based upon Economist report
Russian leaders ‘ao not write much these days in direct contrast to Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders. iiven Stalin, yjpate some books (or had them attributed to him) but the new leaders do not write and what appears under their names is usually collections of speeches, reports, etc. Khrushchov is no exception to this rule, but his deputy in the party secretariat (and, many think, heir apparent) has blossomed forth as a theoretician. In the latest issue of Problems of Peace and Socialism, which was reprinted in the current issue of Kommunist, he has an article on the role of the Communist Party in the Soviet Unione
Part of the article is taken up with a definition of periods in parity history. At the time of the 1917 revolution, according to Kozlov, the Communist Party gained the support of the majority of the industrial workers and other working people. In the following years, during the civil war and the period of econ— omic development the party obtained the backing of the bulk of the nation. But it is only since the ‘establishment of socialism’ in the Soviet Union that the party represents the nation as a whole. Socialist society in Russia is made up of two ‘friendly classes! — the industrial workers and peasants — linked with a working intelligentsia, It appears that this series of formulations is connected with the argumentation about the dictatorship of the proletariat being over in the Soviet Union.
Of more interest than these 'theoretical' conclusions are the data, * provided in the article, of changes in the make-up of the party leadership. Nearly four-fifths of the regional party secretaries have held their jobs for three years or less. This is partly a reflection of the purge carried out by Krushchov, but it is also the result of the advance of the new generation. If the average age of party officials in the republics remains between 35 and 50, for local and reg ional leaders the average has now fallen to to between 30 and 40. And threequarters of them have now had higher education, compared with only a quarter pack + in 1956. It is clear that here is a strata which provides the main suppor ee fori Khrushchov's destalinisation and which will oppose a return to any of the features of the worst days of Stalin's regime.