“The Holy of Holies”: Formation and Evolution of the Party Statute (1898–1920s)

Abstract

In this research paper, based on traditional published source (materials of party congresses and conferences) and on unpublished documents of the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History, examined the main directions of the evolution of the Party Statute (Manifesto of the RSDRP, the Organizational Statute) in the Russian Social-Democratic (labor) party, and then Lenin’s “party of a new type” in the 1898 — 1920s. The Statute, being formally second (after the Program) party document, in fact was “alpha and omega” of RSDRP and then Lenin’s “party of a new type” life and activity. The evolution of party rules during the Civil War and then during the 1920s was the result of strangulation is very conditional originally “inner-party democracy”. Without studying the history and evolution of the Statute is impossible to study the history of the Lenin’s “party of a new type” and the inner-party struggle in RSDRP, then within their own Bolshevik party — until the era of Stalin’s “personality cult”. The member of the Politburo of the RCP(b)’s Central Committee, G. E. Zinoviev not by chance stated in 1924 that “the Bolsheviks used to come primarily from the party organization”. In the light of the evolution of the statutory standards for new light on the story of “party unity”: the facts that a debate about the first version of the Statute at the II Congress of the RSDRP in 1903 began the history of the Bolshevik fraction, and with crimes against the Charter in the Prague conference in 1912 — the history of the Bolshevik party suggest the following idea: a split gene was incorporated into the body of Lenin’s parties initially.