Central committee
A central committee is a political-executive organ designated as the highest organ of a communist party between two congresses. Per the principles of democratic centralism, a central committee is empowered to deal with any issue that falls under the party's purview. While formally retaining this role in socialist states, commonly referred to as communist states by outside observers, in practice, it delegates this authority to numerous smaller internal organs due to the infrequency of its meetings.
The term of a central committee of a ruling communist party is usually five years. The party congress elects individuals to the central committee and holds it accountable. At the first central committee session held immediately after a congress, it elects the party leader, an office usually titled general secretary of the central committee, a political organ, commonly known as the politburo, and an executive organ, customarily named the secretariat.
Status
Communist parties are organised on Leninist lines based on the principles of democratic centralism. Adolf Dobieszewski, an official of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, tried to define democratic centralism in 1980. He posited that centralism involves unifying party building and policy to construct a socialist society. To achieve unity in party building and policy, Dobieszewski contended that the minority had to be subordinate to the majority. Secondly, he posited that lower-level organs were subservient to higher-level organs. Third, members willingly acquiesced to discipline, and political discipline was equally obligatory for all party members. Democracy, on the other hand, meant, according to Dobieszewski, that every member had equal opportunity to participate in the formulation of the party's programme and line, as well as the right to elect and recall officials at all levels.Power was organised as a uniform structure, with the highest party organs, such as the congress, functioning as the party's "supreme organ". This supreme organ is responsible for electing the central committee, which is typically tasked with directing the work of the communist party in between two congresses. According to scholar Baruch Hazan, the former ruling Eastern European communist parties provided nearly identical descriptions of the functions and powers of their central committees. Their responsibilities included representing the party externally, organising party organs, directing their activities, nominating personnel for internal organs, evaluating party cadres, and administering internal funds. Additionally, they were responsible for overseeing the work of state organs, granting approval to the state plan and budget ahead of the discussions in the supreme state organ of power, and endorsing the appointments of individuals to prominent state roles. However, more generally, central committees are empowered to deal with any issue that falls under the party's purview.
Relationship to the state
Most communist states formally enshrine the communist party's leading or guiding role in state and society, and this is institutionalised by giving the party two-thirds of the seats in the supreme state organ of power, which has complete control over all state activities per the principle of unified power. These members are, in most cases, elected in non-competitive elections and stand as candidates on the approval of the central committee.Many central committee members also serve concurrently as members of the SSOP. In the Soviet Union, 227 out of 241 members of the Central Committee of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union concurrently served in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. They tended to dominate the Supreme Soviet and occupied leading political positions within it. In 1971–1973, forty per cent of debate participants were either members or alternates of the central committee. Party members who serve in the SSOP are also bound by party discipline and have to enact policies approved by the central committee.
The leading role principle entails that the central committee adopts recommendations on state policy on behalf of the party to, most commonly, the SSOP, but also to other state organs if deemed necessary. For instance, the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party "adopted recommendations for filling of jobs in the state apparatus" to the SSOP, the National Assembly, on 29 March 1979. In other instances, the central committee could instruct its members to resign from state offices. The 7th Session of the Central Committee of the 8th PUWP Congress, held on 1–2 December 1980, instructed Edward Babiuch, Jerzy Łukaszewicz, Tadeusz Pyka, Jan Szydlak, Tadeusz Wraszczyk, and Zdzisław Zandarowski to resign their seats in the Sejm, the SSOP in the People's Republic of Poland, and instructing its former leader, Edward Gierek, to resign from his seat in the State Council.
The central committee could also nominate individuals to state positions. On 11 April 1984, during the 1st Session of the 11th Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev nominated Konstantin Chernenko as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union "on instructions of the Central Committee". Upon his election, Chernenko nominated Nikolai Tikhonov as chairman of the Council of Ministers, the Soviet government, also on the instructions of the Central Committee. Moreover, Chernenko and Gorbachev both stated that the instruction had also been "approved by the party group" of the Supreme Soviet.
Marxist constitutional theorist Sylwester Zawadzki, and member of the SSOP of Poland, defined the relationship between the party and state as follows, "The Marxist-Leninist party gives political direction to the work of both the and the Government. and Government both work to carry out a common program for building socialism. It does not mean, however, that under
these conditions the importance of the constitutional functions is reduced."
In practice, the party's central committee normally discusses and adopts the state plan and budget before the SSOP does. On 25 November 1981, the RCP Central Committee convened to discuss and adopt the state plan and budget. Two days later, on 27 November, the Romanian SSOP, the Great National Assembly, convened and adopted the central committee's proposals. Moreover, the speakers that spoke at the central committee sessions usually speak at the session of the SSOP. Very few debates occur during the SSOP session, and in most cases, these organs adopt the central committee's recommendations unanimously. This was not always the case. The Assembly of Yugoslavia rejected bills, the Polish Sejm voted against government appointments and, under Gorbachev's leadership, the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet regularly voted contrary to the wishes of the Soviet government and party leaders.
There have been several attempts to reform the relationship between the central committee and the SSOP. In China, according to scholar Anthony Saich, "the party cannot guarantee absolute support and has accepted a looser form of control than during the Maoist days when the National People's Congress| was simply stocked with model workers and peasants, pliant intellectuals and senior party leaders."
The first reforms were instituted in 1991, when the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party adopted a regulation that limited the party's interference in the work of China's SSOP, the NPC. The document clarifies that the CCP has the right to review all proposed laws, but detailed scrutiny of articles and other legal features should be left to the NPC.
In line with this, the number of negative votes by NPC deputies against proposed legislation and candidates has increased since 1991. The NPC has also rejected proposed legislation, such as the "Highway Law of the People's Republic of China" in 1999 and the "Property Law of the People's Republic of China" in 2006. In both cases, the proposed legislation was amended and passed at a later date.
In some cases, the central committee adopts decisions on behalf of state organs despite it not being in their jurisdiction. This occurred at a session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on 13–14 September 1979 when it removed Jan Gregor, Frantisek Hamouz and Bohuslav Vecera from their government posts. Another example is the Extraordinary Plenary Session of the PUWP Central Committee on 9 February 1981 that removed Józef Pińkowski, the sitting head of government, and replaced him with Wojciech Jaruzelski.
Organisation
Sessions
Ruling central committees normally can convene for three meeting types: sessions, extraordinary sessions, and joint sessions. These three types have two sub-forms: a closed session and an enlarged session in which non-members are invited to participate. Central committee sessions dealing with non-party issues are often enlarged, even if what is discussed is routine in nature.These sessions are in most cases organised identically, and the key speech is often delivered by a central committee secretary responsible, for example, for economic affairs or international affairs. The discussions at the sessions are very seldom made public, but adopted resolutions are sometimes made public and session communiques are nearly always distributed to the public. In some instances, the number of non-members exceeds that of central committee members. The Romanian Communist Party did this, and the Central Committee of the 12th RCP Congress convened an enlarged session on 1 June 1982 attended by 360 guests to discuss the "current stage of building socialism in Romania".
Sessions dealing exclusively with party affairs are usually closed. These sessions' most common agenda item is "organisational matters", meaning personnel changes in party and state organs. The communiques published by these sessions are usually brief and say little to nothing about the reason for the changes. But this was not abnormal. For instance, the official communique of the 13th Session of the Central Committee of the 7th Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, held on 11–12 December 1980, only notes that two politburo members, Günter Mittag and Gerhard Schürer, spoke at the session, that fifteen central committee members participated in session discussions and that it approved the SED Politburo's report and the proposed economic plan for 1981.
The same rule regards extraordinary sessions, both ordinary and enlarged, as well. In some cases, these sessions were made public long after the fact. For example, the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party reported that an "important" Central Committee session had taken place 1–2 July 1976, but only informed the public that "measures to ensure the consistent and all-round implementation of the decisions of the 11th BCP Congress" had been adopted and discussed. What these measures were was not made public. The importance of the session was indicated by the fact that Todor Zhivkov, the first secretary of the BCP Central Committee, "read a detailed report" to the session. However, the report's content was not made public either.
Despite the meeting's secretive nature, and the low level of transparency about it, the BCP Central Committee's main newspaper Rabotnichesko delo wrote, "the entire population is called upon to fulfill the 'program' contained in the report." That is, the Bulgarian people were called to participate in implementing resolutions they were not acquainted with. In other more extreme cases, details of the "historic" central committee were kept a secret. For instance, the contents of the BCP Central Committee session on 17 April 1956 that removed Valko Chervenkov as general secretary were deemed too sensitive to be published even thirty years after the event took place.
Central committee sessions could also produce transparent communiques and resolutions. Scholar Hazan contends, "As a rule, this is only the case after a routine , when nothing unusual has happened." These communiques were structured similarly throughout the communist world. Such sessions usually dealt with public matters, such as the economic plan and the state budget. For example, the HSWP Central Committee session held on 3 December 1981 transparently informed about which guests participated in the session and specifically stated what was discussed. In this, the communique stated, "The Central Committee discussed and approved: a report submitted by Comrade Andreas Gyenes, secretary of the Central Committee, on topical international issues; and a proposal submitted by Comrade Ferenc Havasi, member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee, on guiding principles for the 1982 plan and state budget." The ensuing communique summarised the international policy stance of the HSWP and outlined the basic features of the 1982 plan and budget.
However, in other instances, the session makes public the resolutions adopted. For instance, the RCP Central Committee session on 9 February 1982 made public the resolution on "Resetting of Prices and Augmentation of Remuneration of Working Personnel". According to Hazan, the RCP Central Committee took this move to help justify the price increases to the population.
In other cases, as with the PUWP Central Committee sessions from 1980 to 1982 and those of the LCY more generally, the agenda and proceedings of the sessions were made entirely public. In the PUWP, proceedings were aired live by state radio and television, while in Yugoslavia, public broadcasting of central committee sessions had been a normal occurrence since the early 1950s. For example, the 3rd Extraordinary Session of the Central Committee of the 6th LCY Congress, held on 16–17 January 1954, was both publicly broadcast and made public in written form in the LCY Central Committee's theoretical journal, Komunist. This is against the norm in most communist parties as the majority of them did, and still do, keep proceedings secret.
Sessions have, on several occasions, produced documents of an authoritative ideological nature. For instance, the RCP Central Committee session of 25 March 1981 clarified the party's foreign affairs policy and how it differed from other Eastern European communist parties. In other situations, as was a normal occurrence in former communist Europe, the central committee convened to express support for Soviet foreign policy. This occurred at the CPCZ Central Committee session on 21 April 1982, where Vasiľ Biľak, a member of the CPCZ Presidium, accused the United States of being an anti-Soviet state that refused "to reconcile itself to the fact that it has lost its dominating position in the world policy and economy". The session made clear its support for "The Soviet peace initiatives aim at averting the danger of a world nuclear war" which it argued corresponded "to the vital interests and peace wishes of the Czechoslovak people."