Party Composition of Regional Authorities in the First Year of the Soviet Era

Abstract

The article examines the problem of reconstruction of the party composition of the regional authorities of the RSFSR in March — July 1918. The source base of the work is statistical data collected by Soviet researchers, periodical press materials, as well as documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The author studies the party composition of the Soviet authorities at two institutional levels: regional and provincial. The territorial scope of the article is limited to the regions of the European part of Russia (including most of the Urals), where the Soviet power existed in the first half of 1918. This article makes quantitative calculations of delegates of regional congresses of councils and members of executive committees. Based on the analysis of data on the party membership of congresses of Soviets and executive committees, the author comes to the conclusion about the formation of the dual party system in regional and provincial authorities by the time of the convocation of the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets. This process was characterized by a significant reduction in the representation of socialist parties other than the Bolsheviks and their temporary allies from the party of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. The author of the article analyzes the dynamics of the representation of political parties at the provincial institutional levels of the Soviet state in the first half of 1918. Changes in the party composition of regional Soviet authorities consisted in increasing the share of the Left socialist revolutionaries in provincial executive committees and reducing the representation of the Bolshevik party.