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Regional Variation in Female Recruitment and Advancement in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Ellen Mickiewicz
Ellen Mickiewicz*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University Russian Research Center, Harvard University
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Extract

It is commonly reported in the West that the representation of women in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is far below their representation in the population at large, and that although there are slightly increasing rates of admission, continuation of the large disparity seems to constitute a relatively permanent feature of central recruitment policy and procedures. In 1970, for example, women formed 53.9 percent of the general population and 22.2 percent of the CPSU. However, that aggregate figure masks a considerable degree of regional variation. Publication of data from several regional party archives provides the opportunity to examine more closely the process of female mobility within the party and to advance more precise notions about determinants of that process than had previously been possible.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 1977 , pp. 441 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1977

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References

The author wishes to express her appreciation to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for their generous support of the research project of which this article is a part.

1. Gail Lapidus says that regime policy has resulted in altered occupational aspirations and roles for Soviet women, but without policy provisions for altered political roles ( “Political Mobilization, Participation, and Leadership : Women in Soviet Politics, ” Comparative Politics, 8, no. 1 [October 1975] : 115).

2. In 1939 the greatest difference in sex balance for the republics for which there are data was 5.5 percent between Kazakhstan and Estonia. By 1970, however, that gap had narrowed to 2.4 percent. In 1970, the widest gap in the data set was 3.5 percent, between Tadzhikistan and Estonia.

3. See Ellen Mickiewicz, “Native Nationality Recruitment and Mobility in Selected Non- Russian Republics, ” paper prepared for American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies/Department of State Conference on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, September 1975.

4. “KPSS v tsifrakh, ” Partiinaia shisn', 1973, no. 14, p. 13.

5. “O rekomendatsiiakh vstupaiushchim v partiiu, ” Partiinaia shisn', 1972, no. 18, p. 36.

6. Petrov, A. P., “Printsip demokraticheskogo tsentralizma v stroitel'stve KPSS na sovremennom etape,” in KPSS—Poliiichcskii avangard sovetskogo naroda (Moscow, 1971), p. 158.Google Scholar

7. T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R., 1917-1967 (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 205. As to the results of the exchange of party cards under Brezhnev, recent studies suggest that a sharp increase in expulsions has not occurred. See, for example, Aryeh L. Unger, “Soviet Communist Party Membership under Brezhnev : A Comment, ” Soviet Studies, 29, no. 2 (April 1977) : 308.

8. Kommunisticheskaia partiia Kasakhstana v dokumentakh i tsifrakh (Alma Ata, 1960), p. 289.

9. Mervyn, Matthews, Class and Society in Soviet Russia (New York : Walker, 1972, p. 229.Google Scholar

10. “Priem v KPSS i nekotorye izmeneniia v sostave partii za 1966 god, ” Partiinaia zhizn', 1967, no. 7, p. 7.

11. “Ob itogakh priema v partii i izmeneniiakh v sostave KPSS za 1967 god, ” Partiinaia zhizn', 1968, no. 7, p. 27.

12. “Kandidatskii stazh, ” Partiinaia shisn', 1972, no. 20, p. 49.

13. See Handbook of Soviet Social Science Data, ed. Ellen Mickiewicz (New York : Free Press, 1973).

14. N. S. Khrushchev, “Changes in Statutes of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, ” Pravda, August 27, 1952, p. 2. Reprinted in Current Soviet Policies, ed. Leo Gruliow (New York : Praeger, 1953), p. 34.

15. “Report of Credentials Commission of the Nineteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks), ” Pravda, October 9, 1952, p. 6. Reprinted in Current Soviet Policies, p. 94.

16. Rost i regulirovanie sostava kommunisticheskoi partii Kirgizii (Frunze, 1963), p. 234.

17. Kommunisticheskaia partita Gruzii v tsifrakh (Tbilisi, 1971), p. 315.

18. These divisions follow Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R.

19. See, for example, Armstrong, John A., The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite (New York : Praeger, 1959, pp. 132–37.Google Scholar

20. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R., p. 358.

21. An excellent analysis of the careers of Moscow city party organization secretaries is provided by Christian Deuvel, “Career Frustrations for Moscow City Party Leaders, ” Radio Liberty Dispatch (New York, 1971).

22. In cases where the party meeting for confirmation of candidates’ promotion to membership may accidentally fall on dates a month or two beyond the year's term, the candidate may, strictly speaking, become overdue. However, random events of this sort are expected to be essentially nonadditive and hence would not affect trends. It should be noted, too, that my measures of mobility have had to rely, in some cases, on estimates of increases in male and female members. These estimates are based on official tables providing data for (a) female members and candidates; (b) total candidates recruited; (c) female candidates recruited; (d) total members; and (e) total candidates. By subtracting relevant categories, I arrived at estimates of male members, female members, and male candidates recruited. In order to assess the reliability of my estimates, I reaggregated my data and compared mean rates of increase for males and females combined, and compared these to the mean rates of increase for the combined category from the official tables. The average number of percentage points by which the estimates deviated from the official tables was only 3.68. The largest single deviation was for Azerbaidzhan for 1966-69, where the estimates fell short of the official tables by a total of 9.94 percent. Furthermore, because the data for expellees and deaths are not sex-specific, and because, as noted earlier, these cases account for very small proportions of the categories of membership used in this study, their absence is not expected to distort the rather clear trends in the data.

23. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R., p. 360, n.16.

24. Panksejev, A, “EKP Tegevusest Partei Ridade Kasvu Reguleerimisel (Aastad 1944-1965),” in Toid EKP Ajaloo Alalt II (Tallinn, 1966), p. 156.Google Scholar

25. Pool, Jonathan and Azrael, Jeremy, “Education,” in Handbook of Soviet Social Science Data, ed. Mickiewicz, Ellen (New York : Free Press, 1973, p. 150.Google Scholar