Collective leadership

Collective leadership is considered an ideal form of ruling a communist party, both within and outside a socialist state. Its main task is to distribute powers and functions from the individual to a single group. For instance, in China or in Vietnam, when the country was ruled by Le Duan, powers have been distributed from the office of General Secretary of the Communist Party and shared with the Politburo Standing Committee while still retaining one ruler. Nowadays, in Vietnam there is not one paramount leader, and power is shared by the party General Secretary, President and the Prime Minister along with collegial bodies such as the Politburo, Secretariat and the Central Committee.

Forms

China

Currently, the central authority of the Chinese government is concentrated in the Politburo Standing Committee, which is composed of 7-members of the Communist Party of China and headed by the General Secretary of the Central Committee.^[1]

Soviet Union

Collective leadership (Russian: коллективное руководство, kollektivnoye rukovodstvo) or Collectivity of leadership (Russian: коллективность руководства, kollektivnost rukovodstva), was considered an ideal form of governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Its main task was to distribute powers and functions among the Politburo, the Central Committee, and the Council of Ministers to hinder any attempts to create a one-man dominance over the Soviet political system by a Soviet leader, such as that seen under Joseph Stalin's rule. On the national level, the heart of the collective leadership was officially the Central Committee of the Communist Party, but in practice, was the Politburo. Collective leadership is characterized by limiting the powers of the General Secretary and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers as related to other offices by enhancing the powers of collective bodies, such as the Politburo.

Lenin was, according to Soviet literature, the perfect example of a leader ruling in favour of the collective. Stalin's rule was characterized by one-man dominance, which was a deep breach of collective leadership; this made his leadership highly controversial in the Soviet Union following his death in 1953. At the 20th Party Congress, Stalin's reign was criticized as the "personality cult". Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, supported the ideal of collective leadership but increasingly ruled in an autocratic fashion. In 1964, Khrushchev was ousted and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and by Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Collective leadership was strengthened during the Brezhnev years and the later reigns of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms helped spawn factionalism within the Soviet leadership, and members of Gorbachev's faction openly disagreed with him on key issues. The factions usually disagreed on how little or how much reform was needed to rejuvenate the Soviet system.

See also

• Swiss Federal Council

Notes

1. "New Politburo Standing Committee decided: Mingjing News". Want China Times. 18 October 2012. Retrieved 2 January 2013.

Sources

• Baylis, Thomas A. (1989). Governing by Committee: Collegial Leadership in Advanced Societies. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-944-4.
• Cocks, Paul; Daniels, Robert Vincent; Whittier Heer, Nancy (1976). The Dynamics of Soviet Politics. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-21881-9.
• Christian, David (1997). Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege, and the Challenge of Modernity. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-17352-4.
• Taras, Roy (1989). Leadership Change in Communist States. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-04-445277-5.
• Law, David A. (1975). Russian Civilization. Ardent Media. ISBN 978-0-8422-0529-0.