|
Soviet Union [USSR] Party Conference
Similar in size to the congress was the party conference,
although unlike the congress it did not meet regularly. The
Nineteenth Party Conference--the most recent--took place in 1988.
(The Eighteenth Party Conference had been convened in 1941.)
Officially, the conference ranked third in importance among party
meetings, after the congress and the Central Committee plenum.
Oblast and district party leaders handpicked most of the delegates
to the Nineteenth Party Conference, as they had for party
congresses in the past, despite Gorbachev's desire that supporters
of reform serve as delegates. Nevertheless, public opinion managed
in some instances to pressure the party apparatus into selecting
delegates who pressed for reform.
The Nineteenth Party Conference made no personnel changes in
the Central Committee, as some Western observers had expected.
However, the conference passed a series of resolutions signaling
policy departures in a number of areas. For example, the resolution
"On the Democratization of Soviet Society and the Reform of the
Political System" called for the creation of a new, powerful
position of president of the Supreme Soviet, limiting party
officeholders to two five-year terms, and prescribed multicandidate
elections to a new Congress of People's Deputies
(see Soviet Union USSR - Congress of People's Deputies
, ch. 8). The conference passed other resolutions
on such topics as legal reform, interethnic relations, economic
reform, glasnost', and bureaucracy.
By convening the Nineteenth Party Conference approximately two
years after initiating his reform program, Gorbachev hoped to
further the democratization of the party, to withdraw the party
from many aspects of economic management, and to reinvigorate
government and state institutions. He also sought to rouse the
party rank and file against the bureaucracy. In this vein, the
conference was a success for Gorbachev because it reaffirmed his
program of party-directed change from above.
Data as of May 1989
|
