"The lack of correct organizational forms": The difficulties of the formation process of the provincial committee of the RCP(B) in 1917-1920 (based on archival materials of the Vyatka province)

Recently among the researchers of the history of the Bolshevik Party the interest to the party as a social system, which has its own structure and organization, has increased. Several works on the history of the Nizhny Novgorod, Tomsk and Yekaterinburg provincial committees, as well as a generalizing monograph by V. N. Guzarov have been published. This article is devoted to the emergence and formation of the Vyatka Provincial Committee of the RCP (b) in 1917-1920. The aim of the article is to analyze the process of formation of the all gubernsk party center, the development of its structure, personal composition, staffing, functions, formation of the apparatus of the guberniya committee. The author is guided by the principles of historicism, objectivity and consistency, as well as by historical genetic method and content analysis method. The article is written mainly on the unpublished material from the Central State Archives of Kirov region. The article analyzes the prehistory of the formation of the provincial committee - the activity of the provincial bureau (October 1917 - January 1918) and the Vyatka municipal committee, which took over the functions of the provincial party center. An attempt was made to reconstruct the «Mikhail Popov» clique, which played an important role in the Party and Soviet life at the end of 1917-1918. We investigate the history of formation of Vyatka provincial committee of the RCP (b), which was the highest party body on the territory of Vyatka province during the period from the summer of 1918 till the end of 1920 and we reveal its specific features. Its personal composition and peculiarities of the leading cadres are established. The analysis of the problem of personnel «starvation» and the ways of its overcoming are carried out. The apparatus of the Party committee is investigated in a complex way, the changes in its structure are disclosed. The functions and basic forms of work of the provincial party соmmitee are revealed. The analysis showed that party construction in the region 41 was characterized by: slow development process, extreme narrowness of social support, pronounced personnel «hunger», presence of intraparty rivalry and clique of «popovtsy», for whom party work was on the second place. In the autumn of 1918, the province became front line, which led to an increase in its strategic position. The desire of the Central Committee of the Party to ensure proper political leadership in the province, to strengthen the party and Soviet organizations becomes clear. The arrival of a significant number of Bolsheviks from the Urals, as well as representatives of the Central Committee of the Party, accelerated the formation of the provincial committee in the fall of 1918. Subsequent development of the provincial committee depended on the availability of responsible Party cadres. In the summer and autumn of 1919, after the departure of the «Uralians», the process of development of the structure and apparatus of the provincial committee practically came to a halt.