861.00 Conferences All Union Communist Party/20: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 5:11 p.m.]
314. Pravda and Izvestiya published yesterday the text of the report of the Mandate Commission of the Eighteenth Party Conference delivered at the evening session on February 18.23 This report contains statistics concerning the growth of party membership since the Eighteenth Party Congress of March 1939 which are as follows:
“The party now has 2,515,481 members representing an increase of 926,629 over March 1939, and 1,361,404 candidates for membership, an increase of 472,590 over the 1939 figure. It is further revealed in the report of the Commission that of the 457 delegates to the Conference 78.4% are under 40 years of age, 80% have joined the party since 1924, and only 5% are members of prerevolutionary standing.[”]
The very rapid growth of party membership during the past 2 years as shown by the above figures would appear to indicate the absence of any purging activity during this period. The figures on age groups and terms of membership of the delegates to the Conference point to the fact that very few party members of the revolutionary period remain in positions of influence in the party and state.
- This Congress had opened in Moscow on February 15, 1941, the first one since the XVII Congress of January 26–February 10, 1934.↩