Central Committee

The centre of power in a Communist Party run on the Leninist principle of democratic centralism. Each level of the party controls the personnel of the level below, and each level is bound to obey the rulings of the level above. Thus a majority in the central committee is enough to commit the whole party at every level.

The Central Committee was one of the central institutions in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), along with the Politburo, Secretariat, party congress, Central Auditing Commission, and Party Control Committee. Given the political system's centralist, monolithic aspirations, these central institutions bore heavy responsibilities. One of the Central Committee's main functions was to elect all Party leaders, including members of the Politburo and Secretaries of the Central Committee. The Committee - whose members included powerful people in the Communist Party - met every six months in plenary session to approve decisions by the top levels of the party.

The Central Committee was also considered to be the highest organ of the party between congresses (the period known as the sozyv). According to the party rules (Ustav), the Central Committee was supposed to "direct all the activities of the party and the local party organs, carry out the recruitment and the assignment of leading cadres, direct the work of the central governmental and social organizations of the workers, create various organs, institutions, and enterprises of the party and supervise their activities, name the editorial staff of central newspapers and journals working under its auspices, disburse funds of the party budget and verify their accounting."

However, the Central Committee was large; in 1989, for example, it consisted of more than three hundred members. In actuality then, there were two Central Committees. One of them was the body of elected representatives of the Communist Party. The other was the name used in documents produced for and by any number of smaller Central Committee bodies, from the Politburo to the temporary commissions. Thus, the decrees of the Central Committee were seldom prepared by that body. Instead, the Politburo often initiated, discussed, and finalized them.

Bibliography

Hough, Jerry F., and Fainsod, Merle. (1979). How the Soviet Union Is Governed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McAuley, Mary. (1977). Politics and the Soviet Union. New York: Penguin Books.

Schapiro, Leonard Bertram. (1960). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. New York: Random House.

—JOHANNA GRANVILLE

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

A central Committee is commonly the central executive unit of a Leninist (commonly also Trotskyist) or Communist party, whether ruling or non-ruling. In a Communist party, the Central Committee is made up of delegates elected at a Party Congress. In those Communist parties historically ruling around a Marxist-Leninist state, the Central Committee makes decisions for the party between congresses, and usually is responsible for electing the Politburo. In non-ruling Communist parties, the Central Committee is usually understood by the party membership to be the ultimate decision-making authority between Congresses once the process of democratic centralism has led to an agreed-upon position.

Organizations besides Communist ones also have Central Committees, such as the Mennonite Church and Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (to war). In the United States the Democratic and the Republican Parties both have Central Committees; these act as the leading body of those organizations at the national/administrative level, as well as local committees in a similar capacity within the local Democratic or Republican governments of individual counties and states.

List of Central Committees

• Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union
• Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in the People's Republic of China
• Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
• Central Committee of the Korean Workers' Party in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)
• Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party in People's Republic of Poland
• Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba
• Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers' Party
• Central Committee of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan in the Republic of Afghanistan
• Democratic State Central Committee of Connecticut
• Central Committee of the South African Communist Party

See also

• Eastern Bloc politics

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)