THE WORLD OF PARTY ASSEMBLY OF THE 1920S (BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE ZAPORIZHZHIA ORGANIZATION OF THE CP(B)U

Abstract

The article is based on the materials of the State Archive of ZAPORIZHZHIA region. The specifics are to focus not on the content of political decisions of party bodies, but on the general atmosphere that prevailed around these decisions. In particular, it is noteworthy that meetings, meetings and meetings in a certain sense formed the main activities of the party nomenclature: they took the lion’s share of their working time, they were also the center of party members thoughts, a springboard for their personal careers. Where the tension within the Communist subculture is particularly pronounced. The intrigue of confrontations, contradictions, mutual provocations, exchange of views on the ground, multiplied by peripheral problems, turned such meetings into a “provincial fair”. The author reviewed the transcripts of district party conferences, plenums of party committees and minutes of bureau meetings for 1921-1929 and came to the conclusion that the universe of party life was unique, which laid the foundation for a new type of political and administrative elite. Party meetings were a special World of party rhetoric, ritual actions, ideological maneuvers, and emotional discourses. The staged style of conducting meetings, ideologization of speeches, emotional component, dogmatism in discussions and decision-making are revealed. The process of transformation of thinking independent party members into an amorphous mass of performers of the will of the party leadership is revealed. And the bureaucratic cell served only as a crutch for the authorities to manage the bulk of the people and party members. Ukraine has inherited a distorted political asset - “Homo Sovieticus”, and each new organization is only a modified offshoot of the Soviet political world, in today’s realities.