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 have been and continue to be a most important forum in which to make statements and speeches on vital questions of policy (A Nos. 9, 19, 22). Throughout this period the party has been the matrix of the most important policy-making organs of the State, most powerful of which is the Party's Political Bureau. The constitution of 1936 (Articles 126 and 141) declares that the Communist Party is "the guiding core of all organizations of the working people" and the only party of the country which has the right to nominate candidates to the State bodies, to public organizations and societies (central and local). As the only party in the Union, the Communist Party's relation to the State and its importance in the formulation of policy cannot be judged by reference to the situation existing in Western democracies.

Next in importance come statements and speeches before the revolutionary organs such as the All-Russian Central Congress or the Comintern (A Nos. 1, 21), and in the Soviet parliament, the Supreme Soviet of the U. S. S. R., the "highest organ of State authority" (Article 30 of the Constitution), which has also the power to ratify treaties and to approve the Government's foreign policy (A Nos. 16, 17, 23, 28; C Nos. 3, 7).

For a country where doctrine has an important bearing on the formulation of policy, it is of interest to show the attitude of the State Academy, especially in the period up to 1927, i.e, before the rapprochement with the Western democratic world took place. For this reason a quotation from an anonymous paper published in the Soviet Encyclopedia of State and Law has been included (A No. 15). Before 1927 that work was a kind of breviary of Bolshevist orthodoxy.

The other declarations contained in section A were made in connection with the conclusion of treaties, at various conferences, before the League of Nations, in special declarations and radio speeches.

Most noteworthy are the documents relating to the admission of the U. S. S. R. into the League (A Nos. 20 and 24) and to the recent rapprochement with anti-Axis States upon the entrance of the Soviet Union into the present war against Germany. The latter subject is dealt with in the last five documents of Part A. The participation of Soviet Russia in the Joint Declaration by the United Nations (A No. 16) together with the Treaty of Mutual Assistance between Great Britain and the Soviet Union of May 26, 1942 (B No. 42), apparently marks an ideological departure in Soviet policy in so far as the principles of the Atlantic