Soviets of Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Deputies in memorandum of E. G. Gerasimov (Gerasin) of June 14, 1918

This article discusses the a memorandum of the member of the Control and Audit Committee under the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs – Efim Grigorievich Gerasimov (Gerasin). Having supported the socialist movement and subsequently the February and October Revolutions of 1917 since his youth years, the author of the document has analyzed the system of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers 'and Peasants' Deputies that established on the local level in late 1917 – early 1918 and gradually replaced the county self-government. The value of the source lies in the fact that the author of self-censorship revealed the flaws of the new local government, having expressed the concern that they may lead to a civil war in the country. E. G. Gerasimov (Gerasin) dedicated particular attention to the problem of dialogue between the Soviet deputies and central government, and proposed to institute the post of special emergency mediators for controlling the execution of all provisions and “encourage” the representatives of the Soviets. The conclusion is made that the elimination of the existing flaws required the so-called “democratic centralism” in Russia, which suggested the combination of electivity of local administration along with the governing and supervisory power of the central administration. In this regard, the content of the document allows taking a look at the Soviets of Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers’ Deputies through the prism of a person who worked in that system, without idealization or “touchup”.

Of Constitutions, Campaigns and Commissions: A Century of Democratic Centralism under the CCP

Democratic centralism, a hallmark of Leninist party organizations, has played a formative role in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet despite being hailed as an “inviolable” and “unchanging” Party principle, understandings of democratic centralism have shifted dramatically over the century of its existence. This study traces the long arc of the concept's evolution across successive Party Constitutions, focusing on three critical historical junctures: the Sixth Party Congress, which formally adopted democratic centralism into its Constitution as an organizational principle; the Seventh Party Congress, which adopted rectification as the Party's practice of democratic centralism; and the 19th Party Congress, which set a new milestone in codifying the system as a disciplinary tool. I argue that while democratic centralism exemplifies the CCP's institutional plasticity and adaptive governance and is critical to understanding Party-driven constitutionalism in contemporary China, it also highlights an irresolvable paradox inherent in Party rule. Adaptability does not necessarily impart resilience. I conclude that the CCP's normatively unconstrained extra-constitutional leadership under Xi Jinping highlights the essentially and increasingly irrationalist aspects of its illiberal governance project.

State control of the internet in China.

"The Internet landed in China in 1987, only 9 years after the "Open-Door Policy" III 1978. Although the history of the Internet in China is not long, the speed of the Internet's development has been rapid. According to the statistics of China National Network Information Center (CNNIC), the number of Chinese Internet users already reached 33.7 million at the end of 2001, and this number quickly increased to 45.8 million by the end of June of 2002. The Chinese government also recognized the huge potential brought by the Internet to the economic growth in the country and started to launch several projects to enhance its development in 1990s. But, for regimes of democratic centralism, like China, the Internet is a double edged sword. Dramatically distinguished from other traditional mediums, the Internet enhances a much freer information flow and implies libertarianism and anarchism in the virtual world, which collides with the Chinese government's conventional practice of media control. Although the Internet is not as easy to control as other traditional mediums, the Chinese government is intent on maintaining control and censorship on it."--Page 3.

State control of the internet in China.

"The Internet landed in China in 1987, only 9 years after the "Open-Door Policy" III 1978. Although the history of the Internet in China is not long, the speed of the Internet's development has been rapid. According to the statistics of China National Network Information Center (CNNIC), the number of Chinese Internet users already reached 33.7 million at the end of 2001, and this number quickly increased to 45.8 million by the end of June of 2002. The Chinese government also recognized the huge potential brought by the Internet to the economic growth in the country and started to launch several projects to enhance its development in 1990s. But, for regimes of democratic centralism, like China, the Internet is a double edged sword. Dramatically distinguished from other traditional mediums, the Internet enhances a much freer information flow and implies libertarianism and anarchism in the virtual world, which collides with the Chinese government's conventional practice of media control. Although the Internet is not as easy to control as other traditional mediums, the Chinese government is intent on maintaining control and censorship on it."--Page 3.

An Empirical Study on the Impact of Individual Local Political Elites and Decision-Making Collective on Educational Fiscal Expenditure in China

Under the current decentralization system in China, individual characteristics of the local political elites and collective characteristics of the standing committees of the local party have an impact on local education fiscal policy. Yet published research on the similarities and differences between the collective influence of the Standing committee and the individual influence of the political elite are lacking. To address this gap in the literature, our study discussed the impact of local political elites represented by the mayor and the secretary and the collective of standing committees of the local party on education fiscal expenditure. We construct multiple regression models and analyze the R2 Change of variables is based on the cross-sectional data from 2015 of 283 prefecture-level administrative units in China. We find that both political elites and the standing committees have significant impacts on fiscal expenditure in education, and that the influence of the latter is greater than that of the former. The effect of individual characteristics and collective characteristics on education fiscal expenditure is not completely consistent across prefectures. China's prefectural governments implement China's unique principle of democratic centralism when they make decisions on local spending for education and the collective decision-making under the leadership of the committee plays an important role in education fiscal expenditure. Based on this, we put forward policy suggestions to further develop the principle of democratic centralism and to optimize optimizing the local government education supply and evaluation mechanism.

Organizational structure of the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement in Uruguay (1965-1972)

The article represents the first in Russian historiography attempt to consider in detail the structure of the revolutionary organization Tupamaros National Liberation Movement that acted in Uruguay in the 1960s and early 1970s. Due to the fact, that the Movement was clandestine, the data on the structure, strength, members could be reconstructed from both official documents and memoirs of members and leaders of the Movement. There are a lot of eminent persons of the contemporary history of Uruguay among them - ex President Jos Mujica, Vice President Luca Topolansky, former Minister of Defense Eleuterio Fernndez Huidobro and other important public figures. The study reveals the structural framework of the Tupamaros Movement and shows how were applied in practice two conflicting principles of the democratic centralism and internal autonomy of structural units of the organization.

On Constitutional Law Grounds of the State Policy in the PRC

Purpose. Scientific justification of the idea on the acknowledgment of the role of priority basic constitutional principles as grounds for the constitutional law regulation of the state policy in the PRC. Methodology: dialectics, hermeneutics, synergetics, philosophical conceptology. Conclusions. Holding a discussion on the approaches of the modern comparative linguistics to the identification of the development principles of the Chinese legal system, the author suggests referring the Chinese legal system to the socialist one with national peculiarities, historical succession, Chinese traditions occupying an important place in the development of the socialist principle of democratic centralism of the Communist Party of China. The author notes that the key constitutional principles of organization of government in the PRC are established and developed using the elements of two legal families (far eastern, socialist) and taking into account the Chinese specifics of the ideological origination and development of the Communist Party of China based on the ideas of K. Marx, V. I. Lenin, Chinese leaders and other supporters of the democratic centralism principle. Based on the provisions of the first chapter of the Constitution of the PRC, the author singles out 32 categories of the key principles of the constitutional law formation of the Chinese state directly or indirectly forming the powers of government authorities, state policy fundamentals. Scientific and practical significance. The conclusions of the article are aimed at systematization of the key constitutional principles of organization of government in the PRC classified into: basic, economic, social, law enforcement, administrative-territorial and additional ones. The priority basic principles singled out by the author are designed to form the grounds for the constitutional law regulation of the state policy.

Changes in Administrative Status and Urban Built Forms of the Town Centre of Berettyóújfalu After the Second World War

After the Second World War, Hungary adopted the so-called Soviet model, which gave rise to significant changes in the state organisation. “Centralisation” and “democratic centralism” are the keywords which described the operation of government and local bodies in the four decades between 1945 and 1990.Through the change of the townscape of one settlement, this study throws light on how the change in administrative status and the centrally determined settlement policy affected urban development in Hungary, similarly to other former socialist states.Our highlighted example is Berettyóújfalu, whose administrative status changed from period to period in its 19–20th century history. Today, Berettyóújfalu’s townscape is basically determined by three architectural periods: the era of the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy (1867–1918), the period between the two world wars (1918–1944) and the age of state socialism (1949–1989). Out of these periods, the third one was the most significant, as the most important interventions into the townscape occurred at that time.It seems that in Berettyóújfalu, the appearance of urban buildings has not been brought about by economic forces, but expressly by the change in the settlement’s administrative status. It was this change that influenced the town’s architectural character, which consists of two components: the official buildings and the residential building stock.In the era of socialism, the construction of housing estates also falls into the category of public developments, as after the Second World War, the system of state organisation changed fundamentally. Local governments ceased to exist, their role was taken over by hierarchical councils. Consequently, urban policy and urban construction became central duties according to the socialist state concept.The centrally developed industry and the resulting increase in the population was served by building housing blocks with system-building technology. These panel apartment blocks occupied the urban fabric that had been an integral part of the former townscape.In this way, this changed townscape could become a kind of architectural reader on Central and Eastern European history and urban development of the 19–20th centuries.Összefoglaló. A második világháború után Magyarország átvette az úgynevezett szovjet modellt, amely jelentős változásokhoz vezetett az államszervezetben. A „központosítás” és a „demokratikus centralizmus” azok a kulcsszavak, amelyek az állami szervek, s mellettük a helyi szervek működését jellemezték az 1945 és 1990 közötti négy évtizedben.Jelen tanulmány egy település városképének változásán keresztül arra világít rá, hogy Magyarországon – hasonlóan a többi volt szocialista államhoz – miként hatott a közigazgatási státus változása és a központilag meghatározott településpolitika a városépítészetre.A mai Berettyóújfalu településképét alapvetően három építési periódus határozza meg: az Osztrák– Magyar Monarchia kora (1867–1918), a két világháború közötti időszak (1918–1944) és az államszocializmus periódusa (1949–1989). Ezek közül a legmarkánsabb a harmadik, ugyanis ekkor történtek a legjelentősebb beavatkozások a településképben. E korszakokat és a mai városképet tekintve úgy tűnik, hogy a városias épületek megjelenése Berettyóújfaluban nem a gazdasági erő hozadéka volt, hanem kifejezetten a közigazgatási helyzetének megváltozásáé. Ez befolyásolta igazán a mai építészeti karaktert, amelynek két összetevője van: egyrészt a hivatali, másrészt a lakóépület-állomány.Az államszocializmusban a lakótelepek építése is a középítkezések körébe esik, miután a második világháború után alapvetően megváltozott az államszervezet rendszere. Az önkormányzatok megszűntek, helyüket a hierarchikusan működő tanácsok vették át. Ennek velejárója volt, hogy a településpolitika, a városépítés központi feladattá vált a szocialista államfelfogásnak megfelelően.A központilag meghatározott módon telepített ipart, a hozzá kapcsolódó lakosságnövekedést házgyári lakások felépítésével szolgálták ki. Ezek a paneles lakóházak épp azt a városszövetet foglalták el, amely egyébként a maga módján szervesen illeszkedett a korábbi városképbe.Ilyen módon ez a megváltozott településkép egyfajta építészeti olvasókönyvévé vált a 19–20. század közép-kelet-európai történelmének és városépítészetének.