Foreign News: The New Party Rules

Khufu, builder of Egypt's mightiest pyramid, never dreamed of a structure like the Russian Communist Party. Communists like to make it seem like a pyramid in which power rises from the grass roots up through local and regional committees to the top. The West, on the other hand, usually sees the party as a "monolith," in which Stalin has only to crook his little finger to produce a purge in Krasnoyarsk. The Russian version is nonsense, but the Western idea is not quite right either. The party is in fact a highly complex mechanism...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!