In The Soviet Union
During Joseph Stalin's time, the principle of democratic centralism had evolved to the point that the Supreme Soviet, while nominally vested with great legislative powers, did little more than approve decisions already made at the highest levels of the Communist Party. This de facto arrangement soon became the norm in nearly all Communist states.
By the Leonid Brezhnev period democratic centralism was described, in the 1977 Soviet Constitution, as a principle for organizing the state: "The Soviet state is organized and functions on the principle of democratic centralism, namely the electiveness of all bodies of state authority from the lowest to the highest, their accountability to the people, and the obligation of lower bodies to observe the decisions of higher ones. Democratic centralism combines central leadership with local initiative and creative activity and with the responsibility of each state body and official for the work entrusted to them."
Read more about this topic: Democratic Centralism
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, soviet and/or union:
“If the Soviet Union can give up the Brezhnev Doctrine for the Sinatra Doctrine, the United States can give up the James Monroe Doctrine for the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine: Let’s all go to bed wearing the perfume we like best.”
—Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928)
““Is there life on Mars?” “No, not there either.””
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)