Twelfth All-Russian Conference of the Russian Communist Party

Twelfth All-Russian Conference of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)

held in Moscow on Aug. 4–7, 1922. There were 129 delegates with a deciding vote and 92 with a consultative vote present at the conference. The agenda included a report on the international situation presented by G. Ia. Sokol’nikov; on the trade unions by M. P. Tomskii; on party work in the cooperative system by V. V. Kuibyshev; on anti-Soviet parties and tendencies by G. E. Zinoviev; on the work of the section on party statutes by V. M. Molotov; on the improvement of welfare standards of party members by V. M. Molotov; and on the Fourth Congress of the Communist International by G. E. Zinoviev.

The conference sent greetings to Lenin, who was not able to take part in its work owing to illness. The conference took place against a background of the first successes in restoring the national economy, which had been achieved on the basis of the NEP (New Economic Policy). The international situation at the time of the conference was characterized by attempts of imperialist circles in the USA, Britain, and France to obtain one-sided concessions from Soviet Russia by presenting dictates and ultimatums at the Genoa Conference (1922) and The Hague Conference (1922), which were rejected by the Soviet delegation. The conference approved the line of the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) on international policy and, expressing satisfaction with the activity of the Soviet delegations at Genoa and The Hague, turned its attention to the need to concentrate all forces on the question of strengthening the national economy and maintaining the defense capability of the republic at the proper level. After discussing the trade union question, the conference noted that despite a series of practical shortcomings, “the entire experience of carrying out the trade union tasks that had been outlined by the Eleventh Congress had completely confirmed the correctness of the line of the Eleventh Congress of the RCP” (KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh . . . , 8th ed., vol. 2, 1970, p. 396). The conference called on party organizations to strengthen their ideological leadership of the trade unions. The discussion of the party’s tasks in the cooperative system proceeded from the point of view of increasing the guiding role of the working class and party organizations in the development of all forms of cooperation.

In the resolution On Anti-Soviet Parties and Tendencies, the conference pointed to the danger of the growing activity of bourgeois elements, which had revived in the first year of the NEP, and provided a class evaluation of smenovekhov-stvo (the change of landmarks movement), as an ideology that was appearing among a section of the bourgeois intelligentsia. The conference mobilized the party and the working class for a more active struggle against all parties and tendencies hostile to Soviet power, which viewed the NEP as a return to capitalism, as the beginning of the degeneration of Soviet power. The conference maintained that one of the most immediate tasks of the Communist Party was intensifying the party’s ideological work and the struggle against bourgeois ideology.

The conference adopted new Party Rules, which established three categories for those joining the RCP (Bolshevik) depending upon their social position, thus ensuring the selection of the best people from among workers and laboring peasants under the conditions of that time and impeding the entry of individuals from nonproletarian strata of the population.

REFERENCE

Vserossiiskaia konferentsiia RKP(b): Postanovleniia i rezoliutsii. Moscow, 1922.

A. F. DANILEVSKII

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Twelfth All-Russian Conference of the Russian Communist Party