The Eighth Congress of the R.C.P. (B)

Convened between March 18 to 23, 1919, in the former Rotunda Hall of the Kremlin, Moscow (later changed as the Sverdlov Hall). The Congress was attended by 301 delegates with voting rights and 102 delegates with speaking rights, representing a total of 313,766 party members. Included in the agenda of the Congress were: the summary Report of the 7th Central Committee; Programme of the R.C.P.(B); Foundation of the Communist International; War situation and war policy; Work in the Countryside; Organizational questions; and the election of the Central Committee.

The central issue of this Congress was the discussion and adoption of a new party program (the second party program). Although the Seventh Congress had adopted Lenin's draft program for the Party, in view of the disagreements within the drafting commission, at the Eighth Congress, in addition to Lenin, who represented the majority, N.I. Bukharin, who represented the minority, had delivered another report on the issue of the party program. Bukharin proposed to remove the articles on capitalism and petty commodity production from the program and confined himself to pure imperialism. He considered imperialism to be a special socio-economic form.

Bukharin and G. L. Pyatakov also proposed that the article on the right of national self-determination be removed from the party program. Lenin criticized their mistaken views. The Congress basically adopted the Draft of the New Party Program and then approved it after the Program Commission had finalized it.

Another important issue resolved by the Congress was the attitude towards the middle peasants. It is resolved by adopting the "Resolution on the Attitude to the Middle Peasants" drafted by Lenin. Lenin argued for a new party policy toward the middle peasants, a shift from a policy of neutrality toward the middle peasants to a policy of a solid alliance between the working class and the middle peasants under conditions of reliance on the poor peasants, struggle against the rich peasants and maintaining the leadership of the proletariat.

In the work of the Congress, questions on the war situation, war policy, and on the construction of the Red Army took on considerable importance. At the Congress, the so-called "army opposition" rejected the program of the Central Committee. They defended the remnants of guerrillaism, denied the need to include the old military experts, and opposed the establishment of iron discipline in the army. Most of the deputies who spoke at the meeting denounced the “army opposition”, but also sharply criticized the behavior of the chairman of the Republican Revolutionary Military Committee, L.D. Trotsky, who despised the party leadership in the army. The Congress approved the Resolution on the War Issue based on Lenin's arguments.

In its resolution on organizational issues, the Congress countered the Sapronov-Oshinsky group, which denied the leading role of the party in the soviets and advocated the merging of the Presidium of the People's Committee and the All-Russia Central Executive Committee. The Congress rejected the principle of a federal system of party building and considered it necessary to establish a centralized and unified Communist Party and a unified Central Committee to lead all the work of the Party. The Congress laid down the internal organization of the Central Committee, i.e., the Central Committee had a Political Bureau, an Organization Bureau, and a Secretariat. The Congress elected a Central Committee consisting of members and 8 candidate members.