Stalin's Renewal of the Leading Stratum: A Note on the Great Purge

Author(s): A. L. Unger
Source: Soviet Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Jan., 1969), pp. 321-330
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/149486
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 STALIN'S RENEWAL OF THE LEADING STRATUM:
A NOTE ON THE GREAT PURGE
By A. L. UNGER
THE decade of the 1930s saw the renewal of the Soviet leading stratum.
During this period the .regime progressivelyunburdeneditself of its
legacy of class prejudiceand rose to its full totalitarianposture. It is
not, of course, possible to explainthis transformation,and particularly
the mass terrorwhich was its catalystand hallmark,solely in terms of
the need for the creation of a new leading stratumthat was politically
and technicallymore able than its predecessorof the 920zosto meet the
twin requirementsof an industrial economy and a totalitarianstate.
Terror, in any event, has a dynamismof its own, hard to predict and
harderstill to restrainwithin the bounds of even the most inhumane
rationality.'Yet, while the circumstancesresponsiblefor some of the
policies that shook Soviet society to its foundationsmayobesubjectto
conjecture, their immediate consequences can be encompassed by a
glance at the facts. Two of these, in particular,standout clearly.One is
that close on 60o%of the party'smembershipat the beginning of 1933
were no longer in the party at the beginning of 1939. The other is that
the number of specialists2in the party increased77-fold in the period
1928-40. These figures, it is suggested, bear somewhat closer examina-
tion than they have hitherto been accorded in the literature.
The background is familiar. It will be recalled that the formation of a
leading stratum of loyal and efficient power-holders (administrators,
economic managers, army officers, scientists, engineers, etc.) was a
major concern of Soviet policy in the I92o0. The partial reinstatement
of 'bourgeois specialists', carried out against strong opposition within
the party, was regarded as no more than a temporary expedient. In the
Soviet view the only solution acceptable in the long run, in terms of
both ideology and practical politics, lay in the creation of a new leading
stratum drawn from the ranks of the 'formerly oppressed' and firmly
anchored in the political hierarchy of the Communist Party. It was
natural that the regime should look first to the 'socially reliable'
elements in Soviet society, and above all to the proletariat whose class
mission it purportedto realize.And, in the context of the mechanismof
One is remindedthat Stalin, too, while admittingonly to the first stage of the purges, from 1933 to x936,
thought that there had been 'more mistakesthan might have been expected',even though the purges had been
'unavoidable'and their results 'beneficial'.(See his report to the XVIII Party Congress on lo March 1938 in
I. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (M. 1954), pp. 782-3.)
2 The term
'specialist'is used hereas referringto personswith higheror middlespecializededucationemployed
in the national economy (exclusive of military personnel, pensioners and persons in domestic employment).
This is in conformitywith the generalusage of Soviet statistics.(See, e.g., Narodnoe kho.yaistvo SSSR v 9g9godb
(M. 1960),p. 602.) Partystatisticsdo not always adhereto this definition.However, the figuresfor communist
specialists cited in this article have been contrasted in partystatisticswith figuresfor all Soviet specialists,and it
has thereforebeen assumedthat the two are strictly comparable.
322 RENEWAL OF THE LEADING STRATUM

Soviet power, it was probably inevitable that it should seek to reinforce

the somewhat tenuous bonds of class solidarity by the stricter discipline,
closer supervision and more intensive indoctrination which party
membership was expected to entail. In the words of one Soviet writer:
'The Communist Party transformed itself into a colossal, historically
unprecedented apparatusfor the recruitmentof organizingelementsfrom the
vast mass of the toilers and for the training of these toilers.'3
Yet, while the 'recruitment of organizing elements' was doubtless
a formidable task, it was their 'training' for the organization of Soviet
society which posed the more serious problems. It was one thing to
enlist workers and-to a lesser extent-peasants into the party and then
to promote the more able among them to leading positions in the state
and the economy; it was another to endow them with the education
and expertise that go with such positions in the twentieth century. In
the conditions of Russian backwardness the transformation of the
'downtrodden and intimidated'4 of the past into the 'ruling class' of the
future implied a thoroughgoing social and cultural revolution which
was bound to yield meagre returns in its initial phase. The habit of
education, the familiarity with cultural media, are not easily assimilated.
At the end of the first decade of Soviet rule, what D. Fedotoff White
called the 'antithesis of "educated" and "socially reliable"' was as yet
unresolved.5 In I928 there were some 521,000 persons with specialized
higher or middle education employed in the national economy of the
Soviet Union, but no more than 6400 of these belonged to the Com-
munist Party.6 The country was. about to enter into an era of rapid
industrialization, requiring technically qualified and politically reliable
specialist cadres, and the party, with only 2.8% of Soviet specialists in
its ranks, was wholly unprepared to meet this challenge. As Stalin put
it, the regime had 'proved to be unarmed and absolutely backward,
scandalously backward, in the matter of providing industry with a
certain minimum of experts devoted to the cause of the working class'.7
In retrospect, Stalin's renewal of the leading stratum may be seen as a
campaigfi consisting of two pincer movements which first advanced
in two different directions and only gradually closed in to reach their
final objective. On the one hand, the full resources of the state were
bent to the task of providing the growing demands of the economy for
3 L. Kritsman, Die Heroische Periode der Grossen Russisehen Revolution
(Vienna, g929), pp. 127-8. (Emphasis in
the original.)
4 The phrase is Lenin's. See his article in Pravda on the occasion of the
party recruitment drive of October
1919, in V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya,4th ed., 42 vols. (M. 1941-6o), vol. XXX, pp. 46-47.
5 D. Fedotoff White, The Growth of the Red Army (Princeton, N.J.,
i944), p. 393.
6
,hi,.n',
Partiinqaya 962, no. x, p. 48; see also S. A. Fedyukin, Sovetskayavlast' i burghuagnyespetsialisty (M. 1965),
pp. 2oo ff. J. R. Azrael, Managerial Power and Soviet Politics (Cambridge, Mass., I 966), p. 5 3, quotes Soviet sources
to the effect that there were no more than 138 engineers and 75 persons with higher technical education in the
party in I928.
7 See his report to the Leningrad aktiv of 13 July 1928 in Stalin, Sochineniya, 13 vols. (M. 1946-5 i), vol. XI,
p. 215.
IN THE GREAT PURGE 323

specialist cadres. The educational system was greatly expanded,

discipline was tightened, the 'progressive' experiments of the i920S
abandoned and more stress placed on technical and scientific subjects.
But in the process of providing the 'ruling class' of the Soviet Union
with its 'own' intelligentsia,8 such notions about the prior claim of the
proletariat to educational facilities and career advancement as, had been
pursued in the 1920s and the early years of the first five-year plan were
increasingly discarded.9 At a time when the supreme slogan was
'Cadres decide everything!'?1 the regime became increasingly reluctant
to forego the vital contribution of the culturally most advanced sec-
tions of the community. Merit rather than social origin now opened the
doors to education and career, while growing salary differentials brought
rising rewards for trained skill in all branches of the economy. Side
by side with the creation of the material conditions for the growth of
technical and managerial cadres came the social rehabilitation of the
intelligentsia as a whole, including the remaining 'bourgeois specialists'
of pre-revolutionary origin, who only a short time previously had still
been victimised for the early failures of industrialization.1
The number of specialists rose at an increasing pace throughout the
1930s. In the period I929-32 an annual average of specialists
5,300oo
graduated from higher and middle educational institutions, as com-
pared with an annual average of 48,900 in the period I9I8-28. In i933-
37 the annual average 'output' of specialists rose to 198,600 and in
I938-40 it reached 335,300. On i January I94I there were 909,000
specialists with higher education and 1,492,000 specialists with a middle
education in the Soviet Union, a total of 2,401,000, or nearly five times
as many as in I928.12
In the early years of industrialization the regime still sought to safe-
guard the political as well as the social composition of the emerging
intelligentsia by imposing minimum quotas for party (and Komsomol)
members among persons admitted to specialized training. The aim was
to create 'Red Specialists'.13 The figures below show the proportion of
8 See Stalin's speech at a conference of economic managers on 23 June 1931, Problems of Leninism, p. 471.
9 That white-collar workers
enjoyed a growing and disproportionate share of higher education from 1932
onwards may be seen from the figures compiled by N. DeWitt, Soviet Professional Manpower (Washington, D.C.,
1953), p. 179. See also R. Feldmesser, 'Social Status and Access to Higher Education: A Comparison of the
United States and the Soviet Union', Harvard Educational Review, 1957, no. 2, pp. 92-o06, and the same author's
'The Persistence of Status Advantages in the Soviet Union', American Journal of Sociology, 19g , July, pp. 19-27.
10See Stalin's address to the
graduates of the Red Army academies of 4 May 1935, ProblemsofLeninism, p. 66i.
' In the above-quoted speech of 23 June 195 Stalin noted that 'a considerable number of yesterday's wreckers'
were beginning to cooperate with the regime, strongly condemned 'expert baiting' and demanded instead
'greater attention and solicitude' towards the specialists (Problems of Leninism, pp. 475-6). Five years later, when
introducing the Draft Constitution of 1936, Stalin went out of his way to emphasize that the Soviet intelligentsia
was now an equal member of Soviet society, and that it was 'personal ability and personal labour that determines
the position of every citizen in society' (ibid., pp. 686, 692).
12 All
figures from Narodnoe khovyaistvoSSSR v i9ij,godu, pp. 602, 747.
'3 See the resolutions of the joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of
1i April 1928 and of the Central Committee plenum of 12 July s928 in KommunisticheskayaPartiya Sovetskogo
Soyu.ga t regolyutsiyakh i resheniyakhs"eTdov, konferentsii i plcnuwov TsK, 4 vols., 7th ed. (M.), vol. II, pp. 385 ff.
and 400 ff.
324 RENEWAL OF THE LEADING STRATUM

partyand Komsomol studentsin the period 928-35; it will be seen that

the share of party members did indeed rise at first, though it fell off
rather sharply between 1933 and 935.14
1928 931I I933 193J
In highereducationalinstitutions
Members of the party -I 5'3% 24-5% 22'5% 14'7%
Members of the Komsomol I9'2% 28'5% 3$?5% 33'5%
In tekbnikumy
Members of the party 3.8% 5-2% 5-9% I-9%
Members of the Komsomol 36.2% 36-o% 42.2% 31 2%

Although the top ranksof the Soviet leadingstratumremainedfirmly

bound to the party,15the pace of fusion between the partyand the new
intelligentsiabegan to fall behind the immensegrowth in the numberof
specialists of all kinds that streamed out of the Soviet educational
machine and quickly assumed positions of relative importance in an
expanding economy, starved of qualified manpower. The year 1933
already saw a small decline in the share of party members among
students of higher educationalinstitutions; by I935 the share of party
members in both higher educationalinstitutions and tekhnikumy had
fallen below the 1928 level.
At about the same time as the growth of the new intelligentsiagot
into full stride, propelled forwardby the regime'sincreasingawareness
of the need to select and train for positions of responsibilitythe best
human materialthe nation had to offer, irrespectiveof narrow and-
in the conditions of the 1930s-obsolescent ideological concepts, the
doors of the party were closed to new entrants.Party recruitmentwas
stopped in January 1933 and not resumed until November I936.16
During these four yearsand for most of the two yearsthat followed the
party was subjected to a series of purges of unprecedentedscale and
severity. These constituted the second pincer of the campaignfor the
renewal of the leading stratum. As the purges unfolded it became
increasinglyplain that what had begun as an attempt to cleanse the
party of. unreliable and ill-preparedelements among recent recruits
would culminate in nothing less than the decimation of the leading
stratumwhich had led the Soviet Union throughthe first decade-and-a-
half of Bolshevik rule. For the power-holdersof the g92osproved not
only deficient in meeting the technical demands of the industrial age,
they also fell short of the ever more rigorous standards of totalitarian
discipline that came to be associated with Stalin's ascendancy over the
party. Some of the men in top positions were old Bolsheviks of pre-
4 Figures for 1928-33 from Sotsialisticheskoe
stroitel'svoSSSR. Statistichesk)i (M. 1934), p. 41o; for
ethegodnik
935, ibid. (M. I936), p. 576.
5 Figures on party representationamong differentsectors of the Soviet leading stratumwill be found ibid.
(M.
16
1935), pp. 5 3-4, 516-7, 522-35; see also SSSR StranasotsialiZma.
Statisticheskii
sbornik(M. 1936), pp. 94-96.
KPSS v re.olyatsryakh. ... (see footnote 3), vol. III, p. i98; Partiinoe stroite/'stvo, 1938, no. 6, p. 6I.
IN THE GREAT PURGE 325

revolutionary standing and a degree of independent prestige in the

country. Others had rendered valuable service to Stalin in the years of
his struggles with rival groups and may have felt that a share of the
power conquered was theirs by rights other than the Leader's personal
dispensation. Many more had not stood up to the strains and stresses
of collectivization and industrialization with the unwavering loyalty
demanded of totalitarian power-holders. The time had come to purify
the party and refashion it in the mould of Stalinist discipline before the
second generation of leading strata was allowed to enter its ranks.17
Translated into the Stalinist idiom this meant: 'The key question now
facing us is not the elimination of the technical backwardness of our
cadres for, in the main, this has already been done, but the elimination
of the political trustfulness in wreckers who have accidentally obtained
party cards.' 8
In the period of the purges between 93 3 and 1938 the party lost over
I,80o,ooo members or 57'7% of its strength at the beginning of I933.19
In the course of the first two years alone close on I'2 million members
were expelled. These, however, were predominantly rank-and-file
workers and peasants, recent recruits, who had entered the party in the
period of the first five-year plan, and whom the purge commissions
had found wanting in regard to personal conduct, political literacy or
'Bolshevik firmness'.20 With the assassination of Kirov on i December
17 It should be
pointed out that before entering the party many members of the new intelligentsia belonged
either to the Komsomol or to the so-called 'sympathizers' groups'. In the period between November 1936 and
the XVIII Partv Congress nm March 1939 some ;20,000 Komsomol members were admitted into the party
(XVIlI .5"'eed lI'sesoyu,noi KommunisticheskoiPartii (b) 10o-2 marta i939 g. Stenograficheskiiotchet (M. 1939), p.
126). This was around 40,'0 of all admissions during that period (see below). The 'sympathizers' groups', which
were attached and subordinated to lower party organizations, had been set up at the XVII Party Congress in
1934, ostensibly in order to give 'activists among workers and collective farmers . . . the opportunity first to
acquire the habits of organization and leadership' (XVIII S"e.d Vsesoyu~noi KommunisticheskoiPartii (b) 26
Y)anvarya-iofevralya 1934 g. Stenograficheskiiotchet (M. 1934), pp. 521, 67I). As they were abolished by the XVIII
Congress there is sorne reason to believe that one of their main purposes had been to bridge the gap in the fusion
of party and leading stratum. At best, the 'sympathizers' groups' were conceived not as a kind of preparatory
stage to party membership, but rather as a temporary substitute for it at a time when entry into the party was
closed. This much was implied at the XVIII Congress when it was argued that 'in view of the resumption of the
admission of new members the sympathizers' groups have outlived their function' (XVIII S"e,d . ., p. 541).
Of the party candidates accepted in the two years preceding the XVIII Congress z 1% came from the 'sympath-
izers' groups' (ibid).
18
Stalin, Defects in Party Work and Measuresfor Liquidating Trotskyite and Other Double Dealers, Report and Speech
to the Central Committee Plenum of 3-5 March 1937 (M. 1937), p. 22.
19The official party membership figures for the period
193 3-4o are as follows:
Date Members Candidates Total
January 1933 2,203,951 1,351,387 3,555,338
January 1934 1,826,756 874,252 2,701,008
i January 1935 x,659,104 699,61o 2,358,714
I January 1936 1,489,907 586,935 2,076,842
January 1937 1,453,828 527,869 1,981,697
I January 1938 1,405,879 514,123 1,920,002
i January 1939 1,514,181 792,792 2,306,973
March 1939 l,588,852 888,814 2,477,666
January 1940 i,982,743 1,417,z32 3,399,975
X January 1941 2,490,479 1,381,986 3,872,465
(Figures for March 1939 from Istoriya Partii
Kommunisticheskoi Sov,etskogoSoyuza (M. 1962), p. 506; all other figures
from Partiinaya hirns',1947, no. 20, p. 8i and 1967, no. 19, p. 9.)
20 See M. Fainsod, .Smoynsk under Sotit' Rule (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 220-2; Z. K. Brzezinski, The
Permanent Purge (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 54- 8.
326 RENEWAL OF THE LEADING STRATUM

1934 the purge gained new momentum and a further wave of expulsions,
engulfing this time more prominent party members, was launched. By
1936 it looked for a time as if the fury of the purge had spent itself;
the number of party members expelled dropped by approximately two-
thirds in comparison to the previous year, and the introduction of the
new Constitution seemed to engender the promise of a happier future.
In August of that year, however, the first of the great show trials began
and, with the replacement of Yagoda by Ezhov as head of the OGPU
in September, the scene was set for the bloodiest purge yet. What
distinguished the Ezhovshchinafrom its predecessors was not only that
in its course purge and terror 'coalesced',21 but that its brunt was borne
by the leading personnel of party .and state. The fact that 70% of the
Central Committee members elected at the XVII Party Congress in
1934 had been arrested and for the most part shot by the end of 1938
signifies the extent of the holocaust wrought by Stalin's assault on the
Soviet leading stratum.22 In all some 279,000 members were expelled
from the party in 1937-38 and a high proportion of these, if not the
great majority, were persons who had previously occupied positions
of power and privilege in Soviet society.
The annual toll of the purges can be approximately estimated as
follows:
I933 854,330
I934 342,294
I935 281,872
1936 95,145
1937-38 278,818
1933-38 1,852,459

The figures for the years 1933-36 register the net decline in party
membership.23 Since recruitment was suspended for most of this period
the decline in membership may be taken as approximating the number
of expulsions.24 Between January 1937 and the XVIII Congress in
March 939 the number of full party members rose by 135,024 and that
of candidates by 360,945, making an overall net increase of 495,969.25
For approximately the same period (with the addition of the last two
months of 1936) 774,787 candidates were admitted into the party and
21 Brzezinski,op. cit., pp. 65 ff.
22 Khrushchev's secret
speech at the XX Party Congress (The Anti-Stalin Campaign and InternationalCommunism
(New York, 1956), pp. 22-23.
23 See footnote I9 above.
24 Part of the loss was, of course, due to naturalcausesand normal These could not,
membership 'drop-out'.
however, have accountedfor more than a fractionof the total decline,and have been ignored for the purpose of
these calculations.Recruitmentwas resumedon I November 1936,but it developedat an exceedinglyslow pace.
Froma CentralCommitteeresolutionof 4 March I938 it can be inferredthatduringthe firsteight months follow-
ing the resumption of recruitment admissions averaged 5oo per month (Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, I 938, no. 6, p. 6 ).
At most, therefore, another 3000 party membersshould be added to the above figure on this account,but in
order to simplify calculationsfor the subsequentperiod it will here be assumedthat no admissionstook place
in i936.
25 See footnote I9 above.
IN THE GREAT PURGE 327

298,062 candidates were transferred to full membership status.26 The

impact of the purge in 1937-38 can therefore be estimated at 278,8 8-
party members, including I63,038 full members and 115,780 candidate
members.
Party statistics here as elsewhere leave much to be desired. It should
be pointed out that there is some contradictory evidence indicating that
the number of admissions in I937-38 was considerably lower than the
total of 774,787 quoted above. Thus, during the period i November
I936 to i January I938, admissions were stated to have totalled
40,000.27 For I938 admissions were reported to have numbered o8,5 18
in the period January-June and I 35,ooo in the three months September-'
November.28 Finally, the increase in membership between I January
I939 and the XVIII Party Congress in March-a period during which
the purge had largely ceased to operate-was I70,693.29 As admissions
increased progressively a maximum estimate can be obtained by im-
puting to the missing months, July-August and December 1938, the
average of the immediately succeeding period. This would reveal the
following picture of admissions:
I January 1937 to I January 1938 40,000
I January 1938 to i July 1938 o08,518
I July 1938 to i September I938 90,000 (estimate)
i September 1938 to I December 1938 135,000
I December 1938 to I January 1939 85,ooo (estimate)
I January 1939 to I March I939 I70,693
i January 1937 to I March 1939 629,2 1

On the basis of these figures the toll of the purges in I937-38-the

difference between the number of admissions (629,2II) and the net
increase in party membership (495,969)-would be only 133,242 party
members, or less than half of the above total of 278,818.
It will be seen that the accuracy of the estimate of 278,8 18 expulsions
hinges upon the reliability of the figure of 774,787 admissions. It was
cited in two Pravda editorials, and since there would appear to be no
reason for Pravdato exaggerate tle number of admissions-and thereby
the number of expulsions-it has been accepted as the basis for the
present estimate. Partial confirmation of the higher admission figure
may be obtained from data on the number of applications for member-
ship. For the three years from i November I936 to I Novemlbe I939
these were stated to have totalled I 7 million, of which around 750,000
dated since i April i939.30 In the early period of recruitment a large
backlog of applications awaiting approval had accumulated-by the
26 Pravda,
27 October and io November 1939.
27 Partiinoe
stroitel'stvo, 1938, no. 6, p. 61.
28Ibid., 1938, no. 15, p. 3 and no. 23, p. 59.
29 See footnote 19 above.
30 Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, 1939, no. 22, p. I2.
328 RENEWAL OF THE LEADING STRATUM

middle of 1938 it was reported at I8o,ooo.31 It may be assumed, how-

ever, that the number of outstanding applications was reduced as the
pressure on local party organizations to step up the pace of admissions
mounted in the months immediately preceding the XVIII Congress.
Some applications were, of course, refused, but once the breakthrough
to mass recruitment was accomplished the proportion of refusals must
have dropped sharply.32
The estimate of approximately 850,000 purged party members given
by Brzezinski for the three years I936-3833 is based on an inaccurate
reading of the party membership figures. Brzezinski arrives at his
estimate by adding new admissions, which he puts at approximately
4o,ooo0 34 for the two-year period I937-38, to a membership loss of
445,712 between the end of I935 and the end of 1938. However, the
membership figures cited by Brzezinski as relating to the end of I935
(2,358,714) and the end of 1938 (1,920,002) relate in fact to the begin-
ning of 1935 and 1938 respectively, and are therefore irrelevant to an
estimate of the Great Purge. The true figures at the end of I935 and
1938 were respectively 2,076,842 and 2,306,973, showing not a loss,
but an increase of 230,1 3 members.35 Thus, if Brzezinski's estimate of
410,000 admissions-from the resumption of recruitment at the end of
1936 until the end of I938-is correct, the total of purged party mem-
bers in the three years 1936-38 would be not approximately 850,000
but 410,000 less 230,131, or approximately 18o,ooo. Since 1936 alone
accounted for a net decline of some 95,000 members, expulsions during
the two years 937-38 could not have exceeded 85,000.
By the time the delegates to the XVIII Congress assembled on io
March I939 the two-pronged campaign for the renewal of the Soviet
leading stratum was well on the way to achieving its major objectives.
The purges had cleansed the ranks of the party and left it battered and
cowering in the shadow of the omnipotent Leader. On the other front,
the educational establishments had turned out hundreds of thousands
of specialists who, on the authority of a Central Committee resolution
of 4 March 1938 'Concerning the Promotion of Non-Party People to
Leading Work in the Soviets and the Economy',36 were beginning to
assume the positions of leadership in Soviet society to which their
training and talents entitled them. The two pincers began to merge
into one movement with the absorption of the second generation of the
Soviet leading stratum into the ranks of the now refashioned party. A
31
Ibid., 9538, no. 15, p. 3.
32
In the second and third quarters of 1939 primary party organizations rejected respectively 2z8% and 4-7?,
of all applications(Pravda,27 October 1939).
33 Brzezinski, op. cit.,
pp. 98-99.
4 bid., p. 99. On p. Iz2 the number of admissions is given as 'at least 4 5,oco'.
35 See footnote 19 above.
36
Partiinoe stroitel'stro, 1938, no. 6, p. 62.
IN THE GREAT PURGE 529
shift in party recruitment in the directir-n of the intelligentsia could
already be discerned from I938 onwards.37 But until the summer of
1938 the number of new admissions was negligible. In the prevailing
conditions of suspicion and terror few party members and officials
were prepared to expose themselves to the hazards of guilt by associa-
tion which the recommendation and approval of new recruits could
involve.38 Moreover, the current entrance requirerients adopted at the
XVII Party Congress, at a time when admissions were closed and the
party was engaged in purging itself of unsuitable elements who had
entered in the years of mass recruitment I929-32, were not only gener-
ally severe, but continued to discriminate against white-collar employ-
ees.39 When at the XVIII Congress Stalin announced that the party had
since I934 'succeeded in promoting to leading state and party posts over
500,000 young Bolsheviks', and used the latter term to include both
party members and 'persons standing close to the party',40 he indirectly
testified to the fact that the economic expansion and purges of the
930os had left a large gap in the fusion of party and leading stratum.
The abolition of differential admission categories, which was a feature
of the general relaxation of party entrance requirements introduced at
the XVIII Congress, removed the last barrier to the full-scale absorp-
tion of the new intelligentsia in the ranks of the party.41
Recruitment proceeded at a fast rate throughout I939. In the first
six months following the XVIII Congress over 58o0,00ooo party members
were added,42 and by the end of the year membership strength had
almost regained its pre-purge peak.43 In I940 the pace of admissions
began to slow down; in contrast to the increase of nearly ix* million
members for 1939, the net increase for I 940 was less than half a million,
the greater part of which occurred in the first six months of the year.
In the twelve months before Soviet Russia's entry into World War II,
recruitment had fallen to 233,07I.44 Complete figures on the occupa-
tional composition of the post-XVIII Congress recruits are not avail-
able, but the evidence for different localities of the Soviet Union
indicates that white-collar employees constituted over 70% of all new
recruits.45 On I January 1941 the party included 494,800 specialists out
of a total of 2,401,o000 specialists employed in the national economy.46
37 M.
Fainsod, HowvRussia is Ruled (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 263; T. H. Rigby, The Selection of Leading
Personnelin the Soviet State and Communist Party, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 95 4, p. 172.
38
Brzezinski, op. cit., pp. zo-i.
39 XVII S1"ed...
(see footnote 17 above), p. 675. However, engineering-technical personnel directly working
in factory shops were separated from the category of employees and given second place in the order of priority
for party entry, alongside workers of less than five years' production experience.
40 Stalin, Problems
of Lenimism,p. 786.
41 XVIII S"ed. ..
(see footnote 17 above), p. 672 f.
42
Pravda, 27 October i939.
3 See
footnote 19 above.
4
Voprosy istorii KPSS, I 960, no. i, p. x 5o.
4 Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled,
pp. 263-4; Rigby, The Selectionof Leading Personnel. . ., pp. 174-8.
46
Parfiinaya ghign', x962, no. I, p. 48.
330 RENEWAL OF THE LEADING STRATUM

Specialists still constituted no more than 128%?(-;: party membership,

but the magnitude of the change will be appreciated if it is remembered
that since 928 the number of specialists in the party had increased over
77 times, while the increase in the size of the party as a whole had been
less than three-fold and the increase of all specialists in the country less
than five-fold. The party now counted 20-6% of all specialists in its
ranks as compared-with 12z% in 1928.47
The events of the 930osleft a lasting mark on the party. It was rapidly
becoming an association of 'better people'-better not because they
were enlightened, class-conscious workers actually engaged in material
production, not even because they could trace their social origins to
History's chosen class, but because they had succeeded in making their
mark in the kind of society which the Soviet Union had become under
the iron rule of Stalinist totalitarianism. It was a society in which
education, ability, ambition and blind loyalty to the cause of the party
and the commands of its leader alone paved the way to the top. The
criterion of social origin, still powerful in the early years of industrial-
ization, had lost all relevance at a time when the regime's primary
concern was to find sufficient cadres to run Soviet Russia's expanding
industrial empire and its ancillary services. When once the regime
openly abdicated the last remnants of its class nission, the party could
not fall far behind. It was inevitable that the 'profiteers' of the revolu-
tion should join the Jacobin Club, and that the character of the latter
should be irrevocably transformed in the process. Above all, the leading
stratum that arose in the course of the I93os and was fused with tthc
party in the period preceding and following the XVIII Congress was
rooted in Soviet life, its outlook shaped in the years of the purges and
oriented towards-if not reconciled with-the reality of Stalinist rule.

TheHebrewUniversityof Jerusalem

47 An earlier official re-,iew of the

party's growth and composition contrasted the figure of 6oo,5oo communist
specialists for 1941 with 2-4 million Soviet specialists, thus obtaining a proportionate share of 25o for party
members among all specialists (Partiinaya thitn, 1957, no. 20, p. 88). The discrepancy, unless it is the product
of a later 'revision', may possibly be due to the fact that the figures published in s957 refer to all party members
with specialized education (see footnote 2 above).