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Collective leadership (Russian:коллективное руководство,kollektivnoye rukovodstvo), orcollectivity ofleadership (Russian:коллективность руководства,kollektivnost rukovodstva), became - alongside doctrine such asdemocratic centralism - official dogma forgovernance in theUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and other socialist states espousingcommunism.[1]In the Soviet Union itself, the collective leadership concept operated by distributing powers and functions among members of thePolitburo and theCentral Committee of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as theCouncil of Ministers, to hinder any attempts to create aone-man dominance over theSoviet political system by a Soviet leader, such as that seen underJoseph Stalin's rule between the late 1920s and 1953. On the national level, the heart of the collective leadership was officially the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Collective leadership was characterised by limiting the powers of theGeneral Secretary and theChairman of the Council of Ministers as related to other offices by enhancing the powers of collective bodies, such as the Politburo.
Collective leadership became institutionalised in the upper levels of control in the Soviet Union following Stalin's death in March 1953, and subsequent Soviet Communist Party leaders ruled as part of a collective. First SecretaryNikita Khrushchev criticized Stalin's dictatorial rule at the20th Party Congress in 1956, but Khrushchev's own increasingly erratic decisions led to his ouster in 1964. The Party replaced Khrushchev in his posts withLeonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and withAlexei Kosygin as Premier. Though Brezhnev gained more and more prominence over his colleagues, he retained the Politburo's support by consulting its members on all policies. Collective leadership continued underYuri Andropov (General Secretary from 1982 to 1984) andKonstantin Chernenko (General Secretary from 1984 to 1985).Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms espousedopen discussion from about 1986, leading to members of the leadership openly disagreeing on how little or how much reform was needed to rejuvenate the Soviet system.
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According to Stalin's secretary,Boris Bazhanov, Lenin “in general leaned towards a collegial leadership, with Trotsky in the first position”.[3] HistorianPaul Le Blanc referenced various scholars which includedE.H. Carr,Isaac Deutscher,Moshe Lewin,Ronald Suny andW. Bruce Lincoln that on balance tilted “toward the view that Lenin’s desired 'heir' was collective responsibility in which Trotsky placed an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted (if not removed)".[4]
Marxist Leninist ideologists believed[when?] thatLenin, thefirst Soviet leader, thought that only collective leadership could protect the Party from serious mistakes.Joseph Stalin, who consolidated his power after Lenin's death in 1924, promoted these values; however, instead of creating a new collective leadership, he built up a leadership centered around himself.[5]
After Stalin's death (5 March 1953), his successors, while vying for control over theSoviet leadership, promoted the values of collective leadership.[6] The collective leadership included the following eight senior members of thePresidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, listed according to the order of precedence presented formally on 5 March 1953:Georgy Malenkov,Lavrentiy Beria,Vyacheslav Molotov,Kliment Voroshilov,Nikita Khrushchev,Nikolai Bulganin,Lazar Kaganovich andAnastas Mikoyan.[7] Amongst them Malenkov, Beria and Molotov[8] formed an unofficialTriumvirate (also known by its Russian nameTroika) immediately after Stalin's death, but it collapsed when Malenkov and Molotov turned on Beria.[9] After the arrest of Beria (26 June 1953),Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed collective leadership as the "supreme principle of our Party". He further stated that only decisions approved by theCentral Committee (CC) could ensure good leadership for the party and the country.[6] Khrushchev used these ideas so that he could win enough support to remove his opponents from power, most notably Premier Malenkov, who resigned in February 1955.[2]
During the20th Congress of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union Khrushchev criticised Stalin's rule and his"cult of personality". He accused Stalin of reducing the Party's activities and putting an end toParty democracy among others. In the three years following Stalin's death, the Central Committee and thePresidium (Politburo) worked consistently to uphold the collective leadership lost under Stalin.[10] Khrushchev's rule as First Secretary remained highly controversial throughout his rule in the Party leadership. The first attempt to depose Khrushchev came in 1957, when the so-calledAnti-Party Group accused him of individualistic leadership. The coup failed, but Khrushchev's position weakened drastically. However, Khrushchev continued to portray his regime as a "rule of the collective" even after becomingChairman of the Council of Ministers (Premier), replacingNikolai Bulganin.[11]
| Official order of precedence (according to 5 March 1953 amendment) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portrait | Information | Party position(s) | State position(s) | ||
| Rank | 1st | Informally the Party's first amongst equals, literally first secretary | Chairman of theCouncil of Ministers | |
| Name | Georgy Malenkov | ||||
| Birthdate | 8 January 1902 | ||||
| Birthplace | Orenburg,Orenburg Oblast | ||||
| Deathdate | 14 January 1988 | ||||
 | Rank | 2nd | First Deputy Chairman of theCouncil of Ministers Minister of Internal Affairs | ||
| Name | Lavrentiy Beria | ||||
| Birthdate | 29 March 1899 | ||||
| Birthplace | Merkheuli,Sukhumi | ||||
| Deathdate | 23 December 1953 | ||||
 | Rank | 3rd | First Deputy Chairman of theCouncil of Ministers Minister of Foreign Affairs | ||
| Name | Vyacheslav Molotov | ||||
| Birthdate | 9 March 1890 | ||||
| Birthplace | Kukarka,Kirov Oblast | ||||
| Deathdate | 8 November 1986 | ||||
 | Rank | 4th | Chairman of thePresidium of theSupreme Soviet | ||
| Name | Kliment Voroshilov | ||||
| Birthdate | 4 February 1881 | ||||
| Birthplace | Lysychansk,Luhansk Oblast | ||||
| Deathdate | 2 December 1969 | ||||
 | Rank | 5th | Informally the Party's Second Secretary | ||
| Name | Nikita Khrushchev | ||||
| Birthdate | 15 April 1894 | ||||
| Birthplace | Kalinovka,Kursk Oblast | ||||
| Deathdate | 11 September 1971 | ||||
| Rank | 6th | Minister of Defence | |||
| Name | Nikolai Bulganin | ||||
| Birthdate | 30 March 1895 | ||||
| Birthplace | Nizhny Novgorod,Nizhny Novgorod Oblast | ||||
| Deathdate | 24 February 1975 | ||||
 | Rank | 7th | First Deputy Chairman of theCouncil of Ministers | ||
| Name | Lazar Kaganovich | ||||
| Birthdate | 22 November 1893 | ||||
| Birthplace | Kabany, near Kiev | ||||
| Deathdate | 25 July 1991 | ||||
 | Rank | 8th | Minister of Foreign Trade | ||
| Name | Anastas Mikoyan | ||||
| Birthdate | 25 November 1895 | ||||
| Birthplace | Sanahin | ||||
| Deathdate | 21 October 1978 | ||||
| Rank | 9th | Minister of Machine Building Chairman of theState Planning Committee | |||
| Name | Maksim Saburov | ||||
| Birthdate | 2 February 1900 | ||||
| Birthplace | Druzhkivka | ||||
| Deathdate | 24 March 1977 | ||||
| Rank | 10th | ||||
| Name | Mikhail Pervukhin | ||||
| Birthdate | 14 October 1904 | ||||
| Birthplace | Yuryuzansky Zavod | ||||
| Deathdate | 22 July 1978 | ||||
Most Western observers believed that Khrushchev had become the supreme leader of the Soviet Union by the early 1960s, even if this was far from the truth. The Presidium, which had grown to resent Khrushchev's leadership style and fearedMao Zedong'sone-man dominance and the growing cult of personality in thePeople's Republic of China, began an aggressive campaign against Khrushchev in 1963. This campaign culminated in 1964[11] with the replacement of Khrushchev in his offices of First Secretary byLeonid Brezhnev and of Chairman of the Council of Ministers byAlexei Kosygin. Brezhnev and Kosygin, along withMikhail Suslov,Andrei Kirilenko andAnastas Mikoyan (replaced in 1965 byNikolai Podgorny), were elected to their respective offices to form and lead a functioning collective leadership.[12]
One of the reasons for Khrushchev's ousting, as Suslov told him, was his violation of collective leadership.[13] With Khrushchev's removal, collective leadership was again praised by theSoviet media as a return to "Leninist norms of Party life".[14] At the plenum which ousted Khrushchev, the Central Committee forbade any single individual to hold the office ofGeneral Secretary and Premier simultaneously.[15]
The leadership was usually referred to as the "Brezhnev–Kosygin" leadership, instead of the collective leadership, byFirst World medias. At first, there was no clear leader of the collective leadership, and Kosygin was the chief economic administrator, whereas Brezhnev was primarily responsible for the day-to-day management of the party and internal affairs. Kosygin's position was later weakened when heintroduced a reform in 1965 that attempted to decentralise theSoviet economy. The reform led to a backlash, with Kosygin losing supporters because many top officials took an increasingly anti-reformist stance due to thePrague Spring of 1968.[16] As a result, after 1968 Brezhnev was ranked first in the Politburo hierarchy, followed by Podgorny, Kosygin, Suslov and Kirilenko as the top five-ranked members of Politburo.[17]
As the years passed, Brezhnev was given more and more prominence, and by the 1970s he had even created a "Secretariat of the General Secretary" to strengthen his position within the Party. At the25th Party Congress, Brezhnev was, according to an anonymous historian, praised in a way that exceeded the praise accorded to Khrushchev before his removal.[14] Brezhnev was able to retain the Politburo's support by not introducing the same sweeping reform measures as seen during Khrushchev's rule. As noted by foreign officials, Brezhnev felt obliged to discuss unanticipated proposals with the Politburo before responding to them.[18]
As Brezhnev's health worsened during the late 1970s, the collective leadership became even more collective.Brezhnev's death did not alter thebalance of power in any radical fashion, andYuri Andropov andKonstantin Chernenko were obliged by protocol to rule the country in the very same fashion as Brezhnev.[14] When Mikhail Gorbachev was elected to the position of General Secretary in March 1985, some observers wondered if he could be the leader to overcome the restraints of the collective leadership. Gorbachev's reform agenda had succeeded in altering theSoviet political system for good; however, this change made him some enemies. Many of Gorbachev's closest allies disagreed with him on what reforms were needed, or how radical they should be.[19]
According toSoviet literature, theCentral Committee and not thePolitburo was the heart of collective leadership at the national level. At a sub-national level, all Party and Government organs were to work together to ensure collective leadership instead of only the Central Committee. However, as with many other ideological theses, the definition of collective leadership was applied "flexibly to a variety of situations".[20] Making Lenin the example of a ruler ruling in favour of a collective can be seen as proof of this "flexibility".[20] In some Soviet ideological drafts, collective leadership can be compared tocollegial leadership instead of a leadership of the collective. In accordance with a Soviet textbook, collective leadership was:[20]
The regular convocations of Party congresses and plenary sessions of the Central Committee, regular meetings of all electoral organs of the party, general public discussion of the major issues of state, economic and party development, extensive consultation with persons employed in various branches of the economy and cultural life...."[20]
In contrast tofascism, which advocatesone-man dominance,Leninism advocates inner-Party democratic collective leadership. Hence, theideological justification of collective leadership in the Soviet Union was easy to justify. The physical insecurity of the political leadership under Stalin, and the political insecurity that existed during Khrushchev's reign, strengthened the political leadership's will to ensure a rule of the collective, and not that of the individual.[21] Collective leadership was a value that was highly esteemed during Stalin and Khrushchev's reigns, but it was violated in practice.[22]
Richard Löwenthal, a German professor, believed that the Soviet Union had evolved from being atotalitarian state under the rule ofJoseph Stalin into a system that he called "post-totalitarian authoritarianism", or "authoritarian bureaucratic oligarchy",[23] in which the Soviet state remained omnipotent in theory and highly authoritarian in practice. However, it did considerably reduce the scale of repression and allowed a much greater level of pluralism into public life.[23] In a 1960 paper, Löwenthal wrote that one-man leadership was "the normal rule of line in aone-party state".[20] The majority ofFirst World observers tended to agree with Löwenthal on the grounds that a collective leadership in an authoritarian state was "inherently unworkable" in practice, claiming that a collective leadership would sooner or later always give in for one-man rule.[20] In a different interpretation, the Soviet Union was seen to go into periods of "oligarchy" and "limited-personal rule". Oligarchy, in the sense that no individual could "prevent the adoption of policies in which he may be opposed", was seen as an unstable form of government.[24] "Limited-personal rule", in contrast withJoseph Stalin's "personal rule", was a type of governance in which major policy-making decision could not be made without the consent of theleader, while the leader had to tolerate some opposition to his policies and to his leadership in general.[25]
The historian T. H. Rigby claimed that the Soviet leadership was setting upchecks and balances within the Party to ensure the stability of collective leadership. One anonymous historian went so far as to claim that collective leadership was bound to triumph in any future Soviet political system. Professor Jerome Gilison argued that collective leadership had become the "normal" ruling pattern of the Soviet Union.[25] He argued that the Party had successfully set up checks and balances to ensure the continuity of the Soviet leadership.[25] Khrushchev's rule was, according to Gilison, proof that the one-man dominance in Soviet politics had ended. As he noted, Khrushchev "was forced to retreat from unceremoniously from previously stated positions".[25] The "grey men" of the party bureaucracy, Gilison believed, were to become the future Soviet leaders.[25]Dennis Ross, an American diplomat, believed the late Brezhnev-era leadership had evolved into a "rule by committee", pointing to several collective Politburo decisions as evidence.[25]Grey Hodnett, another analyst, believed that "freer communication" and "access to relevant official information" during the Brezhnev Era had contributed to strengthening the Politburo's collective leadership.[25]
According to Thomas A. Baylis, the author ofGoverning by Committee: Collegial Leadership in Advanced Societies, the existence of collective leadership was due to the individual Politburo members enhancing their own positions by strengthening the collective. Ellen Jones, an educator, noted how each Politburo member specialised in his own field and acted as that field's spokesman in the Politburo. Therefore, collective leadership was divided into Party and Government institutional and organisational lines. The dominant faction, Jones believed, acted as a "coalition" government of several social forces.[26] This development led some to believe that the Soviet Union had evolved intoneo-corporatism.[26] Some believed Sovietfactionalism to be "feudal in character".[27] Personal relationship were created to ensure service and support. "Personal factionalism", as Baylis calls it, could either strengthen or weaken the collective leadership's majority.[27]
Robert Osborn wrote in 1974 that collective leadership did not necessarily mean that the Central Committee, Politburo and theCouncil of Ministers were political equals without a clear leading figure.[26] Baylis believed that the post of General Secretary could be compared to the office ofprime minister in theWestminster system.[28] The General Secretary in the Soviet political system acted as the leading broker in Politburo sessions and could be considered "the Party leader" due to his negotiation skills and successful tactics which retained the Politburo's support.[26] In other words, the General Secretary needed to retain Politburo consensus if he wanted to remain in office.[26]
[...] the communique of the third plenary session of the eleventh central committee of the [Chinese Communist Party], adopted on 22 December 1978 [...] suggested that 'less publicity be given to any individual' and called for an assertion of collective leadership: 'Any practice that does not conform to the party's democratic centralism and the principle of collective leadership should be resolutely corrected.' [...] The association of democratic centralism with strictly enforced competences and with collective leadership recalls very similar associations made by Soviet theorists as regards the Soviet Union and the CPSU in the period after Stalin's death.
