WHY NOW? Senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader MA Baby was appointed the party general secretary at the party congress in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, on Sunday (April 6). The gathering saw elections for an 84-member CPI(M) Central Committee and for an 18-member Politburo, which, in turn, chose Baby. Members of the new CPI(M) Politburo include Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Tripura Opposition leader and CPI(M) state secretary Jitendra Chaudhary. WHAT DOES POLITBURO MEAN? Politburos have been crucial to the structure of communist parties since their inception. In the erstwhile USSR and other communist countries, the party was equivalent to the state. Securing the party’s leadership was akin to being the head of the state. Within such an organisation, a Politburo (a shortened form of “political bureau”) referred to a smaller group of top leadership engaged in policy-making. It also worked for the day-to-day functioning of the party. In the Soviet Union’s communist party, which came to power following the 1917 Russian Revolution, general secretary Vladimir Lenin aimed to have the Politburo work as an elite cadre of leaders to guide the revolution further (A Dictionary of Contemporary World History: From 1900 to the present day). The seven Politburo members included Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and future Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. It subsequently became the highest executive organ of the communist party and the state but was often subjected to the whims of the general secretary (the party’s top leader). Under Stalin, its members were increasingly working based on his will. When the Politburo ordered his successor Nikita Khrushchev to be removed, Khrushchev successfully invoked the Politburo's theoretical responsibility to the larger party Central Committee, whose approval he had secured, to maintain his hold on the party. The institution was abandoned in most countries after the end of the Cold War with the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. Today, few countries still have these bodies, including China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba, with some variations. For instance, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a 25-member Politburo, but it is superseded by another exclusive group – the seven-member Standing Committee of the Politburo. HOW DOES POLITBURO DIFFER FROM OTHER PARTY BODIES? Another key body in communist parties is the central committee. Originally envisaged as the highest decision-making body, its large size hindered its capabilities, and the Politburo emerged as a more powerful grouping in the Soviet communist party. The CCP, for instance, has around 370 members in its central committee today, elected by the national legislature. In the case of the CPI(M), the “Central Committee shall represent the Party as a whole and be responsible for directing the entire work of the Party. The Central Committee shall have the right to take decisions with full authority on any question facing the Party.” It also elects the Politburo and the general secretary. At the CPI(M)’s last conclave in Kannur in 2022, the party had fixed 75 as the age limit for the Central Committee and Politburo members.
