Communist Party of the Soviet Union

"CPSU" redirects here. For other uses, see CPSU (disambiguation) and Communist Party of the Soviet Union (disambiguation).
"VKP" redirects here. For a Serbian rowing club from Belgrade, see Veslački Klub Partizan. For the ISO 639-3 code vkp, see Korlai Portuguese Creole.

Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза
Leadership[a]Elena Stasova (first)
Vladimir Ivashko (last)
FounderVladimir Lenin
Founded5 January 1912; 112 years ago (1912-01-05)[b]
Banned6 November 1991; 33 years ago (1991-11-06)[1]
Preceded byBolshevik faction of the RSDLP
Succeeded byUCP–CPSU[2]
CPRF
Headquarters4 Staraya Square, Moscow
NewspaperPravda[3]
Youth wingKomsomol[4]
Pioneer wingLittle Octobrists, Young Pioneers[5]
Membership19,487,822 (1989 est.)[6]
Ideology
Political positionFar-left[12][13]
National affiliationBloc of Communists and Non-Partisans (1936–91)[14][15]
International affiliation
Colours  Red[19]
Slogan"Workers of the world, unite!"[d]
Anthem"The Internationale"[e][20]

"Hymn of the Bolshevik Party"[f]
Politics of the Soviet Union
 
Leadership
Communist Party
General Secretary
Legislature
Congress of Soviets
Supreme Soviet
Congress of People's Deputies
Governance
Constitution
Government
Premiership
Judiciary
Ideology
Society
Economy
Culture
Repression
flag Soviet Union portal
A neighborhood in the Kozhukhovsky Bay of the Moskva River with a large sign promoting the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Moscow, 1975

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),[g] at some points known as the Russian Communist Party, All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet Communist Party (SCP), was the founding and ruling political party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990 when the Congress of People's Deputies modified Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which had previously granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party's main ideology was Marxism–Leninism. The party was outlawed under Russian President Boris Yeltsin's decree on 6 November 1991, citing the 1991 Soviet coup attempt as a reason.[21]

The party started in 1898 as part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1903, that party split into a Menshevik ("minority") and Bolshevik ("majority") faction; the latter, led by Vladimir Lenin, is the direct ancestor of the CPSU and is the party that seized power in the October Revolution of 1917. Its activities were suspended on Soviet territory 74 years later, on 29 August 1991, soon after a failed coup d'état by conservative CPSU leaders against the reforming Soviet president and party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

The CPSU was a communist party based on democratic centralism. This principle, conceived by Lenin, entails democratic and open discussion of policy issues within the party, followed by the requirement of total unity in upholding the agreed policies. The highest body within the CPSU was the Party Congress, which convened every five years. When the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, (previously the Presidium), the Secretariat and the Orgburo (until 1952). The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or two of the three offices concurrently, but never all three at the same time. The party leader was the de facto chairman of the CPSU Politburo and chief executive of the Soviet Union. The tension between the party and the state (Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union) for the shifting focus of power was never formally resolved.

After the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922, Lenin had introduced a mixed economy, commonly referred to as the New Economic Policy, which allowed for capitalist practices to resume under the Communist Party dictation in order to develop the necessary conditions for socialism to become a practical pursuit in the economically undeveloped country. In 1929, as Joseph Stalin became the leader of the party, Marxism–Leninism, a fusion of the original ideas of German philosopher and economic theorist Karl Marx, and Lenin, became formalized by Stalin as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so throughout the rest of its existence. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, and a command economy was implemented. After recovering from the Second World War, reforms were implemented which decentralized economic planning and liberalized Soviet society in general under Nikita Khrushchev. By 1980, various factors, including the continuing Cold War, and ongoing nuclear arms race with the United States and other Western European powers and unaddressed inefficiencies in the economy, led to stagnant economic growth under Alexei Kosygin, and further with Leonid Brezhnev and growing disillusionment. After the younger, vigorous Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership in 1985 (following two short-term elderly leaders, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, who quickly died in succession), rapid steps were taken to transform the tottering Soviet economic system in the direction of a market economy once again. Gorbachev and his allies envisioned the introduction of an economy similar to Lenin's earlier New Economic Policy through a program of "perestroika", or restructuring, but their reforms, along with the institution of free multi-candidate elections led to a decline in the party's power, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the banning of the party by later last RSFSR President Boris Yeltsin and subsequent first President of the successor Russian Federation.

A number of causes contributed to CPSU's loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union during the early 1990s. Some historians have written that Gorbachev's policy of "glasnost" (political openness) was the root cause, noting that it weakened the party's control over society. Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the economic stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. In the final years of the CPSU's existence, the Communist Parties of the federal subjects of Russia were united into the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). After the CPSU's demise, the Communist Parties of the Union Republics became independent and underwent various separate paths of reform. In Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation emerged and has been regarded as the inheritor of the CPSU's old Bolshevik legacy into the present day.[22]


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ "Указ Президента РСФСР от 6 ноября 1991 г. № 169 «О деятельности КПСС и КП РСФСР»".
  2. ^ March, Luke (2002). The Communist Party in Post-Soviet Russia. Manchester University Press. p. 20. ISBN 9780719060441.
  3. ^ Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher (1980). The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers. pp. 242–249
  4. ^ Britannica Komsomol article
  5. ^ Lewis Stegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov. Stalinism As A Way Of Life. p. 374. ISBN 0300084803
  6. ^ White, Pravda & Gitelman 1990, p. 68.
  7. ^ Sakwa 1990, p. 206.
  8. ^ Lansford, Thomas (2007). Communism. New York: Cavendish Square Publishing. p. 17. ISBN 978-0761426288.
  9. ^ Evans, Alfred B. (1993). Soviet Marxism-Leninism: The Decline of an Ideology. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0275947637.
  10. ^ Motyl 2001, pp. 501–502.
  11. ^ a b White 1992
  12. ^ March, Luke (2009). "Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream?" (PDF). IPG. 1: 126–143. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 May 2018 – via Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
  13. ^ "Left". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 April 2009. Retrieved 22 May 2022. ... communism is a more radical leftist ideology.
  14. ^ Кимерлинг А. С. Индивидуальная форма политической презентации власти в позднюю сталинскую эпоху // «Майские чтения» 2006 – ежегодная Всероссийская конференция, проводимая кафедрой культурологии Пермского государственного технического университета
  15. ^ Избирательное законодательство и выборы в 1937–1987 гг.
  16. ^ "2nd International Congress of Brussels, 1891". www.marxists.org.
  17. ^ Legvold, Robert (2007). Russian Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century and the Shadow of the Past. Columbia University Press. p. 408. ISBN 978-0231512176. However, the USSR created an entirely new dimension of interwar European reality, one in which Russia devised rules of the game and set the agenda, namely, the Comintern.
  18. ^ Healey, Denis. "The Cominform and World Communism". International Affairs. 24, 3: 339–349.
  19. ^ Adams, Sean; Morioka, Noreen; Stone, Terry Lee (2006). Color Design Workbook: A Real World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design. Gloucester, Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers. pp. 86. ISBN 159253192X. OCLC 60393965.
  20. ^ A. V. Lunacharskiy (ed.). "The International (in Russian)". Fundamental'naya Elektronnaya Biblioteka.
  21. ^ Jeff Berliner (6 November 1991). "Yeltsin bans Communist Party". United Press International. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  22. ^ "Справочник по истории Коммунистической партии и Советского Союза 1898–1991" [A Handbook on the History of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union 1898–1991]. Knowbysight.info (in Russian). 4 February 2014. Archived from the original on 9 September 2014. Retrieved 24 January 2020.