Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Коммунисти́ческая Па́ртия Сове́тского Сою́за = КПСС) was the name used by the successors of the Bolshevik fraction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from 1952 to 1991, but the wording Communist Party was present in the party's name since 1918 when the Bolsheviks became the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In 1925 the party became All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and then, in 1934, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) and finally in 1952 it became simply the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This article follows the course of the party from 1918 until its dissolution in 1991. For information on the pre-1918 party see Bolshevik.

Once the Third International or Comintern was formed in 1919, the Marxist-Leninist structure of the CPSU was copied by the other Comintern members resulting in Communist parties being formed around the world.

For most of the history of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union, the Communist Party was virtually indistinguishable from the government. Therefore, the history of the USSR and the CPSU are deeply intertwined and overlapping. Therefore, it is useful for those interested in the history of the CPSU to also consult the History of Russia series of articles.

Structure

The governing body of the CPSU was the Party Congress which initially met annually but whose meetings became less frequent, particularly under Stalin. Party Congresses would elect a Central Committee which, in turn, would elect a Politburo. Under Stalin the most powerful position in the party became the General Secretary who was elected by the Politburo. In 1952 the title of General Secretary became First Secretary and the Politburo became the Presidium before reverting to their former names under Brezhnev in 1966.

In theory, supreme power in the party was invested in the Party Congress, however, in practice the power structure became reversed and, particularly after the death of Lenin, supreme power became the domain of the General Secretary.

Membership

Membership in the party ultimately became a privilege with Communist Party members becoming an elite, or nomenklatura, in Soviet society. Members of the nomenklatura would enjoy special privileges such as shopping at well-stocked stores, have preference in obtaining housing and access to daschas and holiday resorts, being allowed to travel abroad, send their children to the best universities and obtain prestigious jobs for them. It became virtually impossible to join the Soviet ruling and managing elite without being a member of the Communist Party.

Membership had its risks, however, especially in the 1930s when the party was subjected to purges under Stalin. Membership in the party was not open. To become a party member one had to be approved by various committees and one's past was closely scrutinised. As generations grew up never having known anything but the USSR, party membership became something one generally achieved after passing a series of stages. Children would join the Young Pioneers and then, at the age of 14, graduate to the Komsomol (Young Communist League) and ultimately, as an adult, if one had shown the proper adherence to party discipline or had the right connections one would become a member of the Communist Party itself.

When the Bolsheviks became the All-Russian Communist Party it had a membership of approximately 200,000. In the late 1920s under Stalin, the party engaged in a heavy recruitment campaign (the "Lenin Levy") of new members from both the working class and rural areas. This was both an attempt to "proletarianize" the party and an attempt by Stalin to strengthen his base by outnumbering the Old Bolsheviks and reducing their influence in the party.

By 1933, the party had approximately 3.5 million members and candidate members but as a result of the Great Purge party membership fell to 1.9 million by 1939. In 1986, the CPSU had over 19 million members or approximately 10% of the USSR's adult population. Over 44% of party members were classified as industrial workers, 12% were collective farmers. The CPSU had party organizations in fourteen of the USSR's 15 republics. In the Russian federation itself there was no separate Communist Party with affairs being run directly by the CPSU.

Civil War

Initially, following the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks dealt leniently with "enemies of the revolution", in one case releasing a tsarist general if he agreed not to join the Whites. He agreed and promptly joined the counter-revolution on his release. As the Civil War progressed, and particularly after the attempted assassination of Lenin on August 30, 1918 by Fanya Kaplan of the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks became more ruthless with political enemies by instituting the Red Terror, although their counter-revolutionary opponents used equally violent methods against suspected Bolsheviks and their partisans.

The execution of ex-Tsar Nicholas II and his family on July 16, 1918 on the orders of the Yekaterinburg soviet caused a particularly strong reaction from foreign governments.

In December 1917, the Bolshevik government established a security force, the Cheka, which took over the role of the former Tsarist Okhranka. In 1918, the Communist government began to send political opponents to forced labor camps, typically in Siberia and the extreme North of Russia. The labor camps were inherited from the Tsarist penal system of forced labour (katorga).

See also: Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War

Party development

The ruling body of the party was the 27 member Central Committee of the CPSU elected annually. In 1919 a smaller Politburo was created initially with five members, to run the party on a day to day basis. The first full members of the Politburo were Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Krestinsky with Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kalinin as candidate members (ie alternates).

Tenth Party Congress

The party initially allowed free and open debate at party meetings, but this changed due to the Civil War. At the Tenth Party Congress of 1921, factions were banned in the party, including the Workers Opposition, and in 1922 the Communist Party became the only legal political party.

Stalin's Rise to Power

The authority of the party increased as a result, as did its control over the government, and within the party the power of the Politburo grew. Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party in April 1922.

The next month Lenin suffered his first stroke and the question of who would be his successor became paramount as his health deterioriated. Lenin's role in government declined. He suffered a second stroke in December 1922 and the Politburo ordered that he be kept in isolation. His third stroke in March 1923 left him bedridden and unable to speak though he was still able to communicate through writing. Lenin finally died as the result of a fourth stroke in January 1924.

As a result of Lenin's illness, the position of general secretary became more important than had originally been envisioned and Stalin's power grew. Following Lenin's thrid stroke a troika made up of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev emerged to take day to day leadership of the party and the country and try to block Trotsky from taking power. Lenin, however, had became increasingly uneasy about Stalin and, following his December 1922 stroke dictated a letter to the party criticising him and urging his removal as general secretary. Stalin was aware of Lenin's Testament and acted to keep Lenin in isolation for health reasons and increase his control over the party apparatus.

Zinoviev and Bukharin became concerned about Stalin's increasing power and proposed that the Orgburo which Stalin, but no other members of the Politburo, be abolished and that Zinoviev and Trotsky be added to the party secretariat thus diminishing Stalin's role as general secretary. Stalin reacted furiously and the Orgburo was retained but Bukharin, Trotsky and Zinoviev were added to the body.

Due to growing political differences with Trotsky and his Left Opposition in the fall of 1923, the troika of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev reunited. At the Twelfth Party Congress in 1923, Trotsky failed to use Lenin's Testament as a tool against Stalin for fear of endangering the stability of the party.

Lenin died in January 1924 and in May his Testament was read aloud at the Central Committee but Zinoviev and Kamenev argued that Lenin's objections had proven groundless and that Stalin should remain General Secretary. The Central Committee decided not to publish the testament.

Meanwhile the campaign against Trotsky intensified and he was removed from the position of Commissar of War before the end of the year. In 1925, Trotsky was denounced for his essay Lessons of October which criticised Zinoviev and Kamenev for initially opposing Lenin's plans for an insurrection in 1917. Trotsky was also denounced for his theory of permanent revolution which contradicted Stalin's position that socialism could be built in one country, Russia, without a worldwide revolution. As the prospects for a revolution in Europe, particularly Germany, became increasingly dim through the 1920s, Trotsky's theoretical position began to look increasingly pessimistic as far as the success of Russian socialism was concerned.

With the resignation of Trotsky as War Commissar the unity of the troika began to unravel. Zinoviev and Kamenev again began to fear Stalin's power and felt that their positions were threatened. Stalin moved to form an alliance with Bukharin and his allies on the right of the party who supported the New Economic Policy and encouraged a slowdown in industrialisation efforts and a move towards encouraging the peasants to increase production via market incentives. Zinoviev and Kamenev denounced this policy as a return to capitalism. The conflict erupted at hte Fourteenth Party Congress held in December 1925 with Zinoviev and Kamenev now protesting against the dictatorial policies of Stalin and trying to revive the issue of Lenin's Testament which they had previously buried. Stalin now used Trotsky's previous criticisms of Zinoviev and Kamenev to defeat and demote them and bring in allies like Molotov, Voroshilov and Mikhail Kalinin. Trotsky was dropped from the politburo entirely in 1926. The Fourteenth Congress also saw the first developments of the Stalin personality cult with Stalin being referred to as "leader" for the first time and becoming the subject of effusive praise from delegates.

Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev formed a United Opposition against the policies of Stalin and Bukharin but they had lost influence as a result of the party struggles and no longer posed a serious threat to Stalin. In October 1927 Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Central Committee and at the Fifteenth Party Congress held in December 1927 the remaining members of the left opposition were subjected to insults and humiliations and in 1928 Trotsky and the Left Opposition were expelled from the Communist Party itself.

Stalin now moved against Bukharin by appropriating Trotsky's criticisms of his right wing policies. Stalin now promoted a new general line favouring collectivization of the peasantry and rapid industrialization of industry forcing Bukharin and his supporters into a Right Opposition.

At the Central Committee meeting held in July 1928, Bukharin and his supporters argued that Stalin's new policies would cause a breach with the peasantry. Bukharin also alluded to Lenin's Testament. While Bukharin had support from the party organization in Moscow and the leadership of several commisariats Stalin's control of the secretariat was decisive in that it allowed Stalin to manipulate elections to party posts throughout the country giving him control over a large section of the Central Committee. The right opposition was defeated, Bukharin attempted to form an alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev but it was too late.

Purge of the Old Bolsheviks

Main article: Great Purge.

In the 1930s other senior Communists, many of whom had been Stalin's allies were removed and many of them were executed or died in mysterious circumstances, including Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev and Nikolai Bukharin. Joseph Stalin instigated a series of purges against senior members of the party, culminating in the Great Purge of 1935 to 1938, with the key processes known as Moscow Trials.

There are theories that purges were initiated as a tool in Stalin's struggle for power. At the 17th CPSU Party Congress (February 1934) Sergei Kirov only received three negative votes in the election to the Politburo showing himself to be the most popular Soviet leader while Stalin received 267 negative votes ranking him the least popular. According to Molotov's memoirs as well as other reports, a number of party members at the Congress had approached Kirov with the proposal that he run for the position of General Secretary against Stalin.

Whether or not Stalin initiated the Purge as a response to opposition to him within the party and whether or not Stalin was personally behind the assassination of Kirov in December 1934 in order to remove a rival, that was used as a pretext for the Purge, the fact remains that of the 1,966 delegates who attended the 1934 "Congress of Victors", 1,108 were ultimately arrested by the secret police. Of 139 members of the Central Committee, 98 were arrested.

Ostensibly, the purge began as an investigation into Kirov's murder. Zinoviev and his former supporters were charged with the murder and subjected to show trials before being executed. The "investigation" continued and soon found thousands of alleged conspirators who were similarly rounded up and shot or put into labor camps. Stalin claimed that Kirov's assassin, Leonid Nikolayev, was part of a larger conspiracy led by Zinoviev, Kamenev and ultimately Leon Trotsky against the Soviet government.

Additional triggers for the purge may have been the refusal by the Politburo in 1932 to approve the execution of M. N. Riutin, an Old Bolshevik who had distributed a 200-pg pamphlet calling for the removal of Stalin and their refusal in 1933 to approve the execution of A.P. Smirnov, who had been a party member since 1896 and had also been found to be agitating for Stalin’s removal.

The failure of the Politburo to act ruthlessly against anti-Stalinists in the Party may have combined in Stalin’s mind with Kirov’s growing popularity to convince him of the need to move decisively against his opponents, real or perceived, and destroy them and their reputations as a means of consolidating Stalin and the bureaucracy’s power over the party and the state.

The Moscow Trials lasted until 1938 and were used to blame various former oppositionists (as well as numerous supporters of Stalin who were considered suspect for some reason or another) with the failure of Stalin's Five Year Plan to meet its goals as well as other problems in the Soviet Union. Numerous Bolshevik luminaries such as Bukharin, Radek, Rykov, were accused of plotting to overthrow Stalin or even conspiring with Hitler and were tried and executed.

The Great Purge saw the removal of 850,000 members from the Party, or 36% of its membership, between 1936 and 1938. Many of these individuals were executed or perished in prison camps. “Old Bolsheviks” who had been members of the Party in 1917 were especially targeted.

At the 18th Party Congress was held in 1939, only 2% of the delegates had also been delegates to the last congress held in 1934.

Stalinism

The labor camps were expanded into the infamous Gulag system under Stalin in his war against so-called "class enemies". Stalin also undertook massive resettlements of Kulaks, similarly to the Tsarist penal system of ssylka (resettlement in remote areas) which had been established to deal with political dissidents and common criminals without executing them.

Under Stalin the meaning of the phrase dictatorship of the proletariat was transformed from a democracy run by the workers (ie where the working class dictates) to a dictatorship by the party leader over the working class in their name.

As Stalin consolidated his rule the party itself ceased to be a serious deliberative body under Stalin with Party Congresses, particularly after the Great Purge, being little more than show pieces in which delegates would sing the praises of Stalin in what became a cult of personality. No party congresses were held at all between 1939 and 1952. The role of the secret police became paramount in Soviet society and within the party with party members closely monitored to ensure their adherence to Stalin. Similarly the Central Committee and even the Politburo became rubber stamps for Stalin's dictatorship and without any ability to challenge his power or question his decision.

See also: Stalinism

Post-Stalin

Stalin's death in 1953 unleashed a new struggle for succession to the leadership of the party and the country. Molotov had been widely thought to be Stalin's obvious successor but he had fallen into disfavour during Stalin's final years and had been removed from the Politburo in 1952 (though he was reinstated after Stalin's death). The struggle for succession became a contest between Beria (the feared leader of the NKVD), Malenkov and Khrushchev. The surviving party leadership feared Beria and in June 1953, three months after Stalin's death, the members of the Presidium (the renamed Politburo) under the instigation of Khruschev agreed to ambush Beria at a Presidium meeting surprising him by bringing in army officers to but him under arrest. He was tried and shot in December 1953 though Khrushchev was later to claim that he shot Beria himself at the June meeting of the Presidium. In March 1953, Malenkov became Chairman of the Council of Ministers (or Premier) with the support of Beria. Malenkov also became First Secretary of the Party (as the postion of General Secretary was now known).

With Beria, Malenkov's ally, out of the way, Khrushchev was in a position to outmanouver Malenkov for power. Without Beria to support him Malenkov relinquished the position of First Secretary to Khrushchev in September, 1953 ushering in a period of "collective leadership" in which Malenkov and Khrushchev shared power. Khruschev won the support of Bulganin to move against Malenkov and at the Central Committee meeting in January 1955, Malenkov was criticized for his close relationship with Beria as well as his failure to implement promises to increase the production of consumer goods. The next month he was dismissed as head of the government.

The Twentieth Party Congress held in 1956 marked the party's formal break with Stalin (three years after his death) when First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev gave his famous Secret Speech denouncing the crimes and excesses of Stalin. This ushered in a period of destalinisation which saw an end to the personality cult which had grown around Stalin, the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners and a thaw in political and cultural discourse. This was too much for conservatives in the Presidium (the renamed Politburo). Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov and Bulganin attempted to oust Khrushchev in the summer of 1957 and won a vote in the Presidium to oust Khruschev but Georgi Zhukov the defence minister and war hero, supported Khrushchev's demands that the matter be sent to the Central Committee which overturned the Presidium vote. Khrushchev ousted the so-called Anti-Party Group from the Presidium and ultimately from the party and, in 1958 became Premier while retaining the position of First Secretary.

The execution of Beria also brought the NKVD and its successor, the KGB under party control where, under Stalin, the state security apparatus had become more powerful than the party and the military. The reversal caused by Beria's arrest and execution brought to the end much of the arbitrary arrest and the system of forced labour in Gulags that had marked the Stalin era.

Khrushchev attempted to reorganize the party structure in 1962 along economic rather than geographical lines. This led to confusion and the alienation of many party officials.

Khrushchev's prestige was severely damaged as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis which ended in what many in the party saw as a humiliating climbdown by Khrushchev. He was removed from power in October 1964 by the Central Committee due to the Cuban Missile Crisis as well as the failure of his agricultural and industrial policies. Destalinisation came a halt under the new General Secretary, Leonid Brezhnev who emerged as the new party leader after first plotting with Nikolay Podgorny to oust Khruschev and then outmanouvering Podgorny to take the party leadership (Podgrony became the ceremonial head of state as a consolation until Brezhnev took that position for himself in 1977). However, there was no return to the policies of terror against party members. While internal party struggles would result in expulsions there were no executions of party members after the execution of Beria in 1953. When Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and other members of the so-called Anti-Party Group were expelled from the Presidium and ultimately from the party for allegedly plotting against Khruschev they were not put on trial or imprisoned but simply demoted to minor posts (such as ambassador to Mongolia in the case of Molotov) or pensioned off as when Khruschev himself was deposed in 1964.

Though initially, the USSR was again under the "collective leadership" of Brezhnev, Podgrony and Alexsey Kosygin , Brezhnev was able to consolidate power and become the undisputed leader. At the 23rd Party Congress held in 1966, Brezhnev was able to have himself declared General Secretary of the party, reviving a title that had not existed since Stalin. The Presidium also reverted to its previous name of Politburo. While Kosygin attempted to persue a policy of favouring light industry and consumer good production over heavy industry, Brezhnev favoured military expansion which necessitated a continued emphasis on heavy industry. While Kosygin remained Premier, it was Brezhnev's policies that won out and by 1968 he was the undisputed leader of both the party and the country. The Brezhnev period ushered in an unparalleled period of stability in the party, a stability that ultimately led to stagnation. Almost half of the members of the 1981 Central Committee had been on the body in 1966 while the average age of Politburo members rose from 55 in 1966 to 68 in 1982 as the USSR became something of a gerentocracy. Brezhnev suffered a stroke in 1975 but continued in power despite deteriorating health until his death in Novemer 1982 at the age of 76. His final years were marked by an attempt to create a personality cult around himself as well as growing corruption within the party as members increasingly paid lip service to socialist ideas and instead saw their positions as a route to self enrichment.

Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev became the party's general secretary in 1985 following an interegnum after Brezhnev's death in 1982 when the party was led first by Yuri Andropov and then by Konstantin Chernenko.

Gorbachev instituted policies of glasnost and perestroika. Glasnost allowed freedom of speech in the Soviet Union and a flourishing of political debate within the Communist Party to a degree not seen since the Russian Revolution while perestroika was an attempt to restructure the political and particuarly the economic organisation of the country. This period of liberalisation ultimately ended in the dissolution of the Soviet bloc in eastern Europe.

At the Twenty-Seventy Party Congress in 1986, Boris Yeltsin became a candidate member of the Politburo and offended party members in a speech that attacked the hidden privliges of the party elite.

At the 1988 Party Conference Gorbachev launched reforms to reduce the party's control over the government including proposals for multicandidate elections to regional and local legislatures and the positions of local and regional party first secretaryships.While Gorbachev was able to receive approval for his reforms from the party, the membership of the CPSU was becoming increasingly resistant to Gorbachev's policies and rather than being a locus for change became a bulwark of conservativism. Increasingly, Gorbachev bypassed the party in order to implement his reforms relying instead on governmental bodies.

In 1990, Gorbachev obtained the repeal of Article Six of the USSR constitution which gave the party supremacy over all institutions in society.

By the time of the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress in July 1990, the party was largely regarded as being unable to lead the country and had, in fifteen republics, slit into oppsoing factions favouring either independent republics or the continuation of the Soviet Union. Stripped of its leading role in society the party lost its authority to lead the nation or the cohesion that kept the party united.

See: History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)

End of Communist rule

The growing likelihood of the dissolution of the USSR itself led conservative elements in the CPSU to launch the August coup in 1991 which temporarily removed Gorbachev from power. On August 19, 1991, a day before a Union Treaty was to be signed devolving power to the republics, a group calling itself the "State Emergency Committee" seized power in Moscow declaring that Gorbachev was ill and therefore relieved of his position as president. Soviet vice-president Gennadiy Yanayev was named acting president. The committee's eight members included KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Internal Affairs Minister Boris Pugo, Defense Minister Dmitriy Yazov, and Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov. The coup dissolved due to large public demonstrations and the efforts of Boris Yeltsin who became the real power in Russia as a result. Gorbachev returned to Moscow as president but resigned as General Secretary and vowed to purge the party of conservaties. Yeltsin had the CPSU formally banned within Russia. The KGB was disbanded as were other CPSU-related agencies and organisations. Yeltsin's action was later declared unconstitutional but by this time the USSR had ceased to exist.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the party became known as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

External Links

USSR Communist Party Leadership (1917-1991)

Program of the CPSU, 27th Party Congress (1986)