Central committee

Communist parties are organised on Leninist lines based on the principles of democratic centralism and unified power.

Democracy, on the other hand, meant, according to Dobieszewski, that every member had equal opportunity to participate in the formulation of the party's programme and line, as well as the right to elect and recall officials at all levels.

[2] This supreme organ is responsible for electing the central committee, which is typically tasked with directing the work of the communist party in between two congresses.

[3] According to scholar Baruch Hazan, the former ruling Eastern European communist parties provided nearly identical descriptions of the functions and powers of their central committees.

The 7th Session of the Central Committee of the 8th PUWP Congress, held on 1–2 December 1980, instructed Edward Babiuch, Jerzy Łukaszewicz, Tadeusz Pyka, Jan Szydlak, Tadeusz Wraszczyk, and Zdzisław Zandarowski to resign their seats in the Sejm, the highest organ of state power in the People's Republic of Poland, and instructing its former leader, Edward Gierek, to resign from his seat in the State Council.

Upon his election, Chernenko nominated Nikolai Tikhonov as chairman of the Council of Ministers, the Soviet government, also on the instructions of the Central Committee.

[Highest organ of state power] and Government both work to carry out a common program for building socialism.

Two days later, on 27 November, the Romanian highest organ of state power, the Great National Assembly, convened and adopted the central committee's proposals.

In China, according to scholar Anthony Saich, "the party cannot guarantee absolute support [in the highest organ of state power] and has accepted a looser form of control than during the Maoist days when the [National People's Congress] (NPC) was simply stocked with model workers and peasants, pliant intellectuals and senior party leaders.

The document clarifies that the CPC has the right to review all proposed laws, but detailed scrutiny of articles and other legal features should be left to the NPC.

This occurred at a session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCZ) on 13–14 September 1979 when it removed Jan Gregor, Frantisek Hamouz and Bohuslav Vecera from their government posts.

Another example is the Extraordinary Plenary Session of the PUWP Central Committee on 9 February 1981 that removed Józef Pińkowski, the sitting head of government, and replaced him with Wojciech Jaruzelski.

These sessions' most common agenda item is "organisational matters", meaning personnel changes in party and state organs.

[22] Despite the meeting's secretive nature, and the low level of transparency about it, the BCP Central Committee's main newspaper Rabotnichesko delo wrote, "the entire population is called upon to fulfill the 'program' contained in the report.

For instance, the contents of the BCP Central Committee session on 17 April 1956 that removed Valko Chervenkov as general secretary were deemed too sensitive to be published even thirty years after the event took place.

"[25] The ensuing communique summarised the international policy stance of the HSWP and outlined the basic features of the 1982 plan and budget.

For instance, the RCP Central Committee session on 9 February 1982 made public the resolution on "Resetting of Prices and Augmentation of Remuneration of Working Personnel".

In the PUWP, proceedings were aired live by state radio and television, while in Yugoslavia, public broadcasting of central committee sessions had been a normal occurrence since the early 1950s.

In other situations, as was a normal occurrence in former communist Europe (bar Yugoslavia), the central committee convened to express support for Soviet foreign policy.

These organisational sub-units do everything from greeting foreign delegations, issuing regulations, monitoring the party as a whole and preparing agenda items and dossiers for politburo meetings.

[33] Outside of these departments, central committees usually have other units as well, such as a publishing house, party schools, scholarly institutes and a capital construction section, for example.

The members of a politburo are the highest-standing officials of the given communist party and are, in practice, the country's leading political elite.

[56] As such, several scholars, like Darrell P. Hammer, Archie Brown and Wu Guoguang, have referred to the general secretary as the central committee's chief executive officer.

The congress closing session usually noted that the election of members and candidates to the central committee was carried out unanimously.

He also stated that party organizations had put forward over 2,000 potential candidates to the leadership but had shortened the list to 125 nominees for central committee membership.

[66] The sitting party leadership usually controls congress proceedings, nominating candidates close to them and trying to remove opponents.

The RCP Central Committee session, held on 26 November 1981, published a communique that stated Leonte Răutu had been removed but did not disclose why.

[74] In line with this reasoning, members lost reelection since the party leadership used the congress as an occasion to rearrange which institutions were to be represented in the central committee.

For example, in the HSWP, Antal Apró, Sándor Gáspár, Károly Kiss, István Szabó and Rezső Nyers had been central committee members since the party's seizure of power in 1948.

[73] Another interpretation, as outlined by Hazan, is that "the exercise of electing a new Central Committee is designed to remove those elements that had, for various reasons, become undesirable, while promoting people faithful to the party leader and his closest associates.