for
materials he had collected for his own future writing. He also wanted to save
the ten years’ worth of ZYZB, particularly the “Spring Festival [New Year]
Commemorative Issues” (Chunjie jiniankan 春節紀念刊). He took these
items to Chongqing and later used them to write Guomindang zhengce
congshu 國民黨政策叢書 (Collectanea of KMT policies) in eleven thick
volumes (Zhu 2001, 37.a).
In summary, despite the substantial history of KMT propaganda ef-
forts dating back to Sun’s reestablishment of the party in 1919, it is clear
from Zhu’s account of how the XCB’s reference library came into ex-
istence that the KMT’s propaganda institutions’ developments at the
start of the Nanjing Decade still hinged on a relatively haphazard and
contingent process. The ZYZB was published, in part, to systematize
propaganda, to standardize messaging, and to impose a higher degree
of discipline and uniformity of thought on the party membership itself,
rather than on the public at large. In this way, the ZYZB complemented
the outward-facing entities of the national media system discussed in the
previous section.
Tutoring the KMT itself with Zhongyang zhoubao
During the KMT government’s Nanjing Decade, few non-party outsiders
were in fact likely to have actually encountered or read ZYZB, mentioned by
Zhu as his purpose for compiling a reference library in the rst place. In the
view of one recent researcher, who invokes present-day PRC phrasing, it
was published “for internal [party] circulation only” (neibu faxing 内部发行)
(Ma 2015, 14). Nonetheless, the journal points to the utter importance of
printing and publishing “the right words” in the non-market driven, inward-
facing political publishing system of the now-ruling, state-building, peda-
gogical party.
Most commonly, Ellul’s integration (or state-building) propaganda is
viewed as targeting the masses, but intellectuals (or educated persons) are, in
his view, most vulnerable to it (Ellul 1965, 76). In the case of ZYZB, the
intended readership was party members and cadres, as well as probationary
party members, with access to party branch ofces. When the journal’s rst
issue appeared in June 1928, the KMT was still nominally locked into the 1st
United Front alliance with the CCP. Despite a wide-ranging purge that had
already cost tens of thousands of Communists and suspected Communists
their lives, Chiang’s KMT was still preoccupied with rooting out hidden
saboteurs and left-leaning party members. Eventually, in March 1929, at the
3rd Party Congress already mentioned, Chiang and the KMT’s right-wing
would purge any remaining actual or suspected left-wing, usually younger,
members. In the meantime, ZYZB would strive to straighten them and any
survivors out ideologically.
31
Competing with the marketplace 137
To do so, each issue of ZYZB provided a road map to topics that the
party leadership considered essential for its party members and ofcials to
know. Issues began with “Review of the Week’s Main Events,” followed by
a section labeled “Main Propaganda Points of the Week.” Next came
“Excerpts,” and “Reprints.”
32
And, echoing the notion of the pedagogical
state, throughout the journal, the emphasis was laid on educating the party
membership, particularly with respect to the KMT’s central dogmas – the
founder Sun Yat-sen and his “Three Principles of the People” – and their
applications to contemporary politics. In the journal’s 2nd issue, its purpose
was declared to be “providing a week’s current events as the object of re-
search…to further each comrade’s knowledge of the revolution while en-
couraging his/her revolutionary courage” (Ma 2015, 17). The journal also
offered elementary tutelage about the following week’s leading propaganda
points while supplying all levels of the party with published rules, regula-
tions, programs, and other documents for reference (Ma 2015, 17).
All levels of the party organization were required to subscribe to ZYZB,
but, because the central party’s links with the lower levels of the party
hierarchy were then weak and unreliable, it was particularly aimed at them
(Ma 2015, 17). Distribution was limited to party branches and access was
tightly guarded and clandestine. Initially, only some 10,000 copies were
printed and subscribers – whether party units or individuals – could not
request more. Subscribers were also forbidden to lend or sell issues to the
non-KMT public. Over time, but especially between 1930 and 1935, as Ma
Rui shows persuasively, the party strived to make sure that the lowest party
ranks (qufen dangbu 區分黨部) got increasing access to the journal while
the provincial and district levels got fewer copies, relatively speaking
(Ma 2015, 19).
As we saw earlier, ZYZB had an editorial committee below the XCB that
included Zhu Zishuang, who helped it assemble its library. Apart from news
clippings and bulletins, the editorial committee also collected party affairs
news, major propaganda points, summaries/minutes of meetings, collected
speeches, etc. (Ma 2015, 23). Contributing editors came from a wide variety
of top party ofcials, not surprising given the journal’s purpose. Based on a
quantitative analysis of some 37 contributors who wrote in response to the
Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, a date that is often taken to mark
the start of Japan’s invasion of China, Ma Rui found that Hu Hanmin –
former Sun associate, recent president of the Legislative Yuan, and future
Chairman of the KMT who in Fall 1931 had already come out in opposition
to Chiang Kai-shek’s party leadership – contributed the most articles with
115. Chiang Kai-shek’s own articles ranked second most numerous, with 68;
by-lines of the sitting Vice-President of the Legislative Yuan, Shao
Yuanchong 邵元沖 (1890–1936), numbered third-most numerous with 36.
Those from inaugural XCB head Dai Jitao came in fourth with 33. Clearly,
the XCB was striving to alert the rank and le as to who the party leaders –
138 Christopher A. Reed
both in terms of incumbent high government ofce-holding and ideological
leadership – were and what they thought.
33
Excerpts from the KMT’s political publishing program during
the Nanjing Decade
The ZYZB was not the XCB’s sole publication. Although during the Nanjing
Decade, the XCB also clearly engaged in Ellul’s agitation propaganda (with
an emphasis on border affairs, foreign powers, and treaty ports), the following
discussion, in keeping with the themes presented above, will provide an
overview of integration propaganda delivered through the XCB’s own print
media to reveal something of the full range of the KMT’s political publishing
during the Nanjing Decade. The discussion is necessarily selective, but this
approach will allow us to bring together with a single focus the various threads
introduced in this chapter up to here. In particular, the notions of the party-
state merger, with the KMT and its political publishing program operating, in
many respects, like a non-market driven party publishing house that stood in
for state institutions; the inuence of the pedagogical state; and nation- and
state-building through the party, including (contrary to Sun Yat-sen’s own
intentions) aspects of multi-ethnicity, will become clear.
Our main historical source for this section which will take us inside the
KMT itself is the internal party documentation known as XCB Weekly
Work Outlines 中央宣傳部工作概要 (Zhongyang xuanchuanbu gongzuo
gaiyao,
34
hereafter Gaiyao). Representing a later incarnation of Mao
Zedong’s xuanchuan dagang discussed earlier, the Gaiyao were issued more
or less weekly during the Nanjing Decade and reected the statist, dis-
ciplinarian KMT of the Nanjing Decade. Intended to summarize the stan-
dardized propaganda goals and messages of the KMT, these summaries
were prepared steadily by XCB staff from mid-July 1927 to mid-July 1937
on the orders of the KMT’s Central Executive Committee (Zhongyang
zhixing weiyuanhui 中央執行委員會 or CEC, that is, the top-most unit of
the party and state).
35
The CEC was also the body that supervised the XCB;
the XCB head sat on the CEC. The XCB Gaiyao were submitted weekly to
the CEC, which then retained them for archiving after discussion.
All of the extant Gaiyao are dated and numbered internally. Although
they clearly became formulaic over time, the formulas did change periodi-
cally throughout the Nanjing Decade. Two factors that seem to have had an
impact on their contents were unpredicted and contingent contemporary
events along with the evolution of the KMT’s communications technology
reviewed earlier. The latter, in particular, produced increasing numbers of
summaries about radio broadcasts from the early 1930s. Much like
Shanghai’s Commercial Press and Zhonghua Books, the leading corporate
publishers of the day, the XCB also got involved in lm production in
the 1930s.
Competing with the marketplace 139
The very rst Gaiyao to survive is dated July 16 to 31, 1927. It reports that
the KMT’s Shanghai party bookstore, the previously mentioned Minzhi
shuju, had sent the XCB 1500 copies of the late President Sun Yat-sen’s
Mourning Records (Aisilu 哀思錄) (“278th XCB WR,” items 1, 9). Mourning
Records was a massive collection of commemorative essays that had been
published in 1925 following the revolutionary’s death that year. Another
500 copies came from the Presidential Funeral Preparation Ofce (Zongli
zangshi choubei chu 總理葬事籌備處) in Nanjing. Mourning Records was
the sort of publication – one with clearly limited commercial appeal prior to
the establishment of the KMT’s national government in 1927 when the
KMT was known chiey for its party army (the NRA) and its Northern
Expedition to reunite the country under party rule – for which Sun and the
KMT had rst established Minzhi shuju in the early 1920s. Mourning
Records was now to become a collection of essays to educate the party’s
rank and le about their party’s founder and his political goals.
36
In the rst week of July, Minzhi shuju had also arranged to have 9,000
copies of the rst issue of an early competitor publication to ZYZB printed
and then delivered to Nanjing. Although only 2150 copies of this Central
Party Biweekly (Zhongyang banyuekan 中央半月刊) were distributed in the
second half of July 1927 to every member of the CEC (“278th XCB WR,”
item 28) along with provincial party branches, by the time the second issue
appeared, that number had been boosted to 6000,
37
suggestive of an am-
bitious party- and state-building print-based propaganda apparatus that
was nonetheless still under construction. One way the XCB broadened the
impact of this journal was to reprint issue 1, which included party bylaws
and standardized forms, in Nanjing and then include that issue as a sup-
plement with issue 2 (“278th XCB WR,” item 3).
38
When the third issue
appeared, Minzhi shuju shipped Nanjing 12,000 copies but, paradoxically,
actual distribution numbers declined. Only 3000 copies were now distributed
by Nanjing, but the Gaiyao offers no direct explanation why.
However, the Gaiyao does report some resistance from within the party’s
army (NRA) to wide distribution of the journal. For instance, in late July
1927, Comrade
39
Chen Zongxun 陳宗訓, the Distribution Section chief
working for the General Political Department’s General Headquarters,
came to the XCB to ask about distribution methods. He inquired whether
the Biweekly should really be sent to each political department within the
military. “On the spot (dangji 當即),” reports the XCB Gaiyao, “we told him
about the regulation requiring all [of them] to subscribe from issue 3 on-
ward; and we passed on the order that each political department in the army
must subscribe” (“278th XCB WR 1927,” item 12).
Numerous other state-building publications sent to the XCB’s main ofces
on Nanjing’s Hunan Road are also mentioned in this rst Gaiyao.
For example, 577 copies of Outline of the Three Principles of the People
(Sanmin zhuyi yaolüe 三民主義要略) were received and distributed to the
various levels of party branches. Just as signicant from the viewpoint of a
140 Christopher A. Reed
still-living revolutionary hero from Sun’s generation, 5000 copies of the rst
volume of longtime Sun associate Mr. Hu Hanmin’s Collected Speeches (Hu
Hanmin xiansheng yanjiang ji 胡漢民先生演講集) were delivered to Nanjing
by Minzhi shuju (“278th XCB WR 1927,” item 23). Two thousand copies of
these were then forwarded to the General Political Training Department
(Zongzhengzhi xunlianbu 總政治訓練部) and 500 to each provincial party
headquarters (“278th XCB WR 1927,” item 25). Added to those in this half-
month were 1560 copies of the suggestively titled ofcial document equating
party and nation, Protecting the Party & Saving the Nation (Hudang jiuguo zhi
wenshu 護黨救國之文書). Four hundred thirty-plus copies of each of the three
volumes of National Revolution Propaganda Collections (Guomin geming
xuanchuan ji 國民革命宣傳集)
40
were also forwarded.
The multi-lingual aspirations of the XCB were reected already in an
appeal to the Accounting Ofce for June and July subsidies for the French-
language newspaper, Three People’s Newspaper (Sanminbao 三民報, which
reected the phrasing of the KMT’s founding ideology) (“278th XCB WR
1927,” item 33). Three People’s Newspaper might have been aimed at both
Chinese living in Shanghai’s French Concession as well as at sympathetic
French-language readers in Indochina. The same logic operated behind the
many English-language translations of KMT documents. Subsequent
Gaiyao recorded repeated efforts to translate key texts into Mongolian,
Tibetan, Manchu, Uighur, and other Chinese minority languages, indicating
the ruling-party KMT’s shift away from Sun Yat-sen’s foundational single-
race view of 1924 and earlier.
The XCB itself had contracted in Nanjing for an extra 1000 copies of
each of two items – Propaganda Outline for the Workers Movement
(Gongren yundong xuanchuan dagang 工人運動宣傳大綱) and Propaganda
Outline for the Peasant Movement (Nongmin yundong xuanchuan dagang
農民運動宣傳大綱) – indicative of the wider and on-going social revolution
that had until recently been led by the KMT’s CCP allies. The titles and
contents of each certainly reected the lingering inuence of Mao Zedong’s
efforts in 1925 and 1926 to systematize and standardize party messages via
the propaganda outlines (xuanchuan dagang 宣傳大綱) mentioned earlier,
but the KMT now sought to domesticate those movements by bringing them
under its own direct supervision.
The multiple copies of Attitudes that Revolutionary Comrades Should
Hold Regarding the Hunan & Hubei Party Purication Movements (Geming
tongzhi duiyu liang Hu qingdang yundong ying chi zhi taidu 革命同志對於兩
湖清黨運動應持之態度) that are reported by the Gaiyao as having been
distributed that July point to another ongoing campaign that consumed
XCB energy that summer. Although the Spring 1927 Party Purication
Movement had begun in Shanghai, it had not ended there. From Shanghai,
the KMT took this campaign to all of its newly occupied provinces in
Central and North China, including Hunan and Hubei. Indeed, it continued
Competing with the marketplace 141
that campaign against its own party members via ZYZB and other pub-
lications well into the 1930s.
As part of the XCB’s supervisory, that is, censoring and monitoring re-
sponsibilities that were intended to ensure that its own party members un-
derstood the ROC’s ofcial Three Principles of the People ideology and
were loyal to it, the XCB now also commenced to distribute “propaganda
personnel examination forms” (xuanchuan rencai diaocha biao 宣傳人才調查
表) and “propaganda conditions investigation forms” (xuanchuan qingxing
diaocha biao 宣傳情形調查表) to all provincial party ofces, including
Hunan’s and Hubei’s. At the same time, it ordered the printing section of the
party’s General Political Department (Zong zhengzhibu 總政治部) to pro-
duce some 10,000 more copies of the General Political Training Department
(Zong zhengzhi xunlianbu 總政治訓練部)’s Declaration to the Masses in
Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi (Gao Xiang E Gan minzhong shu 告湘鄂贛民眾
書), which were added to the 9775 copies that had already been distributed.
In terms of sheer numbers of party-subsidized printing and publishing, as
suggested by the Gaiyao, this campaign to win the “hearts and minds” of
both common folk and party members had no near-equal in Summer 1927.
A decade later, in 1937, the KMT’s political circumstances had changed
signicantly. Despite substantial public opposition to the party’s policies and
operations, on again/off again intra-party factional and even military com-
petition, along with a running civil war with the CCP, the KMT had main-
tained its one-party grip on the government with Chiang Kai-shek at its head.
For example, the Gaiyao for March 22–27, 1937 makes clear that the Party
Purication Movement that had begun exactly a decade earlier in April 1927
in Shanghai was still in force nationally. The Gaiyao reports a regularized
annual commemoration day on April 12 that was listed for enforcement
(banxing 頒行) in the XCB’s self-published Concise List of Revolutionary
Commemoration Days (Geming jinianri jianming biao 革命紀念日簡明表), an
essential reference work for all party ofces (“XCB WGWS 1937,” item 1).
Even in 1937, the Gaiyao editor felt the need to repeat to his own readers,
that is, to the KMT’s CEC, the by-then familiar charges against the CCP.
Invoking “the main propaganda points” worked out by the XCB for na-
tionwide enforcement, he emphasized that the party branches should present
their members with a potted history of the party’s 1924 reform that had
tolerated the CCP in its midst until the Communists carried out “multiple
crimes” (zhongzhong zui’e 種種罪惡) against the KMT. At that point, the
KMT terminated the “Red Calamity” (chihuo 赤禍) at the 1929 3rd Party
Congress (that had substituted for a national assembly).
Hu Hanmin, whose involvement with both party and government stret-
ched back to 1905, had died on May 12, 1936 at the age of 57 from a cer-
ebral hemorrhage. In effect merging party and government ceremonies, he
was now to be commemorated for the rst time in 1937. At its 38th meeting,
the party’s Central Standing Committee had resolved to establish the day of
Hu’s passing as a national day of commemoration henceforth, much like
142 Christopher A. Reed
that of party founder, Sun Yat-sen. The XCB drafted various ceremonies for
commemorating Hu’s passing that would draw on a specially composed
short history of the party elder’s revolutionary activities. This text was so
potentially signicant that it was sent to the Central Party History
Department’s Historical Materials Compilation Committee (Zhongyang
dangshi shiliao bianzuan weiyuanhui 中央黨史史料編纂委員會) for ver-
ication of its accuracy (“XCB WGWS 1937,” item 3). By late April, the
XCB was again at work on the Hu commemoration, having produced a
propaganda outline for distribution to each party branch in anticipation of
the solemn events to come that were intended to integrate those of the local
branches into the national party-state one (“XCB TWGWS 1937,” item 1).
The following week’s Gaiyao is the last one known to make mention of
Zhu Zishuang’s journal, the ZYZB, introduced earlier. Covering two weeks’
work, this Gaiyao recorded the department’s publication of the 460th and
461st issues of the central party organ that would halt production tem-
porarily that last summer of the Nanjing Decade with issue 473 before Zhu
and his subalterns ed the city. His committee had been hard at work in the
weeks prior, with an earlier Gaiyao commenting that the XCB “had col-
lected materials,” presumably still clipped from newspapers and magazines,
“on important international news items” (“XCB WGWS 1937,” item 4).
Multiple foreign-language manuscripts were underway, both from Chinese
into foreign tongues and from those languages into Chinese. This linguistic
work continued into late April with translations into Mongolian of de-
clarations from the one-party proxy national assembly and from the party-
state’s leader, Chiang Kai-shek. Of course, these particular translations
carried ponderous signicance because of steadily expanding Japanese
military inuence in Mongolia since 1933.
The nal Gaiyao were sent on to the CEC throughout July and early August
as war with Japan now spread across North China, promoting ever-closer ties
between party and government. By mid-summer 1937, following the Xi’an
Incident of December 1936, the KMT once again bound itself into a United
Front with the CCP.
41
Filling the party-state breech, the KMT’s XCB tried to
help the party-government claim the political high ground with a campaign,
little known today, termed the Unied National Salvation Movement (Tongyi
jiuguo yundong 統一救國運動). It sought to coopt the patriotic energy mo-
bilized in May 1936 when some 280 non-governmental national and cultural
gures had signed a National Salvation Declaration (Jiuguo yundong xuanyan
救國運動宣言) in Shanghai to protest the KMT’s military inaction regarding
Japan’s incursions in North China south of the Great Wall that were intended
to create a new Manchukuo. Following the Xi’an Incident, the KMT created
its own ofcial movement in response to the Shanghai one in an effort to
undermine the non-party, non-governmental one.
42
Now, the XCB formulated an internal document, titled Unied National
Salvation Theory and Program (Tongyi jiuguo lilun gangling 統一救國理論綱領)
for widespread dissemination to party branches and, through them, to the
Competing with the marketplace 143
general populace. Instructing the party that the program was “the mo-
ment’s most urgent [and] most important work” (muqian zui poqie zui
zhongyao zhi gongzuo 目前最迫切最重要之工作), the document was “dis-
tributed to all provincial and municipal party branches [and] to all special
party branches” (“XCB GWS 1937,” item 1). They, in turn, were in-
structed to reprint it and then further distribute it at local levels. All party
branches and collective units were instructed to work hard discussing and
investigating “so that the real intent of national salvation can be pub-
licized [and] spread to each locale’s newspapers for publishing in a timely
manner to uphold unity against separatists” (“XCB GWS 1937,” item 1).
Further, party branches were ordered to supervise all of China’s maga-
zines, which should now publish special Unied National Salvation issues.
By the time the next Gaiyao was compiled and forwarded to the CEC,
China and Japan had been at war for a month already. Now, with no hint
whatsoever of serving as a government institution, the XCB defaulted to its
functions of organizing the party branches for the widening circles of the
conict. This time, the XCB’s Gaiyao started by stating its activities as
having included secret “instructions to all party branches on the propaganda
work they must prepare.” On July 27 and 28, condential cables had been
sent to all party branches, instructing them to quickly arrange “to encourage
the common folk to resist the enemy’s outrages under the leadership of the
central party [apparatus (my emphasis)]” (guli minzhong zai Zhongyang
lingdaoxia zhunbei kang di yu 鼓勵民眾在中央領導下準備抗敵禦) (“XCB
GWS 82, 83 1937,” item 1). Half a dozen specic guidelines followed, ending
with inspirational words about self-sacrice in extreme situations.
Compiling, editing, and publication did remain active to the bitter end,
however. A new propaganda summary of main issues to be covered in
commemorating Sun Yat-sen’s rst armed uprising in 1895, a propaganda
outline, and two new publications on the Imperial Japanese Army’s en-
croachments on North China, along with small propaganda pamphlets
(xuanchuan xiaoce 宣傳小冊) continued to be produced at XCB initiative
(“XCB GWS 82, 83 1937,” items 5, 6) along with the kinds of daily news
summaries that Zhu Zishuang had initiated in 1928. All of them gave the
KMT’s XCB primacy of place in the centralized ow of party-state in-
formation and access to it.
Summary and conclusion
In common with numerous one-party states across Eurasia, after laying a
foundation from 1919 when the KMT’s Department of Propaganda was
rst formed, to 1927/28, when its new Republic of China (ROC) was de-
clared, the KMT brought about its own form of party-state merger. With
respect to propaganda, it started and ended by substituting the XCB’s po-
litical publishing operation for a formal, even just nominal governmental
ministry of propaganda. With the KMT and its XCB-led political publishing
144 Christopher A. Reed
program operating, in many respects, like a non-market-driven publishing
house, the idea of the pedagogical state supporting party-centered nation-
and state-building, including aspects of multi-ethnicity, started to bear fruit.
Ideologically and politically, the structure laid out by Chiang Kai-shek and
Hu Hanmin for the Tutelage Stage of Chinese nation-building within a one-
party structure contributed mightily to what must have seemed to both the
natural overlay of party and state propaganda.
In this chapter, an introduction to the KMT’s political publishing pro-
gram during the Nanjing Decade has been structured to take us from the
general context of the KMT’s early 1920s political messaging overseen by
Sun Yat-sen to the specics of the XCB’s post-1927 internal operations,
particularly regarding its Nanjing-based, party-centered publication, the
ZYZB (Central weekly journal, 1928–1937). In the next section, we moved
on to the “deep within” of the XCB’s weekly internal propaganda outlines
(Gaiyao) created at KMT Party Headquarters on Nanjing’s Hunan Road
from 1927 to 1937. Seen from another perspective, we have also progressed
from the public operations of a non-market-driven
43
party propaganda
department that merged party and state ideological and enforcement sys-
tems to the progressively more anonymous and bureaucratically disciplined,
ideological, and pedagogical state.
Different from Shanghai’s comprehensive private and corporate publishing
operations, however, as seen here, the KMT’s XCB focused strongly on
inward-facing political publishing, especially for party functionaries but also,
through their tutelage, implicitly including the larger public via outward-
facing media as well. And it did so while aspiring, from the mid-1920s onward,
to hegemonic control of information and messaging in competition with the
private sector. Seen from this perspective, the KMT turns out to have been a
text-centered political party that became a publishing organization almost in
spite of its initial haphazard development, in the late 1920s, under director Ye
Chucang and his acquisitions and reference librarian Zhu Zishuang. Inner
party dynamics, party mobilization, and media jurisdictions all combined
during the party’s post-1928 Tutelage Stage to promote what Ellul terms in-
tegration propaganda, a form of propaganda aimed at state-building through
conformity and discipline, particularly among literate intellectuals.
First organized in 1919, the XCB was recongured in 1924 and again in
1928 to create the KMT’s version of a pedagogical propaganda state. In
only ve months, from 1925 to 1926, and following John Fitzgerald, Mao
Zedong introduced central bureaucratic discipline to the party’s message,
replacing charismatic Sun Yat-sen at the center via the instrument of the
propaganda outline (xuanchuan dagang 宣傳大綱). This outline, by mid-
1927, became the anonymously compiled Gaiyao on which the nal section
of this chapter has focused. Like the early propaganda outline, the Gaiyao
laid out “ready-made analyses and [occasionally] prescribed slogans for
adoption by all party, military, and governmental agencies under the jur-
isdiction of the issuing authority” (Fitzgerald 1996, 240).
Competing with the marketplace 145
Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen’s ideas of 1923 and 1924, to wit, “using the party to
govern the state” and “using the party to build the state,” became, in the hands
of Chiang Kai-shek and Hu Hanmin, the Draft Outline of the Tutelage Stage,
which included a program of mobilizing the party to unify the nation by
training both party members and the public in the KMT’s statist and dis-
ciplinarian ideology known as the Three Principles of the People. That ideology
was laid out ofcially by the KMT’s 3rd Party Congress in 1929, which made
Sun’s writings the core of the party curriculum (and which the ZYZB was able
to reinforce thanks to Zhu’s then-year-old editorial library). At the same time,
as we have seen, the Gaiyao reveal some multi-lingual aspirations of an XCB
that actually undermined Sun’s early 1920s mono-racial view of China.
In the end, by the middle of 1937, with still no independent, non-party,
government propaganda ministry or workers to lead the resistance to im-
perial Japan, the central KMT appears to have had no choice but to delegate
direction of the pedagogical state to its party branches. Presumably more
disciplined than they had been in 1928 when, for example, ZYZB was
launched in the wake of the Party Purication Movement, the responsi-
bilities for mobilizing resistance and maintaining morale across the ROC
now fell to the branches. In the meantime, the central XCB monopolized the
ow of international news propaganda of the sort needed to defend China
on a global stage, rst against imperial Japan and then, eventually, in tu-
toring Republican China’s Allies in the axioms of the KMT’s war effort.
Some, like journalist Theodore White, chafed under wartime China’s ever-
tighter merger of party and state and would eventually seek to expose this
restrictive system to outsiders in unattering ways.
44
Notes
* The author thanks the organizers and participants of the online conference, “The
Vanguard of Class and Nation: Parties as Governments in Eurasia, 1920s–1990s,”
convened April 12–13, 2021 through the University of Heidelberg, Germany, for their
questions and comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. In addition, I wish to
acknowledge comments and insights offered separately on that draft by Robert Culp
of Bard College, USA, and by Shuge Wei of The Australian National University.
1 The contemporary discussion of Chinese print culture involves too many titles to list
here but arguably stems from Leo Ou-fan Lee and Andrew J. Nathan, “The
Beginnings of Mass Culture: Journalism and Fiction in the Late Ch’ing and
Beyond,” in Johnson, Nathan, and Rawski, eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial
China (Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 1987), 360–98. Representative works in-
clude: Joan Judge, Print and Politics: ‘Shibao’ and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing
China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996) and Republican Lens: Gender,
Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2015); Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity,
and Change in Shanghai’s News Media, 1872–1912 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Asia Center, 2004); Alexander Des Forges, Mediasphere Shanghai: The
Aesthetics of Cultural Production (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007); Fei-
Hsien Wang, Pirates and Publishers: A Social History of Copyright in Modern China
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018); Reed 2004; and Culp 2019.
146 Christopher A. Reed
2 On Wenhuajie, see Reed 2004, 16–22, 207–22, 261–63, etc.
3 For more on the transition of the KMT from a Western-style liberal party with
parliamentary aspirations to a vanguard-oriented, state-building, and discipline-
driven political party on the Soviet model, see Huang Jianli, The Politics of
Depoliticization in Republican China: Guomindang Policy toward Student Political
Activism, 1927–1949 (Bern & New York: P. Lang, 1999); Harrison 2000, esp. Ch.
6; and Fitzgerald 1996.
4 For example, through the 83-member, state-directed Shanghai Booksellers’
Same-Industry Association (Shanghaishi shuye tongye gonghui 上海市書業同業
公會) established in 1930 to allow the KMT’s one-party state to supervise and
legislate on the book publishing economy. See Reed 2004, 211, 224, 240, etc.
5 Typically translated as “propaganda,” xuanchuan 宣傳 can also be rendered
“publicity,” “information,” and “public relations.” In this respect, the XCB
seems to parallel other more familiar terms such as Britain’s wartime Ministry of
Information, headquartered in London University’s Senate Building. More si-
nisterly, however, this ministry, was transformed into writer George Orwell’s
Ministry of Truth in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Similarly, although 部 (bu)
often is translated as ministry, regarding the KMT government, it is more
commonly rendered as a party “department.”
6 For an early publication that anticipates the notion of the Chinese pedagogical state,
see Richard W. Wilson, Learning to be Chinese: The Political Socialization of
Children in Taiwan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970). On the pedagogical state per
se, see Fitzgerald, Awakening China, 18–20. More recently, Culp 2019, 20 & 244, has
deployed this notion, arguing that the early PRC “actively supported and facilitated
the production and dissemination of knowledge for the purposes of promoting
economic development, preserving national culture, and cultivating its citizenry.”
7 Cf. “Call for Papers: The Vanguard of Class and Nation: Parties as Governments
in Eurasia, 1920s–1990s, An E-Conference, April 12–13, 2021, University of
Heidelberg, Germany.”
8 For another perspective, see Hans J. van de Ven, “The Emergence of the Text-
Centered Party,” in New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, ed.
by Tony Saich and Hans J. van de Ven (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), 5.
9 For example, Minbao 民報 (People’s journal, 1905–19). It would be followed by
Minguo ribao 民國日報 (Republican daily news, 1915–29), Zhongyang ribao 中央
日報 (Central daily news, 1928–2006), and others. See Schoppa 1995, ch. 3;
Fitzgerald 1996, 28, 280–83; Yeh 1996, ch. 7, 9, 10. Thanks to Robert Culp for
these references.
10 For more on Minzhi shuju, which Fitzgerald translates as “Popular Wisdom Press,”
particularly on its budget and overseas (mostly American) nancing, see Fitzgerald
1996, 195 and 378, n. 58. Minzhi shuju, located at the center of Shanghai’s Wenhuajie
on Henan Middle Road, published textbooks, reference works, and ofcial party
materials. It operated from 1921 to 1937. See Reed 2004, 286.
11 For social science-inspired literature, insightful but characterized by historical
amnesia, see works by Daniel C. Lynch, After the Propaganda State: Media,
Politics, and “Thought Work” in Reformed China (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1999) and Yuezhi Zhao, Media, Market, and Democracy in China: Between
the Party Line and the Bottom Line (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).
12 On agitation propaganda, which Ellul argues is often but not always a propa-
ganda of opposition, see Ellul 1965, 70–74.
13 For more on this topic, see Ellul 1965, “The Characteristics of Propaganda,” 1–6;
and Christopher A. Reed, “From Text(s) to Image(s): Maoist-Era Texts and
Their Inuences on Six Oil Paintings (1957–79),” 205–234, in Redening
Competing with the marketplace 147
Propaganda in Modern China: The Mao Era and Its Legacies, ed. by James Farley
and Matthew D. Johnson (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021).
14 Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State; Soviet Methods of Mass
Mobilization, 1917–1929 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
15 Lee-hsia Hsu Ting, Government Control of the Press in Modern China, 1900–1949
(Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, 1974).
16 Stephen MacKinnon and Oris Friesen, China Reporting: An Oral History of American
Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
17 Robert Culp, Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in
Southeastern China, 1912–1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia
Center, 2007) and Culp 2019.
18 The oath had begun as a statement of personal loyalty to Sun himself (Fitzgerald
1996, 196).
19 In Tokyo in 1905, when Hu was made chief of the Revolutionary Alliance head-
quarters and began contributing to the party paper, Minbao, the former Hu
Zhantang renamed himself Hu Hanmin (“Han person or people”) to signal the anti-
Qing, Han-liberationist motivation of Sun’s revolution. See Boorman 1968, II: 160.
20 Fitzgerald 1996, 184, notes that delegates also agreed to a new party song to be
titled “Three Principles of the People.” The earlier Republican anthem was now
replaced with one that favored one political party—the KMT—and ended with
the lines “…One heart, one soul/One mind, one goal.” It would become the
national anthem in 1928.
21 According to Fitzgerald, almost immediately after the KMT’s new national ag
was raised in Guangzhou on January 1, 1925, a pogrom against remaining des-
cendants of the Manchu Banners living in the city began.
22 To be followed later by that of the People’s Republic; see Lynch, After the
Propaganda State.
23 On Mao’s leadership of the KMT’s XCB, see Fitzgerald 1996, 213–16. The
earliest propaganda outline that Fitzgerald reports having seen was created by
Zhou Enlai’s ofce in Fall 1925; Mao then learned the approach from Zhou. The
propaganda outline became a standard feature of XCB weekly reports once the
KMT arrived in Nanjing.
24 The nal section of this chapter will suggest that Zhou-Mao’s xuanchuan dagang
anticipated the XCB Weekly Work Outlines (Zhongyang xuanchuanbu gongzuo
gaiyao 中央宣傳部工作概要, or Gaiyao).
25 For a near-contemporary source on the events of Spring 1927, possibly written
from a Trotskyist perspective, see Harold R. Isaacs, Tragedy of the Chinese
Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961 [1938, with an
Introduction by Leon Trotsky]). Andre Malraux’s La condition humaine (1928) is
a well-known ctional account of these events.
26 Although large, the actual party headquarters was far less palatial than a planned
facility that was never built. See Charles D. Musgrove, China’s Contested Capital
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), Fig. 3.5, 101; 105; Harrison 2000,
213–214.
27 After a brief delay while its staff ed from Nanjing following the commencement
of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the ZYZB resumed publication, rst
in Changsha, Hunan and, a month later, in Chongqing, Sichuan. It nally halted
publication in November 1948.
28 Thank you to my Ohio State University colleague, Ying Zhang, for bringing Zhu
Zishuang’s article to my attention.
29 The KMT renamed Beijing “Beiping” at the start of the Nanjing Decade and, in
1949, the Chinese Communists restored its original name.
30 Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary career stretched back to 1894.
148 Christopher A. Reed
31 For a different interpretation of the impact of the 3rd Party Congress on internal
KMT pedagogy and propagandization, particularly that aimed at party propaganda
activists, see Christopher A. Reed, “Propaganda by the Book: Contextualizing and
Reading the Zhejiang GMD’s 1929 Textbook, Essentials for Propaganda Workers,”
Frontiers of History in China 10: 1 (March 2015), 96–125.
32 This summary draws from Ma 2015, Abstract (zhaiyao 摘要), 1.
33 Questions regarding whether the credited author was the actual author remain
unanswered.
34 Although the basic content of the Gaiyao remained remarkably constant over the
decade worth of summaries that I have seen, the specic names given to the
Gaiyao varied over time and included gongzuo baogao 工作報告 (work report)
and gongzuo gaikuang 工作概況 (work survey).
35 Not as large as today’s CCP Central Committee, the CEC was its structural equivalent.
36 Approximately 67% (1344) of the total copies received were distributed to party
branches for reference and study in the parts of China that the NRA had occupied.
37 Guangzhou alone is recorded as having conrmed receipt of its 500 copies in
“278th XCB WR,” item 32.
38 In fact, given its importance, the XCB reprinted 20,000 copies of issue 1.
39 The use of the term “comrade” (tongzhi 同志), typically associated with the
Bolsheviks and its epigones such as the CCP, was widely used by the KMT as
well in both speech and writing until the 1940s.
40 Unless cited separately, titles in this paragraph all appear in “278th XCB WR
1927,” item 7.
41 In December 1936, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s generals had kidnapped him outside
the city of Xi’an when the generalissimo had arrived on an inspection tour. The
objective was to force Chiang to declare war on Japan and mobilize for anti-
Japanese resistance the forces Chiang had installed around Xi’an to barricade the
CCP in nearby Yan’an. Following Stalin’s intervention via Mao Zedong and
Zhou Enlai, the CCP leveraged Chiang’s release.
42 For more on the KMT-sponsored Unied National Salvation Movement, see Zhou
Bin 周斌, “Xi’an shibian hou de ‘Tongyi jiuguo yundong,’” 西安事變後的「統一救
國運動」[The United Salvation Movement following the Xi’an Incident], Junshi
lishi yanjiu 軍事歷史研究 [Military history research] (May 11, 2016), 1–13.
43 But nonetheless commercial; the ZYZB was distributed according to paid
subscriptions.
44 On the KMT’s monopoly of news propaganda, see Shuge Wei, News Under Fire,
China’s Propaganda Against Japan in the English-Language Press, 1928–1941
(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017).
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Competing with the marketplace 149
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150 Christopher A. Reed
6 Aspirations for a mass political
party in prewar imperial Japan:
Conicting visions of national
mobilization
*
Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
Introduction: The Establishment of the Imperial Rule
Assistance Association
Although often included as part of the fascist contingent in the 1930s and
1940s, Imperial Japan has been treated as an anomaly resulting from its
lack of a mass political party. In fact, however, the outbreak of war with
China prompted calls for a unied political organization and an integrated
social and political system to transcend debilitating factionalism and
harness national resources for the war effort ultimately propelling the
establishment of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA; Taisei
yokusankai 大政翼賛会) in 1940. The formation, operations and ensuing
limitations of the IRAA itself have been documented by previous scho-
larship. The aristocrat Konoe Fumimaro 近衞文麿 (1891–1945), popular
with many reformist forces and the broader public, formed a cabinet in
1937 before the outbreak of the war with China. As Japan’s war offensive
deteriorated into a protracted total war, attempts to create a totalitarian
party centered on Konoe in the summer of 1938, supported by military
ofcers, reform bureaucrats, and the proletarian Social Masses Party
(Shakai taishūtō 社会大衆党), failed to overcome ideological divisions and
spirited opposition from entrenched power bases in the bureaucracy and
parties whose authority was challenged by the creation of new policy
making institutions. Geo-political conditions in 1940 such as the rapid
German blitzkrieg fueled calls for a New Order movement prioritizing the
public good through the “separation of capital and management” envi-
sioned to compel corporations to conform to national policy (Makino
2016, 218). With war conditions becoming ever more dire, the parties were
dissolved to form the IRAA in October, 1940. Nevertheless, the IRAA
never became a mass totalitarian party with effective centralized control
entirely eclipsing the connes of the Meiji state. The effort to establish a
mass political organization is seen as having been derailed by tense ideo-
logical divisions and criticism among various power bases, nally leading
to the relegation of the IRAA under the auspices of the Home Ministry
tasked with domestic governance such as the police (Makino 2016).
Gordon Berger has shown that the established parties were able to
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-7
maintain a foothold of inuence, and conservative rightists denounced
economic and social planning as depriving the personal power of the
emperor enshrined in the Meiji constitution (Berger 1977, Makino 2016,
Levidis 2020). Ultimately, it is argued that the political structure of the
Meiji constitutional state was not so fundamentally changed as to warrant
the label fascism or totalitarianism.
Standard accounts further stress that the Imperial Rule Assistance
Association and the concepts propagated by it were largely a top-down,
pragmatic response to the deepening quagmire in China. This conclusion is
bolstered by two key themes in the scholarship. One is the belief in the mili-
tary’s pursuit of dictatorship to construct a national defense state in response
the rise of the concept of total war following WWI. The other is the rise of
technocratic expertise in government administration following the Great
Depression, which was assumed would eventually supplant the policy making
role of the Diet. These themes are part of a broader tendency to view the
drastic interventionism of the military and bureaucracy in wartime
through the lens of a static dichotomy between an authoritarian state
increasingly subject to an activist and politicized military, and a passive
people who remained objects of mobilization from above. Yet, as Gordon
Berger (1977, 163) has noted, there were important cases among reform
leaders of autonomous “linkage made between the national defense con-
cept and local reform issues.” Berger (1977, 162) gives a telling example in
1938 of Arima Yoriyasu 有馬頼寧 (1884-1957), Agriculture Minister in the
Konoe cabinet who later held a pivotal leadership position in the IRAA,
giving an address as president of the National Federation of Industrial
Guilds about the need to enter politics and “mobilize the power of the
average citizen” in order to assist Konoe in his reform plans. Arima lent
enthusiastic support to the radical members of the youth auxiliary who
sought to create an agrarian party with a “Japanist” platform which seized
on the concept of national defense. Among the central items of the party
was the “overthrow of capitalism,” the liberation of workers from ex-
ploitation and the elimination of the monopoly of nance capital, re-
vealing how the prospect of national mobilization could harness long-
standing aspirations for social change (Berger 1977, 164).
Recent literature has begun to acknowledge the centrality of the issue of
popular support for national mobilization which has signicantly challenged
conventional assumptions. Tamaki Hiroki (2020) has shown that many of
Japan’s most impactful military planners in the 1930s in fact recognized the
limits of the military supreme command’s independence. Learning from the
defeat of the vaunted German army, military dictatorship and the sub-
ordination of society to military concerns was deemed unsuitable for pro-
tracted wars which demanded the active contribution and sustained morale of
the totality of a complex society, necessitating close cooperation with civilians.
Military solutions were relativized by these leading thinkers as only one
method of achieving strategic objectives. In a similar vein, Clinton Godart
152 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
(2021), building on these emerging trends in research on military thought, has
highlighted how anxiety over public morale prompted calls to proactively
engage with public opinion and the rise of mass politics. For example, Nagata
Tetsuzan 永田鉄山 (1884–1935), the leader of the army’s “Control Faction”
(tōseiha 統制派), advocated cooperation with Diet politics and party rule.
Total mobilization for a protracted future war would ultimately demand a
more tightly imbedded relationship with society, which was envisioned by
some prominent ofcers to result in egalitarian consequences.
Yet, the watershed signicance of total war preparation or great depression
notwithstanding, the central emphasis placed on active popular support and
ideological commitment of the common people as well as many of the mo-
bilization proposals seeking to promote welfarist policies were not prompted
by WWI alone. This chapter will seek to show that they were in part products
of changes in ethnic nationalist thought, and that the aspirations for national
reconstruction among both state ofcials and the common people outside of
power emerged out of these same trends. It will contribute to the eld of global
intellectual and political history by tracing the emergence of overlooked
strands of reformist ideals which helped to propel the movement to create a
mass party through an analysis of the several factions which ultimately coa-
lesced, albeit contentiously, to form the IRAA. These were, namely, reformist
bureaucrats within the Home Ministry, reformists within the military, prole-
tarian party activists, and civilian nationalist activists.
The rst network is the “Alliance for a New Japan” (Shin Nihon dōmei 新日
本同盟), a group consisting of some of Japan’s most important bureaucrats,
including Gotō Fumio 後藤文夫 (1884–1980), Home Minister in the Okada
岡田 cabinet during the mid-1930s, and Tazawa Yoshiharu 田沢義鋪
(1885–1944), who was central to the Alliance’s activities and was the leader of
the politically important semi-public youth and self-cultivation groups
throughout Japane and the empire encouraged by the military and wielded by
the state to guide the thought of the populace. This elite group also saw
participation from academics and politicians who hoped to initiate a move-
ment led by Konoe Fumimaro himself to rectify the corrupt Japanese party
system through “election purication.” Some of these hopes would later come
to fruition in the mid-1930s through their intervention in elections to enforce
corruption laws, allowing for the rise of the Social Masses Party and setting
the development toward the IRAA into motion. The central aim of the
Alliance was to engage in “political education” and moral suasion campaigns
to prepare Japan for general elections with universal manhood suffrage in the
1920s. Political education and moral suasion was designed to, on the one
hand, steer the population from dangerous thoughts and avoid debilitating
divisions within society. Yet, more importantly, it also sought to instill
a critical perspective on corruption through nationalist awareness and
encourage the political participation of the general population, albeit a par-
ticipation premised on the ideological unity of the people managed by thought
guidance. This was based in the belief that national power and international
cultural prestige stemmed from the fervent commitment of the people to the
Aspirations for a mass political party 153
program of the nation-state. The Alliance not only later produced personnel
for the agencies of the wartime state, it also facilitated the collaboration of
reformist networks and served as an incubator for political concepts later
employed by the IRAA.
The second network to be investigated in this chapter is centered around
the writings of the periodical Ishin 維新 (“Restoration”), published by
former progressive education labor leader Shimonaka Yasaburō 下中弥三郎
(1878–1961). This publication served as one venue to discuss national re-
construction and brought together leading civilian ideologues and active-duty
military ofcers through articles as well as roundtable discussions. Ishin boasted
regular contributions from prominent national socialist inspired Japanist in-
tellectuals such as Akamatsu Katsumaro 赤松克麿 (1894–1955), Tsukui Tatsuo
津久井龍雄 (1901–1989), and Nakatani Takeyo 中谷武世 (1898–1990). It also
gave voice to activists such as Nakahara Kinji 中原謹司 (1889–1951), who
sought to harness opportunities presented by the Election Purication
Movement (shukusei senkyo undō 選挙粛正運動) and the controversy over the
nature of the Japanese constitution to mobilize local Army reservist groups rst
locally in Nagano prefecture, and then ultimately to participate in the New
Order movement. The network of activists presented in Ishin in fact extended in
ways which deed simple factional boundaries, overlapping with the Imperial
Way leaders as well as the pan-Asian organizations of Matsui Iwane 松井石根
(1878–1948) and Hayashi Senjurō 林銑十郎 (1876–1943), who were eager to
form a new mass political organization to harness popular support for the state.
One central concern was how to reect the will of the people through the
Diet beyond liberal party politics, which was seen as fundamentally corrupt. As
one activist put it, “not a single Japanese nationalist fundamentally denies the
role of the Diet.” Yet, the Diet was not to be a contest over power or even to
allow conicting perceptions of subjective self-interest. A parliamentarian
system based on assisting a benevolent emperor and reecting Japan’s ethnic
nature of ideological unity would harness the willing commitment and parti-
cipation of the people. This unity would empower the nation and form the
basis of the Ethical State. These political ideals were also perceived as in-
herently intertwined with a planned economy to overcome the exploitative
aws of capitalism in which military spending and production increases would
stabilize ination, employment and wages, and serve as a “social work pro-
gram” contributing to a more moral economic order. And although a failure in
the history of one-party states, if analyzed from a global perspective this history
may bring to light convergences and suggestive contrasts in worldviews with
other countries seeking developmentalist reforms, such as China.
The Alliance for a New Japan, political education and the
origins of “New Order” reforms
In the postwar telling of the primary motive of members behind the formation
of the Alliance in preparation for general elections with universal manhood
154 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
suffrage, the fundamental catalyst was the fear of a complete collapse among
the people in condence in the parties as a result of their corruption and
destructive pursuit of self-interest at the expense of the entirety of the nation.
This disillusionment with parliamentarian politics was believed by the group
to have begun during the Hara Kei 原敬 (1856–1921) administration fol-
lowing World War I. Fear of political apathy led the elite reformers ofthe
Alliance to advocate a nation-wide political education and moral suasion
campaign to achieve the “moralization of politics” through the unity of
“politics and morality and everyday life.” This group, which sought leadership
from Konoe Fumimaro and saw participation from Gotō Shinpei 後藤新平
(1857–1929), included not only the bureaucrats Gotō Fumio, Tazawa
Yoshiharu, Maruyama Tsurukichi 丸山鶴吉 (1883–1956), and the later prime
minister and foreign minister Hirota Kōki 廣田弘毅 (1878–1948), but also the
progressive legal scholar and social education activist Hozumi Shigetō 穂積重
遠 (1883–1951), and the progressive welfare economist professor Ueda Teijirō
上田貞次郎 (1879–1940). It is through the writing of this group that the early
emergence of the ideal of ‘election purication’ which played such a profound
role in the 1930s can be glimpsed. It is through the writing of this group that
the early emergence of the ideal of ‘election purication’ which played such a
profound role in the 1930s can be glimpsed.
As explained in postwar interviews by Hashimoto Seinosuke 橋本清之助
(1884–1891), who uniquely rose through the youth group movement and not
through the exam system to enter the Home Ministry, the philosophical
guiding light of the Alliance were the ideals of British New Liberalism pro-
moted by Ueda Teijirō. Ueda believed New Liberal economics represented a
progressive “revision of capitalism,” which could maintain the dynamism of
free enterprise and free trade yet offset the social consequences of capitalism
through social policy and regulation. This vision further idealized an electoral
system represented by a triad of Liberal, Conservative and Labor parties.
Ueda’s economic and political reformism appears as a moderate product of
serious study of a range of current European welfarist inuences. Ueda ex-
plained that he had initially been entirely convinced of the Fabian position of
nationalizing major industries. The failures of the Soviet example, however,
had shown the necessity of private enterprise reecting a belief in the im-
portance of private property for both pragmatic issues of efciency as well as
reasons of morality (Ueda 1927, introduction and p. 134). Although the most
prominent articulation of New Liberalism stemmed from the neo-Hegelian
idealism of the movement’s founder Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882), Ueda’s
conception of New Liberalism was highly sensitive to current global trends and
was perhaps parallel to the younger, less statist generation of the New Liberal
movement thinkers spearheaded by Leonard Hobhouse (1864–1929) as well as
John Atkinson Hobson (1858–1940), whose concept of imperialism as the nal
stage of capitalism inuenced Lenin’s understanding of imperialism.
New was Liberalism an important strand of welfare economics before
World War II, exerting inuence on the British Labour Party in the 1920s,
Aspirations for a mass political party 155
and was seen as a third way between authoritarian, statist socialism,
and market capitalism.
1
The writings of the Alliance reveal sympathies
consonant with the stated ideals of Ueda, which claimed some con-
vergences with moderate Fabians and Labour thinkers such as Henry
George (1839– 1897), and included support for land redistribution through
heavy taxation (see Kitaoka 1927, 2–4). However, for Tazawa Yoshiharu,
the vigorous proponent of national youth group organizations and to-
gether with Hashimoto Seinosuke the driving force behind the Alliance’s
publication Shinsei 新政, New Liberalism was not merely an economic
worldview. It was a movement of self-cultivation to elevate one’s reali-
zation as a person (jinkaku 人格). The role of the state was to provide the
conditions most conducive to this spiritual cultivation undergirding social
cohesion and the common good. Thus, Tazawa’s interpretation of New
Liberalism appears more closely attuned to the conception of positive
liberty of Thomas Hill Green, who advocated achieving the common good
through state intervention in labor contracts, public health and education
yet emphasized the importance of personal autonomy for self-cultivation
within the moral community.
One acolyte of Thomas Hill Green, James Seth (1860–1925), whose work
on ethics was read and discussed by nationalist philosopher Inoue Tetsujirо
井上哲次郎 (1855–1944), may help provide context for the enthusiastic re-
ception of this general worldview by nationalist reformers such as Tazawa.
Seth’s promotion of positive liberty through a benevolent Ethical State may
also shed light on how a highly interventionist state could be seen as max-
imizing the personal autonomy, potential and well-being of citizen-subjects
in the prewar period among social reformers. Seth identied as a Christian
socialist making clear that the “evils of unlimited and unregulated compe-
tition have thrown into clear relief the advantages of co-operation; the su-
periority of organized to unorganized activity has become manifest.” (Seth
1924, 291) Nevertheless, Seth rejected the elimination of private property.
Although the concept of private property is often seen as a litmus test in a
stark dichotomy between capitalism and socialism, according this Hegelian
view, the “State must not merely secure to the individual the opportunity of
exercising his power of activity; it must also secure to him the fruits of such
activity, and the larger opportunity which comes the possession of these
fruits.” Property ultimately was “an expression of personality” and one base
for the autonomous cultivation of ethics (Seth 1924, 305). Furthermore,
Seth’s optimistically expansive view of the benevolence of the state and of
universal truth, which dismissed the centrality of pluralistic negative liberty,
thus may provide insights into the afrmation, on progressive welfarist
grounds, of a communalist fusion of the will of the individual and the will of
the state leading to a drastic revision of the concept of democracy. Seth went
as far as writing that “Obedience to the State is obedience to the citizen’s
own better self” and that “I am, after all, sovereign as well as subject, subject
of my own legislation. The right of the State is therefore supreme, being the
156 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
right of personality itself.” Finally, Seth believed that individuals “can yield
a willing obedience” to the state “because it is the creation of his own will
and, in obeying it, he is really obeying himself” (Seth 1924, p. 292).
On the surface, the leaders of the Alliance, such as Tazawa Yoshiharu,
would appear to conrm the image of Japanese politics in the prewar period as
incapable to extricating procedural politics from statist tutelage and elite
managerialism led by a Confucian inspired bureaucratic elite seeking to sup-
press challenges to its autonomous policy-making prerogatives through ethnic
nationalist social education. The most cynical interpretation of the movement
among ranking Home Ministry bureaucratic leaders to engage in political
education is that it represented an effort to contain the growth of party power
not only at the national level but also in local affairs. In this skeptical view, the
discourse of local autonomy and political preparation of the local people could
be interpreted as motivated by the fear of the emergence of a mass politics
which threatened, through the incursion of corrupt and self-serving parties, to
usurp the policy making prerogatives enjoyed by elite bureaucrats.
Gordon Berger has discussed the Alliance for a New Japan in the context of
its cooperation with the young Konoe Fumimaro, who shared their critique of
the corruption of party politics as well as of capitalism and their emphasis on
social policy to guarantee the welfare of the people. Berger notes that in the
1920s, Konoe and his Alliance colleagues “accepted the notion of re-
presentative government, but criticized the parties and the local landowners
for their corruption, short-sighted focus on pork-barrel issues, and obstruction
of the rational administrative supervision of national life.” (Berger 1974, 473)
He accurately presents the work of Tazawa Yoshiharu as arguing for the
importance of the inclusion of the people in politics, and of instilling the cri-
tical ability to choose candidates in order to staunch the tendency of the
parties to bribe local elites, the meibōka 名望家, who could deliver local votes
in blocs. However, Berger persists in describing the group as not only anti-
party, but as theoretically groundless, and as seeking to entrench premodern
hierarchies in reaction to exposure to threatening foreign ideas:
Alliance members and other social conservatives never formulated a
coherent ideological response to the alien ideas they feared. However,
Konoe, Gotō, and several other young nobles and Home Ministry
ofcials gave extensive patronage to Yasuoka Masahiro [安岡正篤,
1898–1983] in the 1920s. Their association with Yasuoka suggests that
they hoped to nd in his expostulation of “Oriental theories” [tōyō shisō
東洋思想] of hierarchical social harmony some answer to the notion of
class conict.
(Berger 1974, 469)
Berger concludes that the Alliance achieved what he understands as their
goals in the late 1930s: “They had driven the parties from power, restored
the independence of their ofces from outside inuences, and preserved the
Aspirations for a mass political party 157
social cohesiveness of the country through the turmoil of rapid in-
dustrialization, mobilization and war” (Berger 1974, 469).
Building on Berger’s work, Roger Brown has produced a highly incisive
body of scholarship, which has produced important insights into the poli-
tical worldview of leading “New Bureaucrats” led by Gotō Fumio. It
highlights the inuence of pre-Meiji Confucian administrative thought as an
important corrective to the overemphasis of previous studies on the bu-
reaucracy’s reception of European thought, such as the idealist-inuenced
German Historical School. Brown focuses on the nationalist thinker
Yasuoka Masahiro and his concept of bokumin 牧民 (“shepherding the
people”). Brown shows that nonparty elites in government as critical of
parties out of fear of losing governing prerogatives, stating that:
… Yasuoka reproduced his Confucian-inuenced nationalist perspec-
tive on proper governance for patrons within the nation’s nonparty
political elite during the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, he provided
culturally specic “Oriental” theories legitimizing the ongoing relevance
of these men in an age of parliamentary government and serving their
immediate political objective of reining in the power of the political
parties and thereby securing their own administrative authority.
(Brown 2009, 289)
Brown ultimately concludes that Yasuoka’s bokumin ideology signied a
renovated form of bureaucratic “transcendentalism” (chōzenshugi 超然主義)
whereby the emperor might reign but his ofcials governed, leaving mem-
bers of the Lower House to “assist imperial rule” (yokusan 翼賛) by re-
ecting popular opinion without unduly inuencing policy formulation and
government administration (Brown 2009, 289–90).
Brown has undoubtedly touched on one of the “New Bureaucrats’” core
priorities, namely reecting general public opinion while privileging expertise.
However, by broadening the scope of analysis of political education and
election purication beyond the inner circle of the ‘New Bureaucrats,’ by
including the complex range of inuences often fully in tune with current
global reform thought, and by avoiding a teleological understanding of a
trajectory toward the wartime yokusan elections, it may also be gleaned that
the Alliance’s attitudes to the role of the people in creating an ethical, pow-
erful and independent state, one which would they openly hoped would be-
come the leading contributor to world civilization, was not entirely a reaction
or a belief in the permanent tutelage of the people. To be sure, election pur-
ication and political education were hallmarks of a pedagogical state. Yet,
the Alliance, at least judging from the rhetoric of their journal Shinsei, appears
to have been eagerly committed to stoking a fervent sense of responsibility in
the people as bearers of the nation’s success. The Alliance appeared to imagine
a temporary tutelage through political education which would galvanize
popular support for the “moralization of politics.” In fact, the language used
158 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
evokes less a system of guidance by elite individuals than rule by the ethically
rened customs based on the kokumin 国民 (“national citizens”) and informed
by an ethnic essence which required enlightened custodians of this culture to
bring full awareness to the people. An analysis of the writings and activities of
the Alliance may also reveal a base of support for these ideals not only among
ofcials, but among the local members of youth and self-cultivation groups
who potentially held a belief in a sense of agency and self-realization in a
participatory mass nationalism explaining how common people outside of
power could have equated their own perception of self-interest and identity
with the development of the nation. In terms of the intent of reformist ofcials
as well as their potential social base of support, the secondary literature on the
subject, beginning with Maruyama Masao, has undergone signicant shifts in
interpretation of the aspirations, or mentality, of the people. Furthermore, the
potential support for a nationalist mass politics which gradually developed
over time has not been fully explored.
The classic interpretation of the political thought in relation to society at
the time offered by Maruyama Masao was that that “fascism from below”
was crushed in the early to mid-1930s after the February 26th Incident of
1936, to be replaced with an elitist fascism from above (Maruyama 1963,
36–41). This military rule from above was made possible by a passive civil
society whose political consciousness was never allowed to mature. The state
facilitated this passive acquiescence through the external indoctrination of
the emperor-ideology complex, a unitary value system conating state and
religion and which stemmed the emergence of a critical independence ne-
cessary for a pluralistic liberalism.
One prominent scholar who has contributed to this shift is Yoshimi
Yoshiaki, who, in his work Grassroots Fascism, reveals the emergence of a
popular base of support for the war resulting from a commitment to empire
during the height of total war, and the confrontation of soldiers with the
resistance of the Chinese. Yet, Yoshimi claims that the common people were
committed to constitutional parliamentarianism until the outbreak of war in
1937 and were thus less susceptible to the nationalist reconstruction plans
pursued by the military and Japanist ideologues (Yoshimi 2015). Sayaka
Chatani’s recent work on youth groups in Japan and the empire also suggests
that, rather than being manipulated from above, youth groups directed by the
Home Ministry ofcials – who were in fact members of the Alliance for a New
Japan –, actively embraced and absorbed state propaganda, perceiving it as a
tool for their own advancement. In fact, Chatani argues that youth groups of
which Tazawa Yoshiharu was considered the “father,” were seen in part as
vehicles for rural youth to “enter into contentious politics” (Chatani 2020, 58).
Chatani’s work suggests the possibility of a social base for what she refers to as
the militarist worldview of the Japanese state. Chatani notes that when “ex-
amining Japan’s assimilation policy in its colonies, scholars rarely question
how assimilation or nationalization occurred within Japan in the rst place,”
stating that:
Aspirations for a mass political party 159
The spread of emperor-centered nationalism, which itself was simulta-
neously a device and a goal in creating a national consciousness, did not
happen simply because it was imposed on people through the Boshin
Imperial Rescript, school curricula, and propaganda. Rather, it resulted
from intermediary concepts like “rural youth,” which not only carried the
ideology but directly attracted people and groups with differing visions.
(Chatani 2020, 62)
Tamaki Hiroki’s pathbreaking research concerning local Army Reserve
units and their intervention into politics come to parallel conclusions about
the ground up nature of the motives driving politicization in the interwar
period (Tamaki 2020). Contra to Maruyama Masao, an analysis of the
Alliance for a New Japan in the context of non-elite thought and political
action helps explain not only the potential appeal of nationalist mass politics
and ethnic nationalist welfarism but that, rather than acting as passive
spectators, a range of Japanese thought leaders outside of the state as well as
reformers within the state could actively endorse the ideals of communalist,
anti-liberal kakushin and wield them for their own agendas, gradually col-
laborating, often with tension, with state initiatives.
In sum, the ethnic nationalist reformism of the Alliance for a New Japan
did not represent, as Maruyama argued, a premodern inability to accept
value pluralism or a suppression of an independent social critique
(Maruyama 1963, 36–41). Their worldview emphasized the cultivation of
individual autonomy though through communal solidarity. It was part of a
global trend toward a communalist concept of mass politics and a response
to very modern challenges stemming from industrialization and a cosmo-
logical crisis caused by the perceived soullessness of materialism during in-
dustrialization. Furthermore, in the 1920s, this group of prominent
bureaucrats did not advocate a “yokusan election-”style façade of democ-
racy to suppress the emerging will of the people, and it was not articulated in
terms of top-down elitist management. The underacknowledged emphasis
on the role of the people may shed light on the potential social base of
support for this vision of social reform which collaborated with other
strands of kokumin-centric ethnic nationalism in the 1930s to construct the
IRAA and the wartime state.
By analyzing some representative articles in the journal Shinsei, this sec-
tion will seek to explain the potential appeal and social base of this
worldview by identifying several themes through the lens of the discourse on
the active role of the people in the creation of a more ethical political system,
as well as the emphasis on the self-described “progressive” economics of
welfare and the public good and its interconnection with a publicly minded
cultivation of an autonomous self.
Not only did the concepts of a new political and economic order, and the
consequences of their implementation by these leading bureaucrats in the mid-
1930s have a direct impact on reformist trends in the interwar period, the
160 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
Alliance had important institutional aftereffects. During the Okada cabinet,
Alliance members created extra-parliamentary, extra-party councils of experts
to guide policy. These councils merged with the Resources Bureau of the
Army and ultimately ltered into the Cabinet Planning Board. The Alliance
also contributed directly to the formation of the Imperial Rule Assistance
Association through later providing personnel. Although the Alliance was led
by some of the most powerful and elite reformers in Japan, and even inter-
acted with elites of an older generation such as Gotō Shinpei, the purpose of
this section in tandem with the following section on the publication Ishin, is in
part to explain how the trenchant critiques of corruption and party inghting
of this exclusive circle was reective of a broader set of a nationalist mass
politics and welfarist worldview.
The envisioned movement of the Alliance was conceived as a method of
purifying the corruption of the two national political parties in anticipation
of the rst general election with universal male suffrage. The ultimate agent
of this purication, as described in Shinsei, the publication of the Alliance,
was to be the voters themselves who would be equipped with the political
awareness, morality and knowledge of a modern citizen-subject. This
awareness would provide a critique of party politics and rationalize the
political structure. For Gotō Fumio, Tazawa Yoshiharu and other elite
bureaucrat leaders of the Alliance, the political ideal of an engaged Japanese
people demanding moral accountability in national politics through an
acute political awareness and “healthy public opinion,” was part of a his-
torical development toward their understanding of “democracy,” an “or-
ganic” union of people and state through the willing participation of the
people in a moral and rational order (Mori 1979, 118–130).
Autonomous action, public opinion, and the will of the people
The two major themes of mass politics and economic communalism, un-
derstood as intertwined are discussed colorfully and vigorously throughout
the publication Shinsei, the publication of the Alliance for a New Japan.
One contributor to Shinsei, named Tōge Minoru 藤下三策 (dates unknown),
laments that politics, culture, and education had become separate from its
core essence, and that it was no exaggeration to say that this articial ci-
vilization was the source of unease in the political world. The political class,
in fact, promotes dangerous thought. Speaking like conspirators seeking
bring down the state, they themselves wield force within the Diet, and their
views shift based on the gifts they receive. They are the ones propagating this
so-called dangerous thought: “Politics is power but at the same time it is
education. Yet, in the broad sense. The critical point of the education issue is
in inuence” (Tōge 1924, 71). This is not mere leadership and supervision, it
is an “indirect spiritual interaction” and can come from reading and lis-
tening to the thoughts of others. Tōge cautions that the rise and fall of the
nation depends on casting off articial politics.
Aspirations for a mass political party 161
In a striking and revealing passage, Tōge forcefully denounces the hy-
pocrisy of the destructive policies of the established parties. Politicians fear a
Jewish Peril. Yet, it is they who are making the people distant from politics.
Without shame they demonize the anarchist assassin Namba Daisuke of the
Toranomon Incident, but the politicians themselves act with a cool in-
difference as if unaware of their complicity in the fundamental problems of
Japanese politics. Here the author Tōge’s equation of the threat to the na-
tion from the corruption of politicians and their inghting, with treasonous
conspiracies, represents the most severe level of criticism and is a reection
of the seriousness with which many contributors, such as Tazawa in parti-
cular, valued the fervent commitment of the people to national politics. Tōge
states that his ideal solution for reform was the civic mentality of the youth:
“Taishō youths who cultivate a critical ability and a philosophy of creation,
rise up to thrust out the abuses of those of within the established parties, and
uproot this supercial politics to construct a new civilization!”
Tōge then shows that exploitative selshness in politics was parallel with
Japan’s awed economic policies. Those who “earn income without work,”
such as collecting the interest from property – the classic nemesis of socialist
minded thinkers and a common resentment within the military – emphasize
the importance of the interests of the consumer to justify their own laziness
and maintain the limitlessness of the control of the leisure class. Those with
resources want to protect consumption, but what is neglected are the vast
numbers of poor small producers who are faced with cruel conditions. The
protection of well-to-do consumers at the expense of small producers is a
dangerous trend stemming from dangerous thought. Tōge concludes with a
common refrain, that the corruption, greed, and exploitation of the eco-
nomically disadvantaged derive from a lack of unity of values and thought.
Tōge states that “politics whose content (does not promote) unity of thought
based on values (kachikan 価値観) is articial politics, is dangerous thought
and contains the seeds of crisis for Japan” (Tōge 1924, 72).
The insistence on increased inclusion in electoral politics, yet with an un-
derlying logic that viewed politics as a method of harnessing the active con-
tribution to the nation, rather than progress through the pluralistic debate of
agonistic liberalism, can be seen in certain voices published in Shinsei sup-
porting equal political participation for women. One example which in fact
also reveals a base of readership for the journal beyond a narrow circle of elite
ofcials was the publication of the winners of an essay contest held by Shinsei
on the issue of women’s political rights. Although one contributor admittedly
rejected the necessity of granting equal political rights based on a traditionalist
view of a natural order between men and women and a dismissive attitude to
women’s political knowledge, some winners of the contest forcefully argued
that many Western countries had granted suffrage to women because of their
extraordinary levels of “diligence and ght for the nation” at the Homefront
during the Great War. In the Soviet Union, so one contributor believed,
political inclusion had come as women had proven, in industry and many
162 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
other elds, that they were equally or even more qualied than men. Given the
tragic conditions of working women particularly in agriculture, what was
needed was the liberation of women, respect for equal jinkaku, the spread of
political education, and adequate time for women to engage in self-
cultivation. With the elevation of the political knowledge of the general po-
pulation of women through equality of opportunity in fundamental sub-
stantive education, the granting of the same political rights as men was
appropriate (various authors 1926, 58-64).
Tazawa’s writings on political education and “election purication” fur-
ther claried the stated belief within the publications of the Alliance for a
New Japan that a politically aware general populace was to be a central
agent in an ideal reformed political system. The two ideals become move-
ments in their own right with enormous relevance for reforms in the late
1930s, culminating in the formation of the Imperial Rule Assistance
Association in October 1940. Political education would appear to lend itself
to elitist management of public opinion, and “healthy public opinion” was a
central goal for political reform.
Yet, the ideals stated within Shinsei are designed to equip the kokumin
with the ability to critique the parties, as a check against their “various
corruptions.” Specically, political education was the enlightenment of the
people through the elevation of morality and political knowledge necessary
for the universal male suffrage era of elections. One core problem routinely
denounced was a lack of interest among the people in the depredations
committed by parties who merely sought to seize power for themselves at the
expense of other political interest groups, and the nation. Tazawa describes
the root cause of this corruption in one article, as deriving from a politics
not based on political thought (seiji-jō no shugi 政治上の主義), but rather on
a politics centered on political gures themselves (Tazawa 1927a, 1–3).
Political education aimed to rectify these aws through the temporary tu-
telage of thought guidance. Yet, the stated goal was empowering the public
sphere to demand a more just political order.
The Alliance’s view of mass politics in which the people actively partici-
pate yet through the unied values of morality can be seen in the discourse
on “healthy public opinion” (kenzen na yoron 健全な輿論), which allowed
disagreement yet prioritized a shared public good. It also conrms this
circles’ distinct belief in the vitality and dynamism of the autonomous self-
initiative of the people managed through a prescribed solidarity. The journal
Shinsei stressed that public opinion was the basis of a constitutional state,
yet it required signicant interest and enthusiasm from the people. This
interest in politics would be initially instilled through political education
(Ikeoka 1926, 52). Shinsei emphasized that a politically aware people needed
critical awareness to judge the statements of others. The ability for the
broader population to engage in the formation of public opinion, which
Shinsei supported, required reason, and an attitude of fairness and objec-
tivity. Yet its admonition not to be controlled by emotion reveals its effort to
Aspirations for a mass political party 163
enforce an ideological self-regulation. Likewise, it argued that in order to
create a healthier, and more broad public opinion, one must protect the
morals of brotherly love and harmony. This demands placing one’s own
opinion (iken 意見) within the whole, as well as not thinking merely in terms
of one’s small self-interest. The article concludes by that “without neglecting
self-cultivation, the Japanese people must have awareness and strive to be-
come the driving force of a healthy public opinion, to elevate the level of
politics and self-governing groups” (Ikeoka 1926, 52).
In a similar vein, Tazawa Yoshiharu explained the purpose of publishing
the journal Shinsei was to protect and facilitate the realization of the peo-
ple’s will. One of the recurring criticisms of the parties within the publication
of the Alliance was that they “obstruct the true will of the people.” Parties,
according this circle of reformers, take morality lightly and in order to
achieve a majority or maintain a majority, ally themselves with nancial
power and engage in corruption. The people lose hope in politics and lose
interest and fervor for national life, which Tazawa regards as the “most
fearsome thing” for the well-being of the nation. As a result, a section of the
people seek to escape striving for the construction of national life out of
disgust, and become resigned to the conclusion that the meaning of life is
enjoying culture. A subsection goes as far as using language about de-
stroying the state. The result of these tendencies will be natural decline. In
response, to avoid stepping in this chaos, it is necessary to devise a political
purication suitable for the sparking of the public will of the people, and the
resuscitation of their interest and fervor in national society. The content of
political education is the elevation of political morality and the spreading of
political knowledge. Yet, despite Tazawa’s vigorous advocacy for a form of
state tutelage through political and moral education, this did not lead to a
belief in status hierarchy. According to Tazawa, there should be no different
treatment or separation between those who are politically educated and
those who are not. Furthermore, youth groups, in the spirit of mutual
learning, were promoted as ideally not top-down. Teachers must learn from
students as well, a point that Tazawa learned during his experience as a
youth group leader (Tazawa 1924, 2–6).
It was also the case that to implement reform and achieve modern people-
centric politics, the authors associated with the Alliance argued for the need
to instill values of autonomous initiative. Yet, this understanding of au-
tonomy appears to have been a collective one, intimately tied to the ethnic
nation. Political education, therefore, was also seen as a method of molding
ethnic national culture. Articles in Shinsei stress that the vitality and mor-
ality of the nation depends on the individual cultivation of the people, their
active commitment and participation in the program of the nation. Yet this
emphasis on the centrality of the action and inclusion of the people is pre-
mised on a shared core of unity in the emotions, principles, and values of the
people secured by a unied ethnic nature, through ethnic essentialism.
Ethnic nature which is the wellspring of culture changes according to the era
164 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
and can be rened through education and self-cultivation to maximize its
strengths and diminish its weaknesses.
The emphasis on autonomy stemmed from a belief in the power of “self-
creation” often touted as one of the group’s most fervent ideals. Many of the
reformers, including major national gures such as Gotō Fumio and Tazawa
Yoshiharu, saw autonomous self-creation as the source of economic dyna-
mism and national strength. Tazawa wrote that as the work of an individual is
the reection of an individual personality, for great culture, we need a great
ethnic nature. Just as individual personality (seikaku 性格), has to be molded,
the ethnic nature of the country had to be molded rst. Parallel to the de-
velopment of individual character, “we must devote all power to molding the
ethnic nature of the Japanese people. As a result, for the rst time, the ethnic
nation awakens to its individuality, and as it achieves the creation of culture
based on this individuality, we will surely achieve the creation of an even
greater culture, a more remarkable culture through the tempering and re-
construction of that ethnic nature.” Furthermore, “we of course know the
difculty of day in and day out educational efforts to mold and reconstruct
ethnic nature, yet, I think unyielding devotion allows for the achievement of
this heavenly work” (Tazawa 1927b, 1–15).
In the end, political education to inculcate the values of autonomous self-
creation was necessary to correct the fundamental aws of the Japanese na-
tion. Yet, in this argument an explicit opposition to statist coercion as cow-
ering the people into a static submission comes into focus. Tazawa explains
that strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese ethnic nation was the Imperial
Household at the center, signifying the nation as a family. The strength of
Japan’s ethnic essence resides in its burning with shared emotion (kangeki 感
激). The simplicity and relative discipline in terms of material desires were also
a cultural asset. The weakness and aw, however, is the lack of free creation
(jiyū sōzō 自由創造), and a tendency to emulate models. In Tazawa’s analysis,
the Japanese ethnic nature had its glorious essence in the “Great Way” of
respect for the gods and the worshiping of the Imperial ancestors, but its
greatest aw was that it lacked this spirit of free creativity.
Tazawa deemed that concentration of power centrally was probably
temporarily necessary during the Meiji Restoration to break through the
damaging customs of feudal efdoms and spiritually unify the nation under
the emperor. Yet, the superstition of all powerful law and rules of regional
bureaucrats, and an over-reliance on kokken 国権, i.e. on the states’ rights as
opposed to people’s rights, had stunted the ability of autonomous critical
thinking imperative for the development of a modern nation. Tazawa judged
that, since the Meiji period, Japan had an ever-increasing afiction of imi-
tation, in which regional locales passively emulated the centers, and warned
that regions which over-relied on central models lost their sense of re-
sponsibility. In contrast, the harnessing of each creative individual would
ultimately produce an abundant society, and mutually stimulating institu-
tions particular to their locales could create a high-level culture. Tazawa
Aspirations for a mass political party 165
continued by turning the same criticism of a passive lack of autonomous
creativity against the country’s large business conglomerates (zaibatsu 財閥)
for their overreliance on the power of the state. In his words, the “zaibatsu
represented feudal-thinking capitalism, which cannot become liberal capit-
alism, and is a far cry from free creation” (Tazawa 1927b, 1–15). In sum,
political education was not envisioned as an instrument of ensuring a pliable
populace but rather as a tool of collective national empowerment.
Ethnic nationalist reformism in the 1930s: Military and civilian
collaboration through the publication Ishin
In the aftermath of the nancial turbulence in the late 1920s as well as the
nationalist upsurge after the Manchurian Incident in 1931, the timbre of
reformist voice began to reect shifting social realities. The Depression led
to altered understandings of agency and reconsiderations of what tools were
available to enact social change. Throughout the spectrum of political views
there were subtle reorientations of thought leading some ideologues to
transgress boundaries and collaborate with new networks. In the crucible of
the 1930s, the state and ethnic nationalism began to be regarded as the only
possible instrument of stabilizing the economy. Nationalist reformers sought
greater collaboration with the military and prominent former progressives,
even those intellectuals most wary of the state, began to reevaluate the role
of the state in improving conditions. Prominent strands of Japanists, whose
ideal social order was grounded in a belief in the symbiotic relationship
between self-realization and national empowerment through moral-spiritual
cultivation, began to begrudgingly acknowledge the rise of technocracy and
the need for social policy determined by bureaucrats. Yet, the rise of the
bureaucracy led to a fear that bureaucratic forces whose claim to expertise
beyond the accountability of the people would form a new despotic base of
power. This also prompted some nationalists to reemphasize the importance
of the people and their direct relationship to the emperor.
One network which provides insights into this conuence of overlapping
networks can be gleaned from the pages of Ishin 維新, a publication by the
originally leftist publishing house Heibon-sha 平凡社 of Shimonaka
Yasaburō 下中弥三郎 (1878–1961). Initially rising to national prominence
as a leftist labor leader from humble origins, Shimonaka’s conversion to
Japanism in the interwar period was closely observed by military thinkers as
can be seen through the private papers of Araki Sadao 荒木貞夫
(1877–1966). The monthly magazine Ishin is an important window into the
social reformist and Japanist networks, which coalesced under the rubric of
a Shōwa Restoration (Shōwa Ishin 昭和維新) and normalized the concepts
underpinning the New Order and Imperial Assistance Association under
Konoe Fumimaro. Through Shimonaka, Ishin organized regular panel
discussions bringing together Communist-Party-founder-turned-Japanist
166 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
Akamatsu Katsumaro, economists Takahashi Kamekichi 高橋亀吉
(1894–1977) and Kojima Seiichi 小島精一(1895-1966), as well as high-
ranking military planners such as general Matsui Iwane and his Pan-
Asianist associates. Contributions included at least one article from Konoe
Fumimaro himself. Yet, most importantly, the panel discussions and articles
featured mid-level ofcers often driving policy discussions. Most civilian
contributors came from social reformist backgrounds.
Several key themes emerge in Ishin. One was support for a totalitarian
political system under the intimate rule of the emperor, which could reect the
will of the people unhindered by the self-serving liberal parties, and the role of
the Diet to facilitate this ideal unity. Through articles and roundtable dis-
cussions, Shimonaka and the networks supported in Ishin, argued that
intimate imperial rule was not incompatible with parliamentarian re-
presentation of the popular will (min‘i 民意) equated with public opinion
(yoron 輿論). Another was economic restructuring facilitated by the military.
Mass increases in military spending would increase the welfare of the people
and a planned economy could overcome the crisis of capitalism. One last
theme was the rejection of materalism and the continued importance of per-
sonal spiritual cultivation. It was stressed that representation through “true
and fair elections” was the starting point, and that despotism was inimical to
the benevolent “ethical state.” Ishin concluded that the purpose of the Diet
was the implementation of assisting the rule of emperor (yokusan) by chan-
neling the will of the people whose needs would be organically unied, facil-
itating an active and mutually benecial cooperative system of morality
(Shimonaka 1936, 11–16). The writings of Ishin may provide an explanation
of a theme which deserves further exploration: the belief that social control to
mobilize national power was conceived as compatible with the “will of the
people” typically conceived as monolithic and abstracted beyond recognizable
reality. It also helps to reinforce that some leading military officers, and the
nationalists who shared their views, appeared to have held convictions in
regards to social reform independent from purely military concerns.
This worldview nds expression in the ideals of Nakatani Takeyo 中谷武
世 (1898–1990), an active contributor to Ishin and its roundtable discussions
who stood in the intellectual lineage of the national socialist Kita Ikki 北一
輝 (1883–1937). For Nakatani, the conicts of liberalism would be solved by
the intimate rule of the emperor. Yet, in his view, the emperor was not
despotic, or dictatorial, but rather a manifestation of a principle uniting the
people. Juxtaposing “representative democracy” (daigiteki minshu seiji 代議
的民主政治) with a political system based on “national holism” (minzoku-
teki zentai seiji 民族的全体政治), Nakatani claimed that a Japanist political
system would be premised on the organic unity of the people, and the em-
peror would achieve shared values, thought, and self-interest to overcome
divisions (okuchō isshin 億兆一心). Imperial politics, according to this
worldview, was ethnic totalitarian politics, which transcended class and
Aspirations for a mass political party 167
occupation. This system would be realized through the Diet as an Imperial
Rule Assistance Association (Taisei yokusankai 大政翼賛会) (Nakatani
1934, 32–41). Thereby, Nakatani presaged the term later used to name the
central political organization established in 1940.
For Nakatani, the will of the people was not to be confused with the party
coalitions, which received the majority of votes in elections. In fact, he ar-
gued that parties obstructed the will of the people, and that their inghting
encouraged a corrupting contest of power. Rather, the will of the people was
equated with ethnic essence and national tradition. This emphasis on culture
and tradition, however, did not translate into elite repression of the people.
On the contrary, Nakatani argued that “Imperial politics is the politics of
people’s movements while liberalism was the politics of exploitation and
despotism.” Nakatani argued for the “organic” unity of the will of the
people and the will of the emperor to overcome conicting self-interest.
Nonetheless, he still appears to emphasize the central role of the people.
Nakatani imagined that the “the general will of the people in Japan, through
the Diet, structures the will of the Emperor. Through the will of the
Emperor, the will of the state is structured.”
Another political activist who intersected with the circle publishing in
Ishin was Nakahara Kinji, the leader of an Army Reservist group in Nagano
Prefecture who collaborated with other national socialist-inected activists,
such as Nakatani Takeyo and Hashimoto Kingorō 橋本欣五郎 (1890–1957).
Tamaki Hiroki has shown that Nakahara was deeply sympathetic to so-
cialistic ideals of social justice and sought to mobilize Army Reservists as a
proletarian movement. Although he later had a position within the IRAA,
in the 1930s the Waseda University educated Nakahara sought to enter into
electoral politics to lead efforts for drastic reform yet was met with serious
opposition from Reservists headquarters and the Army Ministry who
sought to temper the politicization of the military. Nevertheless, Nakahara’s
embrace of the Election Purication Movement and the specic way in
which the political imaginary of a local reformer was imbedded in aspira-
tions for totalistic mobilization conceived through Imperial assistance pro-
vides insights into how activists even outside of power could see their own
interests, and a sense of collective empowerment, reected in the state.
In articles published in Ishin in the mid-1930s during the ferment of the
Election Purication Movement and the controversy over the nature of the
relationship of the Emperor to the state, Nakahara lamented that Election
Purication had excited many groups, but had yet to live up to its promise in
elevating the politics of the kokutai. Nakahara appeared to believe that more
action was necessary to counteract the forces obstructing change, but for-
cefully argued that the “great tide of Showa Restorationism, regardless of
whether it is wanted by the government or not, will be propelled forward”
and further that “the Election Purication and Clarication of the Kokutai
movements were weapons provided to ensure the perfect chance for the new
popular impetus” for reform through prefectural and national elections
168 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
(Nakahara 1935, 18). Nakahara sought to establish political organizations
to reform the political economy and advance ethic development with a
platform which included the eradication of utilitarian class-based liberalism,
the overcoming of capitalism, nancial fascism, and socialism, as well as the
elimination of feudal thought. Nakahara believed the time was ripe to
transcend anti-Japanese thought, politics and diplomacy “through the
election struggle” (Nakahara 1935, 20).
Nevertheless, Nakahara showed a deepening frustration with the established
political parties’ squabbles and barefaced ambition. The urgent need, ac-
cording to Nakahara, for a Lower House which would more directly serve the
will of the people was made painfully clear. For the establishment of a re-
formist Diet, there needed to be a structural reorganization of the Diet and its
membership (Nakahara 1936, 14). Japan, argued Nakahara, was facing in-
ternational and domestic crisis and the obstructionist forces maintaining the
status quo could lead the government and Diet to atrophy and, ultimately, lose
its function. For Nakahara, the Imperial military was not merely an organi-
zation for defense, it was the protector of the kokutai and the nation of the
emperor. If those responsible for the national constitution and laws, namely
the government and Diet, failed to adhere to the way of assisting the Emperor,
who was to say that there would be no case in which a revision of the con-
stitution and laws would not be revised through extra-legal means? (Nakahara
1936, 15).
Parallel to his associate Nakahara, the radical Hashimoto Kingorо
sought
to mobilize a reformist movement through his Greater Japan Youth Party
(Dai Nihon Seinentо
大日本青年党) based on the concept of “Imperial
Assistance.” The explanation of their demands for economic controls and a
revised Diet sheds light on the potential appeal of this worldview. According
to a published book which served as an explanation of their platform, the
current era was confronted with the deadlock of materialist liberalism, an
age in which money became authority, the wealthy were arrogant, and spirit
was dismissed. This deadlock meant the deadlock of capitalism and party
politics. It was an era of domestic and geopolitical crisis. The Greater Japan
Youth Party, which took an aggressive posture against exploitative land-
lords, demanded the reform of capitalism and “controls” (tо
sei 統制).
Hashimoto and the Youth Party were adamant that Controls, economic or
political, were entirely separate from the concept of “restrictions” which had
dened the feudal era (Hashimoto 1937, 13). Restrictions suppressed the
essential purpose, the essential life of things. Controls, in contrast, employed
craft to carry out the completion of an essential purpose. Crucially, Controls
were born from the transcendence of a fusion of restrictions and of freedom.
It was the fundamental principle of the future (Hashimoto 1937, 15). The
problem with the current government, argued the text, was that it had no
theory of control (Hashimoto 1937, 14).
The solution to overcoming this crisis was a totalitarian system of in-
timate Imperial rule. Nevertheless, Hashimoto and his followers still
Aspirations for a mass political party 169
emphasized the importance of a political system which integrated the pop-
ular will. The Party text explained that
the main issue in reforming the political structure was the Diet and the
parties. Concentrating state power back to the Imperial Household is
the desperate call of the ethnic nation. This may rai se some doubts as to
whether we reject the Diet. Yet, we should make clear we do not.
(Hashimoto 1937, 58)
The current Diet system, corrupted by bribery and ofcials who received small
percentages of votes, did not reect true popular will. The goal of the Youth
Party was to “revitalize the unique features of traditional Imperial politics
through a progressive new form” (Hashimoto 1937, 58). And unlike some
radical reformers, Hashimoto and the Youth Party did not believe in an ab-
solute rejection of elections. In fact, “elections were one important measure of
knowing the popular will.” What was needed, however, was a rationalization
of elections through election revision (Hashimoto 1937, 72). Hashimoto, not
unlike other Japanist thinkers, interpreted the historical emergence of the
singular Japanese constitution as a document which, in contradistinction to
the contest for power between monarch and people in Europe, facilitated the
intimate relationship of people and emperor. Constitutional rule and People’s
Rights had developed as a method of checking minority rule and the excessive
encroachment of bureaucrats. A revitalized Japanese Diet, which could
channel true popular will to the emperor, would realize the traditional na-
tional life of the Japanese ethnic nation and effectively provide the conditions
for the realization of ethnic essence. This discourse, common among Japanists
of this general circle, also appears strikingly consonant with mid-Meiji “na-
tional essence” activists who pursued a Japanese-style constitution and elec-
tions to protect an intimidate relationship between emperor and people (see
Grover 2021).
Yet another voice amplied by Ishin who discussed revised systems of re-
ecting the will of the people was the national socialist Tsukui Tatsuo.
Speaking during an age of geopolitical ruptures, in which total mobilization
became a centrifugal force on politics, Tsukui wrote in Ishin that in the civi-
lized world there were no political structures which did not listen to the people
at all. Nevertheless, democracy and parliamentarianism had collapsed and in
its stead a new national, totalitarian and technocratic politics had emerged
(Tsukui 1934, 17). In these systems, the protectors of the interests of society
were an elite few who secured the welfare for the entirety of nation and people.
However, according to Tsukui, in terms of the central priority of the public
good, Japan had from antiquity implemented a “higher-level form of fascist
political theory.” Japan’s political tradition was already equipped with the
“correct politics for the ourishing and welfare of the entirety of nation and
people based in the principle of the unity of the people under the emperor
170 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
(ikkunbanmin 一君萬民).” Tsukui’s vision of reform would embrace the spirit
of parliamentarianism as well as expertise, and this would be crowned with the
implementation of “radiant Mahāyāna (Buddhist) politics.” This ideal politics
would not be operated by one or two individual minds, but could be found in
the clarication of traditional ideals built through deeply rooted ethnic
practice. The Diet had been founded to reect the people’s demands, yet aws
continued to be exposed in its function. Tsukui exclaimed that
for the Diet to truly serve as the seat of Imperial Way Assistance (ōdō
yokusan 皇道翼賛), and not serve the cabinet as an institution of
monopoly for party factions, urgent efforts must be exerted for the
Diet to assume the character of national unity to the letter. Transcending
parliamentarianism does not mean eliminating the Diet, it means making
it a place which more correctly reects the public opinion of the people.
(Tsukui 1934, 19)
The thought of Tsukui, who routinely touted Mahāyāna values in his writings,
nevertheless stressed the forward-looking developmentalist quality of the
Japanese spirit, challenging the common perception of a strict binary among
Japanese nationalists between modernist technocrats and irrational spir-
itualists (see Mimura 2011). Most importantly, Tsukui’s idealized ethnic na-
tionalism was emphatically people-centric. Tsukui cautioned that in an effort
to overcome liberalism and socialism, many Japanists had fallen to advocating
a blunt statism. It must not be forgotten that Japanism was a transcendent
synthesis of liberalism-socialism and not a mere reaction to it. Tsukui’s felt
compelled to clarify Japanism against fanatical nationalist demagogues who
abused the sacrosanct nature of the core imagery of the kokutai to attack
others, as well against, in the background, the advance of a technocratic
bureaucracy. Japan was “an Imperial country, but at the same time was a
nation of the people (minshū 民衆).” In fact, the “emperor was not above the
people, but among the people” (Tsukui 1940, 19). The progressive Japanese
spirit was founded in the fundamental principle of the “people as base”
(minpon 民本), and was believed to foster the ourishing of the people. What is
more, Japanism did not merely seek to restore the past. It was also a “vigorous
developmental progressivism” (Tsukui 1940, 21).
In a parallel vein to his writings in Ishin, Tsukui states that it is forgotten
that Japan was a “true democratic nation” (Tsukui 1940, 19). The Japanese
ethnic nation, he argued, had long secured not a fake liberty, but a true
liberty which sprang from the depths of ethics and pathos. Thus, those who
believed that the Japanese kokutai contained dictatorship or bureaucratic
supremacy were gravely mistaken (Tsukui 1940, 19-20). Japan was not a
country of the unity of the emperor and bureaucrats, the unity of the em-
peror and the military or the unity of the emperor and political parties. Any
politics not backgrounded by the will of the people, economics which did
Aspirations for a mass political party 171
not expand the power of the people, or through which lacked a people-based
quality was irrelevant and disconnected to life. Japanism must take the place
of liberalism and socialism and must become representative of the voice of
the people (Tsukui 1940, 21).
From these fervent writings, which exude condence in signicant social
transformation, it can be seen how intellectuals and activists could serve as
conduits of a mass nationalism independent of state direction. This nation-
alism was malleable enough for a critical mass of the population to seize upon
for the imagining of their own interests functioning to both provide a critique
of government ofcials who fell short of the ideal and to pressure ideological
conformity. In fact, public media such as Ishin, which provided a mouthpiece
for an increasingly politicized military and helped publicize their positions,
were entirely uncritical of the military. Some authors who advocated a
planned economy wrote that the 1934 army pamphlet promoting an economy
grounded in morality for the sake of the well-being of the people was welcome
reassurance that the army was a representative of “national socialism” (kokka
shakaishugi 国家社会主義). Shimonaka Yasaburō and others saw military
spending as a form of “public works program,” which would ow like a shot
of medicine to every part of the organic body, increasing employment and
income for the nation. The people and intellectuals needed closer relations
with the military, which was one pillar of the ethical state. The military would
maximize national production, and through it, the welfare of the people
(Shimonaka 1936, 11–16). This emphasis on maximizing welfare through in-
creased industrial production facilitated by mass government spending, with
the belief that the negative effects of ination could be offset through an equal
expansion of productivity was in fact a crucial global trend. Yet it is also true
that planned economy proponent Kojima Seiichi, although highly receptive in
principle to many of the pamphlet’s proposals was also cautious, among
others things, about its vagueness and the potential for spending to lead to
detrimental ination without controls.
Lastly, domestic movements were not the only hotbed for exploring new
concepts of social reform, mobilization and the role of people. Empire also
infused new vistas for imagining socio-political systems which harnessed the
active support of the people. Imperatives for total preparation acutely felt by
military visionaries, coupled with the need for a free space for experimenta-
tion, led to early programs for a mass party emerging in Manchuria. Efforts
within the military to construct a new political system were driven by Ishiwara
Kanji, among the most impactful Japanese military ofcers in the 1930s.
In April 1932, Ishiwara Kanji, who spearheaded the invasion and occu-
pation of Manchuria in 1931 as part of a broader attempt to create a self-
sufficient bloc in preparation for war against the Soviet Union, encouraged
Japanese residents of Manchukuo to establish the Concordia Association
(Kyōwakai 協和会; Xiehehui in Mandarin), a civic organization whose goal
was to promote a sense of nationhood in Manchukuo and which aimed to
make the ideal of “ethnic harmony” a reality. To Ishiwara, developing a
172 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
strong civic organization to shape politics appeared to provide an alternative
to the Japanese military-controlled Manchukuo government nominally
headed by Puyi. He insisted that this association, with grassroots support,
should assume the role of political leadership in the new state functioning
as a single party dictatorship that would reect the people’s will” (Kishida
2020, 19). Yet, Ishiwara’s vision was not prompted merely as a response to
war preparation. In fact, during his younger years in training at the
Military Academy in Tokyo, Ishiwara sought the guidance of political
thinkers Tokutomi Sohō 徳富蘇峰 (1863–1957), Nogi Maresuke 乃木希典
(1849–1912), and Ōkuma Shigenobu 大隈重信 (1838– 1922), who had been
prominent in the Meiji period (Kishida 2020, 19).
Although the maverick Ishiwara was soon disillusioned with the direction
of the Concordia Society, Ishiwara began wielding his contacts to press for a
signicant reorganization of the political structure domestically; and these
effort shed light on the processes leading up to the establishment of the
IRAA. In 1936, Ishiwara organized meetings among reformist leaders in-
cluding representatives from the military such as general Hayashi Senjurō,
the bureaucracy, such as Gotō Fumio of the Alliance for a New Japan, and
industry at the home of future leader of the IRAA, Arima Yoriyasu, to
develop a new party under Prince Konoe Fumimaro.
Undergirding these efforts was the ideal of integrating the “will of the
people” into a system of national unication which would intervene into
every aspect of social life. An advisor to Ishiwara, Asahara Kenzō 浅原健三
(1897–1967), a former leftist labor leader and associated with the Concordia
Society, and who sought the formation of a mass party to deal with the
Lower House, helped articulate the Ishiwara plan. According to Asahara,
the organization of the Concordia Association was twofold, and it was these
two aspects which could serve as a model for Japan. The rst would im-
plement a process to speak to the will of the people through councils, re-
miniscent of Meiji era thought. Asahara envisioned that
The members of the Concordia Association, which make up a direct
organization reecting the will of the people to officials and the will of state
officials to t he people (min’i jōtatsu, jōi katatsu 民意上達，上意下達),
which would gather in one party where other necessary bureaucratic
officials would attend; and under a roundtable discussions, carry out the
necessary duties of through a union of councils (rengō kyōgikai 連合協議
会), which is the rst aspect of organization.
(Asahara 1937, 51–58)
The reorganization of the Concordia Society in 1937 was a product of this
vision. The way the central ideal of organic state-society relations through
“reecting the will of the people to officials and the will of state officials to
the people” ultimately became the key phrase in the New Order Declaration
of the Konoe administration in August 1940, which laid the conceptual
Aspirations for a mass political party 173
groundwork for the IRAA, exposes the impact of the colonial periphery on
the reformist imaginary of the Japanese metropole.
In terms of the second theme, Asahara argued that outside of this direct
organization of channeling the will of the people upwards, and the will of the
high to the low, there is an administrative system which is a cell structure of
(organizations) from central government to the provinces. This system
would, according to Asahara, touch the everyday lives of the people. Under
this control system, members of the Concordia Association facilitated the
implementation improvements for workers, farmers, etc., and also labored
for ethnic harmony (Asahara 1937).
Asahara explained that the one critical factor for the Concordia Society and
its attractiveness as a model for Japan, was its utility as a pedagogical state to
tutor or guide rather than coerce the people into the necessary transforma-
tions for a more just society as well as one more prepared for the threat of total
war. Asahara explains the Concordia Society was “an organization for moral
suasion, an education organization, a social organization, a religious orga-
nization, thought organization, an economic organization, and at the same a
political organization.” Yet, Asahara continues by cautioning that “the
Concordia Association is different from Japanese political organizations.
Japanese political organizations and movements have power as their goal. In
Manchukuo, competition of power is not forgiven” (Asahara 1937, 51–58).
Asahara concludes that, not unlike the bureaucrats in the Alliance for a New
Japan, political systems which seek to implement the true will of the people
can only be successful if the state represented the ethnic essence of the people.
This view that policy which reected ethnic culture also reected the true will
of the people was in fact a central theme which became more pronounced over
the course of the interwar period. Finally, Asahara, like virtually all reformers
in Japan at that time, but particularly those connected to Japanists circles such
as Ishin, saw political economic change as linked and argued characteristically
that increased spending and production serve to stabilize the economy and
provide for the welfare of the people.
Conclusion
Japanese aspirations for a mass party or totalitarian reforms in the 1930s
and 1940s represented more than mere total war mobilization or an ad hoc
reaction to the needs of the war with China. The repressive ideology of the
period was ultimately rooted in certain utopian aspirations for a more just
social order, which emerged in the 1920s and 1930s as a response to what
was perceived as a corrupt and unfair state of things. In fact, prominent
elements of IRAA discourse began as opposition ideas before they found
their way into ofcial war-time ideology. In this sense, the Imperial Rule
Assistance Association was the result of a longer intellectual lineage to
transform the state by overcoming liberal democracy.
174 Bruce Grover and Egas Moniz Bandeira
However, this political transformation was never completed. The con-
stitutional system established in the second half of the 19th century proved
to be comparatively stable—much more so than those established during the
wave of imperial transformations which affected the Qing, Russian, and
Ottoman Empires in the rst two decades of the 20th century. The Japanese
party system withered, but did not completely disappear, and the political
parties maintained a certain foothold on power (Berger 1977). Accordingly,
the Imperial Rule Assistance Association established in 1940 was never
developed into a mass party to dominate the state akin the other Eurasian
single-party regimes. In this sense, the Japanese case was somewhat atypical
among the cases discussed in this volume. It was, however, part of the same
global trend toward the authoritarian reconstruction of political systems
and a tighter organizational coherence of the masses.
Unpublished archival sources
Nihon kindai shiryō kenkyūkai kyūzōshiryō 日本近代史料研究会旧蔵資料
[Old material of the research commission on modern Japanese historical
records]. Held at Hitotsubashi University, Japan.
Note
* The authors would like to thank Tobias Weiss of Sophia University, Tokyo, for
generously providing access to his personal sources on the Alliance for a New Japan.
1 Hashimoto Seinosuke 橋本清之助, handwritten record of postwar interview, in
Nihon kindai shiryō kenkyūkai kyūzōshiryō 日本近代史料研究会旧蔵資料 [Old
material of the research commission on modern Japanese historical records], 3–9–1,
16–17. Held at Hitotsubashi University, Japan.
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Aspirations for a mass political party 177
7 Constitution-making in the
informal Soviet empire in Eastern
Europe, East Asia, and Inner Asia,
1945–1955
*
Ivan Sablin
Introduction
During the rst decade after the Second World War, all Soviet dependencies
in Europe and Asia adopted new constitutions or introduced substantial
amendments to the existing ones. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 was the
main reference for most of the constitutions, while Iosif Vissarionovich
Stalin personally edited some of the drafts. Despite the similarities between
many provisions and direct borrowings from the Soviet Constitution, there
were major differences between the constitutions of Albania (1946), Bulgaria
(1947), China (1954), Czechoslovakia (1948), East Germany (1949),
Hungary (1949), North Korea (1948), Mongolia (1940), Poland (1947
1
and
1952), Romania (1948 and 1952), and Yugoslavia (1946). They varied in
terms of the sources of sovereignty and in their discussions of political
subjectivity, established different supreme state institutions, and did not
necessarily mention the ruling party, the Soviet Union, or socialism.
There were in fact no clear guidelines for constitution-making in Soviet
dependencies until 1957 (Hazard 1974, 988). Although their adoption was
often directed or supervised by Moscow, the authorship of the con-
stitutions was heterogeneous, with the participation of domestic and
Soviet leaders, jurists, and ofcials. Variable forms of dependence, from
military occupation to ideological and pragmatic allegiance, as well as the
ad hoc solutions in individual contexts contributed to the variety of
constitutional norms.
This lack of uniformity attested to the imperial character of Soviet gov-
ernance in Eurasia (Burbank and Cooper 2010, 11–12). In 1985, ahead of
the imperial turn in Russian and Soviet history (Sunderland 2016), the
economist Charles Wolf conceptualized the informal (external) Soviet em-
pire. It excluded the internal empire, that is the Soviet Union proper, and
had several distinguishing features: partial contiguity, the variety in the
forms of domination (satellites, allies, or cooperating regimes), and the
special role of the ruling parties, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU)
2
as the primary agent of imperial power and the associated parties
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-8
in the dependent polities (Wolf 1985, 997–98). Although Wolf wrote about
the 1980s, the main characteristics of the informal Soviet empire con-
solidated already in 1945–1955.
This chapter focuses on the constitutional and nonconstitutional gov-
ernment architectures, which together with the establishment of state so-
cialist economies became an important part of the structural adjustments
(Duara 2007) within the informal Soviet empire. Structural adjustments did
not necessarily occur through coercion. Allegiance was also ensured through
ideological commitment to building socialism, which made the informal
Soviet empire also a hegemonic formation (Morozov 2021), and pragmatic
interest in Soviet assistance (Li 2001, 29–31). The Soviet–Yugoslav split in
1948, as well as the later Albanian–Soviet and Sino–Soviet splits, demon-
strated that structural adjustments did not predetermine subordination and
were reversible.
Formal integration of different parties and states also took shape during
the rst decade after the Second World War but the respective multilateral
organizations did not cover the whole informal empire. Whereas the in-
tegration through the Communist International (Comintern, 1919–1943)
included parties from the whole world, postwar organizations were conned
to Europe. The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties
(Cominform, 1947–1956), the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
(1949–1991), and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (1955–1991) only in-
cluded European members in the 1940s and the 1950s.
The analyses of the constitutions’ adoption and authorship was based on
secondary literature and archival documents, predominantly those published
by Tat’iana Viktorovna Volokitina and her colleagues (Volokitina, Islamov,
and Murashko 1997; 1998; Volokitina 1999; 2002). The provisions of the
constitutions, pertaining to sovereignty, political subjectivity, supreme state
institutions, and dependence, were compared in their Russian translations.
The survey of nonconstitutional institutions and their representation relied on
archival documents, secondary literature, and illustrated propaganda maga-
zines. These magazines were modeled after the journal SSSR na stroike
(“USSR in Construction”), renamed Sovetskii Soiuz (“Soviet Union”) in
1950, and were usually published in the respective states and in multiple
languages. No magazines were available for Mongolia and Yugoslavia.
Constitution-making was not a one-sided adoption of the supposed model
of people’s democracy
3
and followed the nuanced imperial logic. Multiple
actors, including domestic party leaders and legal scholars, Soviet advisors,
and the leaders and functionaries of the VKP(b)/CPSU, partook in drafting
the constitutions. The Yugoslav Constitution of 1946, for instance, was
drafted by Yugoslav Communists in contact with the Soviet Ambassador,
while the North Korean Constitution of 1948 was practically written at
Stalin’s dacha (country house). The heterogeneous authorship and ad hoc
political solutions contributed to the major differences in the texts.
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 179
In the constitutions, sovereignty and political subjectivity were ascribed to
the people, the toilers, classes, nationalities, and regions, often in combi-
nation. Most of the constitutions proclaimed parliaments supreme bodies of
state power, rejecting thereby separation of powers, and introduced standing
bodies with broad competence, acting between parliamentary sessions.
Several constitutions were more restrictive than their Soviet counterpart,
barring different groups from elections. The ruling parties were rarely
mentioned. The goal of building socialism and the special relations to the
Soviet Union were mentioned more frequently but were also not ubiquitous.
The standardization of governance in Soviet dependencies also pertained
to nonconstitutional (in most cases) institutions of parties and leaders. The
ruling parties were presented as the main agents of societal change and
the de facto governments in propaganda and archival documents and were
treated as such by Moscow. A special role was also ascribed to leaders, most
of whom formally headed the parties but not the states. Domestic parties
and leaders were presented as subordinate to the VKP(b)/CPSU and the
Soviet leader. The dominance of the Soviet Union as a state was also evident
both in propaganda and archival documents.
Background
The Bolsheviks, whose Party was the center of the Soviet empire (Suny and
Martin 2001), had been involved in constitution-making in Soviet de-
pendencies since the 1920s. The concepts of “people’s republic” and “peo-
ple’s democracy” played an important role in describing pro-Soviet regimes
since the 1920s and the 1940s, respectively, but neither of them corresponded
to complete uniformity of the dependent regimes.
The concept of people’s republic was introduced by the non-Bolshevik
socialists of the Ukrainian Central Rada, who proclaimed such a republic
in November 1917 in response to the Bolshevik-led coup in Petrograd. The
1918 Constitution of the Ukrainian People’s Republic specied that so-
vereignty belonged to “the people, that is, to all citizens” and was ex-
ercised through the universally elected People’s Assembly, which was
called the “supreme body of power” and granted supreme legislative
power. The Council of Minister and the General Court were granted su-
preme executive and judicial power, respectively. The Constitution also
introduced autonomy for non-Ukrainian nationalities (Pryliuk and
Ianevs’kyi 1992).
Although the Ukrainian Central Rada opposed the Bolsheviks, the latter
appropriated the concept of people’s republic. Most of Soviet Russia’s de-
pendencies which later joined the unied state were called socialist soviet
republics, but the Far Eastern Republic (1920–1922), the Khorezm People’s
Soviet Republic (1920–1923), the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic
(1920–1924), and the People’s Republic of Tannu-Tuva (1921–1944) did not
180 Ivan Sablin
have the word “socialist” in their names. Neither did the Mongolian
People’s Republic (1924–1991), which remained formally independent and
became a “prototype” for modern satellite states (Lattimore 1956, 39).
The 1921 Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic was an important
milestone in the legal development of the informal Soviet empire. Unlike the
1918 Soviet Constitution, which ascribed sovereignty and political sub-
jectivity to classes, to the toilers, and to nationalities, the Constitution of the
Far Eastern Republic stated that all power in the republic belonged to the
people, although it also established autonomies for non-Russian national-
ities, implying differentiated subjectivity. It also did not mention the goal of
building socialism, unlike the 1918 Soviet Constitution, but still transferred
natural resources to state property and granted the toilers special rights and
protection. The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic introduced uni-
versal elections, unlike in the USSR. It granted the People’s Assembly leg-
islative power, but the Administration (a “collective president”) of seven
people also received broad competence, including the right to adopt pro-
visional laws between parliamentary sessions. This meant that the system of
the Far Eastern Republic had similarities to that of Soviet Russia, where
supreme authority between the All-Russian Congresses of Soviets belonged
to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and its standing Presidium
(Far Eastern Republic 1921, 7, 10, 28–31; Vyshinskii 1938, 423–26). The
potent Administration facilitated the control of the Bolshevik Party over the
Far Eastern Republic, but the Party also relied on nonconstitutional mea-
sures (Sablin 2018, 182–85).
The Constitution of the Far Eastern Republic granted some preferences to
Soviet Russian citizens, but the 1921 Constitution of Tannu-Tuva was the rst
one to formally proclaim dependence on Soviet Russia in foreign relations
(Far Eastern Republic 1921, 32; Dubrovskii and Serdobov 1957, 295). The
ve constitutions of formally independent Tuva (1921, 1924, 1926, 1930, and
1941) are exemplary of constitutional variability. The 1926 Constitution of the
Tuvan People’s Republic gloried the October Revolution in its preamble but
still spoke of people’s power. The 1930 Constitution of the Tuvan Arats’
[Herders’] Republic declared adherence to a non-capitalist path to socialism
and “the dictatorship of the toiling arat masses.” The 1941 Constitution of the
Tuvan People’s Republic called it “a state of the toilers” and reafrmed the
non-capitalist path (Dubrovskii and Serdobov 1958, 281–82, 286–87, 293).
The 1924 Constitution of Mongolian People’s Republic did not mention the
USSR but stated that “because the toilers of the whole world” aspired to
destroy “capitalism and achieve socialism (communism),” the Republic had to
pursue a foreign policy corresponding “to the interests and the main objectives
of the oppressed small peoples and revolutionary toilers of the whole world”
(Vaksberg 1925, 44). Irrespective of their constitutions, Mongolia and Tuva,
the only Soviet dependencies between 1922 and the Second World War, were
run by the domestic “people’s” parties and, through them, by the Bolshevik
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 181
Party. Their populations experienced violence and mass purges similar to
those in the USSR (Kaplonski 2014; Rupen 1965, 612).
The Soviet Constitution of 1936, which was often called the “Stalin
Constitution” and was adopted following a “popular discussion” (Lomb
2017; Velikanova 2018), vested sovereignty with two classes (workers and
peasants), with the toilers, and with the constituent republics. It also re-
ferenced multiple political subjects. The Constitution declared the USSR a
“socialist state of workers and peasants,” stated that “all power in the
USSR” belonged “to the urban and rural toilers,” but also granted “all ci-
tizens,” with the exception of “insane persons” and those who were disen-
franchised by court, passive and active voting rights, eliminating the
previous restrictions. The Constitution also dened the USSR as a union
state, founded through the “voluntary unication” of republics which re-
tained partial sovereignty and had the right to secession. Finally, it called the
VKP(b) “the vanguard of the toilers” and “the leading core of all organi-
zations of toilers, both civic and state” (Trainin 1940, 179–81, 188–89).
The USSR’s new institutional design was also self-contradictory. Whereas
the Constitution vested “all power” of the toilers in the soviets (councils) of
toilers’ deputies, it also introduced the Supreme Soviet as “the supreme body
of state power,” while the soviets of toilers’ deputies were dened as local
bodies of state power. The Supreme Soviet had two equal chambers, the
Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities, and was called the only
legislative authority. At the same time, the standing Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet had broad competence between the sessions of the assembly,
including the right to issue decrees. Several other institutions had the word
“supreme” in their description. The Council of People’s Commissars (the
Council of Ministers since 1946) was the “supreme executive and adminis-
trative body,” while the Supreme Court was the “supreme judicial body.”
The Prosecutor (the Prosecutor General since 1946) was responsible for
“supreme” legal oversight. The overall “supreme” status of the Supreme
Soviet and the subordination of all other bodies to it meant that there was
no formal separation of powers (Trainin 1940, 179, 182–87).
The Communist leadership appeared to have considered contested elec-
tions (Getty 1991, 18) but did not introduce them until 1988/1989. All
candidates were pre-appointed by the Party, and the so-called “bloc of
Communists and non-party members” always won all of the seats. All
major decisions were made in the Central Committee of the Party and
unanimously ratied either by the Supreme Soviet or its Presidium (Juviler
1960, 3). By the time the Constitution of 1936 was adopted, the initial oli-
garchic collective leadership of the Bolshevik Politbiuro (Political Bureau)
had already given way to Stalin’s dictatorship, which achieved its full power
with the onset of the Great Terror (1937–1938). The apparatuses of the
Bolshevik Central Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars, which
Stalin chaired since 1941, became the two main institutions of the state. They
drafted resolutions to be approved by Stalin as the de facto supreme institution
182 Ivan Sablin
(Oleg V. Khlevniuk 2008, xiv–xvi, xix–xxi). The Constitution of 1936 further
bolstered the personality cult of Stalin as the supreme leader (vozhd’) in all
areas of Soviet life (Gill 2011, 117–21, 138).
The adoption of the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was connected to do-
mestic and international developments. The Soviet leadership hoped for
social stability and reconciliation with at least some of the groups which had
been persecuted in the previous years. In July 1935, Nikolai Ivanovich
Bukharin, who participated in drafting the new constitution, published an
article celebrating the emergence of a unied Soviet people through the
cohesion of classes and nationalities. International considerations also
played a role, as a “democratic” Soviet Union was supposed to facilitate the
shift of politics in foreign states to the left and help the struggle against
fascism (O. V. Khlevniuk 1996, 156–57; Whittington 2019, 147).
By 1936, at least three different understandings of people’s democracy
consolidated in the international communist discourse. In the context
of anticolonialism, it was evoked already in 1926, when the Korean
Communist Party, under the auspices of the Comintern’s Executive
Committee, proclaimed the slogan of a “people’s democratic republic” as a
means of struggle against Japan. Such a republic would have a universally
elected parliament as its supreme body, would be allied to the USSR, and
protect workers’ and peasants’ interests (Vada et al. 2007, 386–88). In 1936,
Wang Ming of the Chinese Communist Party spoke of the need to create a
“people’s democratic republic” in China, reafrming the need for a uni-
versally elected parliament and a government of national defense against
Japan.
4
In 1935–1936, the notion of “people’s democracy” was used in re-
lation to the regime of the new Soviet Constitution.
5
It also became strongly
associated with the tactics of a united or popular front and antifascism.
In 1935, the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern supported the
tactics of a united front “of the proletariat” and “of all toilers” against
capital, fascism, and war on national and the international level, but at the
same time reafrmed the need to win most of the working class over to
communism. It also resolved to turn the national communist parties into
mass parties.
6
Following the Congress, Nikos Zachariadis, the General
Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, spoke of the “parties of
people’s democracy” when discussing an anti-fascist united front in
December 1935.
7
After the victory of the Popular Front in the Spanish
legislative election in February 1936, Jesús Hernández Tomás of the Spanish
Communist Party called for advancing the “people’s democratic” revolution
in Spain.
8
At the onset of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), in September
1936, Georgi Dimitrov, who then headed the Comintern’s Executive
Committee, argued that if the Republicans won, a republic of a new type
would be established, “a state with genuine people’s democracy.” Such a
state would not yet be “soviet,” but it would be an “antifascist, left state,
with the participation of the genuine left part of the bourgeoisie” (Dam’e
et al. 1999, 36).
9
In 1937, Spanish Communists reafrmed the understanding
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 183
of “people’s democracy” as “a democratic parliamentary republic of a new
type” (Pozharskaia and Saplin 2001, 299). After the Spanish Civil War, in
1941, émigré participants of the Popular Front highlighted the nationality
aspect of people’s democracy when discussing freedom for Catalonia and
the Basque Country.
10
Unlike in the USSR, universal elections were not introduced in the two
informal Soviet dependencies, Tuva and Mongolia. Although the 1940
Constitution of Mongolia and the 1941 Constitution of Tuva had signicant
borrowings from the Soviet Constitution of 1936, non-universal, unequal, and
indirect elections were retained in both countries. Their continued dependence
on the USSR also reected in the new constitutions. Both constitutions re-
afrmed the non-capitalist path to socialism and included provisions on the
special role of their respective ruling parties, the Mongolian People’s
Revolutionary Party and the Tuvan People’s Revolutionary Party. By ana-
logy with the “Stalin Constitution,” its Mongolian counterpart was called the
“Choibalsan Constitution” after Khorloogiin Choibalsan, Mongolia’s leader.
Tuva’s 1941 Constitution also granted Soviet citizens in the country active and
passive voting rights. (Dubrovskii and Serdobov 1958, 295, 300–301; Iaskina
2007, 112; Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 36, 46–47).
Tuva was ultimately annexed to the USSR in 1944, like Western Belarus
and Western Ukraine (Eastern Poland), Bessarabia (Moldova), Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania a few years before it (Naimark 2017, 63–64). No other
immediate Sovietizations followed. In 1943, Moscow rejected the idea of the
Polish Workers’ Party, which took the place of the Communist Party of
Poland, disbanded in 1938, to establish workers’ and peasants’ power in the
country. Instead, it supported the slogans of national freedom and people’s
democratic power along with the united front tactics (Kemp-Welch 2008,
18–19). Immediately after the war, Stalin also urged German Communists
against a violent revolution, stressing the need to take the electoral path to
power, if necessary, in coalition with other parties in the context of broader
support for socialism across Europe (Slaveski 2013, 117).
Unlike in Yugoslavia and Albania, where the Axis powers were defeated
by own communist-led partisan forces, in the rest of Eastern Europe, in
North Korea, and in Manchuria, they were defeated by the Soviet Red
Army. The Red Army remained a major factor in most of Eastern Europe –
with the exception of Yugoslavia, Albania, and Czechoslovakia (from which
it withdrew in December 1945) – as well as in North Korea and Mongolia.
The Soviet secret police detachments in the occupied territories and Soviet
advisors also played an important role in the postwar political developments
(Békés et al. 2015, 18; Volokitina, Murashko, and Noskova 1993, 5).
In Eastern Europe, the Soviet takeover of the economies and defense
establishments and the creation of new dependencies went on since the
closing stages of the war and was especially swift in the former Axis coun-
tries, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. In Austria, the attempts to pene-
trate the economy failed due to Anglo–American pressure. Although
184 Ivan Sablin
Moscow’s guidelines were incomprehensive and despite the predominance of
coalitional arrangements, domestic communist parties took dominant po-
sitions of power in the police, foreign relations, local governments, the army,
and economic bodies across the region in 1945–1946. Non-communist
parties were pushed away through a variety of tactics, including arrests
and inltration by clandestine communists. When constitutional means did
not work, the communists turned to mass mobilization and political vio-
lence. All this allowed gradual establishment of communist monopolies in
all countries of the region, irrespective of the appearances of the regimes
(Békés et al. 2015, 9–15; Naimark 2017, 66–67).
Competitive elections were held in 1946–1947 in Czechoslovakia, Romania,
Poland, and Hungary, but in all four cases communists admitted to rigging
them (Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1: 12–13, 15, 379). During the
establishment of the Cominform in September 1947, Andrei Aleksandrovich
Zhdanov, a prominent Bolshevik, repeated Stalin’s earlier claim that the world
was divided and urged communist parties to assert control. Forcible in-
corporation of social democratic parties followed, major industries were
completely nationalized, and rst attempts at collectivization of agriculture
were made. Secret police operations, often overseen by Soviet representatives,
helped to nish off the opposition. The Cominform, like the Comintern in its
later stages, was used to ensure Soviet control of the Eastern European parties,
which was one of the reasons for the Soviet–Yugoslav split in 1948. Following
the split, the most direct Sovietization took place between 1949–1950 and
1953–1956 (Naimark 2017, 68–70).
Authorship and adoption
Multiple actors participated in drafting the constitutions of Soviet de-
pendencies. The involvement of domestic communist leaders and jurists was
signicant in most cases. In some cases, Soviet jurists and diplomats played
a role. Direct involvement of the VKP(b)/CPSU leadership in writing and
editing the texts was rare and was documented in the cases of North Korea,
Poland, and Romania. Yugoslav Communists contributed to the making of
the Albanian Constitution, while non-communist politicians initially parti-
cipated in drafting the Czechoslovak Constitution. Most of the constitutions
were adopted by assemblies after a “popular discussion,” like in the USSR.
In several cases, non-communists had the opportunity to expressed their
opposition to the texts.
The rst postwar people’s republics run by a single party were formed in
Yugoslavia and Albania, where the communists became dominant forces
without Soviet military involvement. Despite initial coalitional arrange-
ments in Yugoslavia, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz
Tito quickly took control over the key spheres of the reestablished state.
Prominent non-communists left the government in October 1945, but could
not consolidate the opposition. The Communist-led People’s Front won all
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 185
seats in the Constituent Assembly on November 11, 1945. Western powers
recognized the election as legitimate (Volokitina, Murashko, and Noskova
1993, 13–16, 97–99, 103). The Constituent Assembly convened on
November 29, 1945, and the same day proclaimed the Federative People’s
Republic of Yugoslavia (Nikiforov 2011, 547). The rst draft of the con-
stitution was prepared by Yugoslav jurists under the Communist leaders
Edvard Kardelj and Moša Pijade and was very close to the Soviet
Constitution of 1936, but Tito introduced signicant changes to the draft.
Soviet Ambassador Ivan Vasil’evich Sadchikov provided some advice, but
the Yugoslav authors did not appear to have followed it strictly
(Chernilovskii 1947, 56; Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1: 328).
Like in the USSR, the draft was published for a “popular discussion.”
The similarities between the draft and the Soviet Constitution prompted
some non-communists to claim that it was dictated by Moscow and that it
would make Yugoslavia a simple vassal of the USSR, akin to Mongolia.
Other critics argued that even though the Yugoslav system was more de-
mocratic, it established a concealed one-party system, and rebuked the one-
sided pro-Soviet orientation. No major changes were introduced, and the
Constitution of the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was adopted
on January 31, 1946 (Volokitina, Murashko, and Noskova 1993, 106–7;
Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1: 325–26, 329, 333). In 1953, the
Constitution was subject to major amendments, supervised by the Central
Committee of the Party (which was renamed to the League of Communists
of Yugoslavia in 1952). Kardelj and Pijade were responsible for the
amendments (Nikiforov 2011, 607–8).
The Communist Party of Albania also adopted the tactics of a Democratic
Front in the context of local armed opposition. On December 2, 1945, the
Democratic Front won all seats in the Constituent Assembly. With the ex-
ception of several independents, there was no contest from organized oppo-
sition. In Northern Albania, the election featured numerous violations, but
Western observers concluded that it reected the broad support for the
Democratic Front. On January 11, 1946, the Constituent Assembly declared
Albania a people’s republic. The Provisional Democratic Government under
Enver Hoxha, the First Secretary of the Communist Party, presented draft
constitution, which was prepared with the assistance of Yugoslav Communist
advisors. After a “popular discussion,” the Constituent Assembly adopted the
Constitution of the People’s Republic of Albania on March 14, 1946
(Smirnova 2003, 265–68; Volokitina, Murashko, and Noskova 1993, 17,
111–13). Following the Soviet–Yugoslav split, the Communist Party of
Albania was reformed into the Party of Labor of Albania in 1948, and in 1950
substantial amendments were introduced to the Constitution, making it closer
to the Soviet counterpart (Kuprits 1951, x–xi; Smirnova 2003, 303).
In Bulgaria, Soviet involvement was more prominent, and the process of
adoption was more contested. Initially, the Fatherland Front, which came to
power in 1944, was a broad coalition, but it became dominated by the
186 Ivan Sablin
Bulgarian Workers’ Party (Communists). The Front won 88 percent of votes
in the parliamentary election in November 1945. In September 1946, a re-
ferendum supported the proclamation of a people’s republic. The election to
the Sixth Grand National Assembly, which was to adopt a new constitution,
took place on October 27, 1946. Despite numerous violations, the
Fatherland Front won only about 70 percent of votes, and the parliament
included members of the opposition who were ready for political struggle
(Brunnbauer 2008, 52; Volokitina 1999, 1: 356; Znepolski et al. 2018, 77).
In September 1946, Stalin advised Dimitrov, who in November 1946
would become Bulgaria’s rst Communist Prime Minister, that the country
should adopt “a people’s constitution,” which would fall “more to the right
than the Yugoslav one” (Rieber 2009, 116). The Fatherland Front’s draft
was prepared by the Bulgarian Communists with the assistance of Soviet
advisors Il’ia Pavlovich Trainin (a legal scholar), Vsevolod Nikolaevich
Durdenevskii (a legal scholar), Konstantin Petrovich Gorshenin (Prosecutor
General of the USSR), Aleksandr Fedorovich Gorkin (Secretary of the
Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet), and Petr Nikolaevich Fedoseev (a
Marxist–Leninist philosopher). The opposition came up with their own
drafts, but the “popular discussion” of the Front’s draft began in May 1947.
In April–May 1947, all oppositional newspapers were shut down in
Bulgaria, and the anti-communists in the parliament decried the lack of
outlets to properly discuss the Front’s draft. Fearing a discussion of the
situation at the United Nations Security Council, the Communists allowed
some debates, which revolved around separation of powers, private prop-
erty, and political and civil liberties. The Front’s draft did not receive a two-
thirds majority in the Grand National Assembly but passed the rst reading
on June 20. On December 4, 1947, the Constitution of the People’s Republic
of Bulgaria, which became known as the “Dimitrov Constitution,” was
adopted (Lazarev 1952, 7; Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1:
630–31, 742; Znepolski et al. 2018, 78–79).
In Romania, King Michael I formally led the coup, which in 1944 es-
tablished the government of the National Democratic Bloc, including the
Romanian Communist Party. Under the pressure from Andrei Ianuar’evich
Vyshinskii, who was the Soviet negotiator in the peace talks, the King made
the Communist Petru Groza Prime Minister in 1945. Ahead of the election
to the Grand National Assembly on November 19, 1946, Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the
Romanian Communist Party, informed a Soviet representative that his
party planned to ensure its own majority with the help of “special ‘technical’
means.” With numerous violations, the Communist-led Bloc of Democratic
Parties won around 70 percent of votes. Romanian Communists then used
the Soviet military presence to eliminate political opposition and prompt
Michael I to abdicate on December 30, 1947, with the proclamation of the
Romanian People’s Republic. In February 1948 Romania signed a treaty of
friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance with the Soviet Union,
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 187
becoming the rst Eastern European dependency to do so. The same month,
the Communists merged their party with the Social Democratic Party,
forming the Romanian Workers’ Party. In the new election to the Grand
National Assembly on March 28, 1948, the Communist-led Popular
Democratic Front won 405 out of 414 seats. On April 13, 1948, the Grand
National Assembly unanimously adopted the provisional Constitution of the
Romanian People’s Republic. No detailed information is available on
the drafting of this constitution,
11
but it was most certainly supervised by
the Party leadership, and the draft had been published before the discussion
in the parliament (Deletant 2018, 66; Focseneanu 1998, 116–17; Leustean
2007, 306–7; Tismaneanu 2003, 94; Van de Grift 2011, 49; Volokitina,
Murashko, and Noskova 1993, 28, 182–84; Volokitina 1999, 1: 370, 375–76).
The Soviet leadership was directly involved in drafting the second postwar
constitution. In 1951, Gheorghiu-Dej asked for Soviet assistance, to which
Stalin agreed. After the commission under Gheorghiu-Dej (Figure 7.1)
provided the draft, it was edited by Vyshinskii, Vagan Grigor’evich
Grigor’ian (who chaired the VKP(b) Central Committee’s Foreign Policy
Commission), and Gorshenin in 1952. On June 25, 1952, Viacheslav
Mikhailovich Molotov submitted draft recommendations on the text to
Figure 7.1 A meeting of the constitutional commission under the presidency of
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej during the Thirteenth Session of the Grand
National Assembly, Bucharest, between September 22 and 24, 1952
(Fototeca online a comunismului românesc, Photograph #IA172, 172/1952).
188 Ivan Sablin
Stalin who apparently rejected them. On July 6, 1952, new recommendations
were submitted and approved two days later. In Romania, the amended
draft was put up for a “popular discussion.” On September 23, 1952,
Gheorghiu-Dej presented the draft to the Grand National Assembly, and on
September 27, 1952, it was adopted (Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko
1998, 2: 582, 771, 796, 804–5; Volokitina 2002, 2: 632–35).
In Czechoslovakia, the drafting of a new constitution was especially
contested. The government-in-exile under Edvard Beneš, the prewar
President, and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia under Klement
Gottwald agreed to form the coalitional National (People’s) Front in 1943.
The Communists found themselves in a contested landscape, with Beneš
resuming his presidency in 1945 and the Soviet troops withdrawing later the
same year. Ahead of the election to the Constituent National Assembly, the
Czechoslovak Communist leaders Rudolf Slánský and Gottwald informed
the Soviet side that they intended to limit the participating parties to those in
the National Front and rush with the election date due to the disagreements
among the Front’s members. The election, which took place on May 26,
1946, did not result in a Communist plurality (Mar’ina 2005, 2:49;
Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1: 379, 575–76).
The parliament’s constitutional commission, chaired by the Social
Democrat Oldřich John included members of different parties and its work
entailed erce debates (Gronský 2006, 2:329). The VKP(b) Department of
Foreign Policy reported in September 1947 that the opposition attempted
to remove the foundations of the “people’s democratic system” from the
text, while Slovak politicians sought to “have their separatist proposals
passed.” It also criticized the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia for not
using “nonparliamentary forms of struggle” and rebuked the weakness of
the Communist Party of Slovakia. During the crisis of February 1948,
caused by the tensions between the Communists and non-communists in the
government, Valerian Aleksandrovich Zorin, the Soviet Deputy Minister of
Foreign Affairs, who was then in Prague, instructed Gottwald and the rest
of the Czechoslovak Communist leaders to take a rmer stance. According
to Zorin, Gottwald was afraid to go against Beneš, feared American in-
volvement, and asked the Soviets to move their troops in Germany and
Austria around Czechoslovakia, which Moscow rejected (Mar’ina 2005,
2:74; Volokitina 1999, 1: 498–99, 551–52).
The crisis ended with the Communist coup on February 21–25, 1948, and
the Communist Party established control over the Constituent National
Assembly.
12
On April 14, 1948, the National Front, then under Communist
control, approved the draft of the new constitution and it was put up for a
short “popular discussion.” Beneš refused to support the undemocratic
constitution and the undemocratic elections, which would include one
list of candidates. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia nevertheless resolved to submit the draft to the parliament
on May 4. On May 9, 1948, the Constituent National Assembly adopted the
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 189
new Constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic. Edward Taborsky, a former
secretary of Beneš, called the text a “hybrid” of Western parliamentarism and
the Soviet system. Beneš resigned after the adoption of the Constitution and
the new election, which gave the absolute majority to the National Front. On
June 9, 1948, Gottwald signed the Constitution into force as Prime Minister
and acting President, and on June 14, he was elected President (Abrams 2009,
358; Dobeš 2010, 357–68; Mar’ina 2005, 2:80–81; Volokitina, Islamov, and
Murashko 1997, 1: 868–70; Volokitina 1999, 1: 612).
The constitution-making in North Korea was fully controlled by the
Soviet side. According to Nobuo Shimotomai, all important political
documents were most likely written by Soviet advisors under the supervision
of the Soviet generals in charge of North Korea, Terentii Fomich Shtykov,
Nikolai Georgievich Lebedev, and Andrei Alekseevich Romanenko. In
February 1947, the Communist-dominated congress of people’s committees
formed the People’s Assembly and approved Kim Il-sung’s government,
which was active since February 1946. In November 1947, at the third
session of the People’s Assembly, Kim Tu-bong, the rst Chairman of the
Workers’ Party of Korea, reported on the plan to draft a provisional con-
stitution. The session created a commission of the members of the
Communist-led Democratic Front for the Reunication of Korea, which
prepared a draft with the assistance of Boris Vasil’evich Shchetinin, a Soviet
jurist. Following the recommendation of the Bolshevik Politbiuro, the draft
was put up for a “popular discussion” in February–April 1948 (Simotomai
2009, 73, 78, 82; Vanin 2016, 131).
According to Shtykov, however, the proper discussion of the draft took
place at Stalin’s dacha on April 24, 1948. This meeting, which apart from
Stalin and Shtykov included Molotov and Zhdanov, amended the draft and
decided to make the constitution permanent. It was to be enacted in South
Korea as well, while the new government was to include its representatives.
On April 28–29, 1948, the extraordinary session of the People’s Assembly in
Pyongyang pre-approved the draft to be adopted by the future all-Korean
legislature. On July 9–10, 1948, the People’s Assembly enacted the
Constitution and set the election to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the new
legislature. The election was held on August 25, 1948, in the North and,
illegally in two stages, in the South. The new assembly included 360 deputies
from the South and 212 from the North. On September 8, 1948, the rst
session of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea approved the Constitution. The next day it declared the
country’s independence. Moscow withdrew its troops in 1949. According to
Nobuo Shimotomai, Lebedev was the one who proposed the name of the
country, although it also repeated the abovementioned 1926 slogan of the
Korean Communists (Simotomai 2009, 82–87; Vanin 2016, 132, 138–40).
In Hungary, the Soviet occupation did not prevent competitive parlia-
mentary election in November 1945, in which the Hungarian Communist
Party won only 17 percent. Mátyás Rákosi, its leader, nevertheless noted
190 Ivan Sablin
that elections did not matter much, given the domination of the Communists
in the army, the police, the secret police, local government, and the judiciary.
The parliament did not play a signicant role, as the Communists also
passed laws through the Supreme National Council, for instance, on the
Soviet–Hungarian Economic Agreement of 1945. In May 1946, after
meeting Stalin, Rákosi revealed to the Party’s top functionaries that pro-
letarian dictatorship was on the agenda as soon as peace treaties were signed
and the elections in Western Europe were over (Békés et al. 2015, 10, 19).
Ahead of the second postwar parliamentary election, the leaders of the
Communists and the Social Democrats agreed to disenfranchise some 300,000
“reactionaries” and omit some people from voters’ lists. Despite the use of
intimidation and fraud, the Communists won only 22 percent of the votes on
August 31, 1947, which displeased the Bolshevik Foreign Policy Department.
Ahead of the third election, the Communists forced the Social Democrats to
merge the two parties into the Hungarian Working People’s Party in 1948.
The new Party joined the Hungarian Popular Front of Independence, which
ran uncontested in the election on May 15, 1949, and won the absolute ma-
jority of seats, effectively nalizing the establishment of a one-party regime
(Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1: 571; Volokitina 1999, 1: 593;
2002, 2: 279; Fekete 2019, 196–97).
Before the election, Rákosi informed Mikhail Andreevich Suslov, who
then headed the Bolshevik Foreign Policy Commission, that his party
planned to adopt a new constitution after the election (Volokitina, Islamov,
and Murashko 1998, 2: 71). The draft of the new constitution was prepared
by a commission, formed by the Council of Ministers and chaired by
Rákosi. Two Hungarian jurists, Imre Szabó and János Beér, played an
important role in drafting the text. Beér maintained that the presence of the
Soviet troops was a revolutionary factor, that the teachings of Stalin were
the main inspiration, and that the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was the ex-
ample for the new Hungarian constitution. The draft was put up for a brief
“popular discussion” on August 5–10, 1949, which resulted in some revi-
sions. On August 17, 1949, the revised draft was submitted to the parlia-
ment, where it was unanimously adopted as Act XX on August 20, 1949
(Fekete 2019, 198, 201–2).
Although it is often discussed as a special case, the Soviet Occupation
Zone in East Germany also underwent a comparable transformation into a
one-party state (Connelly 2009, 170–71). The Communist Party of Germany
and the Social Democratic Party of Germany were forced to merge into a
new party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, already in April 1946. Like
in the case of Korea, Moscow envisioned a constitution for the whole
country and encouraged the convocation of the First People’s Congress for
Unity and a Just Peace, which included nominees from parties and other
organizations, in December 1947. Members of the Socialist Unity Party and
the West German Communists had around 72 percent of seats. The Second
People’s Congress convened in March 1948 and elected the People’s Council
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 191
of 300 members from the East and 100 members from the West. The
People’s Council formed a commission to draft a constitution for Germany.
Although it included members from West Germany, their participation was
deemed illegal by the West German authorities in the context of the rising
tensions, which culminated in the start of the Berlin Blockade in June 1948
(Markovits 2008, 1314–15).
The constitution was drafted under the supervision of the Socialist Unity
Party leadership. Otto Grotewohl, a Social Democrat before the merger,
chaired the commission. The Party’s First Secretary Walter Ulbricht and the
jurist Karl Polak, both of whom had returned from the Soviet Union, played a
key role in the process. Moscow supported a draft which would be suitable for
the whole country, and until the adoption of the Basic Law in West Germany
on May 8, 1949, Grotewohl had apparently hoped that a compromise was
possible. Although the Socialist Unity Party had a majority, there were de-
bates in the commission. After the formal creation of the Federal Republic of
Germany in the West, the East German leadership proceeded with con-
stituting a separate state. On October 7, 1949, the People’s Council approved
the Constitution of the German Democratic Republic (Markovits 2008, 1314,
1316–17; for a detailed account, see Amos 2005).
In Poland, the Democratic Bloc, led by the Polish Workers’ Party and the
Polish Socialist Party, won the election to the Legislative Sejm in January
1947, in the context of violence against the opposition. Although the oppo-
sition had the opportunity to voice their concerns in the Sejm and declared the
election fraudulent, rejecting therefore the parliament’s constituent status,
the Sejm adopted the provisional Small Constitution on February 19, 1947.
The document, which amended the Constitution of 1921, pertained to the
competence of the main government bodies and introduced the State Council,
a new institution, and national councils. The opposition interpreted the Small
Constitution as a step toward the Soviet system. The Sejm also elected the
Communist Bolesław Bierut President. After the practical elimination of the
Polish People’s Party, the Communist-led Democratic Bloc remained the only
organized political force, although the Catholic Church continued to be an
important independent actor in a broader sense (Kemp-Welch 2008, 47;
Kersten 1991, 346–48, 350, 352; Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1:
554–55). In December 1948, the Polish Workers’ Party and the Polish Socialist
Party were merged into the Polish United Workers’ Party. The parties, which
were formally “allied” to it, had little independence. Furthermore, the
Communists controlled the secret police, which had Soviet advisors.
In November 1949, the Soviet Marshal Konstantin Konstantinovich
Rokossovskii took over the command of the Polish Army. The Communist
leadership under Bierut was in constant contact with the VKP(b) leadership
and Soviet diplomatic representatives (Noskova 2012, 565–69).
In May 1951, the Sejm created a commission for drafting a new con-
stitution. The Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party
192 Ivan Sablin
prepared the draft, which was then edited by Stalin. The draft was put up for
a “popular discussion” in January 1952. The opponents of the draft claimed
that it was the same as the Soviet Constitution of 1936 and demanded, for
instance, that the provision on liquidating “exploiter” classes was removed.
The separation of church and state was also heavily contested. Catholic
activists opposed it, arguing that the Polish people needed a Polish
Constitution and not a Stalinist one. The Communist leadership, however,
did not actively suppress them. They informed Moscow that in view of
adopting the constitution, the new election, and general religiosity of the
population, they did not want to strain relations with the Episcopate.
The Episcopate, in its turn, did not obstruct the promulgation of the
Constitution by the Sejm on July 22, 1952, and the subsequent parliamen-
tary election (Kemp-Welch 2008, 47; Noskova 2012, 579; Volokitina,
Islamov, and Murashko 1998, 2: 691, 730; Volokitina 2002, 2: 627).
There was no Soviet military presence in China after their withdrawal
from Manchuria in 1946. Stalin nevertheless advised Mao Zedong, the
Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, on the design of the Chinese
political system since April 1948. Mao initially planned to exclude all other
parties from politics, but Stalin urged the Chinese Communist Party to
cooperate with them, and Mao conceded. In 1949, Stalin supported the
formation of “a people’s democratic dictatorship” instead of “a proletarian
dictatorship” after the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War
(1927–1937, 1945–1949). Shortly before the proclamation of the People’s
Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the rst Chinese People’s Political
Consultative Conference, representing the Communist-dominated United
Front, approved the Common Program, which laid out the basics of the
state system. It relied on the concept of “democratic dictatorship of
the people,” which was dened as the power of the United Front of the
“working class, peasants, petty bourgeoisie, and national bourgeoisie, led by
the working class.” The Common Program envisioned the convocation of a
parliamentary body, the National People’s Congress (Li 2001, 32–35, 38–39;
Tikhvinskii and Galenovich 2017, 8: 21–23, 25).
In 1949, Stalin argued that the Chinese constitution, to be adopted by 1954,
was supposed to reect the pre-socialist stage. Mao by contrast wanted to
postpone the constitution until after socialism was built. In the fall of 1952,
Stalin reafrmed his previous position, and Mao conceded (Li 2001, 39–41). In
February 1953, the Chinese government introduced the law for unequal, in-
direct, and non-universal elections to the National People’s Congress, similar
to the Soviet elections before 1936. The entire process was controlled by the
Chinese Communist Party. The elections continued for over a year between
May 1953 and July 1954. In January 1954, the government formed a con-
stitutional commission under Mao, who proceeded with the plan despite
Stalin’s death in March 1953. Among other Party leaders only Liu Shaoqi
worked on the text. The initial draft was prepared by Mao and his aides Chen
Boda, Hu Qiaomu, and Tian Jiaying. It was then revised by members of the
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 193
Politbiuro of the Communist Party and by senior members of the constitu-
tional commission. In April 1954, the draft was put to a “popular discussion”
(Figure 7.2), which resulted in a few minor revisions. The Government
Administration Council pre-approved the draft on September 9, 1954, and the
rst session of the National People’s Congress unanimously adopted the
Constitution on September 20, 1954 (Diamant and Feng 2015, 22–24; Li 2001,
29, 42–45; Sudarikov 1955, 82–90; Tikhvinskii and Galenovich 2017, 8:55–57).
The Mongolian Constitution of 1940 was amended several times, in 1944,
1949, and 1952. In 1946, Mongolia’s independence was recognized by the
Guomindang’s government of China, and in October 1949 the Mongolian and
Chinese People’s Republics established relations (Iaskina 2007, 177–78, 186).
Sovereignty and political subjectivity
The most common sources of sovereignty and collective bearers of political
subjectivity in the constitutions of Soviet dependencies were the “people,”
Figure 7.2 “Housewives of Shanghai joyfully welcomed the publication of the draft
constitution of the PRC,” 1954 (Kitai, No. 7, 1954, p. 3).
194 Ivan Sablin
the “toilers,” and the classes of workers and toiling peasants, which were at
times mentioned simultaneously. Several constitutions mentioned multiple
peoples or nationalities, while the East German Constitution also referred to
regions (lands).
The “people,” which could mean the whole population (nation) or imply
the social category of the working people (toilers), was the most common
source of sovereignty and political subject. All Soviet dependencies, except
East Germany and Czechoslovakia, had the words “people’s republic” in
their ofcial names. “People’s democracy” was explicitly mentioned in the
constitutions of China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania (1952), and
Poland (1952). Only the 1952 Romanian Constitution dened “people’s
democracy,” specifying that it was the power of the toilers (Durdenevskii
1948a, 50; Israelian 1954, 27; Karev 1953, 6–7; Kotok 1954, 36; Sudarikov
1955, 29). With the exception of the Small Constitution of Poland, universal
elections
13
were mentioned in all constitutions, although several population
groups were disenfranchised in China,
14
Hungary,
15
and Romania,
16
making the legislation there more restrictive than in the USSR. Like in the
Soviet text, the expression “all citizens” was mentioned in most of the
constitutions, even if the “people” was not discussed as the source of so-
vereignty (Chernilovskii 1947, 37; Demidov 1952, 52; Durdenevskii 1948a,
51; 1948c, 88; Israelian 1954, 46; Karev 1953, 26; Kuprits 1951, 13;
Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 50; Lazarev 1952, 25; People’s Republic
of Albania 1947, 56; Sobinov 1953, 39; Sudarikov 1955, 82; Tavrov 1952, 55;
Trainin 1940, 189).
The people as the source of sovereignty was explicitly mentioned in the
constitutions of Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Hungary, North Korea, Poland (1947 and 1952), Romania (1948 and 1952),
and Yugoslavia. The Constitution of Albania initially stated that “all power
originated in the people and belonged to the people.” The 1950 amendments
changed this provision, but the constitution still mentioned “sovereignty of
the people and the state” and the universally elected representatives of the
people (Kuprits 1951, 3, 7, 13; People’s Republic of Albania 1947, 51, 56).
The Bulgarian Constitution claimed that the People’s Republic emerged
from the heroic struggle of the “Bulgarian people” and stated that all power
originated in the people and belonged to the people (Lazarev 1952, 25). The
Czechoslovak Constitution stated that the people were “the only source of
power in the state” (Durdenevskii 1948a, 51). The Hungarian Constitution
mentioned “the sovereignty of the people” but excluded the “enemies of the
toiling people” from the franchise (Israelian 1954, 30, 46). The East German
Constitution spoke of the German people (Sobinov 1953, 27). The North
Korean Constitution vested the power in the people (Tavrov 1952, 55). In
Romania, the Constitution of 1948 stated that “all state power originates in
the people and belongs to the people” (Durdenevskii 1948c, 87). The
Constitution of 1952 did not include such a provision but still mentioned
national independence, sovereignty of the Romanian people, and the
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 195
interests of the “popular masses” (Kotok 1954, 31–32). Yugoslavia was
dened as a people’s state, in which “all power originates in the people and
belongs to the people” (Chernilovskii 1947, 35–36). According to Sadchikov,
Tito removed the statement that all power belonged to “urban and rural
toilers,” like in the Soviet Union, from the original draft (Volokitina,
Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1: 328).
The national understanding of the people was especially strong in the
Chinese and Polish cases, even though the social aspect was also there. The
Chinese Constitution located all power with the people and, by including
the overseas Chinese into the franchise, made the national understanding
prominent. At the same time, it mentioned ethnic heterogeneity and implied
the social understanding of the people, stating that there were enemies of the
people inside each nationality (Sudarikov 1955, 29–31, 35). The Small
Constitution of 1947 spoke of the Polish people or nation as the main col-
lective subject (Republic of Poland 1947). The Polish Constitution of 1952
mentioned the progressive “traditions of the Polish people,” the struggle
against “national slavery” against Prussian, Austrian, and Russian coloni-
zers, and national revival in its preamble; the Sejm ofcially embodied the
sovereign rights of the people (Karev 1953, 5, 11). Stalin made the national
aspect of the draft more prominent, removing, for instance, a direct mention
of Soviet leadership from the preamble (Noskova 2012, 579).
The toilers as a source of sovereignty and a bearer of political sub-
jectivity were mentioned in the constitutions of Albania (after the
amendments of 1950), Hungary, Mongolia, Poland (1952), and Romania
(1952). Similar to the Soviet Constitution of 1936, in most cases this made
the texts self-contradictory, with both the inclusionary people and the
exclusionary toilers serving as sources of sovereignty. The statement that
all power belonged to the “urban and rural toilers” was copied from the
respective article of the Soviet Constitution, while “the socialist state of
workers and peasants” transformed into the state of toilers. The con-
stitutions of Albania (before the amendments of 1950), East Germany,
Romania (1948), and Yugoslavia granted the toilers or the toiling people
assistance or special care (Chernilovskii 1947, 40; Demidov 1952, 37;
Durdenevskii 1948c, 87; Israelian 1954, 28; Karev 1953, 5, 7; Kotok 1954,
31–33; Kuprits 1951, 3; Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 36; People’s
Republic of Albania 1947, 52; Sobinov 1953, 31; Trainin 1940, 179). Only
the Mongolian Constitution provided an exhaustive denition of the toi-
lers as the “arat herders, workers, and intelligentsia” (Demidov 1952, 37;
Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 36).
Apart from restricting the voting rights, the Chinese, Hungarian, and
Romanian (1952) constitutions granted some other rights only to the “toi-
lers” or the “toiling citizens” rather than simply the “citizens” (Fekete 2019,
202; Israelian 1954, 42–46; Kotok 1954, 52; Sudarikov 1955, 51; Trainin
1940, 187–89). The Polish Constitution of 1952 claimed that the People’s
Republic defended the toilers from the forces which were “hostile to the
196 Ivan Sablin
people” and contained a self-contradictory paragraph, claiming that the
Sejm represented the will of the toilers and manifested the sovereign rights of
the people (Karev 1953, 7, 11). When there was no explicit tension between
the people and the toilers, it was implied. The Yugoslav Constitution spe-
cied, “Every citizen is obliged to work according to his abilities: whoever
does not give to society cannot receive from it” (Chernilovskii 1947, 44).
During the discussion of the draft, Sadchikov claimed that “popular so-
vereignty” made Yugoslavia akin to “bourgeois democratic republics” but
also mentioned that a base for future class differentiation was present, citing
the assistance to the toilers and the abovementioned clause. According to
Sadchikov, Kardelj informed him that the clause would be used to crush the
bourgeoisie (Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1997, 1: 326–27).
Class sovereignty and subjectivity was articulated in the Albanian,
Chinese, Hungarian, Polish (1952), and Romanian (1948 and 1952) con-
stitutions. After the amendments of 1950, Albania was dened as “a state of
workers and toiling peasants” (Kuprits 1951, 3). The Chinese Constitution
specied that the state was “led by the working class and based on the union
of workers and peasants” (Sudarikov 1955, 31). The Romanian Constitution
of 1948 maintained that the state emerged as a result of the people’s struggle
under the leadership of the working class (Durdenevskii 1948c, 87), while the
Constitution of 1952 referred to the “toilers” led by the “working class” and
mentioned its union with toiling peasants, again specifying the leading role
of the working class (Kotok 1954, 31–32). In the Hungarian Constitution,
the state of “workers and toiling peasants” was also based on the union
of the two classes under the leadership of the former (Israelian 1954, 27–28).
The Polish Constitution of 1952 ascribed state-building to the “heroic
working class” and the union of workers and peasants under the former as
the most “advanced class” of the society. It also mentioned the liquidation
of the exploiter classes as the objective of the People’s Republic (Karev
1953, 5–7).
Nationalities as sources of sovereignty, political subjects, or bearers of
special rights were mentioned in the constitutions of China, Czechoslovakia,
North Korea, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was constituted as a
federation, like the USSR, but unlike a union of equal republics (Trainin
1940, 180), Yugoslavia was a union of equal peoples based on self-
determination. Like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia also included territorial
autonomies within union republics (Chernilovskii 1947, 35). The biggest
difference between the two federations was the lack of the right to secession
in Yugoslavia. According to Sadchikov, Tito and Kardelj argued that, un-
like in the USSR, there were no deep “national differences” in Yugoslavia
since all peoples were Slavic. They also argued that the peoples were not
numerous enough to function as sovereign (Volokitina, Islamov, and
Murashko 1997, 1: 326). In the 1940s, there were discussions of larger
Eastern European federations among the Yugoslav and Soviet leaders, in-
cluding the possible merger of Bulgaria and Albania with Yugoslavia
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 197
(Perović 2007). Besides, the Yugoslav Communists criticized the Bulgarian
draft constitution for hampering the self-determination of the Macedonians
(Volokitina 1999, 1: 393).
In 1945–1955, no Soviet dependency other than Yugoslavia was constituted
as a federation. The Czechoslovak Constitution established a state “of two
equal Slavic peoples, the Czechs and the Slovaks,” with the latter getting their
own national bodies (Durdenevskii 1948a, 51). This political community was
exclusionary in the ethnic sense. Already the electoral law of April 1948 dis-
enfranchised the Hungarians and the Germans. In May 1948, the exclusion of
the Hungarians from the Constitution led to a conict between the Hungarian
Communist Party and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The
Bolsheviks criticized the absence of national minority rights from the
Czechoslovak Constitution but also rebuked the existence of separate bodies
for the Slovaks, which ostensibly made the Czechs unequal to them. In June
1948, after the Constitution was enacted, the Czechoslovak leadership assured
Molotov that ensuring the legal equality of the Hungarians with the Czechs
and the Slovaks was a priority for the cabinet (Volokitina, Islamov, and
Murashko 1997, 1: 874, 912; Volokitina 1999, 1: 615–16, 620).
The Constitution of China stated that different nationalities untied into
“one great family of free and equal peoples” and established a “unitary
multinational state” with autonomy for territories where particular national
minorities predominated (Sudarikov 1955, 30–31). Both Romanian con-
stitutions included the rights of national minorities, while the 1952 one es-
tablished a territorial autonomy for the Hungarians, the Magyar (Hungarian)
Autonomous Region (Durdenevskii 1948c, 88; Kotok 1954, 32, 37–38).
During the “popular discussion,” the Hungarian Autonomous Region
evoked many questions pertaining to possible travel restrictions between it
and other regions, to the ofcial language, and to the voting rights of the
Romanians there (Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1998, 2: 804). The
North Korean Constitution specied that national minorities had the right to
use their language and develop national culture (Tavrov 1952, 61). The
Constitution of East Germany was the only one to include the subjectivity of
regions (lands) (Sobinov 1953, 44, 51).
Supreme state institutions
The constitutions of Soviet dependencies established different structures of
government, although there were some shared aspects. Most of them did not
introduce separation of powers, declaring parliaments the supreme bodies of
state power, similar to the Soviet Constitution of 1936. Furthermore, with
the exception of East Germany, standing bodies with legislative authority
between parliamentary sessions had been established in all Soviet de-
pendencies by 1955. Several constitutions also borrowed the contradiction
between the locally organized councils, which ostensibly had all power, and
the parliaments, as the supreme bodies, from the Soviet system.
198 Ivan Sablin
Following the Soviet example, most of the constitutions proclaimed a
universally elected parliament the supreme body of state power, which
meant that there was no separation of powers. The only exceptions were the
Small Constitution of Poland and the Constitution of Czechoslovakia,
which called the Legislative Sejm and the National Assembly, respectively,
the supreme legislative bodies. In the case of Czechoslovakia, there was also
a separate legislative body in Slovakia, the Slovak National Council. Most
of the constitutions, with the exception of the East German, Hungarian,
Polish, and Yugoslav ones, specied that the parliament was the sole leg-
islative authority. In the case of East Germany, the universally elected
People’s Chamber was declared the “supreme state body,” but there was
also the second chamber, the Chamber of Lands, which was formed by the
parliaments of the lands. The Hungarian Constitution stated that the State
Assembly had legislative rights. In East Germany, parliamentary elections
were direct to the People’s Chamber and indirect to the Chamber of Lands.
In Mongolia (before 1949) and China, they were indirect. The Chinese
Constitution did not introduce a universal franchise and made urban votes
more important than rural ones, which made it similar to the Soviet
Constitution of 1918, although there were fewer voting restrictions in the
Chinese case. The Chinese Constitution also established a xed number of
seats for national minorities and for the overseas Chinese in the National
People’s Congress (Chernilovskii 1947, 50–51, 62; Demidov 1952, 41, 52;
Durdenevskii 1948a, 51; 1948b, 64; 1948c, 89; Iaskina 2007, 186; Israelian
1954, 30–31; Karev 1953, 7, 10; Kotok 1954, 33, 38; Kuprits 1951, 13;
Lazarev 1952, 28; Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 39, 42–43, 45–46;
People’s Republic of Albania 1947, 56; Sobinov 1953, 44; Sudarikov 1955,
35, 82, 86–87; Tavrov 1952, 55, 62; Trainin 1940, 182; Republic of Poland
1947; Vyshinskii 1938, 427, 431–32, 436).
In Yugoslavia, the Federal Council and the Council of Nationalities, the
two chambers whose names and design were adapted from the Supreme
Soviet, were established as directly elected and equal. The whole People’s
Assembly was proclaimed the supreme body of state power at the federal
level, while the individual republics had their own people’s assemblies. The
departure from the Soviet model in 1953 included the absorption of the
Council of Nationalities into the Federal Council and the creation of a new
chamber, the Council of Producers, consisting of delegates from workers’
councils and other economic organizations. Direct universal elections were
partially kept only for the Federal Council (Chernilovskii 1947, 50–51, 62;
Nikiforov 2011, 608–10).
All constitutions (except the Small Constitution of Poland) established
standing bodies which were active between parliamentary sessions. In most
cases, they were the presidiums of the parliaments, modeled after the
Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. According to the Small Constitution of
Poland, the Sejm could grant legislative authority to the Cabinet between
the parliamentary sessions. The Polish Constitution of 1952 made the State
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 199
Council, which the Small Constitution established as an executive body
separate from the Sejm, similar to the standing bodies of parliaments in
other Soviet dependencies. The State Council, the Standing Committee of
the National People’s Congress in China, and the presidiums
17
elsewhere
had broad competence, including the right to issue decrees, and in most
cases were the collective heads of state. In Czechoslovakia, the Presidium of
the National Assembly had limited competence, and the provisional legis-
lation, adopted between parliamentary sessions, had to be supported by the
President and the Prime Minister and approved by the National Assembly
upon its convocation. East Germany remained the only Soviet dependency
where a potent standing body had not been created by 1955, but the People’s
Chamber still formed three standing commissions, on general matters, on
economic and nancial matters, and on foreign affairs. In Yugoslavia, the
competence of the Presidium of the People’s Assembly was narrower than
that of its Soviet counterpart, and in 1953 it was abolished completely.
Instead, the President and the Federal Executive Council, led by the former,
were to be elected by the People’s Assembly (Chernilovskii 1947, 55–57;
Demidov 1952, 43–44; Durdenevskii 1948a, 58; 1948c, 89; Iaskina 2007, 186;
Israelian 1954, 33–34; Karev 1953, 12–14; Kotok 1954, 41–42; Kuprits 1951,
16–17; Lazarev 1952, 31–32; Neal 1954, 233–34; People’s Republic of
Albania 1947, 57; Sobinov 1953, 40; Sudarikov 1955, 37–39; Tavrov 1952,
65–66; Trainin 1940, 182–83; Republic of Poland 1947; Volokitina, Islamov,
and Murashko 1997, 1: 327–28).
Soviet ofcials rebuked the amendments to the Yugoslav Constitution,
known as the Yugoslav Constitutional Act of 1953. In particular, they decried
the introduction of the ofce of the President, claiming that it gave one man the
“supreme legislative, executive, and military power” and negated the demo-
cratic achievements of the Yugoslav people (Volokitina, Islamov, and
Murashko 1998, 2: 907). There were, however, presidents in Czechoslovakia,
East Germany, and Poland (until 1952) as well. In Czechoslovakia, the
President, also elected by the parliament, had broad competence (Durdenevskii
1948a, 51, 59). In East Germany, the President, elected by the two chambers,
had mostly representative functions but could also issue orders, which needed
to be approved by the Prime Minister or the responsible minister (Sobinov
1953, 41, 50). The Small Constitution of Poland retained the President, elected
by the Sejm, as part of the executive branch, but the 1952 Constitution abol-
ished the ofce and made the State Council the collective head of state
(Republic of Poland 1921; Karev 1953, 13; Republic of Poland 1947). The
Chinese Constitution gave broad executive and military competence to the
Chairman of the Chinese People’s Republic, elected by the National People’s
Congress (Sudarikov 1955, 40–42).
Most of the constitutions established locally formed bodies, most fre-
quently called “councils,” which followed the example of the soviets in the
USSR. Two of them also borrowed the key contradiction between the clause
which made parliament the supreme body of state power and the clause
200 Ivan Sablin
which gave all power to the soviets (Trainin 1940, 179, 182, 186). In 1950,
the statement that “All power in the People’s Republic of Albania belongs to
the urban and rural toilers as represented by the people’s councils” was
added to the Albanian Constitution (Kuprits 1951, 3; People’s Republic of
Albania 1947, 51). In a similar manner, the Mongolian Constitution stated
that “All power in the Mongolian People’s Republic belongs to the urban
and khudon toilers as represented by the khurals [assemblies]” of the toilers.
Like in the Soviet case, the Great People’s Khural and the territorial khurals
of toiler’s deputies were different institutions, since the latter were explicitly
called “local bodies of state power” (Demidov 1952, 37, 41, 46; Mongolian
People’s Republic 1947, 36).
Other constitutions, however, managed to avoid this contradiction. In
Romania, the Constitution of 1948 simply dened the people’s councils as the
local bodies of state power (Durdenevskii 1948c, 92), as did the constitutions
of Bulgaria and Hungary (Israelian 1954, 38; Lazarev 1952, 35). The Albanian
(before the amendments of 1950), Chinese, North Korean, Romanian (1952),
Polish (1952), and Yugoslav constitutions also dened such bodies as local
bodies of state power but connected them to the larger system. The Yugoslav
Constitution stated that the people realized their power through the “re-
presentative bodies,” which included both the people’s committees and the
parliaments at the republican and federal levels (Chernilovskii 1947, 36, 66).
The same approach was used in the Albanian Constitution before the
amendments (People’s Republic of Albania 1947, 51, 60). The Romanian
Constitution of 1952 stated that the power belonging to the “urban and rural
toilers” was realized through the Great National Assembly and people’s
councils (Kotok 1954, 33, 46). In a similar manner, the Polish Constitution of
1952 stated that the toilers acted through their representatives in the Sejm and
in the “people’s councils,” which were already mentioned in the Small
Constitution (Karev 1953, 7, 14, 16; Republic of Poland 1947). The Chinese
Constitution stated that “All power in the Chinese People’s Republic belongs
to the people as represented by the National People’s Congress and local
people’s congresses” (Sudarikov 1955, 31, 44). The North Korean
Constitution stated that the people’s committees assisted the Supreme
National Assembly (Tavrov 1952, 55, 71). The Czechoslovak and East
German constitutions did not use the concept of local bodies of state power.
The former still described the territorial people’s (national) committees as part
of the unied public administration (Durdenevskii 1948b, 67). The latter es-
tablished a system of local self-government (Sobinov 1953, 57–58).
Most of the constitutions used the word “supreme” in relation to the
cabinets, courts, and prosecutors, but only the Small Constitution of Poland
clearly established the separation of legislative (the Legislative Sejm), ex-
ecutive (the President, the State Council, and the Cabinet), and judicial
(independent courts) powers (Republic of Poland 1947). The constitutions
of Albania, Bulgaria, China, Mongolia, Poland (1952), Romania, and
Yugoslavia followed the Soviet Constitution of 1936, which made the
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 201
Council of People’s Commissars the “supreme executive and administrative
body” (Trainin 1940, 184), when discussing the cabinets (Chernilovskii 1947,
58; Demidov 1952, 44; Durdenevskii 1948c, 91; Karev 1953, 14; Kotok 1954,
43; Kuprits 1951, 17; Lazarev 1952, 32; Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 41;
People’s Republic of Albania 1947, 58; Sudarikov 1955, 42). The North Korean
Constitution stated that the Cabinet of Ministers had “supreme executive”
power (Tavrov 1952, 66). The Hungarian Constitution dened the Council of
Ministers as the “supreme body of state administration” (Israelian 1954, 35). In
the cases of Czechoslovakia and East Germany, supreme executive authority as
a concept was not mentioned. The Czechoslovak Constitution divided the
central executive authority between the President and the Cabinet, while
Slovakia also had its own cabinet (Durdenevskii 1948a, 60; 1948b, 62–63).
The East German Constitution did not include the word executive at all when
discussing the Cabinet (Sobinov 1953, 47).
Following the Soviet example (Trainin 1940, 187), supreme courts as
supreme judicial bodies were introduced in Albania (after the 1950
amendments), China (as the Supreme People’s Court), Mongolia, North
Korea, and Poland (1952) (Demidov 1952, 50; Karev 1953, 19; Kuprits
1951, 23; Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 44; Sudarikov 1955, 49;
Tavrov 1952, 75). Supreme courts were also established by the constitution
of Albania (prior to the amendments), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East
Germany, Hungary, Romania (1948), and Yugoslavia but the notion of
supreme judicial authority was not articulated (Chernilovskii 1947, 68;
Durdenevskii 1948b, 68; 1948c, 92; Israelian 1954, 40; Kotok 1954, 49;
Lazarev 1952, 37; People’s Republic of Albania 1947, 61; Sobinov 1953, 55).
With the exception of Czechoslovakia, the ofce of prosecutor general
and the respective agency were established in all Soviet dependencies. The
Soviet notion of “supreme” legal oversight was used in relation to such an
ofce in the constitutions of Bulgaria (where it was called the Chief
Prosecutor), Mongolia, and Romania (1952) (Demidov 1952, 50–51; Kotok
1954, 50; Lazarev 1952, 376; Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 44; Trainin
1940, 187). The Chinese Constitution established the Supreme People’s
Prosecutor’s Ofce and the position of the Prosecutor General (Sudarikov
1955, 50). The ofce of the Supreme Prosecutor was also established in
Hungary (Israelian 1954, 41). The constitutions of North Korea and Poland
(1952) did not use the word “supreme” when discussing the competence of
the Prosecutor General (Karev 1953, 19; Tavrov 1952, 75–76). The
Romanian Constitution of 1948 limited the Prosecutor General’s oversight
functions to criminal law (Durdenevskii 1948c, 93). In the constitutions of
Yugoslavia and Albania, the prosecutor’s ofce was dened as a body of the
parliament (Chernilovskii 1947, 70–71; Kuprits 1951, 23; People’s Republic
of Albania 1947, 61–62). The East German Constitution mentioned the
Prosecutor General but did not specify the competence of the ofce
(Sobinov 1953, 55).
202 Ivan Sablin
Dependence
Some of the constitutions made the dependence on the USSR, the socialist
ideology, and the special role of the ruling parties explicit. The USSR was
presented as the liberator, as a model, and as an ally in several texts. Some
constitutions also mentioned or implied the goal of building socialism. The
ruling parties were mentioned only in several cases.
The constitutions of China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and
Romania (1952) mentioned the Soviet Union. The Czechoslovak Constitution
cited the Great October Revolution as the inspiration and the “Russian
workers and peasants” as the example for the Czechs and the Slovaks. It also
mentioned the country’s liberation with the help of the Allies, the USSR in the
rst place. The USSR was called “the great Slavic power,” which strengthened
the nationalist aspect of the Constitution (Durdenevskii 1948a, 50–51). The
Hungarian Constitution mentioned the liberation by the “great Soviet Union”
and its “seless support” for rebuilding the country (Israelian 1954, 27). The
Polish Constitution of 1952 referenced the liberation through the Soviet vic-
tory and claimed that the Polish working class relied on the Soviet experience
of socialist construction (Karev 1953, 5–6). The 1952 Constitution of Romania
claimed that the formation of the People’s Republic resulted from the Soviet
victory over German fascism and Romania’s liberation by the Soviet Army.
The Constitution also mentioned the friendship and alliance with the USSR
and its “seless brotherly support and aid.” The friendship and union with the
countries of people’s democracy were also included into the formulation of the
state’s foreign policy in the Constitution (Kotok 1954, 31–33). The Chinese
Constitution also referred to the “unbreakable friendship” with the “great”
USSR and the “countries of people’s democracy” (Sudarikov 1955, 30–31).
Socialism was mentioned in the constitutions of Albania (after the
amendments of 1950), China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland,
and Romania. The Mongolian Constitution stated that the country was
following the “non-capitalist path of development” for the eventual “tran-
sition to socialism” (Demidov 1952, 37; Mongolian People’s Republic 1947,
36). The amended Albanian Constitution stated that the foundations of
socialism had already been built in the country (Kuprits 1951, 3; People’s
Republic of Albania 1947, 51). The Czechoslovak Constitution mentioned
the peaceful way to socialism (Durdenevskii 1948a, 50). The Hungarian
Constitution stated that the country was on its way to socialism and cited
Soviet assistance in building its foundations (Israelian 1954, 27–28). The
1952 constitutions of Poland and Romania included the goal of building
socialism (Karev 1953, 6; Kotok 1954, 32). The Chinese Constitution also
set the goal of building “prosperous and happy socialist society” (Sudarikov
1955, 29). The East German Constitution did not mention socialism but
referred to social justice and state economic plans (Sobinov 1953, 27, 32–33).
Parties were mentioned only in the cases of Albania, China, and
Romania. The reference to the special role of the Party of Labor of Albania
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 203
was included in the Constitution in 1950. Like in the Soviet case, it was
mentioned in the clause on the right to association: “conscientious citizens
from the ranks of the working class and other strata of the toiling people are
united in the Party of Labor of Albania” (Kuprits 1951, 8; Smirnova 2003,
303; Trainin 1940, 188). A similar passage on the Romanian Workers’ Party
was included in the Romanian Constitution of 1952. The text also referenced
the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party in the creation of the state
twice (Kotok 1954, 31, 33, 54). The Chinese Constitution stated that the
Chinese Communist Party led the Chinese people to its victory (Sudarikov
1955, 29–30).
Nonconstitutional institutions
Similar to the USSR, the parties, which were at best only briey mentioned in
the constitutions, and the leaders, whose authority derived from their positions
in the parties, played pivotal roles in the political systems of Soviet de-
pendencies. The central bodies of the ruling parties became the de facto su-
preme government agencies. The leaders performed as the heads of state
irrespective of their government ofces. The VKP(b)/CPSU, the Soviet gov-
ernment, and the Soviet leader were often presented as external sources of
authority, even when there was no Soviet military presence.
The monopolization of control over political and social life by the com-
munist parties, irrespective of their ofcial names and nominal popular front
arrangements, happened before the adoption of the constitutions in most
cases. The Yugoslav Communist Boris Ziherl acknowledged the formation
of a one-party regime in January 1946. “The word ‘party’ in Yugoslavia has
the same meaning as in the USSR: the people mean exclusively the
Communist Party by it” (Volokitina 1999, 1: 271). Each of the domestic
communist parties in Soviet dependencies became known as the “Party” in
the respective context, and their control of the government was not con-
cealed. This was an intentional policy. When the Soviet–Yugoslav conict
developed in 1948, Stalin rebuked the lack of public presence from the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia and its semi-legal status, claiming that
“according to the theory of Marxism, the party has to control all state
bodies of the country.”
18
Within the parties themselves, small ruling circles
became the main governing bodies, with one or several persons having the
nal say. The nominal character of popular fronts was also not concealed
(Mar’ina 2005, 2:91–92; Noskova 2012, 576–77). The coverage of the Third
Congress of the Bulgarian Fatherland Front in 1952, for instance, claimed
that the program and the main goals of the Communist Party and the
Fatherland Front were the same.
19
The leadership of the ruling parties in people’s democratic state-building,
building socialism, and developing the country was afrmed in propa-
ganda.
20
East Germany, for instance, ostensibly owed all of its achievements
to the Party.
21
The “correct policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea” was
204 Ivan Sablin
deemed the source of inspiration for the “Korean people” in the Korean
War (1950–1953).
22
The people and the toilers were occasionally said to
“love” their respective party.
23
Propaganda outlets presented party con-
gresses (Figure 7.3) and conferences (Figure 7.4) as events of great im-
portance. The plenums of central committees were treated as the main
decision-making bodies.
24
Even though the decisions were made in small circles, it was indeed at the
large party gatherings, and not, for instance, in the parliaments, where the
most important policies were announced. Ulbricht, for instance, proclaimed
the objective of building socialism in East Germany at the Second Party
Conference of the Socialist Unity Party in 1952 (Figure 7.4), and “thou-
sands” of people ostensibly promised the Conference to engage in “socialist
competition” in order to achieve it.
25
A report on the Tenth Congress of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1954 presented the Party as the
inspiration for “all honest citizens of Czechoslovakia” and as their educator.
“Faith in the Party, in the truth of its teachings, in the correctness of its
path, kindled a ame in the hearts and minds of the people.” The report
attached features of a parliament to the Congress, arguing that it brought
together representatives of all “spheres of our national life and all regions
of our republic,” the “genuine representatives of the Party and the
Czechoslovak people.”
26
Figure 7.3 The Second National Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, Tirana,
April 10–14, 1950 (Novaia Albaniia, No. 32–33, April–May 1950, front
matter).
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 205
Although the achievements of the people were mentioned, especially
prominently in Poland,
27
propaganda outlets tended to present the people
not as the political subjects but as the followers of the ruling party and the
implementers of its tasks. The election results, which usually reported vic-
tories of the respective fronts with over 99 percent of votes, were presented
as the unity of the whole people and its afrmation of the tasks, set by the
party, the cabinet, or the leader. The support for the party was often pre-
sented as unanimous.
28
The notion of “the moral-political unity” of the
people under the party’s leadership as, for instance, articulated in North
Korean propaganda,
29
was borrowed directly from the Soviet discourse
(Gill 2011, 105).
In the parliaments, the hierarchy did not change, as there was no delib-
eration on the presented goals and plans. The coverage of parliamentary
sessions included references to the “objectives” and “directives,” set by party
and the leader, which the people were striving to fulll, and often stressed
the unanimity of decisions.
30
A report on the session of the Grand National
Assembly of Romania, for instance, stressed the commitment to ght for the
implementation of the rst Five-Year Plan, which rank-and-le deputies
Figure 7.4 The Second Party Conference of the Socialist Unity Party, Berlin, July 10,
1952. Front row, left to right: Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pieck, and Otto
Grotewohl (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183–15410-0097/ CC-BY-SA 3.0).
206 Ivan Sablin
made “on behalf of the workers, engineers, and technicians.”
31
In North
Korea, the Supreme People’s Assembly was said to have adopted the budget
in order to implement the policies of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the
Cabinet.
32
The linkage between the party authorities and the populace,
political and ideological education and socialization, and the integration of
diverse social groups within one state were in fact the primary tasks of the
state socialist parliaments, given that they did not engage in deliberative
legislation (Nelson 1982, 4, 7–9, 11; for a discussion of the Czechoslovak
case, see Gjuricǒvá 2019).
In Albania, the complete subordination of the People’s Assembly to the
Party was openly acknowledged.
The strength of the Albanian state, of the people’s democratic system
lies in the strength of the Party and the full provision of its leading and
controlling role in the entire work of the state apparatus. Therefore, the
rst session of the Third People’s Assembly, unanimously expressing the
will of the people, revealed love and unbreakable loyalty to the Party
and its Central Committee, unanimously approving the program of the
new Cabinet, which in turn undertook, like all previous people’s
Cabinets, to unswervingly implement the Party line.
33
The exact status of individual leaders differed across the informal Soviet
empire, but there was always one or several persons who were treated as the
de facto head(s) of the respective state. Within their states, the power of
some of the leaders was comparable to that of Stalin in the Soviet Union,
and many of them modeled their behavior and images on Stalin (Naimark
2017, 70). This applied in particular to Hoxha in Albania, Valko
Chervenkov in Bulgaria, Mao in China, Rákosi in Hungary, Choibalsan in
Mongolia, Kim in North Korea, and Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania (after the
purges of other leaders in 1952). They usually were prime ministers and rst
or general secretaries
34
of the respective ruling parties. With the exception of
the presidents Gottwald and Beirut, most of the leaders were not formally
heads of state, but they were nevertheless presented as the leaders (often
“great” and “beloved”) of the people or the toiling people in propaganda
outlets. Hoxha was, for instance, called “the organizer of our victories,” the
“leader of the Albanian people,” the “founder and organizer” of the
Albanian state. The leaders of the people in Soviet dependencies were mu-
tually recognized as such.
35
Domestic personality cults involved broad cir-
culation of the leaders’ images and statements, public celebrations of their
birthdays, and publication of their works.
36
There were also cults of the
deceased leaders, which were modeled after that of Lenin in the USSR, and
included those of Dimitrov in Bulgaria, Sun Yat-sen in China, Gottwald in
Czechoslovakia, and Damdiny Sükhbaatar and Choibalsan in Mongolia
37
(Apor et al. 2004; Iaskina 2007, 187; Mar’ina 2005, 2:92; Myadar 2019, 60).
Several regimes had collective leadership. In East Germany, where the
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 207
recent history of Nazism made a single leader problematic, Wilhelm Pieck
(President), Grotewohl (Prime Minister), and Ulbricht (First Secretary of
the Party) were all celebrated in propaganda outlets (Figure 7.4), while the
Party was dened as the “Leader of the Nation.”
38
The notion of the Party
as the “genuine leader, inspirator, and teacher of the people” was also used
in Czechoslovakia. Although Antonín Zápotocký succeeded Gottwald, who
died, as the President and was prominently featured in propaganda,
39
Antonín Novotný headed the Party. The German and Czechoslovak (since
1953) cases were, however, an exception. In Poland, where Bolesław Bierut,
Jakub Berman, and Hilary Minc ruled as a group, Moscow still considered
Bierut as the leader of the Party and hence its primary contact in Poland,
and he was celebrated as such in propaganda outlets.
40
Individuals also
consolidated their positions through the purges, which were initiated or
sanctioned by Moscow, as was the case in Romania. With the exception of
Ana Pauker,
41
who was purged by Gheorghiu-Dej in 1952, all leaders were
men (Hodos 1987, 94; Mar’ina 2005, 2:107, 136; Noskova 2012, 569).
Although only the “Choibalsan Constitution” in Mongolia and the
“Dimitrov Constitution” followed the example of the “Stalin Constitution”
of the USSR, propaganda outlets still presented some of the leaders as the
key actors in drafting the constitutions (Figure 7.1), presenting the drafts,
and getting them adopted
42
(Figure 7.5).
Figure 7.5 Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (center) and Petru Groza (left) voting for the
Constitution of Romania at the Thirteenth Session of the Grand
National Assembly, September 24, 1952 (Fototeca online a comunismului
românesc, Photograph #IA174, 174/1952).
208 Ivan Sablin
The leaders were also featured during the implementation of the constitu-
tions. There were numerous reports and photographs of the leaders cam-
paigning, voting in elections (Figure 7.6), being nominated and elected as
deputies to local and central bodies, speaking in parliaments and other as-
semblies, or being appointed to ofces by them.
43
Gheorghiu-Dej was, for
instance, called “the best son of the Romanian people” and “the rst candi-
date,”
44
while Chervenkov was celebrated as the “rst deputy of the toilers.”
45
Gheorghiu-Dej was often shown voting in the parliament.
46
In a similar
manner, the leaders were featured during the coverage of party assemblies.
47
Soviet representatives participated in state-building across the informal
empire, often at the formal request of the respective leaders. In 1949, for in-
stance, Gottwald asked Stalin to send advisors to assist in establishing bodies
of state security and border control. Although initially these advisors were
considered temporary, in 1950 they were already treated as permanent both in
Moscow and in Prague (Volokitina, Islamov, and Murashko 1998, 2: 382). In
1951–1952, numerous Soviet advisors came to Czechoslovakia, and there was
even a request to send a “chief advisor” to work in the government, which
Moscow denied (Mar’ina 2005, 2:102). Whereas terror, coercion, anti-religious
campaigns, and mass purges were perpetuated by domestic authorities most of
Figure 7.6 Mátyás Rákosi and his wife Fenia Fedorovna Kornilova voting in the
local council election, Budapest, October 22, 1950 (Fortepan #126963/
Bauer Sándor, CC BY-SA 3.0).
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 209
the time, the Soviets also occasionally intervened directly, as was the case when
they suppressed the East German uprising in 1953 (Naimark 2017, 72–76).
Soviet representatives often criticized the policies of the dependent re-
gimes, sometimes citing the constitutions. In 1948, for instance, Zorin cri-
ticized the restrictive religious law in Bulgaria, fearing that it could stimulate
opposition among the clergy and believers in the country and cause a re-
action abroad. Moscow then advised the Bulgarian Communists to change
the law so that it would follow the Constitution (Volokitina 1999, 1: 643,
645–46). In 1950, a Soviet secret police advisor informed Rákosi that the
existing police courts were unconstitutional, and Rákosi agreed to form
people’s courts instead (Volokitina 2002, 2: 271). In 1953, Soviet re-
presentatives described the state subventions to the Catholic Church and
religious education in Poland as unconstitutional (Volokitina 2002, 2: 861).
Propaganda outlets often cited the supremacy of the VKP(b)/CPSU, the
Soviet Union, and their leaders. The cult of Stalin spread across the whole in-
formal empire (Naimark 2017, 70). Portraits of Stalin were displayed in do-
mestic and public settings (Figure 7.2), including polling stations (Figure 7.7).
Almost 13 million copies of the works of Stalin and Lenin had been, for in-
stance, printed in Romanian by the end of 1954 (Deletant 2018, 67). Numerous
places were named after Stalin and Lenin. Domestic events were often accom-
panied by the portraits of Soviet leaders (Figure 7.3 and Figure 7.4). The
Figure 7.7 Elections to the People’s Assembly and district people’s councils of the
People’s Republic of Bulgaria, December 18, 1949 (State Central
Museum of Contemporary History of Russia (GTsMSIR) 27126/163).
210 Ivan Sablin
respective peoples and parties were said to “love” the USSR, its people, and
Stalin, who was often called a “genius.” Domestic communist parties were said
to learn and get inspiration from the VKP(b) and the USSR. The XIX Congress
of the VKP(b)/CPSU and the anniversaries of the October Revolution were
widely celebrated.
48
Bulgarian propaganda, for instance, referred to the Soviet
Union as the “double liberator and seless patron,”
49
while Romanian propa-
ganda deemed Stalin “the genius teacher of the toilers of the whole world.”
50
In
a similar manner, the report on the Second Party Congress in Albania stated,
that “The Congress clearly revealed the boundless love and loyalty of the Party
of Labor and the entire Albanian people to the Bolshevik Party, the Soviet
Union, and the genius leader of all humanity, Comrade Stalin.”
51
Bilateral meetings and events, including the visits of ensembles and circus
troupes, within the informal Soviet empire were accompanied by the por-
traits of the leaders of the two sides and those of Soviet leaders, even if the
Soviet side was not involved (Figure 7.8). After Stalin’s death, the portraits
of Georgii Maksimilianovich Malenkov and then Nikolai Aleksandrovich
Bulganin were displayed as those of the current leaders. Given that the in-
uence of the two within the USSR was far from that of Stalin, this meant
that the Soviet leader as an institution, rather than Stalin personally, had
symbolic importance.
52
Figure 7.8 Czechoslovak Ambassador to China František Komzala giving a speech
before the performance of the Czechoslovak circus troupe, Beijing,
December 1953. Portraits, left to right: Georgii Maksimilianovich Malenkov,
Antonín Zápotocký, and Mao Zedong (Kitai, No. 1, 1954, p. 39).
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 211
The visits of Soviet specialists, the signing of treaties with the Soviet
Union, Soviet aid, and the events knowns as the “Month of Friendship”
with the Soviet Union contributed to the cohesion of the Soviet informal
empire and were extensively covered in propaganda outlets.
53
The USSR
and its dependencies also regularly exchanged parliamentary delegations
(Figure 7.9). Soviet dependencies supported the USSR’s international in-
itiatives, including its “struggle for peace” campaign
54
(Johnston 2008).
In 1955, the signing of the Warsaw Treaty was a major step toward the
formal integration of the informal empire, although it was still conned to
Europe. Hoxha, for instance, stressed the honor of joining the treaty and
promised that the Albanian people would protect the interests of the “camp
of socialism.”
55
Apart from the further integration of the informal empire,
the regimes in the USSR and its dependencies strengthened their interna-
tional legitimacy in 1955. The Supreme Soviet joined the Inter-
Parliamentary Union (IPU), which meant that it became recognized as a
parliament by the organization (Juviler 1961, 25). The same year, Albania,
Figure 7.9 Delegation of the USSR Supreme Soviet at the session of the State
Assembly of the Hungarian People’s Republic, November 1955. Mátyás
Rákosi is in the front on the right (GTsMSIR 31111/15).
212 Ivan Sablin
Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania were admitted to the United Nations,
joining Czechoslovakia and Poland, its original members (“Member States”
n.d.), which boosted the USSR’s position within the organization.
Conclusion
The constitution-making in the informal Soviet empire in 1945–1955 con-
tinued the Bolshevik practice which started in the 1920s. The concepts of
“people’s republic,” borrowed from the Ukrainian socialists, and “people’s
democracy,” developed in the Comintern, contributed to the idea of a Soviet
satellite in the general sense. At the same time, there was no coherent
blueprint on how a “people’s republic” was to be constituted. Multiple ac-
tors joined the practical implementation of the idea in each particular
context and, having adopted different elements from the Soviet Constitution
of 1936, came up with different legal architectures. The sources of sover-
eignty, political subjectivity, supreme state institutions, and the indications
of dependence on the USSR and the domestic communist party varied
across the constitutions of Soviet dependencies. Whereas there were con-
siderable similarities between some of the texts or their parts, only the es-
tablishment of a standing legislative body became the most prominent albeit
also not ubiquitous feature of the dependent regimes in this period.
The nonconstitutional structural adjustments in governance were, how-
ever, much more profound. Similar to the VKP(b)/CPSU and Stalin in the
USSR, the domestic communist parties and leaders came to dominate the
political systems of Soviet dependencies. The fusion of parties and govern-
ments was openly admitted and in fact celebrated in propaganda outlets. So
were the leaders, few of whom were the constitutional heads of state.
Propaganda and political practice also demonstrated that the VKP(b)/
CPSU, the Soviet government, and the Soviet leader played an explicit role
of external sources of authority. The launch of de-Stalinization in 1956
threatened this nonconstitutional architecture, which is one of the reasons
for its mixed reception in Soviet dependencies (A. R. 1956, 492–93) and the
eventual splits with Albania and China. The same year, however, the sup-
pression of the Hungarian Revolution demonstrated that Moscow was
ready to use military measures for preserving its informal empire if ideolo-
gical and pragmatic allegiance was insufcient (Borhi 2004, 3).
Periodicals
Bolgariia [Bulgaria]
Chekhoslovakiia [Czechoslovakia]
Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike [German Democratic
Republic in Construction]
Kitai [China]
Kommunisticheskii internatsional [Communist International]
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 213
Narodnaia Pol’sha [People’s Poland]
Narodnaia Rumyniia [People’s Romania]
Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia [People’s Democratic Romania]
Novaia Albaniia [New Albania]
Novaia Koreia [New Korea]
Vengerskii biulleten’ [Hungarian Bulletin]
Notes
* This study was completed as part of the project “ENTPAR: Entangled
Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China and
Mongolia, 1905–2005,” which received funding from the European Research
Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
program (grant agreement no. 755504).
1 Major amendments to the 1921 Polish Constitution, which became known as the
Small Constitution of 1947, predated the adoption of the Constitution of the
People’s Republic of Poland in 1952.
2 The party was called the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) or the VKP(b)
in 1925–1952.
3 Propaganda usually presented the community of Soviet dependencies in a dif-
ferentiated manner, as the countries of people’s democracy, the People’s Republic
of China, and the German Democratic Republic (Bolgariia, No. 7, 1951, p. 3),
but the notion of the “countries of people’s democracy in Europe and Asia” was
also present (Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike, No. 3,
1954, p. 1).
4 Kommunisticheskii internatsional, No. 14, 1936, p. 93.
5 Kommunisticheskii internatsional, No. 23–24, 1935, p. 90; No. 16, 1936, p. 9.
6 Kommunisticheskii internatsional, No. 22, 1935, pp. 3, 5.
7 Kommunisticheskii internatsional, No. 18, 1936, p. 104; No. 5–6, 1936, p. 74.
8 Kommunisticheskii internatsional, No. 11–12, 1936, p. 52–53.
9 The author is grateful to Aleksandr Shubin for his comment on the matter.
10 Kommunisticheskii internatsional, No. 5, 1941, p. 98.
11 The author is grateful to Cristian Vasile for his clarication on the matter.
12 The author is grateful to Adéla Gjuričová for her advice on the subject.
13 In 1944, universal elections were introduced in Mongolia (Mongolian People’s
Republic 1947, 50).
14 In China, the Constitution claimed that the elections were universal, with the
exception of insane persons and those who were disenfranchised by law. The
election law of 1953 specied that landowners who had not yet “changed their
class afliation according to law,” “counterrevolutionary” elements, and other
individuals who were disenfranchised by court did not have active or passive
voting rights (Sudarikov 1955, 51, 83).
15 In Hungary, the “enemies of the toiling people” were disenfranchised (Israelian
1954, 46).
16 In Romania, voting rights to people’s councils were limited in 1950, with former
industrialists, bankers, and other “representatives of large bourgeoisie,” as well as
kulaks (prosperous peasants) being disenfranchised (Narodno-demokraticheskaia
Rumyniia, No. 5, 1950, p. 6; No. 6, 1950, p. 9). The Constitution of 1952 stated
that only “toiling citizens” had voting rights. The elections were still called
“universal” in the election law of 1952, but it reafrmed the disenfranchised
categories: “former landowners, former industrialists, former bankers, former
large businessmen, kulaks, owners of private trade companies and small non-
214 Ivan Sablin
nationalized companies based on the exploitation of hired labor,” and those who
were sentenced for war crimes and crimes against peace and humanity, in addi-
tion to the standard exclusion of insane persons and those disenfranchised by
court (Kotok 1954, 56, 65).
17 In Mongolia, its functions were performed by the Small Khural and its Presidium
(Mongolian People’s Republic 1947, 39–40). In 1949, the Small Khural was
abolished, with the Presidium of the Great People’s Khural taking over its
functions (Iaskina 2007, 186).
18 RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), f. 558, op. 11, d.
398, l. 29 (To Comrade Tito and other members of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia from Molotov and Stalin on behalf of the VKP
(b) Central Committee, March 27, 1948).
19 Bolgariia, No. 5, 1952, p. 31.
20 Kitai, No. 5, 1954, p. 3; Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 4, 1951, p. 2;
Novaia Albaniia, No. 11, 1951; Novaia Koreia, No. 6, 1954, p. 8; Vengerskii
biulleten’, No. 52, 1952, cover, p. 5.
21 Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike, No. 3, 1954, p. 1.
22 Novaia Koreia, No. 2, 1955, p. 3.
23 Chekhoslovakiia, No. 7, 1954, p. 1; Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No.
4–5, 1952, p. 4; Novaia Albaniia, No. 32–33, 1950.
24 Bolgariia, No. 2, 1954, p. 1; Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na
stroike, No. 1, 1951; Novaia Albaniia, No. 7, 1954; Novaia Koreia, No. 2, 1955,
p. 4; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 29, 1951, p. 1.
25 Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike, No. 5, 1952, p. 1.
26 Chekhoslovakiia, No. 7, 1954, p. 1.
27 Narodnaia Pol’sha, July 1953.
28 Bolgariia, No. 1, 1954, p. 2–3; Narodnaia Rumyniia, No. 12, 1955, p. 2; Novaia Albaniia,
No. 5, 1954; No. 6, 1954; No. 8, 1954; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 141, 1953, p. 6.
29 Novaia Koreia, No. 9, 1954, p. 5.
30 Bolgariia, No. 3, 1955, p. 31; No. 5, 1955, p. 5; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 52, 1952,
cover, p. 5.
31 Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 8, 1950, p. 4.
32 Novaia Koreia, No. 6, 1954, p. 5; No. 4, 1955, p. 8.
33 Novaia Albaniia, No. 8, 1954.
34 In the VKP(b)/CPSU, there was no formal leader in 1934–1953.
35 Kitai, No. 1, 1952, p. 2; No. 1, 1954, p. 2; No. 7, 1955, pp. 8–9; Narodnaia
Pol’sha, December 1953; Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 5, 1950, p. 6;
No. 10–11, 1951, p. 8; No. 6, 1952, p. 2; Novaia Albaniia, No. 11, 1951; Novaia
Koreia, No. 6, 1954, p. 8; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 52, 1952, cover, p. 1.
36 Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike, No. 1, 1951; Kitai,
No. 11, 1951; No. 1, 1952, pp. 2–3; Narodnaia Pol’sha, July 1953; Narodno-
demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 3, 1950, p. 1; No. 5, 1951, p. 1; No. 10–11,
1951, pp. 8, 26; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 52, 1952, cover.
37 Bolgariia, No. 1, 1951, pp. 37–39; No. 2, 1951, p. 1; Chekhoslovakiia, No. 4, 1954,
p. 2; No. 7, 1954, p. 2; Kitai, No. 11, 1951; No. 4, 1955, p. 3.
38 Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike, No. 3–4, 1953, p. 2;
No. 3, 1954, pp. 1–2.
39 Chekhoslovakiia, No. 4, 1954, p. 1–2; No. 7, 1954, p. 1.
40 Narodnaia Pol’sha, December 1955.
41 Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 2, 1950, p. 24; No. 4, 1951, p. 7.
42 Kitai, No. 4, 1954, p. 1; No. 7, 1954, p. 1; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 52, 1952,
front matter.
Constitution-making in the Soviet empire 215
43 Bolgariia, No. 1, 1954, p. 1; No. 4, 1951, p. 1; No. 2, 1953, p. 30; Germanskaia
Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike, No. 2, 1951; No. 3, 1952, p. 4; No. 1, 1954,
p. 1; No. 5, 1955, p. 5; Kitai, No. 9, 1954, p. 1; No. 10, 1954, p. 6; Narodno-
demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 5, 1950, p. 6; No. 6, 1950, pp. 12–13; No. 11, 1952,
p. 15; No. 12, 1952, p. 15; No. 1, 1953, p. 7; Narodnaia Pol’sha, March–April 1953;
Narodnaia Rumyniia, No. 3, 1955, p. 4; Novaia Albaniia, No. 21–22, 1949, p. 8; No. 6,
1955; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 142, 1953, cover; No. 143, 1953, front matter.
44 Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 6, 1950, p. 13; No. 4, 1951, p. 2; No.
12, 1952, p. 15.
45 Bolgariia, No. 1, 1953, 1.
46 Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 8, 1950, p. 5; No. 4, 1951, p. 3; No. 3,
1952, p. 3.
47 Bolgariia, No. 2, 1954, p. 1; Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na
stroike, No. 3, 1954, front matter; Kitai, No. 4, 1955, p. 1; Kitai, No. 11, 1955,
p. 2; Narodnaia Pol’sha, December 1953; Novaia Albaniia, No. 17, 1949, pp. 2–11,
18; Novaia Albaniia, No. 32–33, 1950; Novaia Albaniia, No. 4–5, 1952; Vengerskii
biulleten’, No. 69, 1952, front matter.
48 Bolgariia, No. 7, 1951, p. 3; No. 1, 1952, front matter; No. 2, 1952, p. 32; No. 5,
1952, p. 30; No. 2, 1953, p. 30; Chekhoslovakiia, No. 2, 1953, p. 3; No. 4, 1954,
p. 2; No. 6, 1954, p. 24; No. 7, 1954, p. 1; Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia
Respublika na stroike, No. 3, 1951; No. 6, 1952, p. 3; No. 1, 1953, pp. 3, 29; Kitai,
No. 11, 1952, pp. 2–3; No. 12, 1954, p. 3; No. 12, 1955, p. 3; Narodnaia Pol’sha,
July 1953; Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 2, 1950, p. 24; No. 3, 1950,
p. 24; No. 6, 1950, p. 25; No. 8, 1950, p. 4; No. 5, 1951, p. 7; No. 10–11, 1951,
p. 1; No. 12, 1951, p. 18; No. 4–5, 1952, p. 4; No. 10, 1952, p. 2; No. 11, 1952,
p. 1; No. 2, 1953, p. 10; No. 11, 1953, pp. 1–2; Novaia Albaniia, No. 17, 1949,
p. 18; No. 25–26, 1949, p. 14; No. 34, 1950; No. 11, 1951; No. 4, 1954; No. 6,
1954; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 18, 1950, p. 9; No. 11, 1951; No. 29, 1951, cover.
49 Bolgariia, No. 6, 1951, p. 6.
50 Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No. 7, 1950, p. 6.
51 Novaia Albaniia, No. 32–33, April–May 1950.
52 Bolgariia, No. 8, 1954, p. 31; Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike,
No. 3, 1952, p. 20; Kitai, No. 4, 1954, p. 2; No. 9, 1954, p. 39; No. 3, 1955, p. 2; No. 5,
1955, p. 37; Novaia Albaniia, No. 12, 1954; Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 73, 1953, cover.
53 Bolgariia, No. 6, 1951, p. 10; Chekhoslovakiia, No. 3, 1954, p. 25; No. 7, 1954,
p. 3; Germanskaia Demokraticheskaia Respublika na stroike, No. 1, 1952, p. 18;
No. 1, 1953, p. 3; Kitai, No. 12, 1951; No. 1, 1952, p. 20; No. 3, 1952, p. 1;
Narodnaia Pol’sha, December 1953; Narodno-demokraticheskaia Rumyniia, No.
7, 1950, p. 6; No. 10, 1952, pp. 1, 8; Narodnaia Rumyniia, No. 6, 1954, p. 8;
Novaia Albaniia, No. 11, 1951; No. 11, 1954; Novaia Koreia, No. 6, 1954, p. 8;
Vengerskii biulleten’, No. 137, 1953, cover.
54 Chekhoslovakiia, No. 11, 1955, p. 24; Narodnaia Rumyniia, No. 3, 1955, p. 5;
Novaia Albaniia, No. 4, 1955; Novaia Koreia, No. 4, 1955, p. 1.
55 Novaia Albaniia, No. 6, 1955.
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222 Ivan Sablin
8 Work teams, leading small groups,
and the making of modern Chinese
bureaucracy, 1929–1966
*
Long Yang
Introduction
The subject of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formed, developed,
and coordinated the relationship between its formal and provisional in-
stitutions has long been a central topic in the analysis of Chinese govern-
ance. Important elements of that relationship include bureaucratic routines,
CCP top leaders’ personal power, departmental interests, forms of govern-
ance, and policy making and implementation. Previous scholarship has
stressed the role of provisional institutions in intensifying competition be-
tween government departments for their own interests. Such competition
further caused fragmented governance (Lieberthal and Lampton 1992;
Lieberthal 2004). This approach tried to predict whether China’s political
system would eventually reach its demise. As the CCP seems to be becoming
increasingly responsive to political and economic challenges, recent studies
have shifted to explore instead the operations of provisional institutions so
as to discuss the longevity of China’s ruling system. These studies have re-
vealed that the operations of provisional institutions helped the CCP make
governance practices effective through formal institutional approaches and
informal political channels (Miller 2008; Walder 2009; Zhou 2010; Perry
2019; Tsai and Zhou 2019). Moving beyond this governance approach, this
chapter focuses on the inner workings of the CCP, with a particular em-
phasis on the origins and development of these provisional institutions.
This chapter will rst trace how, between the late 1920s and 1940s, the
CCP assembled two prominent forms of provisional organizations, i.e.,
“small groups” (xiaozu 小组) and work teams (gongzuo dui 工作队), both of
which still play their part in today’s Chinese politics. Work teams often
adopted a grassroots-oriented approach while small groups operated in a
top-down manner. The establishment of both forms of provisional institu-
tions to replace part of the functions of formal Party and government organs
occurred during the ow of the CCP’s internal history: Party leaders of the
time were handling the questions of political control and participation in the
context of the long-term war. Historians of modern China have highlighted
the profound impact of the constant warfare on the operation of the CCP’s
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-9
armed forces, party cells, and administrative organs (Mitter 2005). For ex-
ample, the historian Hans van der Ven has stressed that warfare acted as a
vehicle for creating a more tightly disciplined CCP so as to provide cohesion
in the 1930s and 1940s (Ven 2018, 5). Building upon this literature, this
chapter will argue that in the context of the warfare of this period, the pe-
culiarities of the CCP’s military operations and its army’s relationship with
local society fundamentally inuenced the formation of these provisional
institutions.
A careful examination of the development of these provisional institutions
in the 1950s and 1960s shows how international security concerns further
drove their militarization. The CCP turned the international tensions of the
Cold War into pressing domestic concerns that resulted in the restructuring
of the Party and government organs. In the rst place, the CCP set up small
groups to replace the functions of formal Party and government organs in
an attempt to tighten centralized control. This centralization led these
provisional institutions to have the characteristics of their formal counter-
parts. In the second place, the CCP assembled work teams and dispatched
them to counties or villages to carry out policies and broaden political
participation. These teams could also be developed into an institution with a
hierarchical structure and take over the functions of the Party and gov-
ernment organs from the county to the village levels. Recent studies have
revealed the centrality of military practices and ideas to a pronounced
militarization of Mao’s China. These practices and ideas shaped China’s
domestic policies (Meyskens 2020). The disjuncture between provisional
institutions and their formal counterparts was important in how major
political campaigns like the Campaign to Wipe Out Hidden
Counterrevolutionaries (1955–1962) and the Socialist Education Movement
(1962–1966) were implemented. This chapter will further argue that this
militarization led the CCP to outrank the earlier inherited institutions and
adopt some of their institutional practices and culture.
Although these institutions could provisionally take over the functions of
the Party and government organs, they did not acquire its legal status in law,
particularly Chinese constitutional law.
1
Instead, their position as formal
institutions was granted in the CCP’s constitutions since 1945. The CCP had
already practiced small groups and work teams, but it did not legitimize
such practices until the revision of its Constitution in 1945.
2
The 1945 Party
Constitution stipulated that Party Committees at each level could establish
provisional work committees or departments (linshi de gongzuo weiyuanhui
huo bumen 临时的工作委员会或部门) only for special or temporary work
(Article 28).
3
This regulation differentiated provisional institutions from
their formal counterparts. In 1956, when the Party revised the Constitution,
provisional institutions were ascribed an almost equivalent status as other
formal committees or departments. In the words of the Constitution, the
Party Committees at each level could set up departments and “other orga-
nizations (qita jigou 其他机构) on an ad hoc basis (genju xuyao 根据需要)”
224 Long Yang
(Article 30).
4
This change illustrates that provisional institutions could oc-
cupy their prominent position within the Party and government system, and
that the CCP considered them as part of its formal institutions.
The military origins of the CCP’s provisional organizations:
Work teams and small groups, 1920s–1940s
In the decades between the 1920s and the 1940s, the CCP evolved into a
centralized organization with the operations of ad hoc institutions for specic
missions. It was the long-term war with the Nationalist Government and
Japan that stimulated the CCP to survive by establishing such institutions. As
early as the late 1920s, the CCP dispatched its military ofcials and soldiers as
work teams to the local places where they were tasked with establishing Party
and government organs from the county to the village levels. The CCP did so
in an attempt to mobilize villagers to support the army through the supply of
soldiers and grain. In the two decades that followed, dispatching work teams
to assist in building up local governments and mobilize villagers became an
integral part of the CCP’s governance practices (Li 2010). Just as importantly,
facing an overwhelming military challenge from the Nationalist Government,
the CCP set up “small groups” at its top level to centralize the decision-
making authority. The success of the group in commanding the army brought
Mao Zedong back to the center of military decision making. The in-
stitutionalization of the small groups to replace the functions of the CCP’s
Politburo and government further assured the centrality of Mao in the early
1940s (Gao 2018, 326–330). This section illustrates that the practices of these
provisional institutions were rooted in the context of the long-term wartime
environment in which the CCP lived and worked.
The military origins of work teams
The genesis of work teams can be traced back to the shift in the relationship
between army and local society in the late 1920s. In an attempt to survive in
the war and expand the CCP’s military force, Mao Zedong decided to select
army ofcers and soldiers to assemble work teams and sent them to counties,
townships, or villages. These work teams mobilized the people and set up local
Party committees and governments. Rather than bypassing the regular ad-
ministrative hierarchy, they functioned provisionally as local Party commit-
tees and governments or assist them in establishing the subordinate Party and
government organs. The CCP’s army and high-level party organs continued
to deploy work teams, while also assisting local Party committees and gov-
ernments to perform their functions, all against the backdrop of the CCP’s
success in the expansion of its territory during the Sino-Japanese War (Chen
1986; Lai 2011). However, such practices impacted the work teams’ re-
lationship with the governments in the regions where the former were de-
ployed. Their tensions emerged because work teams gained bureaucratic
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 225
power after their deployment became more regular. Work teams thus some-
times replaced part of the functions of local governments in implementing
specic policies.
The practices of work teams grew out of the context of the CCP’s military
expansion, because it needed to broaden villagers’ political participation and
build up a base for recruiting soldiers and collecting grain tax. In 1929, the
CCP’s Central Committee agreed with Mao’s idea that the Red Army
should take responsibility to not only ght against the Nationalist
Government, but also to build up local Party committees and Soviet gov-
ernments. The army was instructed to dispatch its soldiers to mobilize
people to establish these committees and governments. After the establish-
ment of these organs, the army transferred the power of collecting grain tax
and recruiting soldiers to them. Meanwhile, the soldiers who served in work
teams still played their role in assisting local governments in organizing
villagers and training militia.
5
In the words of a general of the army at the
time, these soldiers formed the “mass work teams” (qunzhong gongzuo dui 群
众工作队) that helped to enlarge the CCP’s military force (Gong 1978).
Work teams taught villagers to read and write and broadened their political
participation by organizing them into labor unions, peasant associations,
and village Soviet governments. From the CCP’s point of view, enlightening
and arming villagers would be an important way of enabling them to par-
ticipate in the revolution.
6
However, in practice, these work teams some-
times put local Party and government organs under their own control after
they had set up these formal institutions (Ying 2018).
With the Sino-Japanese War sweeping across North and Central China, the
CCP’s army sent its ofcers and soldiers as work teams to establish local Party
committees and governments in Japanese-occupied areas. This was also the
rst time that the systematic deployment of work teams came into being.
7
In
late 1937, Zhu De, then commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, was
directly in charge of dispatching work teams to North and Central China. He
said that as team members, soldiers were responsible for setting up county
Party committees and governments (Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi 2006). The
functions of these work teams were changed with the expansion of base areas.
In the rst stage, their work was not only to establish county Party committees
and governments in the Japanese-occupied areas, but also to take over these
organs’ functions provisionally.
8
Given that the CCP military force of the time
was nominally part of the Nationalist Government, the county governments
set up by work teams could not operate on their own names (Yang 2008).
9
For
example, in Gaoping county, Shanxi province, work teams composed of
military ofcers and soldiers initiated the de facto county Party committee and
government. These organs had two names. The rst was “Party Committee
and Government,” but was only used within the CCP. The second, “Gaoping
Mass Movement Work Teams” (Gaoping minyun gongzuo dui 高平民运工作
队), was the one by which they refered to the newly established Party and
government organs in public (Lin 2012, 50–53; Wu and Yuan 2015).
226 Long Yang
In the second stage, the focus of work teams in North and Central China
was on (1) assisting county governments in setting up governmental in-
stitutions at the township and village levels, and (2) mobilizing villagers to
participate in the newly established local authorities. As local ofcials could
run the de facto county Party committees and governments, the army started
sending work teams to the countryside. In a county of Hebei province, a
work team consisting of four infantry companies was stitched together from
three military units. In cooperation with the County Party Committee and
Government, the work team went to the countryside with the task of mo-
bilizing villagers to help build up township- and village-level governments
and “peasant associations” (nonghui 农会) alike. After succeeding in doing
so, the work team transferred the power of these township- and village-level
governments to the County Party Committee and Government and returned
to their regiments.
10
With county Party committees and governments being
widely established in Central China in the early 1940s, these local organs
also assembled their own work teams. Different from their counterparts sent
by the army, these work teams were mainly tasked with implementing a wide
range of policies such as the mobilization of villagers for rent reduction or
other economic concessions (Liu 1943). Just as importantly, they sometimes
also needed to take over part of the functions of the township- and village-
level governments because the latter did not have enough qualied cadres
(Esherick 1998; Liu 2003). In some cases, these work teams acted as
township or village governments (Zhou 2018).
11
In short, work teams from
both the army and higher-level governments played a crucial role in estab-
lishing Party and government organs from the county to the village level in
North and Central China.
It was during the Civil War between the CCP and the Nationalist
Government that the relationship between work teams and local govern-
ments shifted. Such a relationship would persist into the People’s Republic
of China (PRC hereafter). In particular, the CCP’s routinized use of work
teams to carry out specic missions created the ground for them to function
as the local Party and government organs and replace ofcials with the
activists they trained. The CCP’s efforts to routinize the use of work teams
can be exemplied by Liu Shaoqi’s letter to local ofcials in 1947. Liu, a
senior leader who later became Chinese president, said that the initiative of
policy implementation in the countryside should always start with dis-
patching work teams.
12
However, this routinization impacted the work
teams’ interaction with local Party and government organs. In the regions
under the CCP’s control for years, when work teams entered into commu-
nities, they could supervise or remove village leaders by channeling villagers
into political participation through the establishment of “peasant associa-
tions.” The dismissal of village leaders brought up tensions between work
teams and local authorities (Li 2010). In the newly “liberated” areas of
North China where local authorities lacked enough qualied cadres to fulll
their duties, work teams continued to make township- and village-level
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 227
bureaucracy work (Geng 2018). However, some of these teams took ad-
vantage of this situation by accusing the cadres of being unqualied and
thus replaced them with the activists that they trained (Li 2012). In this case,
although work teams retained their ad hoc, task-specic character, they were
in the position of being able to inuence formal local bureaucracy.
In sum, the practices of dispatching work teams to counties or countryside
stemmed from the attempt of CCP’s Red Army to support its military op-
erations through the establishment of local governments and the mobiliza-
tion of the people. With the CCP’s base areas expanding in North and
Central China during the Sino-Japanese War, the functions of work teams
experienced continuity and change. On the one hand, the army continued to
send its ofcers and soldiers to set up local Party and government organs.
On the other hand, work teams dispatched by the army assisted local gov-
ernmental bodies in making their daily operations smooth when they lacked
enough qualied ofcials at the township and village levels. The routiniza-
tion of dispatching work teams in the late 1940s complicated work teams’
relationship with local Party and government organs. For the CCP, the
routinization of sending work teams to the countryside was a way of making
its policy implementation more effective. However, for work teams them-
selves, the implementation process allowed them to replace part of the
functions of the local Party and government organs, cultivated their own
activists, and appointed them to take up the vacant posts.
The military origins of small groups and its institutionalization
Unlike “work teams,” which were usually dispatched to very local places to
carry out specic missions, “small groups” were originally established at the
top level of the CCP. These groups were designed to centralize decision-
making authority within the CCP’s Centre. Under the circumstances of the
protracted war, the functions of these groups replaced those of both the
CCP’s Politburo and the Chinese Soviet Republic and contributed to con-
solidating the CCP supreme leaders’ personal power. In the early 1940s,
when the CCP had consolidated its base areas, Mao Zedong initiated the
Rectication Movement (1942–1945) and institutionalized a small group
system to replace the functions of Party and government organs from the
central to the provincial level. The institutionalization of “small groups”
shaped its relationship with the Party and government organs in the decades
that followed.
The establishment of small groups enabled the CCP’s top leaders to
tighten centralized control against the backdrop of the difcult circum-
stances of evacuation. In 1934, the Nationalist Government’s army encircled
Ruijin, the capital city of the Chinese Soviet Republic, with rings of
blockhouses and gradually reduced its area. Facing this, the CCP’s Central
Committee had no choice but to prepare for evacuation. Bo Gu, general
228 Long Yang
secretary of the CCP’s Central Committee, set up a temporary team called
“Three-Person Group” (sanren tuan 三人团) to take over the functions of
the CCP’s Politburo, the Chinese Soviet Republic, and its Central
Revolutionary Military Commission (CRMC hereafter) (Itoh 2016, 103). In
the following half a year, the Three-Person Group bypassed these Party,
government, and military organs, and made major decisions directly. For
example, as the Chinese Soviet Republic became a de facto government-in-
exile, its leaders were excluded from decision making in relation to gov-
ernmental affairs. Zhang Wentian, chairman of the Republic, said that his
power had been transferred into the hands of this “Three-Person Group”
(Zhang 1990, 31).
13
What is more, this group also prevented military leaders
of the CRMC from knowing important information about military opera-
tions.
14
As a result, setting up this group enabled the three top leaders to
centralize power in their hands.
However, a succession of failures in military operations in the early stage
of the CCP’s evacuation caused a crisis of condence for this Three-Person
Group. In January 1935, when the Red Army obtained a temporary respite
after arriving in Zunyi, Guizhou province, the CCP’s Centre convened a
Politburo conference to review the performance of this Three-Person Group.
The majority of Politburo members blamed this group for over-centralizing
power and lacking the adaptive capacity to support sustained contingency
military operations. Their choice was to reestablish collective leadership, a
form of ruling that stressed the importance of consensus in decision-making.
Therefore, the meeting decided to dismiss this group and convene Politburo
conferences regularly.
15
Under the reinforced attack from the Nationalist Government, it was
almost impossible for the CCP’s Politburo to convene meetings with the
attendance of the majority of its members. This partly led to the failure of
rebuilding collective leadership. In early 1935, the military troops, acting
together with the CCP’s Politburo, were placed in a life-or-death situation.
Meanwhile, Mao Zedong successfully directed a series of battles, despite
having been stripped of his military role two years prior. The success made
him renowned among the CCP’s Politburo again for his military prowess
(Yang 2016). In March, the Politburo decided to set up a new “Three-Person
Group” only responsible for military operations. This group took over the
functions of the CRMC, and Mao was awarded a place among this group to
assist Zhou Enlai in commanding the army. In the following twenty months,
this group managed to lead the army to arrive in Yan’an, Shaanxi province,
which later became the headquarter of the CCP in the late 1930s and early
1940s. The successful military operations under the leadership of this group
also contributed to conrming Mao Zedong’s role as the military’s supreme
leader. As the Politburo settled in Yan’an, it resumed the CRMC and
concluded with the dismissal of this “Three-Person Group” in the name of
the Chinese Soviet Republic (Yang 2016). Just as importantly, Mao was
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 229
appointed as chairman of the CRMC, and he eventually came back to the
power center of the CCP again.
In initiating and implementing the Rectication Movement in Yan’an, Mao
set up a provisional institution with a hierarchical structure. The in-
stitutionalization of this provisional institution gave Mao an upper hand in
consolidating the centrality of his role within the CCP and its government. In
1942, he created the Central Committee General Study Committee (CCGSC)
to serve as the provisional supreme power organ for this movement. As the
historian Hua Gao puts it, the establishment of the CCGSC marked a shift in
power because it had the characteristics of a formal institution. The CCGSC
had its administrative ofce and subordinate branch study committees at each
level of the Party and government organs. At the top level, the CCGSC took
over the functions of the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Shaan-Gan-Ning
Border Region Government, previously known as the Chinese Soviet
Republic. It operated under Mao’s direct orders and was answerable only to
him (Gao 2018, 326–330). Furthermore, Mao froze out the government system
of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region and put a branch of the CCGSC in
charge of governmental affairs (Dai and Zhao 2011). The CCGSC constituted
one of the most important mechanisms to ensure his centrality as the supreme
leader of the CCP and its government. More importantly, the in-
stitutionalization of such a provisional institution preserved Mao’s freedom of
action within a bureaucratic system that naturally tended to routinize power.
In sum, the CCP’s top leaders successively established two “Three-Person
Groups” in response to the military threat from the Nationalist Government.
In the 1930s, the rst one took over the functions of the CCP’s Politburo
and the Chinese Soviet Republic. However, military failure brought an
end to this institution. After this, the CCP’s Politburo set up a second
“Three-Person Group” specically for military command and appointed
Mao Zedong as one of its core members. This group only took over the
role of the CRMC, a military unit body of the Chinese Soviet Republic. As
the army under Mao’s leadership succeeded in escaping from the en-
circlement, his prominent position with the CCP’s military system was
afrmed. In the early 1940s, Mao further set up a new provisional in-
stitution to replace the functions of the CCP’s Politburo and its border
region government. The institutionalization of this organ not only estab-
lished the centrality of Mao in the Party and its government, but also
played an important role in inuencing the CCP’s policy implementation
in the decades that followed.
Militarization, small groups, and the campaign to wipe out
hidden counterrevolutionaries, 1955–1962
This section explores the militarization of small groups in the Campaign to
Wipe Out Hidden Counterrevolutionaries that began to sweep across China
230 Long Yang
in 1955. This campaign aimed at identifying so-called “hidden enemies”
within the Party and government organs through the reassessment and re-
classication of cadres, soldiers, intellectuals, and so on (Lin 2009, 548–564;
Eddy 2019, 99–100). After the establishment of the PRC in 1949, the CCP
initiated a series of political campaigns like the Campaign to Suppress
Counterrevolutionaries in the hunt for the so-called “enemies” (Strauss
2006; Yang 2008). Unlike the previous campaigns implemented by the
formal Party and government organs, the Campaign to Wipe Out Hidden
Counterrevolutionaries was carried out by a provisional institution named
“small groups” set up from the central authorities down to the county levels.
According to the statistics collected for the CCP’s internal use, between 1955
and 1960, the small groups reviewed more than 51 million ofcials, in-
tellectuals, and staff of public institutions, and more than 0.63 millions of
them were identied as “hidden enemies.”
16
Although the scale of this
campaign was huge, the structure and functions of these small groups re-
main obscure to us. An examination of the processes of running these
groups will show how they became institutionalized and replaced part of the
functions of organizational departments, public security departments,
courts, and so on.
This campaign occurred against the backdrop that the CCP’s top leaders
were increasingly concerned with the alleged collusion between the
American camp and Chinese domestic “enemies” who were deemed to have
the intention to subvert the state from within. Firstly, at the Party’s Eighth
National Congress in March 1955, its leaders like Mao Zedong highlighted
the possibility of a war and the connections between American “im-
perialism” and domestic “hidden enemies.” Mao thus argued that the
campaign against these “enemies” was to ensure the security of the Chinese
socialist system (Mao 1977 [1955], 138–142). Secondly, the founding of the
Warsaw Pact Organization (WPO) in 1955 deepened these leaders’ anxiety
about China’s precarious situation in international relations. This was be-
cause China only acquired observer status at the WPO (Lüthi 2007).
The establishment of a provisional small group at the central level
originally aimed to ensure Mao’s personal authority in leading this cam-
paign. In May 1955, Mao instructed to set up a Central Five-Person Small
Group (zhongyang wuren xiaozu 中央五人小组) with the appointment of
Lu Dingyi, head of the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department, as the
head of this group. This group consisted of senior ofcials from the
Central Departments of Propaganda, Organization, Public Security, and
so on. Meanwhile, Lu regularly reported to Mao rather than to the CCP’s
Politburo after he assumed overall responsibility of this group. Through
Lu and this group, Mao steered this campaign under his personal con-
trol.
17
For example, in an attempt to support this group’s work, Mao
forwarded one of its briengs to provincial Party committees and required
them to write reports back to him and his group by consulting this
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 231
brieng.
18
Just one day later, the Hebei Provincial Committee sent Mao
and this group a report in which it planned to set up Five-Person Groups
from the provincial down to the county level.
19
This report inspired Mao
to institutionalize this group from the central to the county levels.
The institutionalization of these groups from the central to the county
levels outstripped the routine power of some formal Party and government
organs like organizational departments and public security departments. In
July 1955, in the name of the CCP’s Central Committee, Mao instructed
provincial Party committees to establish such small groups from the pro-
vincial to the county levels in order to widen its hunt for the so-called hidden
enemies (see Table 8.1). The CCP’s Centre tasked these groups with re-
viewing and documenting the backgrounds, thoughts, and behaviors of the
individuals afliated with public institutions and Party and government
organs.
20
Just two months later, this group was expanded into a Central
Ten-Person Small Group (zhongyang shiren xiaozu 中央十人小组) with
other senior ofcials from the Supreme Court, the Supreme Procuratorate,
Table 8.1 The relationship between the “small groups” and Party and government
organs
The Central Ten-Person
Group Central Organizational Department, Public
Security Department, Supreme Court
Province Five/Ten-
Person Group Provincial Organizational Department,
Public Security Bureau, High Court
Prefecture Five-Person
Group Prefectural Organizational Department,
Public Security Bureau, Prefectural Court
County Five-Person
Group County Organizational Department,
Public Security Bureau, County Court
CCP’s Centre & Mao
Zedong
232 Long Yang
and the Ministry of Public Security (see Table 8.2). This Ten-Person Group
set up its own administrative ofce with a group of ofcials drawn from
these departments. Such an expansion meant that this provisional institution
stripped part of the authorities away from these Party, government, and
judicial organs and incorporated that into itself.
21
At the local level, the
Shanxi Provincial Committee, for example, formed a Provincial Ten-Person
Small Group and Five-Person Small Groups at the prefectural and county
levels. It further authorized them to take over part of the functions of
Table 8.2 The members of the Central Five/Ten-Person Group
Lu Dingyi
(Group Leader)
Chief of the
Central
Propaganda
Department
Luo Ruiqing
(Deputy
Group Leader)
Public Security
Minister
Department
Qian Ying
Deputy Secretary of the Central
Control Committee Department
Zhou Yang
Deputy Chief of the Central
Propaganda Department
Li Chuli
Deputy Chief of the Central
Organizational Department
Department
Yang Qiqing
Deputy Minister of the Ministry
of Public SecurityDepartment
Gao Kelin
Deputy president of the Supreme
People’s Court Committee
Department
Liu Lantao
Deputy Secretary of the Central
Control Committee
Xiao Hua
General Political Department of
the PLADepartment
Liang Guobin
Deputy chief procurator of the
Supreme People’s Procuratorate
SecurityDepartment
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 233
organizational departments, public security, and judicial organs (see
Table 8.3).
22
The formation and expansion of these small groups’ routine power also
came into effect, along with the policy implementation surrounding the hunt
for “hidden enemies.” In July 1955, the CCP’s Centre released a document
stipulating that small groups were in full charge of this work. Given that
these groups did not have enough cadres to complete all tasks associated
with this campaign, local Party and government organs were permitted to
convene public meetings to expose potential “hidden enemies.” However,
before doing so, they must rst request permission from the small groups at
the same level. The groups had the authority to assign local ofcials to
collect denunciations and confessions, monitor the progress of these meet-
ings, and ask them to report back to them directly. They just needed to
inform the ofcials’ superiors of their decision.
24
What is more, these groups
also had the power to remove local Party and government leaders from their
posts if the latter were deemed to have failed to perform their duties during
this campaign.
25
Through these ways, these groups developed their power
networks at each level of Party and government organs and constructed
their bureaucratic routines to carry out the campaign.
Table 8.3 The Five-Person Groups of the southern Shanxi prefecture
23
Prefectural Five-Person
Group
Special Case and File
Purge Group
Reinvestigation and
Determination Group
Administration Office
Committee Department
Xinjiang Leading
Group
Houma
Leading Group
Linfen Leading
Group Yuncheng
Leading Group Xianxian Leading
Group
234 Long Yang
In the course of investigating the suspected ofcials or staff, these small
groups took over part of the functions of organizational departments, public
security, and procuratorate. They were not only responsible for receiving
and collecting denunciations and confessions as well as processing these
materials, but also reviewed each case by themselves and decided whether to
arrest ofcials or staff suspected of being “hidden enemies.”
26
For example,
the Central Ten-Person Group thoroughly investigated the case of Hu Feng,
a celebrated leftist writer. It sent its ofcials to collect archival materials
from the Second National Archives in Nanjing, located in Jiangsu province,
because Hu was accused of having had connections with the Nationalist
Government’s spy organizations in the 1930s and 1940s. However, the re-
view of the archives by the ofcials showed that the Nationalist Government
put a great deal of effort into watching him and circumscribing his public
activities in an attempt to prevent him from spreading socialist ideas.
Although the ofcials found these documents, the leaders of the Central
Ten-Person Group still decided to arrest Hu (Wang 2014).
The institutionalization of these small groups paralleled them to the formal
institutions, particularly in regard to their hierarchal relations with the latter
and within themselves. In August 1955, the CCP’s Central Committee ordered
its subordinate Party and government departments to submit their plans
about the implementation of the campaign to the Central Ten-Person Group
for review and approval. Just a few days later, the Commerce Department of
the State Council stated that it had been working on a plan concerning this
campaign and would submit to this group for review. The Department further
asked for instruction from this group about how to keep a balance between
the initiative and implementation of the campaign and their quotidian work.
27
Just as importantly, the CCP’s Central Committee exerted its control over the
Provincial Five/Ten-Person Groups through a sophisticated institutional de-
sign, especially dual leadership. According to the relevant policies, the groups
at the provincial level had to be under the leadership of both their central
counterparts and the Party committees at the same level. In December 1955,
the Jiangsu Provincial Ten-Person Group reported to both the Central Ten-
Person Group and the Jiangsu Provincial Committee about the problems of
deciding on verdicts. It found that the punishments the “hidden enemies”
received for their offenses had often been excessive. This provincial group thus
suggested that ordinary ofcials were barred from participating in the ad-
judication process. Instead, leaders of its subordinate groups at the prefectural
and county levels took charge of reviewing each case le and made such de-
cisions collectively. The Central Ten-Person Group approved this suggestion
and then forwarded it to other provincial Ten-Person Groups.
28
The institutionalization of the Central Ten-Person Group was accompanied
by its formal exertion of authority in issuing documents and orders in their
own names. The bureaucratic power of this group was substantially different
from that of previous provisional institutions like the “Three-Person Groups”
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 235
and the CCGSC, both of which could not issue documents directly. Instead,
their ofcial decrees were written and distributed in the name of the CCP’s
Politburo and/or the Chinese Soviet Republic.
29
In contrast, the Central Ten-
Person Group used its own name to release documents and instructions to its
subordinates as well as provincial Party and government organs. For example,
this group ordered local Party committees and governments to investigate
each case thoroughly before they convened the public meetings for de-
nunciation. As explained in the relevant document, the reason for doing so
was to avoid falling into a passive position without reliable evidence.
30
The Central Ten-Person Group’s power to formulate national policies
associated with the campaign further exemplied its bureaucratic routines.
Like the Chinese Central Government, this group also adopted the way of
feeding local experiences back into national policy formulation (Heilmann
2008). Forming and using “special squads” (zhuan’an xiaozu 专案小组) to
conduct investigations was a case in point. In early 1956, this group noticed
that a “special squad” in Shanxi province had failed to investigate an of-
cial’s case. During the course of questioning the ofcial, the leader of this
squad was found to have been lying in bed, two members were roasting
sweet potatoes, one member was reading a newspaper, and the remaining
one was responsible for taking notes. It was said that the suspected ofcial
fell asleep because no one raised questions.
31
By taking a lesson from this,
the Central Ten-Person Group stipulated a national policy that local groups
from the provincial down to the county levels must directly lead their own
special squads to conduct investigations and that public security depart-
ments at the same level must assist these squads to carry out the in-
vestigation.
32
Additionally, this group also permitted its subordinates to
adjust these policies according to local conditions. According to a document
issued by this group in April 1956, its provincial government could adjust
the regulations on how to identify and classify “hidden enemies.” But before
doing so, they had to request permission from this group.
33
The power of the Central Ten-Person Group established in 1955 took more
bureaucratic forms by mid-1956. In the following years, both Mao and the
CCP’s Central Committee were almost not concerned with this campaign, but
the groups from the central down to the county level continued to review
ofcials and staff and investigated the suspected ones.
34
For instance, the
Five-Person Group of the Southern Shanxi Prefecture and its subordinates
reviewed 355,133 people and classied 4,431 of them as “hidden enemies” in a
period from 1955 to 1962, when this campaign eventually came to an end.
35
In sum, establishing small groups contributed to carrying out the cam-
paign against the formal institutions’ bureaucratic routines. However, its
organs from the central down to the county levels became institutionalized
as they took over part of the functions of Party and government organs,
particularly organizational departments, public security departments, and
courts. They also acquired a parallel status with formal institutions at the
same level and thus issued orders and documents in their own names.
236 Long Yang
Militarization, work teams, and the Socialist Education
Movement, 1962–1966
Between 1962 and 1966, the CCP initiated and implemented the Socialist
Education Movement (SEM), a campaign that aimed at rectifying local of-
cials and rural cadres to contend with the lack of effective leadership (Baum
1975). In the CCP’s words, cadres’ deviation was a result of the inuence of
“revisionist ideas” on their thoughts. The CCP’s Central Committee even
equated these cadres to counterrevolutionaries.
36
Because of the Sino-Soviet
split in the early 1960s, China’s security situation became more precarious
(Lüthi 2008; Li and Xia 2014). For the CCP’s top leaders, the initiative of this
campaign was to prevent domestic counterrevolutionaries from subverting the
state from within because they were said to have been inuenced by their
Soviet counterparts. Such anxieties about war with the Soviet Union had far-
reaching consequences for the militarized campaign. The CCP thus dispatched
work teams to counties and villages to investigate the cadres who were deemed
to be unqualied. During the movement, from a total of 11 million rural
cadres, over two million were affected to varying degrees, and more than
630,000 cadres received disciplinary sanctions across the country.
37
Unlike
their previous counterparts who had assisted local Party and government
organs, these work teams challenged local bureaucratic routines and gradually
formed their own hierarchical structures. This section explores work teams’
developing positions within the CCP and their relationship with local Party
and government organs. It demonstrates that work teams’ bureaucratic power
was routinized as they became administratively independent of the Party
committees and governments of the counties where they carried out the SEM.
The unfolding of the SEM witnessed the shift in the administrative re-
lationship between work teams and county Party committees and govern-
ments. The year 1964 marked the shift in that relationship. Before that year,
work teams were under the leadership of the Party committees of the counties
where they carried out the campaign. The provincial party committees in
North China instructed work teams to assist the county Party committees
rather than to take everything on their hands.
38
In some areas like Tangshan,
Hebei province, the Prefectural Party Committee even ordered its work teams
to implement county- and commune-level Party committees’ decisions. By
placing work teams under the leadership of county Party committees, their
higher-level counterparts could ensure that local authorities monitored and
controlled the process of investigating their cadres.
39
In August 1964, the
CCP’s Central Committee circulated the Taoyuan experience nationwide. The
Taoyuan experience, as summarized by Wang Guangmei, the wife of then
China’s President Liu Shaoqi, advocated for keeping work teams adminis-
tratively independent of county Party committees. In the following years,
work teams across the country thus had more leeway to drive their operations
than they previously had done.
40
The CCP’s Centre transformed work teams
into a hierarchical system from the county to the village levels. In a few
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 237
months of 1964–1965, the CCP’s Central Committee even permitted work
teams to take responsibility for leading the Party committees from the county
to brigade levels if necessary.
41
In short, the developing administrative re-
lationship between work teams and county Party committees complicated
bureaucratic routines during the SEM.
The ways to appoint and direct work teams changed along with the shift
in their administrative relationship with county Party committees and
governments. Before August 1964, Party committees from the central down
to the county levels sent their own ofcials as work teams to communes and
villages. County Party committees directed these work teams immediately
after they had arrived in the local places. The teams reported back to both
county Party committees and the organs with which they were formally
afliated.
42
After August 1964, when work teams became administratively
independent, the provincial Party committees organized their work teams
into a single work regiment (gongzuo tuan 工作团). For instance, in
Tangshan, Hebei province, the provincial Party committee assigned more
than 14,000 ofcials, university students, and staff of public institutions to a
work regiment.
43
The work regiments formed its own hierarchical bureau-
cracy by dividing themselves into a number of sub-regiments (gongzuo fentuan
工作分团) and sent them to communes. One sub-regiment included dozens of
work teams that were responsible for implementing the SEM in villages (see
Table 8.4).
44
As we will see, the institutionalization of work teams inclined
them to replace rural cadres with activists whom they trained and with whom
they built up connections during their stay in the villages.
Table 8.4 The administrative hierarchies of work teams and
local Party committees
Work
regiment
Sub-regiment
Work team
County Party
Committee
Commune Party
Committee
Brigade Party
Committee
238 Long Yang
The institutionalization of work teams went hand in hand with the de-
veloping ways to assign ofcials, students, and staff at public institutions to
form each work team. Before August 1964, Party committees at the county
level and above often organized those who came from the same institution
into a work team. For work teams, they moved into their roles almost
without storming as they were familiar with each other. However, after
August, the CCP’s Centre adopted a model from the Taoyuan experience
suggesting that work teams should be composed of ofcials from different
Party and government organs. According to the Taoyuan experience,
through this way, work teams could break away from their existing con-
nections, which had become established in the bureaucratic system. They
constructed new connections with activists, and carried out the campaign
without the worry of their interpersonal relations with other work team
members. In the following two years, provincial Party committees employed
in this way to formulate work teams.
45
Because work team members were
well aware of the ad hoc nature of its institution’s hierarchy, they sometimes
argued with each other over the implementation of SEM policies. Their
inghting further inuenced the way of mobilizing villagers, cultivating
activists, and investigating cadres (Zhao 2009).
The mode of work teams’ mass mobilization also changed in step with
their institutionalization. Generally speaking, the process of mobilizing
villagers began with “squatting on a point” (dundian 蹲点), which meant
that work team members went to stay in a village for a period of months. It
continued with their practice of “three togethers” (santong 三同) of living,
eating, and working with “poor peasants” (pinnong 贫农). Meanwhile, they
attempted to cultivate activists who would later play a crucial role in ex-
posing cadres’ alleged malfeasance through denunciation and “speaking
bitterness” (suku 诉苦) at public meetings. The nal phase of this process
constituted the dismissal of cadres who were charged with engaging in
misconduct. The institutionalization of work teams had a substantial impact
on the use of the very same process to live together with villagers, cultivate
activists, and sanction cadres. Before this, it was commune and brigade
cadres who helped work teams to nd the villagers with whom they prac-
ticed the “three togethers.” These villagers often had good interpersonal
relationships with these commune and brigade cadres, while work teams
often selected and trained activists from the villagers with whom they lived
together. Because of this, these activists were unlikely to expose mal-
feasances of cadres, which could result in considerable damage to their re-
lations.
46
Arranging “three togethers” in this way allowed local ofcials to
keep most cadres in their posts. This mode of operation often made the SEM
unfold in a relatively restrained manner. After the institutionalization of
work teams, they were ordered by their superiors to put cadres aside when
they had arrived in villages. They rst searched for “poor peasants” who had
grievances against cadres, then practiced the “three togethers” with them,
and nally trained them into activists. By so doing, work teams radicalized
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 239
the campaign by replacing cadres with the newly cultivated activists (Wang
2019).
The process of institutionalizing work teams inuenced the power re-
lationship between cadres and villagers. Before August 1964, work teams
advised villagers to focus on the denunciations of cadres’ economic corruption
and misappropriation of collective property. Although few villagers were
brave enough to participate in the denunciations of malfeasance, some of
them were even insulted by the cadres who were the targets of the SEM. In
Tangshan, Hebei province, both work teams and county Party committees
treated these cases as civil disputes and were unwilling to support villagers.
47
This meant that work teams had not had the intention to change the cadres’
dominant position in villages. Starting in August 1964, work teams drama-
tically changed their attitudes toward the cadres’ revenge against the villagers
who voiced out their grievances during public meetings. If a cadre took re-
venge against these villagers by spreading rumors about them or even striking
them, their actions were now subjected to criminal punishment.
48
Also in
Tangshan, the work regiment ordered county prosecution ofcials to arrest
these cadres at public meetings, in an attempt to show their support to vil-
lagers. As work teams tried to remove some cadres from their posts by in-
vestigating their alleged malfeasance from economic corruption to moral
improprieties, more villagers also could participate in the SEM and express
their grievances through denunciation.
49
The institutionalization of work
teams also led to the disruption of cadres’ dominant position and impacted the
village-level politics.
In sum, the developing role of work teams in carrying out the SEM had to
do with their institutionalization. Before August 1964, together with county
Party committees, work teams played an essential role in preventing a large
number of cadres from being dismissed from their posts. With the Taoyuan
experience disseminating nationwide from August 1964, work teams were
organized into a relatively stable bureaucratic organ with hierarchical struc-
tures. On the one hand, they were not only administratively independent of
county Party committees and governments but also took responsibility for
leading these Party and government organs for a few months. At the same
time, these work teams cultivated activists, built up connections with them,
and appointed some of them to replace the cadres who were deemed to be
unqualied. On the other hand, as work teams tried to dismiss a large number
of cadres from their posts, their actions disrupted the dominant position of
cadres in villages. Such a disruption created the ground for villagers to chal-
lenge cadres.
Conclusion
The CCP inherited some institutional structures from the practices of its
early years. It considered those structures to be part of its formal institu-
tions. In addition to this, it developed a number of new institutional
240 Long Yang
structures of its own. This chapter has discussed the two most prominent
institutions: work team and small group. In the context of the civil war, the
Sino-Japanese War, and the Cold War, the military threats and anxieties
drove the CCP to use such provisional institutions constantly. This chapter
has argued that work teams emerged from the army, and that both work
teams and small groups came in some regards to outrank the earlier in-
herited institutions and adopted some of their institutional practices and
culture. It has also argued that the disjuncture between work teams and the
inherited institutions was important in how a major campaign, the Socialist
Education Movement, was implemented.
In examining the origins and development of small groups and work
teams as institutions, this chapter has concluded that the CCP’s attempt to
build up base areas for military recruitment and the collection of grain tax
was crucial in shaping the way of using such institutions. In the context of
the long-term war between the 1920s and 1940s, the CCP’s army played an
important role in setting up local Party and government organs and assisted
them in their operations. Therefore, the provisional institutions’ peculiar
relationships with these formal organs complicated bureaucratic politics in
the decades that followed. Just as importantly, it was also the context of the
long-term war in which the CCP’s top leaders tightened the centralized
control through the establishment of small groups.
It is important to note that the practices of work teams were also associated
with the issue of political participation in twentieth‐century China. The CCP’s
top leaders of the time were handling the question of how to broaden political
participation. From their point of view, the deployment of work teams was a
way of dealing with the increasing breach between bureaucracy and the people
in the 1960s. The examination of the role of work teams in the SEM has shown
that they could not substantially broaden villagers’ political participation
when they were under the leadership of county Party committees. Instead,
their institutionalization not only allowed them to be administratively in-
dependent of county Party committees but also created tensions between
formal bureaucratic organs and work teams. The complicated relationship
between work teams and county Party committees led the former to dismiss
the cadres appointed by the latter. Work teams replaced these cadres with the
activists they trained. What is more, the actions of dismissing cadres en-
couraged villagers to express their grievances in public. Therefore, the in-
stitutionalization of work teams to some degree helped broaden villagers’
political participation.
Notes
* I am grateful to Egas Moniz Bandeira, Ivan Sablin, and Vincent Conway for
their insightful comments.
1 Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo xianfa (1954) 中华人民共和国宪法 (1954) [The
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wxzl/wxzl/2000-12/26/content_4264.htm; Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo xianfa
(1982) 中华人民共和国宪法 (1982) [The Constitution of People’s Republic of
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2 Zhongguo Gongchandang dangzhang (1928) 中国共产党党章 (1928) [The
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3 Zhongguo Gongchandang dangzhang (1945) 中国共产党党章 (1945) [The
Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party (1945)], in Zhonggong Zhongyang
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4 Zhongguo Gongchandang dangzhang (1956) 中国共产党党章 (1956) [The
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5 “Zhongyang gei hongjun di si jun qianwei de zhishixin” 中央给红军第四军前委
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7 “Guanyu gonggu yu kuoda Jin-Cha-Ji genjudi de zhishi” 关于巩固与扩大晋察冀
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Cha Ji base area], in Zhonggong Zhongyang wenjian xuanji 11:503.
8 “Zhongyang guanyu jianli Wandong kang Ri genjudi de zhishi”中央关于建立皖
东抗日根据地的指示 [Directive of the Central Committee on setting up an anti-
Japanese base in eastern Anhui], in Zhonggong Zhongyang wenjian xuanji,
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9 “Guanyu Jinan xin zhengfu chengli hou de gongzuo zhishi” 关于冀南新政府成立
后的工作指示 [Directive on the work after the establishment of new government
in southern Hebei], in Zhonggong Zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 11:541.
10 “Huairou ji Pingbei di yi ge Zhonggong xianji zuzhi lingdao jigou: Zhonggong
Luan-Chang-Huai lianhe xian gongzuo weiyuanhui” 怀柔暨平北第一个中共县
级组织领导机构: 中共滦昌怀联合县工作委员会 [The rst county-level Party
organ in Huairou and Pingbei: The CCP Luanchang Joint County Working
Committee]. http://www.bjhrqw.gov.cn/hrdw/dszc/dszl/hr_212644/index.html.
11 Zhou, Xiaohan 周晓寒, “Zhou Liren gensui Liu Shaoqi kaizhan Yancheng
minyun gongzuo” 周利人跟随刘少奇开展盐城民运工作 [Zhou Liren following
Liu Shao’s lead to organize masses in Yancheng]. http://www.xsjn4a.cn/post.
html?id=5afbc5c5fa9b8b09973b4662
12 “Liu Shaoqi tongzhi guanyu chedi jiejue tudi wenti gei Jinsui tongzhi de yi feng
xin” 刘少奇同志关于彻底解决土地问题给晋绥同志的一封信 [Comrade Liu
Shaoqi’s letter to comrades in Shanxi and Suiyuan concerning resolving land
problems thoroughly], in Zhonggong Zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 16:488.
13 Zhang, Wentian 张闻天, “Cong Fujian shibian dao Zunyi huiyi” 从福建事变到
遵义会议 [From the Fujian Incident to the Zunyi Conference], in Zhang Wentian
yu Zunyi huiyi 张闻天与遵义会议 [Zhang Wentian and the Zunyi Conference],
ed. by Zunyi huiyi jinianguan 遵义会议纪念馆 (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi zi-
liao chubanshe, 1990), 31.
14 “Zhongyang guanyu fandui diren wuci weijiao de zongjie de jueyi (Zunyi huiyi)”
中央关于反对敌人五次围剿的总结的决议（遵义会议） [Resolution by the
Central Committee on summing up the campaign against the enemy’s ve
242 Long Yang
rounds of encirclement (Zunyi Conference)], in Zhonggong Zhongyang wenjian
xuanji,10:466–467.
15 “Dakai zunyi, Zhongyang zhaokai zhengzhiju kuoda huiyi” 打开遵义, 中央召开政
治局扩大会议 [After occupying Zunyi, the Central Committee held an enlarged
meeting of the Politbureau], in Zunyi huiyi wenxian 遵义会议文献 [Documents on
the Zunyi Conference], ed. by Zhonggong zhongyang dangshi ziliao zhengji
weiyuanhui 中共中央党史资料征集委员会 and Zhonggong Zhongyang dang’an-
guan 中共中央档案馆 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), 99–101.
16 “Zhonggong zhongyang shiren xiaozu guanyu suqing ancang fan geming fenzi
yundong de zongjie baogao” 中共中央十人小组关于肃清暗藏反革命分子运动的总
结报告 [Summary report by the Ten-Person Group of the CCP Central Committee
concerning the Campaign to Wipe Out Hidden Counterrevolutionaries], in Suqing
ancang fan geming fenzi yundong wenjian 肃清暗藏反革命分子运动文件汇编
[Colections of Documents from the Campaign to Wipe Out Hidden
Counterrevolutionaries], ed. by Zhonggong Shandong shengwei sufan lingdao
xiaozu 中共山东省委肃反领导小组 (Jinan: Internal Publication, 1961), 32.
17 “Dui Zhongyang guanyu kaizhan douzheng suqing ancang fan geming fenzi
zhishi gao de piyu” 对中央关于开展斗争肃清暗藏反革命分子指示稿的批语
[Comments on the Central Committee’s draft directive on the struggle to elim-
inate counterrevolutionaries], in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao 建国以来毛泽
东文稿 [Mao Zedong’s manuscripts since the founding of the People’s Republic
of China], ed. by Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi 中央文献研究室, 13 vols.
(Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1991), 5:179.
18 “Zhongyang zhuanfa wuren xiaozu bangongshi guanyu Zhongyang yiji jiguan
suqing ancang fan geming fenzi de douzheng qingkuang jianbao de piyu” 中央转
发五人小组办公室关于中央一级机关肃清暗藏反革命分子的斗争情况简报的批
语 [Comments on the Central Committee’s transmission of the Ofce of Five-
Person Small Group’s bulletin concerning the struggle to eliminate hidden
counterrevolutionaries], in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao, 5:195.
19 “Zhongyang zhuanfa hebei shengwei guanyu sufan douzheng de liangge wenjian
de piyu” 中央转发河北省委关于肃反斗争的两个文件的批语 [Comments on the
Central Committee’s transmission of the Hebei Provincial Committee’s two
documents concerning the struggle to eliminate counterrevolutionaries], in
Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao, 5:205–206.
20 “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu jielu hufeng fan geming jituan gei gedi dangwei de
zhishi” 中共中央关于揭露胡风反革命集团给各地党委的指示 [Directive of the
CCP Central Committee to local Party committees regarding the exposure of the Hu
Feng Counterrevolutionary Clique], available in Zhongguo wushi niandai chuzhongqi
yundong shujuku (1949–1955) 中国五十年代初中期运动数据库（1949–1955）
[Database of the Chinese political campaign in the beginning and mid-1950s], ed.
by Song, Yongyi 宋永毅 (Hong Kong: Universities Service Centre, 2014).
21 “Lu Dingyi zai shiba ge shengshi dangwei he zong zhengzhibu wuren xiaozu fu-
zeren huiyi de baogao jilu” 陆定一在十八个省市党委和总政治部五人小组负责人
会议的报告记录 [Minutes of Lu Dingyi’s speech at the meeting with Five-Person
Small Groups of eighteen provinces and the General Political Department],
available in Zhongguo wushi niandai chuzhongqi yundong shujuku.
22 “Diyi pi sufan zuzhi qingkuang” 第一批肃反组织情况 [The situation of the rst
round of sufan organizations], in Jinnan qu sufan yundong zhong qingcha chu de fan
geming fenzi he qita huai fenzi ziliao huibian 晋南区肃反运动中清查出的反革命分子
和其他坏分子资料汇编 [Compilation of material on the identied counter-
revolutionaries and other bad elements in the Campaign to Wipe Out Hidden
Enemies in Jinnan], ed. by Zhonggong Shanxi Jinnan diwei wuren xiaozu bangongshi
中共山西省晋南地委五人小组办公室 (Jinnan: Internal Publication, 1963), 1:21–22.
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 243
23 “Di er pi sufan zuzhi qingkuang” 第二批肃反组织情况 [The situation of the
second round of sufan organizations], ibid, 23–25.
24 “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu kaizhan douzheng suqing ancang fan geming
fenzi de zhishi” 中共中央关于开展斗争肃清暗藏的反革命分子的指示 [Directive
of the CCP Central Committee on the implementation of the struggle to eliminate
hidden counterrevolutionaries], available in Zhongguo wushi niandai chuzhongqi
yundong shujuku.
25 “Zhongyang shiren xiaozu pizhuan gansu shengwei wuren xiaozu guanyu qixiang
ju lingdao yundong chengyuan buchun qingkuang de tongbao” 中央十人小组批
转甘肃省委五人小组关于气象局领导运动成员不纯情况的通报 [A circular by
the Five-Person Small Group of the Gansu Provincial Committee on the impurity
of the Weather Bureau’s members responsible for the campaign], available in
Zhongguo wushi niandai chuzhongqi yundong shujuku.
26 “Youjin yu Lu Dingyi huitan jiyao: Jieshao Zhongguo zhengzhi yundong de qing-
kuang” 尤金与陆定一会谈纪要: 介绍中国政治运动的状况 [Minutes of the talk
between (Pavel) Yudin and Lu Dingyi: Introducing the situation of the political
campaign in China], in Eluosi jiemi dangan xuanbian: Zhongsu guanxi 俄罗斯解密档
案选编：中苏关系 [Selections of declassied Russian archives: Sino-Soviet relations],
ed. by Shen, Zhihua 沈志华, 12 vols. (Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin,
2015), 6:76.
27 “Zhonggong Zhongyang guanyu shangye xitong sufan gongzuo yu yewu
gongzuo jiehe wenti gei shangye bu dangzu de pifu” 中共中央关于商业系统肃反
工作与业务工作结合问题给商业部党组的批复 [Comments of the CCP Central
Committee on the issues of combining sufan work with daily operations to the
Leading Party Group of Commerce Department], available in Zhongguo wushi
niandai chuzhongqi yundong shujuku.
28 “Zhongyang shiren xiaozu pizhuan Jiangsu shengwei shiren xiaozu guanyu
zhenbie ding’an gongzuo de qingkuang baogao” 中央十人小组批转江苏省委十
人小组关于甄别定案工作的情况报告 [Report by the Jiangsu Provincial Ten-
Person Small Groupon reinvestigation and verdict work], available in Zhongguo
wushi niandai chuzhongqi yundong shujuku.
29 For the documents, see Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, vol. 10.
30 “Zhongyang shiren xiaozu pizhuan Beijing shi di si jianzhu gongsi san gongqu de
gongren sufan douzheng qingkuang de tongbao” 中央十人小组批转北京市第四
建筑公司三工区的工人肃反斗争情况的通报 [Circular on the situation of
workers’ struggle to eliminate counterrevolutionaries at the Third Division of
the Beijing Fourth Construction Company], available in Zhongguo wushi niandai
chuzhongqi yundong shujuku.
31 “Luo Ruiqing zai ge sheng shi zhongyang guojia jiguan he junshi xitong wuren
xiaozu fuzeren huiyi shang de baogao” 罗瑞卿在各省,市,中央直属机关,中央国家
机关和军事系统五人小组负责人会议上的报告 [Luo Ruiqing’s speech at the
ministerial-level meeting with the Party, government, and military leaders of
Five-Person Small Groups], available in Zhongguo wushi niandai chuzhongqi
yundong shujuku.
32 “Zhongyang shiren xiaozu guanyu zhuan’an xiaozu jige wenti de guiding” 中央十
人小组关于专案小组几个问题的规定 [Regulation of the Central Ten-Person
Group about several problems of special case groups], available in Zhongguo
wushi niandai chuzhongqi yundong shujuku.
33 “Zhongyang shiren xiaozu guanyu fan geming fenzi he qita huai fenzi de jieshi ji chuli
de zhengce jiexian de zanxing guiding” 中央十人小组关于反革命分子和其他坏分子
的解释及处理的政策界限的暂行规定 [Interim provision by the Central Ten-Person
Small Group about the denition and treatment of the political demarcations of
counterrevolutionaries and other bad elements], author’s collection, 8.
244 Long Yang
34 “Luo Ruiqing zai ge sheng shiwei wuren xiaozu fuzeren huiyi shang de zongjie
fayan” 罗瑞卿在各省, 市委五人小组负责人会议上的总结发言 [Luo Ruiqi’s
speech at the meeting with leaders of provincial and municipal Five-Person Small
Groups], ibid.
35 “Zhonggong Jinnan diwei wuren xiaozu guanyu zai quanqu kaizhan neibu sufan
yundong de gongzuo zongjie” 中共晋南地委五人小组关于在全区开展内部肃反运
动的工作总结 [Work summary by the CCP Jinnan Prefectural Committee’s Five-
Person Small Group on the implementation of sufan campaign], in Jinnan qu sufan
yundong zhong qingcha chu de fan geming fenzi he qita huai fenzi ziliao huibian, vol. 1: 5.
36 “Zhonggong Zhongyang guanyu yinfa nongcun shehuizhuyi jiaoyu yundong
zhong yixie juti zhengce guiding de xiuzheng cao’an de tongzhi” 中共中央关于印发
农村社会主义教育运动中一些具体政策规定的修正草案的通知 [Notication of
the CCP Central Committee about the circulation of the revised draft of specic
policies and regulations concerning the Socialist Education Movement in the
countryside], Zhongfa (64), no. 600, available in Zhongguo dayuejin-dajihuang
shujuku (1958–1962) 中国大跃进–大饥荒数据库 (1958–1962) [Database of the
Chinese Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine], ed. by Song, Yongyi 宋永毅
(Hong Kong: Universities Service Centre, 2013).
37 “Pingfan yuanjia cuo’an luoshi ganbu zhengce cujing he tuidong zuzhi gongzuo de
quanmian boluan fanzheng” 平反冤假错案, 落实干部政策, 促进和推动组织工作的
全面拨乱反正 [The reversal of unjust, false, and wrong cases, the implementation of
cadre policies, and the acceleration of bringing order out of chaos in organizational
work], in Boluan fanzheng: zhongyang juan 拨乱反正：中央卷 [Bringing Order Out
of Chaos (Part on the Centre)], ed. by Zhonggong Zhongyang zuzhibu 中共中央组
织部, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1999), 1:234.
38 “Guanyu Beijing jiaoqu nongcun shehuizhuyi jiaoyu yundong shidian de
jingyan” 关于北京郊区农村社会主义教育运动试点的经验 [The experience of the
experiment of the Socialist Education Movement in suburban Beijing], Beijing
Municipal Archives, le no. 001-014-00756.
39 “Zhonggong Tangshan diwei guanyu siqing wufan yundong lingdao wenti de
jiancha baogao” 中共唐山地委关于四清,五反运动领导问题的检查报告 [Self-
criticism report by the CCP Tangshan Prefectural Committee on the problem of
leading the Four Cleanups and Five-Antis], Tang (64) no. 124, 2.
40 “Zhonggong zhongyang zhuanfa guanyu yi ge dadui de shehuizhuyi jiaoyu
yundong de jingyan zongjie de pishi” 中共中央转发<关于一个大队的社会主义教
育运动的经验总结>的批示 [Summary of the experience of a production brigade
in the Socialist Education Movement], Zhongfa (64), no. 527, 81.
41 “Zhonggong Zhongyang yinfa Zhongyang guanyu nongcun shehuizhuyi jiaoyu
yundong zhong gongzuotuan de lingdao quanxian de guiding (cao’an) de
tongzhi” 中共中央印发《中央关于农村社会主义教育运动中工作团的领导权限
的规定（草案)）的通知 [Regulations of the CCP Central Committee on the
authority of work regiments during the Socialist Education Movement in the
countryside (draft),” available in Zhongguo dayuejin-dajihuang shujuku.
42 “Zhonggong Baoding diwei guanyu kaizhan shehuizhuyi jiaoyu jinxing si qing
gongzuo xiang shengwei de baogao” 中共保定地委关于开展社会主义教育进行
四清工作向省委的报告 [Report by the CCP Baoding Prefectural Committee to
the Provincial Committee on the implementation of the Socialist Education
Movement and the work on the Four Cleanups ], available in Zhongguo dayuejin-
dajihuang shujuku.
43 “Zhonggong Tangshan diwei di jiu ci quanhui guanyu jindong mingchun she-
huizhuyi jiaoyu yundong de bushu de jueding” 中共唐山地委第九次全会关于今
冬明春社会主义教育运动的部署的决议 [Directive of the CCP’s Tangshan
Prefectural Committee’s Ninth Plenary Session on the deployment of the
Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 245
Socialist Education Movement this winter and next spring], Zhonggong Tangshan
diwei wenjian 中共唐山地委文件 [Documents of the Tangshan Party Committee],
4–5. Author’s collection.
44 “Zhonggong Zhongyang pizhuan Li Xuefeng tongzhi gei Liu Shaoqi tongzhi de
xin” 中共中央批转李雪峰同志给刘少奇同志的信 [Comrade Li Xuefeng’s letter
to Comrade Liu Shaoqi], available in Zhongguo dayuejin-dajihuang shujuku.
45 “Zhongyang guanyu shejiao gongzuodui bianzu he jiaoliu shejiao gongzuo
jingyan wenti de zhishi” 中央关于社教工作队编组和交流社教工作经验问题的指
示 [Instruction of the CCP Central Committee on the problem of organizing
Socialist Education Movement work teams and exchanging experience about the
Socialist Education Movement work], in Jianguo yilai Liu Shaoqi wengao 建国以
来刘少奇文稿 [Manuscripts of Liu Shaoqi since the founding of the People’s
Republic of China], edited by Zhonggong Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi 中共中
央文献研究市 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2018), 12:250–251.
46 “Zhongyang guanyu zai wenti yanzhong de diqu you pinxie xingshi quanli de
pishi” 中央关于在问题严重的地区由贫协行使权力的批示 [Instruction of the
CCP Central Committee on the exertion of power by Poor Peasant Associations
in the regions with serious problems], in Zhonggong dangshi jiaoxue cankao ziliao
中共党史教学参考资料 [Reference materials for the teaching of CCP history], ed.
by Zhongguo Renmin Jiefangjun Guofang Daxue dangshi dangjian zhenggong
jiaoyanshi 中国人民解放军国防大学史党建政工教研室, 24 vols. (Beijing:
Zhongguo Renmin Jiefanghun Guofang Daxue chubanshe, 1988) 24:509–510.
47 “XXX si qing gongzuo dui guanyu chuli fan shehuizhuyi xianxing fan geming fenzi
dahui qingkuang de baogao” XXX四清工作组关于处理反社会主义现行反革命分
子大会情况的报告 [Report of the XXX Four Cleanups Work Team on the meeting
of handling anti-socialist, active counterrevolutionaries], Tang (64) no. 123, 3.
48 “Zhonggong Tangshan diwei zhuanfa XX xian XXX si qing gongzuodui guanyu
XXX deng dadui si bu qing ganbu daji baofu qingkuang de baogao” 中共唐山地
委转发XX县XXX四清工作队关于XXX等大队四不清干部打击报复情况的报告
[Report of the XXX Four Cleanup Work Team on the four unclean cadres’
retribution in XXX village and others], Tang (64) no. 128, 1–3.
49 “Zhonggong Tangshan diwei pizhuan Zhonggong XX xianwei guanyu dazhang
qigu chuli daji baofu pinxiazhongnong anjian de liang ge baogao” 中共唐山地委
批转中共XX县委关于大张旗鼓处理打击报复贫下中农案件的两个报告 [Two re-
ports by XX County Party Committee on handling the cases of retributing poor
and lower-middle peasants on a grand scale], Tang (64) no. 123, 1–2.
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Modern Chinese bureaucracy, 1929–1966 249
9 From revolutionary comrades to
“mothers of the nation”: The
Workers’ Party of Korea’s
approach to the role of women
in the 1950s–1960s
Natalia Matveeva
Introduction
Social revolutions have been dened as “rapid, basic transformations of a
society’s state and class structures” characterized by a combination of
societal structural change with class upheaval and political and social
transformation (Skocpol 2008, 4–5). The notion of structural social trans-
formation as an essential feature of social revolutions seems especially re-
levant to modern history, from the 1917 Russian revolution to other
revolutions in Asia, Africa, and America throughout the 20th century.
The “communist revolution,” as Marx and Engels claimed, was “the most
radical rupture with traditional ideas” (Marx and Engels 1969, 126). And
the so-called “woman question,” the issue of the role and place of women in
society and family, was an important part of it. According to Lenin, it was
the most demonstrative indicator of the differences between “bourgeois”
and “socialist” democracies: where the former (i.e. the Western capitalist
world) merely offered women promises of equality and freedom from the
patriarchal yoke, the latter actually delivered on those promises, providing
genuine freedom and equality to the “oppressed sex” (Lenin 1974, 285–288).
The “woman question” was also entangled with broader socio-economic
issues. In the eyes of Marxist-Leninists women’s inferior status under ca-
pitalism was caused by their dependence on men and the connes of the
bourgeois family. They needed to be freed from “kitchen slavery” and
provided not just with property but with new political, economic, and social
roles, and brought into the public life and workforce.
In line with that, in the Soviet Union women came to play an extensive role
both in society and economy (Mcauley 1979, 290). Soviet women activists in
the 1920s claimed that “the situation of women in regard to political and other
rights [was] much better in Russia than in Europe” and that this “immense
progress” had been “realized by the woman worker” (Ruthchild 2010, 253).
The intensive industrialization of the 1930s especially saw unprecedented fe-
male participation and increase in numbers of women workers. Moreover,
women also started challenging the traditional lines of sex segregation in the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003264972-10
workplace, expanding branches of older industries and entering new in-
dustries such as the chemical industry and machine building, lling jobs
previously reserved for men (Goldman 2002). While after its rst radical years,
the Soviet regime returned to viewing the traditional family as an important
part of society, Soviet policies in the rst half of the 20th century, unlike those
of the West, constructed gender by emphasizing women’s roles as workers,
and not just mothers, and promoted “state support and collective responsi-
bility” for mothers and children (Hoffmann 2011, 144).
A similar approach was also adopted in other socialist states. In the
People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong stated that the emancipation of
Chinese women was part of the socialist revolution in China, and that women
should be widely included in production and contribute to the nation’s wealth
and prosperity (Mao 1993, 83). Only with the collective effort of the whole of
society could socialism be built, and women and men should labor equally;
the Chinese women were “a source of labor” which needed to be used to the
benet of the country (Mao 1977, 312). Thus, in the understanding of
the Chinese communists, women should leave home and fully join the
workforce, working equally with men; and marriage, family, and motherhood
were placed under the state’s and the party’s supervision and care.
1
Publicly and outwardly, the policies of the PRC’s close neighbor and
fellow member of the socialist bloc, the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK, North Korea), went along similar lines. Among the rst
measures introduced by the North Korean Workers’ Party (which in 1949
was transformed into the Workers’ Party of Korea [WPK]), the ruling party
of the DPRK that essentially presided above all the state institutions and the
state itself,
2
in collaboration with the Soviet Administration in northern
Korea was a series of laws and reforms aimed at eliminating inequality
between men and women and emancipating women. The land reform, an-
nounced on March 5, 1946, allowed women to own land (Lee 1963, 67),
thus, in line with Marxist ideology, abolishing men’s monopoly on having
property. The Labor Law stipulated women’s right to work, and the Law on
Sex Equality adopted in July 1946 stated equal rights for men and women in
all areas of life, including inheritance and family matters (Kim 1980, 185).
On the outside, the adoption of the laws on gender equality and extension
of property rights to women could be taken to mean that North Korea has
“closely adhered to the Marxist perspective on the ‘woman question’” (Park
1992, 527). In general, the North Korea of the 1950s, and to a lesser extent
the 1960s, is typically assessed as closely emulating the Soviet Union’s ex-
perience from the 1920s–1930s, since its leadership saw “compelling paral-
lels” between the situation, objectives and needs of the Soviet Union in those
decades of industrialization and the DPRK after the war (Buzo 1999, 58).
Yet while that assessment is largely true for economic development strate-
gies and domestic politics, it is much less applicable to the social sphere and
to gender policies.
The woman question in the DPRK 251
Despite outward similarities, the WPK’s position on the role and place of
women in society diverged from the ofcial Marxist-Leninist line and on
closer inspection incorporated not only the Marxist-Leninist ideas widely
introduced under the Soviet Occupational Administration (1945–1948), but
also colonial legacies, reections of anti-Japanese struggle (see Kim 2010),
as well as the leadership’s own nationalist views, and reected the trans-
formations occurring within the North Korean society and ideology in
the post-war decades. Moreover, it also retained more traditional and
Confucian elements, which according to Marxist position should have been
eradicated as vestiges of the past, but were instead included into and became
a part of the new state ideology.
While actually calling North Korea a (neo-)Confucian society might be
going too far, the Confucian inuence on it and on the style of leadership
created by Kim Il-sung is hard to deny. The image of Kim created by the
state was not just that of a “benevolent king” envisioned by Confucian
scholars, but that of a “father of the nation” commanding “lial loyalty of
his ofcials and the people” (Robinson 2007, 157). As this study aims to
showcase, the latter concept extended to the level of family, and the task of
disseminating and implementing it was placed on the women of North
Korea. The result of state policies was thus not so much the creation of a
“new type of social actor that did not have a gender afliation” (Kim 2016,
33), but rather a reinvention of traditional gender identities and the women’s
role in the patriarchal world to t the new realities. Essentially, a woman’s
duty to husband and family was replaced with the duty to the state, the
Party, and the leader, and was combined with the responsibility of raising
the next generation of revolutionary ghters with loyalty to the Party and
ultimately to the “Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung.”
This study looks beyond the early stages of state formation, which have
previously been the main focus of scholarly attention,
3
to the second half of
the 1950s- and mid-1960s, from the completion of the post-war re-
construction to the time when the formation of state ideology and practical
policies, including gender policies, was nalized (Person 2013, 5). It explores
the DPRK at that time as a “pedagogical (party-)state” using pedagogic
strategies not just within but outside the formal education framework to
govern the people (see Pykett 2010; Kaplan 2006) and entrench among them
the WPK leadership’s views of, and approaches to, the role of women in the
new society. Special attention is paid to the role of the press, including the
ofcial women’s magazine Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng [Korean Woman] in that pro-
cess, since in North Korea, like in many one-party states, the press played a
major role in propaganda, agitation, and organization of society (Lee 2009,
196), and was the vehicle of state social policies.
Essentially, this chapter explores how on North Korean soil the Marxist-
Leninist concept of women as active participants in the public life and im-
portant addition to the labor force was transformed into “mothers of the
nation” tasked with providing overall support to the Party’s policies and the
252 Natalia Matveeva
upbringing of loyal citizens, and how that shift was used to further
strengthen the Party’s and its leader’s position.
Women in the workforce: An economic necessity
By 1957, the year in which the economic reconstruction after the Korean
War (1950–1953) was deemed completed, the ratio of men to women in
North Korean society was roughly 9:10. The war had caused a signicant
shift from the 1946 level of 1:1 (Eberstadt and Banister 1992, 32). In these
circumstances, given the need to rapidly rehabilitate and develop the
economy, the logical decision for the state would be to put all the available
resources to the task, including women. For example, in the Soviet Union
the government actively took measures to ensure that female workers who
had joined the workforce during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) re-
mained part of it and assisted with rehabilitation (Nakachi 2011, 424). Yet,
in North Korea, the share of women in labor force was only 20 percent in
1957, less than half the level of the Soviet Union or the PRC in the same
years, and lower even than in the Soviet Union in 1929, before the start of its
rapid industrialization.
4
The highest representation rate was in light in-
dustry, agriculture, and trade. From their Marxist-Leninist positions, Soviet
diplomats stationed in North Korea attributed the low levels of female
engagement in production to the “vestiges of the past, according to which a
woman could only be involved in domestic labor.” They also noted that the
system of childcare and other institutions that would allow women to be
more active in society was underdeveloped in the DPRK: according to the
1957 economic plan, there were only 11,000 places available in daycare and
nurseries to assist working women with child rearing.
5
Those two issues were interconnected. Despite being a nominally com-
munist party, the WPK did not publicly condemn or outlaw the traditional
Confucian values (unlike the CCP during the Cultural Revolution), nor did
it renounce family as a source of social ills and oppression, as the Bolsheviks
had done in the early years of Soviet Russia. The Soviet leaders had since the
1920s worried that the “double shift” of work and household chores limited
women’s productivity in the workplace, and especially in the post-World
War II decades attempted to take measures to lighten that burden by im-
proving social services (Clements 2012, 259). On the other hand, in North
Korea the family was seen as “a building block of North Korean com-
munism” (Kim 2010, 745) and had remained uncontestedly the women’s
domain. The state did not feel the need to step in to supervise child up-
bringing, like it did in the PRC, nor did it provide suitable conditions for
many women to join the workforce.
6
However, rapid economic development and industrialization, for which
the Party and its leader insistently pushed, dictated its own rules. In 1958,
and especially in 1959, in order to achieve the extremely high target of a 50-
percent increase in industrial output put forward by the WPK Central
The woman question in the DPRK 253
Committee and by Kim Il-sung personally, the industrial ministries and
heavy industry enterprises took the route of extensive development and
attracted more workers, mostly from the countryside, but also from less
important light industries. The average yearly number of workers in 1959
was estimated at 1.517 million, almost half a million more than in 1958, and
even more than was expected by the State Planning Committee.
7
Most of
those workers were male, of course – but not all of them, and moreover
women got recruited to ll in the places in light industry left by men who
moved to heavy industries. As a result, the absolute number of women in the
workforce almost tripled from 1957 to 1960, going from 169,000 to 493,000
by the 1960s. However, with the overall increase in the number of workers,
the percentage of female workers rose much less dramatically, from 20 to
32.7 percent, averaging an increase of three percentage points per year. In
the following years, the tempo slowed down to slightly more than 1 per-
centage point per year, reaching 36 percent by 1964.
8
Overall, the share of
female workers uctuated between 20 and 30 percent in urban industries,
reaching a higher share only in some light industry enterprises such as the
Chŏngjin chemical ber plant.
9
The situation was different in the countryside. With men leaving for urban
industrial work, women were left to take care of the agricultural sector,
which now had to support the increased urban population. In 1963, Soviet
diplomats on visit to provinces noted that only women and children were
working the elds, “possibly because part of the male population moved to
cities to become industrial workers, or were mobilized into the army.”
10
Kim
Il-sung himself admitted that the overwhelming majority of the workforce in
the countryside was comprised of women and the elderly.
11
Yet while he did
not say that this was how it should be, his solution to the agricultural
problems was enacting the technical, cultural, and ideological revolution in
the countryside, rather than distracting workers from industrial enterprises.
Working women were allowed 77 days of maternity leave and after that
were supposed to return to work, leaving the kids to state childcare ser-
vices.
12
Yet by 1964 there were still not enough nurseries and kindergartens
to accommodate all the children,
13
so many women chose to stay at home
with their kids. To help support the family, some of them took up working
from home, collecting and recycling secondary raw materials and making
“food by-products.”
14
The work was time-consuming, but the pay was low;
the head of a repairs brigade at the Pyongyang silk mill, An Hyon-won,
recounted that his salary was 50 won in 1963, and that his wife working
from home earned 20–25 won. They and their two kids spent more than 50
won on food per month, and thus their combined income was barely enough
for their family of four.
15
Thus, in regard to economic life, oftentimes
women were forced to work by circumstances, but their inclusion in the
workforce was not actively facilitated by the Party.
The WPK Central Committee’s ofcial newspaper Rodong Sinmun
[Workers’ Newspaper] stated that by 1965 63 women had been awarded the
254 Natalia Matveeva
honorary title of “hero of republic and labor,” and over 47,000 had received
medals for their service to the country.
16
Overall, in the 20 years since lib-
eration, 35,000 women had completed higher education – yet, given that the
country’s population was over 10 million, more than half of whom were
female, the share of women with higher education was less than 1 percent.
By the mid-1960s, about 25,000 women were deputies of local government
bodies and the Supreme People’s Assembly.
17
However, where at the lowest government levels women did indeed oc-
cupy about one-third of the seats in village representative organs, the per-
centage got lower the higher the power echelons: in the counties, cities, and
provinces it was only 20–25 percent,
18
which was not much given that
women comprised more than half of the population. In the Supreme
People’s Assembly, less than 14 percent of deputies were women. The trend
was not unusual either for other socialist or for capitalist countries. In the
neighboring PRC, for example, women comprised about 18 percent of the
deputies in the National People’s Congress (Andors 1976, 101). Overall, in
the years 1957–1965, among the 45 members of the North Korean cabinet of
ministers only three had been female. One of them was Ho Chŏng-suk, the
wife of Kim Il, the First Deputy Chair of the Council of Ministers; another
one was Pak Chŏng-ae, a well-known women activist, long-time head of the
Democratic Women’s Union and a faithful Kim Il-sung supporter; and the
third one, Yi Yang-suk, whose husband was also a high-ranking North
Korean ofcial, had only served for one month.
19
Ho Chŏng-suk and Pak
Chŏng-ae, together with Kim Ok-sun, the wife of the Chief of General Staff
of the Korean People’s Army, were also the only female members of the
WPK Central Committee in those years.
Kim Il-sung himself later noted that women were underrepresented in the
political and social sphere, and that their representation was “in areas of
secondary importance” (Kim 1976, 105–126) – however, he did not propose
any real steps to rectify the situation. And while, for example, in the Supreme
People’s Assembly one-fth of seats were reserved for women deputies, the
actual percentage was often lower, and even now the female representation is
seen as a token “to brighten the optics” (Demick 2020).
The WPK and the “woman question”
But if women were not proportionately represented in local and central
government, did not take a proactive role in political matters, and were
involved in the economic production and workforce largely by necessity
(either state-induced or in order to support the family), what was the place,
role and mission of women in the North Korean society according to the
WPK ideologues? The answer appears to be trifold: the women of North
Korea needed to stand by the Party and with the Party in its struggle against
imperialism; they were tasked with disseminating the Party’s ideology within
the country on the lowest levels to their families; and it was their
The woman question in the DPRK 255
responsibility to raise the future generation of revolutionary ghters and
instill in them loyalty to the state and Party.
Women as anti-imperialist ghters
Throughout the socialist camp, especially during the periods of in-
dustrialization, women’s press such as the Soviet Union’s Rabotnitsa
[working woman] and Krest’ianka [peasant woman] magazines, followed the
general narrative of extolling labor heroes and heroism of ordinary people in
extraordinary circumstances (see Brandenberger 2012). Outwardly, North
Korea’s Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng, the main magazine targeted at female audiences,
fell into that trend. There also, like in Rabotnitsa, appeared real-life stories
of outstanding women who worked to the benet of the country – like, for
example, Yŏm Chŏng-ja, a worker from the Nyŏngbyŏn textile factory who
was awarded the title of “labor hero” for her dedication to work and out-
standing productivity.
20
Yet, unlike its Soviet counterparts, the Chosŏn
Nyŏsŏng, rather than putting emphasis on female workers’ actual achieve-
ments and calling for more women to join the workforce and follow that
example, emphasized their overall dedication and determination to serve the
country and follow the Party’s leadership.
The Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng was the organ of the Democratic Women’s Union,
one of the largest and most important and inuential mass social organi-
zations in North Korea, founded after liberation and subordinated to the
Party. Already in 1946, a year after its establishment it incorporated one-
third of the adult female population and had committees on all adminis-
trative levels, from village to city and province (Kim 2013, 114–116). By the
1960s the majority of the women of North Korea were members of the
Democratic Women’s Union – in comparison, in the Soviet Union less than
ve percent of the female citizens were members of the women’s councils and
the Committee of Soviet Women, the closest the USSR had to all-female
social organizations analogous to the DWU (Pukhova 1989; Tsentral’noe
Statisticheskoe Upravlenie SSSR 1985). A similar situation existed in other
Eastern European “people’s democracies.”
Such high rates of participation in the Democratic Women’s Union made
its press organ a powerful instrument for the dissemination of the Party’s
policies and ideology to female audiences. As the DWU was subordinated
directly to the WPK, the Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng also published key Party decisions
and statements among stories of heroism and the typical content aimed at
female audiences such as recipes, patterns, instructions for making clothes,
and tips for child-rearing, thus signicantly expanding their audience.
21
Where the Soviet women’s press understood “battle” with imperialism
guratively, more as an economic competition with the capitalist world,
North Korea’s interpretation was more literal. Thus what further distanced
the Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng from similar women’s journals of contemporary Soviet
Union and “fraternal countries” was the abundance of articles about women
256 Natalia Matveeva
ghters who stood alongside men and defended their homes, not just in the
recent Korean War against American imperialists,
22
but also against the
Japanese in the 1930s.
23
These were arguably more numerous than the tales
of heroic women workers who overfullled plans and contributed to the
country’s economic development, and appeared more and more frequently
as time progressed.
Covering the proceedings of the Third Congress of the Democratic
Women’s Union in 1965 (the Second Congress was held more than ten years
earlier, in 1954), the WPK newspaper Rodong Sinmun proclaimed that the
women of Korea needed to be always ready to stand together with their
husbands and sons and, “holding in one hand their weapons, and in the
other hand sickle and hammer,” defend the Party and the country against
any enemies (how the authors of the article imagined holding a sickle and a
hammer in the same hand remains a mystery). It stressed that as “the trusted
ally of the WPK,” the Democratic Women’s Union had to be unreservedly
faithful and devoted rst and foremost not to the cause of women’s freedom
and rights, but to “the leaders of the Party.”
24
The DWU’s organizations were expected to rely “from beginning to end”
on Party organizations, lead all their work in the directions designated by
the Party and follow its decisions, and battle courageously “shoulder to
shoulder with the Party.” As for the “battle” part, the Rodong Sinmun
claried that “the Democratic Women’s Union of Korea and the women of
[the] country together with the whole Korean people” should “expose and
thwart the machinations of the American imperialists, steadfastly defend the
Eastern outpost of socialism, and determinedly ght for peace in Asia and in
the whole world.”
25
The personication of the “woman ghter” role model that the WPK
presented to the North Korean women was Kim Jong-suk, Kim Il-sung’s
deceased wife, mother of his son and successor Kim Jong-il, and his fellow
guerilla ghter from the 1930s to 1940s. According to Kim Il-sung’s Western
biographies, Kim Jong-suk joined the guerilla brigades in the second half of
the 1930s, where she sewed and cooked for the ghters and worked various
odd jobs, and at one time was even arrested by the Japanese but managed to
get back to her comrades (Suh 1988). It was there that she met the future
“Great Leader” of North Korea and, according to his ofcial biography,
even saved his life:
One day, while the unit was marching under the General’s [Kim Il-sung]
command, ve or six enemies unexpectedly approached through the reeds
and aimed at the General. The danger was imminent. Without losing a
moment, Comrade [Kim Jong-suk] shielded the General with her own
body and shot down an enemy with her revolver. [Each time such danger
occurred,] Comrade [Kim Jong-suk] rose to the occasion with fury, and
protected the Headquarters of the revolution at the risk of her life.
(Baik 1969, 512)
The woman question in the DPRK 257
Kim Jong-suk was celebrated as the “woman commander” and praised for
being an anti-Japanese hero ghter and for upholding “the original idea and
policy of Kim Il-sung.”
26
The WPK’s idea was for women to comprehen-
sively support the policies put forward by the Party and the leader, but not
be widely and actively included in politics and actual decision-making. For
that reason, Kim Il-sung’s next wife, Kim Sŏng-ae, who was involved in
North Korea’s political life and was elected vice-chairwoman of the Central
Committee of the Democratic Women’s Union in 1965, and later became a
representative of the People’s Supreme Assembly, did not exactly t the
requirements for a role model, unlike Kim Jong-suk.
Women as faithful comrades and vehicles of ideological education
Thus, the decisions were to be taken by men in the Party leadership, and
women were tasked with disseminating and implementing those decisions at
the lowest levels within the family, with little input into the actual decision-
making process. Women should be ready to stand with the Party and its
leader against imperialist forces, but in peaceful times, in the absence of an
actual war, they needed to follow the Party and its decisions.
In this aspect of the WPK gender policies, the pedagogical component
came to the forefront and went beyond the formal educational framework.
The Third Congress of the Democratic Women’s Union in 1965 stated that
women needed to be educated in the spirit of Party policy and revolutionary
traditions and needed to keep up their “revolutionary watchfulness.” Both
the delegates’ speeches and the Congress’s nal report pointed out the ne-
cessity of “educating all the women” in the spirit of “boundless devotion to
the Party and the leader”:
The Democratic Women’s Union’s organizations need to ensure that
the Union’s members and the women gather even more monolithically
around the Party, defend ever more vigorously the Party’s Central
Committee and its leader comrade Kim Il-sung, stand steadfastly on the
Party’s line and policy and ght till the very end for making them
the reality.
27
For that purpose, in addition to the meetings and events regularly organized
by the Democratic Women’s Union under the Party’s supervision, the Party
and the DWU carried out short-term educational courses for women
throughout the country through local people’s committees, continuing on
from the rst post-liberation years (see e.g. Kim 2013). Together with Party
organizations, the people’s committees explained to the women the WPK’s
domestic and foreign policies, so that they could relay that knowledge at
home, and organized mass cultural events in order to popularize the Party’s
policies and decisions.
28
Ideological education was being carried out on a
large scale and for various “target audiences.” Thus, for example, Soviet
258 Natalia Matveeva
diplomats on a visit to the provinces mentioned that 3–4 month long courses
were organized specically for women in South Hwanghae province in the
south-west of North Korea, close to the border with South Korea, to
strengthen their – and their families’ – ideological consciousness. Reportedly,
more than a thousand women were attending those courses.
29
Similar courses
were also being organized for women from former wealthy peasantry and
small city bourgeoisie in order to educate them in the proper socialist and
party ways and through them promote the Party’s ideas to their families and
to the North Korean youth.
The nal report of the Third Congress also stressed that the Women’s
Union’s organizations throughout the country needed to stand for and
support the principle of juche (self-sufciency and self-reliance), which was
nalized as the state’s ideology in the second half of the 1960s (Person 2013).
They were also tasked with entrenching “Marxist-Leninist ideology” among
their members and ghting against revisionism and reactionary ideology
which marred “the purity of Marxism-Leninism.”
30
The WPK CC’s greeting
to the delegates of the Congress specically postulated that “the DWU
members and women, who outstandingly carry out the Korean revolution,
have to ght against revisionism and dogmatism, for the purity of Marxism-
Leninism.”
31
The Soviet representatives who attended the DWU Congress stated that
while the matter of “enforcing class education” gured prominently in the
delegates’ speeches and the nal report, neither of those paid sufcient at-
tention to elimination of bourgeois ideology and outdated patriarchal ideas.
Even less attention was given to the question of “international education” of
women and international cooperation. The USSR itself attributed much
importance to internationalism – thus, for example, one of the goals of the
Committee of Soviet Women was formulated as expressing solidarity with
the women of the world against all forms of aggression, and achieving peace
and mutual understanding between the nations of the world, to which end
the Committee actively cooperated with the Women’s International
Democratic Federation (Shumilina 1981).
In North Korea, on the other hand, as Soviet diplomats disapprovingly
noted, the international aspect was notably neglected. According to the
delegates’ reports and the nal report of the DWU Congress, the rst and
foremost task of the Democratic Women’s Union was educating the women
“not in the spirit of internationalism, but in the spirit of nationalism.”
32
While that does not mean that “internationalist” education was com-
pletely scrapped, it, as everything else, was ultimately subordinated to the
Party’s goals. From time to time and on specic occasions such as anni-
versaries and national holidays, the WPK newspaper Rodong Sinmun
published materials on well-known international revolutionary gures like
Lenin or Karl Marx, stressing their ideas’ and actions’ impact on the world.
And the Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng in similar publications focused more on the
The woman question in the DPRK 259
“personal” side of historical gures, their families and family life, and the
roles played by women.
Initially, in the mid-1950s, the Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng articles were close in style
and focus to other press not aimed specically at female audiences, looking
more at the masculine and revolutionary side of things. For example, in
1955, an article titled “Karl Marx’s Family” talked more of Marx’s work
and his writing of Das Kapital and other works than about his family, de-
spite the title,
33
and the women of Marx’s family got little attention from the
article’s author.
But with the need to actively engage women in ideological education and
teach them to be proper citizens, wives, and mothers, the focus also shifted.
Several years later, the Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng published several articles specically
about Karl Marx’s wife Jenny, this time actually making her, rather than her
husband, the main focus. One story stressed that above all else Jenny was
Karl Marx’s faithful and trusted comrade and companion.
34
According to
another one, she was the kind of woman to occupy herself with the kids and
economize so that her husband could worry less about earning a living wage
and rather dedicate himself to his writing, “the noblest deed for the benet
of mankind,”
35
creating and promoting socialist ideas. The article stressed
that even in the difcult times for the family Jenny Marx always supported
her husband and gladly welcomed his friends in their home. Her life, the
article’s author proclaimed, offered an example of a true revolutionary’s
wife, who was also his trusted comrade, and was the model all the women of
the world should follow in their family lives.
36
Women as “mothers of the nation”
However all that did not negate the more traditional image of women as
mothers. In 1961, giving a speech at the National Congress of Mothers
organized by the Democratic Women’s Union, Kim Il-sung stressed that it
was the mothers’ duty (rather than the state’s or the Party’s) to bring up the
children to be good and responsible builders of communism, ghters, and
followers of the Party.
37
The event itself in its ofcial title identied women
as mothers, stressing motherhood as the one most important and dening
role for women.
A mother, in Kim Il-sung’s words, was “a person” (sic) who took great
interest in their children’s education and upbringing, and paid effort to raise
them to become good human beings. As Kim Il-sung stated in his opening
speech at the Congress of Mothers, one of the main goals of the Party was
educating the people, and especially the youth, to be proper builders of
communism.
38
For that, the mothers’ input was essential. It is curious how
Kim blamed the past and the traditional society for the lack of accessible
universal education, stating that, whereas before only those with money
could afford to properly educate their children and the rest had to school
them at home at best, now the WPK and the socialist government had
260 Natalia Matveeva
rectied that injustice and made education available to everyone at every
level of society. And yet at the same time he proclaimed that proper socialist
education started in the family and that the mothers, not the state schools,
were primarily responsible for children’s education.
While Kim Il-sung also mentioned other areas that women needed to pay
attention to in his opening speech at the congress, such as domestic work,
and praised women for their contribution to the country’s economy,
nevertheless their important and “heavy duty” of bringing up the next
generation of North Koreans stood rst in the list of tasks assigned to them
by the Party.
39
As the country became more autarkic and the rhetoric of self-
sufciency and self-reliance was established as the Party’s main ideological
line, that aspect became ever more important.
Here again the Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng presented several examples of model
women. Some were international – thus, an article entitled “Lenin’s Mother”
named Vladimir Lenin’s mother Maria Ulyanova one of the greatest
women, not because of who she was, but because of who her son was.
40
It
emphasized how she, despite being unable to access formal education,
educated herself at home after work, learning foreign languages and Russian
and European literature. Her determination and efforts allowed her to take
an external exam and become a schoolteacher. However, she nonetheless
mainly dedicated herself to her children and to raising and teaching them,
including the future “leader of world proletariat” Vladimir Lenin. The
Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng specically emphasized Maria Ulyanova’s motherly side,
how she taught her children all she knew and gave them passion for music
and learning, and how the children and family were always her joy and
hope. She always supported them, especially her sons Alexandr and
Vladimir. The article concluded that Maria Ulyanova was widely re-
membered as the “mother of the revolutionaries,”
41
thus showing the North
Korean women the path they should take, namely being rst and foremost
mothers, even to the detriment of work and other occupations, dedicating
themselves to family and children, and bringing them up to be proper re-
volutionary ghters.
Yet the ultimate example of a mother and the model to follow proposed
by the WPK and the North Korean press for the women was the “Great
Leader” Kim Il-sung’s own mother, Kang Ban-sŏk. Having been awarded
the titles of “mother of Korea” and “mother of all,” she essentially had her
own personality cult established in the 1960s alongside her son Kim Il-sung.
Her birthday, April 21, was made a memorial day.
Kang Ban-sŏk was celebrated for upbringing Kim and raising him to be a
revolutionary and anti-imperialist ghter. According to the North Korean
state myth, Kang Ban-sŏk encouraged her son to ght against the Japanese
occupants. Reportedly, after Kim and his mother visited his father in a
Japanese prison, she cried: “I want you to grow up fast and avenge your
father!” to which Kim “swore before his mother that he would avenge his
father without fail” (Jager 2003, 115).
The woman question in the DPRK 261
The ofcial historiography states that under the Japanese occupation
Kang organized women’s associations not only in her own village, but also
in the neighboring villages, educated women and inspired the Korean people
to struggle against the Japanese. The Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng told a story of how in
1917, after the arrest of Kim’s father Kim Hyŏng-jik, the Japanese police
came again to the village and into the Kims’ house in order to search it.
Kang Ban-sŏk was enraged by this and fearlessly stood up against the police,
and it was they who were afraid and had to leave her house empty-handed.
42
The story seems quite improbable, as it is much more likely that in such a
situation the police would have arrested the woman who attacked them,
rather than fear her and run away from her house. Moreover, while Kim’s
father was indeed a resistance activist, his mother in reality had little in-
volvement with it; yet the ofcial historiography has her picking up the
revolutionary banner after the arrest of her husband and carrying on his
work.
43
By depicting Kim Il-sung’s mother as a fearless revolutionary ghter
and a source of inspiration for her son, the ofcial state myth not only
ascribed to Kim a long legacy of revolution, but also made his mother into
the model of a woman and mother, an ideal for all the others to follow.
In 1967, through the Democratic Women’s Union and its organ Chosŏn
Nyŏsŏng, the WPK launched a campaign for “learning from Madame Kang
Ban-sŏk.” It called for women to visit the memorial places linked to the life
of Kang Ban-sŏk, which had “deep revolutionary history” and were dear to
all patriots,
44
such as Chilgol, where she was born, and Mangyŏngdae,
where she lived with her husband and where her son Kim Il-sung was born.
The women were called on to follow Kang’s spirit and example in all spheres
of life, however small and menial. Thus, for example, she loved her mo-
therland and reportedly praised the “clear and cool” waters of Korean
rivers
45
– and in her spirit the Korean women needed to treasure and
economize water, not waste it. Pictures accompanying the articles showed
the women, the members of the DWU, visiting Kang’s birthplace, her house,
the sites of her revolutionary activities, and “learning” from her life and
experience.
The cult of Kang Ban-sŏk was later further entrenched in 1978 with the
publication of her ofcial biography entitled “Mother of Korea.” It portrayed
her as a dedicated wife and mother, a comrade to her husband and inspiration
for her son, but also as a hard worker, a skilled weaver blessed with excep-
tional talent. All this endowed her with “heroic qualities,” allowing her to
become the mother of the national hero who liberated Korea from Japanese
imperialism and founded the just socialist state and society (Kim 2011).
Kang Ban-sŏk’s title of “Mother of Korea” was later also shared with
Kim Il-sung’s wife (and Kim Jong-il’s mother) Kim Jŏng-suk, thus creating
the cults of personality for the two (mythologized) women in the leader’s
life, and putting both of them ofcially on equal level as the role models and
ideals to which the North Korean women should aspire. This distinctly put
North Korea’s case apart from the cases of personality cults of the leaders in
262 Natalia Matveeva
other “fraternal countries.” In the Soviet Union, the leaders’ families did not
feature majorly in their cults of personality, and in general were never much
in the public eye, until much later years, the 1980s. Stalin’s wife Nadezhda
Allilueva was not included into his cult, and denitely did not get her own,
neither before nor after her death (even despite her suicide not being dis-
closed to the public). Perhaps the one who came the closest to having her
own personality cult was Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, but that was
only after Lenin’s death, and she was celebrated not as the wife of the in-
cumbent head of state but as a faithful revolutionary comrade of the “leader
of world proletariat.”
In North Korea though, with Kim Il-sung’s wife and mother being pre-
sented as role models for the North Korean women to follow, Kim Il-sung
himself essentially took on the quazi-Confucian role of patriarch and head
of nation-family, as well as head of state. That also contributed to the
strengthening and entrenchment of Kim’s own cult. According to Michael
Robinson, Kim’s position as “father of the people” ew naturally out of
Korea’s Confucian tradition, which especially in the 1950s–1960s was still
present in North Korea, and his leadership drew extensively from it to ce-
ment his total power within the political system (Robinson 2007, 156–157).
As nurturing the “family” was the father’s (leader’s) obligation, Confucian
lial piety in the form of loyalty to the leader and the country was the re-
sponsibility of the people, his “children” (Ibid., 157).
That image of the state as family and the leader as the father was pro-
moted in various ways and through various mediums. The press, the covers
of the Chosŏn Nyŏsŏng and the colorful pictures inside rarely pictured a full
family – husband, wife and children – but frequently featured the Great
Leader surrounded by women and/or children, giving them advice and in-
structions on how to be proper citizens and mothers and bring up the next
generation of revolutionary ghters.
46
And while Joseph Stalin, Mao
Zedong, and other leaders of the socialist bloc (and not only the socialist
bloc) were also from time to time pictured with children in the press, the
image of Kim as leader and “father” was much more widely promoted and
more lasting. In North Korea, the Kim family, Kim Il-sung himself, his
mother, wife, and later his son Kim Jong-il came to embody “national in-
dependence and the revolution” (Robinson 2012, 157).
Overall, the second half of the 1960s nalized the WPK’s policies with
regard to the role of women in the North Korean society. In contrast to
many other Eastern bloc states including the Soviet Union, the role that the
WPK offered for the North Korean women was not that of an outstanding
worker and contributor to the economic life of the country, but of loyal
comrade to her husband (who was said worker and contributor) and even
more importantly “mother of the nation,” mentor of the next generation of
revolutionary ghters with loyalty to the state, the Party, and ultimately to
the patriarchal gure of the Great Leader comrade Kim Il-sung himself.
The woman question in the DPRK 263
Conclusion
The “woman question,” the matter of the role and place of women in society,
became an important part of the intellectual debate in the second half of the
19th century for both the capitalist Western societies (with the questions of
women’s suffrage, property, and legal rights), and for the emergent Marxist
ideology, especially after the Russian revolution and the founding of the rst
socialist states. The Marxist-Leninist answer to the “woman question” was to
adopt equal rights laws, give women property rights, and more importantly
include them into the workforce alongside men, contributing to rapid struc-
tural social and political transformations and nalizing the social revolution.
For the leaders of the Soviet Union, abolishing “kitchen slavery” also
meant getting rid of the vestiges of patriarchal and religious past, a notion
they actively promoted in the Soviet republics in Central Asia and then in
other states joining the socialist camp. In the Soviet Union, women took
active part in the industrialization of the 1930s; later, during the Great
Patriotic war, they replaced at the factories men who went to war, and after
the war the state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made efforts
to keep women working and contributing to the national economy.
In East Asia, the PRC and its leaders largely followed that idea and
rhetoric, seeing women workers as a valuable addition to the labor force. The
neighboring North Korea also adopted laws on gender equality and women’s
right to work. However, as this chapter aimed to explore, despite outward
similarities, the North Korean ruling Party’s approach to the “woman ques-
tion” essentially diverged from the ofcial Marxist-Leninist line.
A relatively small percentage of women actually worked in fully-paid
ofcial employment in factories and ofces (although they did constitute a
signicant part of rural workers, having to replace men conscripted into the
army or working at industrial enterprises), and the women’s further inclu-
sion into workforce was complicated by insufcient nursery and daycare
facilities. The WPK saw little need in improving those facilities, as evidenced
by the lack of attention given to the matter in the plans for the development
of the national economy.
The social revolution in North Korea did not bring with it a complete
abolition of the traditional societal structure. Rather, in the area of gender
roles, it adjusted it to new realities and needs of the Party. In North Korea,
women were not so much expected to contribute to economic development
by leaving the connes of the house to become industrial workers and stand
together with men at the forefront of socialist construction. Instead, they
were to be the ghters in a different kind of battle – ideological rather than
economic. To that end, the WPK took a “pedagogical state” approach and
paid extensive effort to educate women in the Party policies so