The Party’s over

John Lloyd

At the time of writing, the main document I shall discuss has not been published and has had only minimal exposure in the media anywhere. It circulates among at most two to three thousand members of the Soviet Communist Party nomenklatura and policy intelligentsia. It was not particularly difficult to acquire: it will certainly be in the hands of several Soviet journalists. But nothing of its content has appeared so far in the Soviet press, in spite of its fundamental importance to Soviet society – a testimony to the nervous respect (or aversion) it invokes.