t level of Soviets – district, provincial, or republican. Supreme power was held by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which elected a central executive committee to exercise power between meetings. The executive committee in turn appointed a cabinet, the Politburo which was headed by Lenin. In the early days, a number of sources tell us that although the Party was dictatorial, Lenin was not a dictator in the Party and allowed some freedom of opinion and dissent within it. Laver states: “His practice was to allow free debate amongst colleagues, although he disliked bowing to a majority if he demurred on any particular issue.” Likewise Christian notes that:“In the early months after the revolution, the Party was loosely organized, debate and controversy were endless. Contacts between the center and the local Party cells were sporadic. And local Party officials frequently rejected, criticized or ignored orders from the center. At the center itself, the crucial decisions – especially over Brest-Litovsk – provoked bitter controversy and debate”. This “liberal” situation was permanently changed by the demands of the Civil War. By the eighth Party Congress in March 1919, Lenin decreed in his seventh point that:“The Party finds itself in a situation in which the strictest centralism and most severe discipline are an absolute necessity. All decisions of a higher body are absolutely obligatory for lower ones. Every decree must be implemented…In this sense outright military discipline is needed in the Party in the present epoch. All party enterprises which are suitable for centralization (publishing, propaganda, etc) must be centralized for the good of the cause. All conflicts are decided by the corresponding higher party body.” As will be shown later, it was precisely in this Leninist trend of centralization that the true seeds of Stalinist dictatorship were sown. One...
