What is the essence of the dictatorship of the party? In a state where one political organization seeks sole power, it gets rid of all its competitors and merges with the state apparatus. The most striking example of this order is the Soviet Union.
The example of the Bolsheviks
To understand the essence of the dictatorship of the party, it is sufficient to consider in detail the example of the Bolshevik party that came to power in Russia in 1917. The leadership of the RSDLP (b) was not going to reckon with its opponents. When the October Revolution took place , part of society still harbored the illusion that Lenin and his associates were organizing the work of the Constituent Assembly. This body was to use the democratic procedure to determine the political future of Russia.
The constituent assembly worked only one day. It included not only the Bolsheviks, but also the Social Revolutionaries. They also held leftist views, but diverged with Lenin on some fundamental issues. In particular, the Social Revolutionaries refused to recognize the first decrees of the Soviet government. By a majority of votes, the Constituent Assembly elected their representative Viktor Chernov as its chairman.
When the RSDLP (b) realized that the new government was becoming the opposition, it was decided at all costs to disperse it. In advance, the government banned the holding of demonstrations in Petrograd. The deputies were expelled from the courtroom the day after the start of work. This scene became famous thanks to the phrase "The guard was tired." That is how the guards argued for the temporary closure of the Tauride Palace, where the deputies met.
State terror
Later it became clear that the Constituent Assembly was finally dispersed. Residents of Petrograd held several demonstrations and rallies in support of the representative body. And they were shot by parts of the Latvian riflemen. Killed, according to various estimates, from 8 to 20 people.
The essence of the dictatorship of the party was revealed in this tragedy. The Bolsheviks did not want to share powers and were ready to destroy all their opponents. Terror is a principle that is key when it comes to a party dictatorship that has seized power in any state.
Ban on discussions
However, even after the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, some Russian parties remained in the legal field. They could become serious competitors to the Bolsheviks in the struggle for public opinion. These were the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. In the way the RSDLP (b) destroyed them, the essence of the dictatorship of the party reappeared.
The Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks remained the only non-military way to be in power. These were the tips. These bodies have become a typewriter, stamping the necessary voices. The dictatorship of the party of the proletariat was that any discussion was forbidden if a decision had already been taken “upstairs” in the Central Committee.
Opponents of the Bolsheviks were successfully re-elected to the Soviets and began to change their mood. The situation for Lenin and his supporters became extremely shaky. The situation was also bad because the communists controlled only Petrograd and Moscow, while the white movement was actively operating in the vast expanses of the rest of the country.
Party merging with the state
In May 1918, Zinoviev compared the Soviets with the House of Lords in the British Parliament. Elected representative bodies got out of the control of the Bolsheviks. In this regard, the party leadership decided to deliver a preemptive strike. In the spring of 1918, the leaders of the Assembly of Commissioners were arrested, on which the opposition relied most.
Meanwhile, the process of merging the party apparatus with the state began. The people's commissariats, the Council of Defense, and the Council of People's Commissars were entirely Bolshevik. Party members became more and more bureaucrats and part of the nomenclature. By 1920, when the IX Congress of the RCP (B.) Was held, every second Bolshevik was in the Soviets (and in the entire organization there were 98% of the total number of deputies). And only every tenth party member worked in production.
The dominance of special services
In the future, the essence of the dictatorship of the party of the 1920s was the use of special services and a repressive apparatus. The Bolsheviks had a Cheka in this capacity. The main concern of the Chekists was the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. A large network of informants has been created. For every prominent oppositionist, denunciations and slander were gathered.
The dictatorship of the Bolshevik party officially took shape in 1922. Then Lenin declared that the only way to foment a world revolution was to create a single communist political movement. In summer, demonstration trials against the Socialist Revolutionaries began. Such representations, widely covered in the press, were also of a propagandistic nature. The image of enemies and traitors was developing in society, with which it was necessary to deal with it. Later, this practice was successfully applied not only to professional political opponents, but also to any citizens who are dissatisfied with the authorities.
Repression against opponents
Repressions against opposition movements were justified by “revolutionary expediency” and other high-profile slogans. After the Social Revolutionary leaders were convicted, the Soviet secret services organized a congress of that part of the party that was ready to merge with the Bolsheviks. These socialists were called "proponents." They dissolved the party and joined the communists. The fate of the Mensheviks was similar.
Only one party remained in the Soviet Union . But even inside the RCP (b), a similar process was launched. In 1924, after the death of Lenin , a struggle for power began between the Bolsheviks of the first wave.
Party cleansing
The struggle in the ranks of the CPSU (b) was not so much a social character as a personal one. Nevertheless, when Stalin became the sovereign leader of the party, he also got rid of theoretical discussions. Opponents were convicted and for the most part shot in the 30s. The features of the political regime and the essence of the dictatorship of the party led to the dictatorship of one person.
The main opponent of Stalin at first was Leon Trotsky. Along with Lenin, he organized the October Revolution, while Koba did not claim leadership at all. It was because of this that Trotsky was the first to be repressed. At the last moment he managed to emigrate. A few more years the revolutionary lived in Mexico, until he was killed by a Soviet agent in 1940.
It is worth noting that some of the above principles developed by the Bolsheviks were later successfully used by the Nazis in the Third Reich. In the modern world, the dictatorship of the party is much less common. Today, a country with such a political system is communist China, where all state institutions are also replaced by party ones, and the opposition is banned.