WI: multiparty Soviet Union in the 50s

What if kruschevs reforms of the ussr lead to the formation of factions within the communist party that were allowed to openly compete with eachother. So that different ideological and policy lines within Marxism-Leninism were permitted to contend for control of the Soviet government?
 
I mean, I don't want to totally throw an idea out or call it ASB, but Kruschev's reforms never intended to liberalise the Soviet Political sphere to that extent, and while he did weaken the state bureaucracy and dismantle the Stalinist political cult of personality, he also crushed attempts to weaken the Politburo's grip on outlying republics and the like. if the Soviet Union is allowing open and serious deviancy from the party line in the open, it's really not the Soviet Union anymore, even if it shares the same name.
 
What if kruschevs reforms of the ussr lead to the formation of factions within the communist party that were allowed to openly compete with eachother. So that different ideological and policy lines within Marxism-Leninism were permitted to contend for control of the Soviet government?

Khrushchev was as opposed to factions as Lenin and Stalin had been and as Brezhnev would be. Indeed, one of the most severe charges brought against members of the so-called Anti-Party Group (of Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov and "Shepilov who joined them"--later Bulganin, Pervukhin, and Saburov were added to the list, and it was also revealed that Voroshilov had supported them) which tried to remove Khrushchev in 1957 was that they were "factionists" and "splitters." For example,

"Speaking for the whole part; the XXII Congress condemns with indignation such subversive, anti-party, factional activity as incompatible with the Leninist principle of party unity. Anyone taking the course of factional struggle, intrigue behind the scenes, and machinations against the Leninist party line and party unity is acting against the interests of the whole people, the interests of building communism. Expressing the will of all communists, the Congress states that the party will steadily continue to implement the Leninist law that the unity and purity of the party's ranks are tabs maintained and that an implacable struggle is to be conducted against any manifestations of cliquishness or factionalism." https://books.google.com/books?id=ODQ5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT182

Thus a "faction" was a grave sin against the Party even when it had--as the "Anti-Party Group" temporarily did--a majority in the Presidium! (And of course if the Anti-Party Group had won, they would have called Khrushchev and his allies on the Presidium like Mikoyan and Kirichenko factionalists...)
 

longsword14

Banned
No Soviet leader would ever let that happen, and neither did anything like that ever happen. The Party == the State.
 
No Soviet leader would ever let that happen, and neither did anything like that ever happen. The Party == the State.
The title is poorly phrased based on the actual text - the would still only be the Communist Party and nobody else; there would be far more debate WITHIN the party, kinda like in the immediate aftermath of the death of Lenin, with the Left Opposition and the Right Opposition
 
A nominally multiparty system was not necessarily incompatible with Communist rule. The east European "peoples' democracies" were mostly not (theoretically) one-party states. The typical pattern was this: in addition to the Communist (or "Workers") party, there were other parties which were tolerated as long as they accepted the "leading role" of the Communists. They were not competitive or rival parties, although they often had their roots in--or at least took the names of--bona fide historical parties. Rather, their purpose was to convince non-proletarian (peasants, petty bourgeois) or non-Marxist (Christian) elements of society to accept the Communist-dominated regime. Examples were the Christian Democratic, Liberal Democratic, Farmers, and National Democratic parties in the GDR; the Agrarians in Bulgaria, the Socialist party (basically those people from Benes' old National Socialist Party who went along with the Communist take-over in 1948) in Czechoslovakia, the United Peasants Party in Poland, etc. Typically, all parties would run candidates for the National Assembly on a single slate (the "National Unity Front", "Fatherland Front", etc.) which was of course dominated by the Communists and was unopposed and would get at least 99% of the vote in the "elections." A similar pattern existed (and still exists) in China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

(One party which was *not* allowed was the Social Democrats--because like the Communists they claimed to be Marxist and to represent the working class. Obviously, such claims could not be allowed, so one of the key measures in consolidating Communist rule in the late 1940s was the forced "merger" of the Communists and Social Democrats into unified "Workers" parties, which were really little more than the Communist Party under a new name. The merger process was facilitated by the fact that some of the "Social Democratic" leaders like Zdenek Fierlinger in Czechoslovakia were basically Communist "moles.")

One interesting (to me, anyway) detail is that in the PRC the nominally multiparty system is the result of Stalin, who overruled Mao's suggestion that a one-party system be established following victory. See Stalin's telegram of April 20, 1948: "We are very grateful for the information from Comrade Mao Zedong. We agree with the assessment of the situation given by Comrade Mao Zedong. We have doubts only about one point in the letter, where it is said that “In the period of the final victory of the Chinese Revolution, following the example of the USSR and Yugoslavia, all political parties except the CCP should leave the political scene, which will significantly strengthen the Chinese Revolution.” We do not agree with this. We think that the various opposition parties in China which are representing the middle strata of the Chinese population and are opposing the Guomindang clique will exist for a long time. And the CCP will have to involve them in cooperation against the Chinese reactionary forces and imperialist powers, while keeping hegemony, i.e., the leading position, in its hands. It is possible that some representatives of these parties will have to be included into the Chinese people's democratic government and the government itself has to be proclaimed a coalition government in order to widen the basis of this government among the population and to isolate imperialists and their Guomindang agents. It is necessary to keep in mind that the Chinese government in its policy will be a national revolutionary-democratic government, not a communist one, after the victory of the People's Liberation Armies of China, at any rate in the period immediately after the victory, the length of which is difficult to define now. This means that nationalization of all land and abolition of private ownership of land, confiscation of the property of all industrial and trade bourgeoisie from petty to big, confiscation of property belonging not only to big landowners but to middle and small holders exploiting hired labor, will not be fulfilled for the present. These reforms have to wait for some time. It has to be said for your information that there are other parties in Yugoslavia besides the communists which form part of the People's Front." http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113618

But all these "non-Communist" parties were basically a concession to the "backwardness" of the People's Democracies--these countries had not yet fully built Socialism, the petty bourgeoisie remained, and it was advantageous to have parties that would facilitate its acceptance of the "leading role" of the Communist Party. Also, in some of these countries religious sentiment was more widespread than in the USSR, and parties like the Christian Democratic Union in the GDR were designed to facilitate Christian support for the regime and for the Soviet-bloc "peace"campaign. CDU members were even allowed to vote in the Volkskammer against the liberalization of abortion law--AFAIK the only case of non-unanimous voting in that body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Union_(East_Germany) (I read somewhere that East German poet Johannes Bobrowski.a member of the East German CDU, once described himself as a "non-Marxist who accepted the socialist structure and destiny of the GDR.") Soviet authors praised the minor parties in the People's Democracies but added that for the USSR itself to have any additional political parties would be a backwards step.

Incidentally, one possible reason Soviet soldiers stationed in the "peoples democracies" were forbidden to mix with the civilian population is not just that they would see that people were more prosperous there than in the USSR but that even in a hard-line country like the GDR the difference in political systems from that of the USSR might lead to unorthodoxy. Brian Moynihan wrote in Claws of the Bear: The History of the Red Army from the Revolution to the Present(1989) "The extreme sensitivity even towards the most faithful satellite, East Germany, is revealing. A dissident in Moscow told the author, 'East Germany has more than one political party. That may mean nothing to you, since the SED is totally dominant. But to us it means plurality and a sort of freedom. The army doesn't want any soldier stumbling on to that kind of idea.'" (p. 451)
 
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The title is poorly phrased based on the actual text - the would still only be the Communist Party and nobody else; there would be far more debate WITHIN the party, kinda like in the immediate aftermath of the death of Lenin, with the Left Opposition and the Right Opposition

Even in the 1920's, factions were illegal after the Tenth Party Congress in 1921. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_on_factions_in_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union This fatally undercut both the Left and Right Oppositions--since they had to disclaim "factional" activity:

"The overwhelming defeat of the Opposition in early 1924 left Trotsky politically isolated and faced with the prospect of expulsion for further manifestations of “factional” activity. Consequently, for the next two years Trotsky refrained from open attacks on the party leadership and from public denunciations of party bureaucratism, and he instructed his supporters to do likewise. The Belgian-born Oppositionist, Victor Serge later recalled how in 1925 Trotsky sent him the following directive: “For the moment we must not act at all: no showing ourselves in public but keep our contacts, preserve our cadres of 1923, and wait for Zinoviev to exhaust himself.”" http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/7502/1/twisstm_etd2009.pdf After Stalin broke with Zinoviev and Kamenev, Trotsky thought his chance had come, and the new United Opposition tried to answer the charge of factionalism by accusing Stalin and Bukharin of "majority factionalism." Not surprisingly, the majority "dismissed as nonsensical the accusation that the majority leadership was guilty of factionalism. The majority, it asserted, could not have any factional views distinct from those of the collective party since it was the majority that determined the political line of the party.79 On the contrary, it was the Opposition that had violated party discipline. For his conspiratorial activities, Lashevich was expelled from
the Central Committee and stripped of his post in the War Commissariat. All who had participated in the meeting with Lashevich were banned from party office for two years. Most importantly, Zinoviev, who had been implicated indirectly was removed from the Politburo..." Ibid. "Faced with defeat and the prospect of severe reprisals, the United Opposition petitioned the leadership for a truce. Stalin agreed, but dictated severe terms: the Opposition was to accept the decisions of the party organs, admit that its factional activities had been harmful to the party, and disavow its domestic supporters who advocated a new party and its foreign sympathizers who had been expelled from their respective sections of the Comintern.83 The Opposition reluctantly complied with Stalin’s conditions and promised henceforth to defend its views “only in the forms established by the statutes and decisions of the congresses and the CC" It really isn't necessary to go into further details about 1926-7 except that the ban on factions was again and again used as a weapon against the Opposition until the lattert was entirely banned. "It is also clear that in the context of the party struggle of 1926-1927 it would have been politically suicidal for the Opposition to advocate openly either freedom for contending factions or a multi-party system. Nevertheless, acceptance of these restrictions also carried a price. To maintain the fiction that they were simply a loose grouping of like-minded party members, the Opposition leaders repeatedly were forced to abandon propaganda work among their natural constituency—party and non-party workers...." Ibid.

As for the Right Opposition it was so afraid of being called a faction that it really offered no open opposition at all, simply arguing against Stalin's anti-peasant policies behind closed doors in the Politburo. The most Bukharin could do in his published writinga was to hint at opposition to Stalin in an "Aesopian" way--e.g. his "Notes of an Economist" though an attack on Stalin was presented as aimed against Trotskyist "super-industrializers."

In short, a system of legalized factions would not mean "back to the 1920's" but "back to pre-1921." There is no chance of either Khrushchev or his opponents in the Party agreeing to that in the 1950's.
 
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