The Politbureau the Supreme Power in Soviet Russia

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POLITICAL power in Soviet Russia is not divided and is delegated only in respect to minor matters; it rests firmly concentrated in the hands of one small group, the steering committee, or "Politbureau," of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The nine members of the Politbureau, together with their eight alternates, are the spear-head of the Communist Party's force of a million and a half members. On the one hand they dominate and direct the Government of the U. S. S. R. (the usual abbreviation for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), and on the other hand the Third, or Communist, International. They are the main-spring of all action in the realm of the Soviets and of all Communist action abroad.

This fact is to be emphasized because of a tendency to speak of the Soviet Government as though it were an independent agency, like the Government of the United States. There is hardly any similarity between them. In the one case we have a Government of which the President, his Cabinet, and probably a majority of the elected members of Congress belong to a particular Party, but feel bound hardly at all even to the formal Party platform. In Russia today we see a Government recruited entirely from the sole existing legal Party, the supreme organ of which is a self-perpetuating and autocratic group that meets secretly and can banish or imprison every person in the country who incurs its displeasure...