Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза | |
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Colours | Red[18] |
Slogan | "Workers of the world, unite!"[c] |
Anthem | "The Internationale"[d][19] "Hymn of the Bolshevik Party"[e] |
Politics of the Soviet Union |
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Soviet Union portal |
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),
The party started in 1898 as the
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
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 "
History
Name
- 16 August 1917 – 8 March 1918: Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian: Российская социал-демократическая рабочая партия (большевиков); РСДРП(б), romanized: Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (bol'shevikov); RSDRP(b))
- 8 March 1918 – 31 December 1925: Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian: Российская коммунистическая партия (большевиков); РКП(б), romanized: Rossiyskaya kommunisticheskaya partiya (bol'shevikov); RKP(b))
- 31 December 1925 – 14 October 1952: All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian: Всесоюзная коммунистическая партия (большевиков); ВКП(б), romanized: Vsesoyuznaya kommunisticheskaya partiya (bol'shevikov); VKP(b))
- 14 October 1952 – 6 November 1991: Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза; КПСС, romanized: Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza; KPSS)
Early years (1898–1924)
The origin of the CPSU was in the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). This faction arose out of the split between followers of Julius Martov and Vladimir Lenin in August 1903 at the Party's second conference. Martov's followers were called the Mensheviks (which means minority in Russian); and Lenin's, the Bolsheviks (majority). (The two factions were in fact of fairly equal numerical size.) The split became more formalized in 1914, when the factions became named the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), and Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks). Prior to the February Revolution, the first phase of the Russian Revolutions of 1917, the party worked underground as organized anti-Tsarist groups. By the time of the revolution, many of the party's central leaders, including Lenin, were in exile.
After Emperor
The Bolsheviks had rapidly increased their political presence from May onward through the popularity of their program, notably calling for an immediate end to the war, land reform for the peasants, and restoring food allocation to the urban population. This program was translated to the masses through simple slogans that patiently explained their solution to each crisis the revolution created. Up to July, these policies were disseminated through 41 publications, Pravda being the main paper, with a readership of 320,000. This was roughly halved after the repression of the Bolsheviks following the July Days demonstrations so that even by the end of August, the principal paper of the Bolsheviks had a print run of only 50,000 copies. Despite this, their ideas gained them increasing popularity in elections to the soviets.[21]
The factions within the soviets became increasingly polarized in the later summer after armed demonstrations by soldiers at the call of the Bolsheviks and an
In the aftermath of the
In 1921, as the
Stalin era (1924–53)
After Lenin's death, a power struggle ensued between Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, and Leon Trotsky, the Minister of Defence, each with highly contrasting visions for the future direction of the country. Trotsky sought to implement a policy of permanent revolution, which was predicated on the notion that the Soviet Union would not be able to survive in a socialist character when surrounded by hostile governments and therefore concluded that it was necessary to actively support similar revolutions in the more advanced capitalist countries. Stalin, however, argued that such a foreign policy would not be feasible with the capabilities then possessed by the Soviet Union and that it would invite the country's destruction by engaging in armed conflict. Rather, Stalin argued that the Soviet Union should, in the meantime, pursue peaceful coexistence and invite foreign investment in order to develop the country's economy and build socialism in one country.
Ultimately, Stalin gained the greatest support within the party, and Trotsky, who was increasingly viewed as a collaborator with outside forces in an effort to depose Stalin, was isolated and subsequently expelled from the party and exiled from the country in 1928. Stalin's policies henceforth would later become collectively known as Stalinism. In 1925, the name of the party was changed to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), reflecting that the republics outside of Russia proper were no longer part of an all-encompassing Russian state. The acronym was usually transliterated as VKP(b), or sometimes VCP(b). Stalin sought to formalize the party's ideological outlook into a philosophical hybrid of the original ideas of Lenin with orthodox Marxism into what would be called Marxism–Leninism. Stalin's position as General Secretary became the top executive position within the party, giving Stalin significant authority over party and state policy.
By the end of the 1920s, diplomatic relations with Western countries were deteriorating to the point that there was a growing fear of another allied attack on the Soviet Union. Within the country, the conditions of the NEP had enabled growing inequalities between increasingly wealthy strata and the remaining poor. The combination of these tensions led the party leadership to conclude that it was necessary for the government's survival to pursue a new policy that would centralize economic activity and accelerate industrialization. To do this, the first five-year plan was implemented in 1928. The plan doubled the industrial workforce, proletarianizing many of the peasants by removing them from their land and assembling them into urban centers. Peasants who remained in agricultural work were also made to have a similarly proletarian relationship to their labor through the policies of collectivization, which turned feudal-style farms into collective farms which would be in a cooperative nature under the direction of the state. These two shifts changed the base of Soviet society towards a more working-class alignment. The plan was fulfilled ahead of schedule in 1932.
The success of industrialization in the Soviet Union led Western countries, such as the
The Soviet Union was the first to warn of the impending danger of invasion from
The
In 1949, the
Post-Stalin years (1953–85)
After Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev rose to the top post by overcoming political adversaries, including Lavrentiy Beria and Georgy Malenkov, in a power struggle.[26] In 1955, Khrushchev achieved the demotion of Malenkov and secured his own position as Soviet leader.[27] Early in his rule and with the support of several members of the Presidium, Khrushchev initiated the Thaw, which effectively ended the Stalinist mass terror of the prior decades and reduced socio-economic oppression considerably.[28] At the 20th Congress held in 1956, Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes, being careful to omit any reference to complicity by any sitting Presidium members.[29] His economic policies, while bringing about improvements, were not enough to fix the fundamental problems of the Soviet economy. The standard of living for ordinary citizens did increase; 108 million people moved into new housing between 1956 and 1965.[30]
Khrushchev's foreign policies led to the Sino-Soviet split, in part a consequence of his public denunciation of Stalin.[31] Khrushchev improved relations with Josip Broz Tito's League of Communists of Yugoslavia but failed to establish the close, party-to-party relations that he wanted.[30] While the Thaw reduced political oppression at home, it led to unintended consequences abroad, such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and unrest in Poland, where the local citizenry now felt confident enough to rebel against Soviet control.[32] Khrushchev also failed to improve Soviet relations with the West, partially because of a hawkish military stance.[32] In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev's position within the party was substantially weakened.[33] Shortly before his eventual ousting, he tried to introduce economic reforms championed by Evsei Liberman, a Soviet economist, which tried to implement market mechanisms into the planned economy.[34]
Khrushchev was ousted on 14 October 1964 in a Central Committee plenum that officially cited his inability to listen to others, his failure in consulting with the members of the Presidium, his establishment of a cult of personality, his economic mismanagement, and his anti-party reforms as the reasons he was no longer fit to remain as head of the party.
The Brezhnev era began with a rejection of
At the 23rd Congress held in 1966, the names of the office of First Secretary and the body of the Presidium reverted to their original names: General Secretary and Politburo, respectively.[40] At the start of his premiership, Kosygin experimented with economic reforms similar to those championed by Malenkov, including prioritizing light industry over heavy industry to increase the production of consumer goods.[41] Similar reforms were introduced in Hungary under the name New Economic Mechanism; however, with the rise to power of Alexander Dubček in Czechoslovakia, who called for the establishment of "socialism with a human face", all non-conformist reform attempts in the Soviet Union were stopped.[42]
During his rule, Brezhnev supported
Andropov, a staunch anti-Stalinist, chaired the KGB during most of Brezhnev's reign.[50] He had appointed several reformers to leadership positions in the KGB, many of whom later became leading officials under Gorbachev.[50] Andropov supported increased openness in the press, particularly regarding the challenges facing the Soviet Union.[51] Andropov was in office briefly, but he appointed a number of reformers, including Yegor Ligachev, Nikolay Ryzhkov and Mikhail Gorbachev, to important positions. He also supported a crackdown on absenteeism and corruption.[51] Andropov had intended to let Gorbachev succeed him in office, but Konstantin Chernenko and his supporters suppressed the paragraph in the letter which called for Gorbachev's elevation.[51] Andropov died on 9 February 1984 and was succeeded by Chernenko.[52] The elderly Cherneko was in poor health throughout his short leadership and was unable to consolidate power; effective control of the party organization remained with Gorbachev.[52] Chernenko died on 10 March 1985 and was succeeded in office by Gorbachev the next day.[52]
Gorbachev and the party's demise (1985–91)
The Politburo did not want another elderly and frail leader after its previous three leaders, and elected Gorbachev as CPSU General Secretary on 11 March 1985, one day after Chernenko's death.[53] When Gorbachev acceded to power, the Soviet Union was stagnating but was stable and might have continued largely unchanged into the 21st century if not for Gorbachev's reforms.[54]
Gorbachev conducted a significant personnel reshuffling of the CPSU leadership, forcing old party conservatives out of office.
In reaction to these changes, a conservative movement gained momentum in 1987 in response to
Gorbachev convened the
Despite the deep-seated opposition to further reform, the CPSU remained hierarchical; the conservatives acceded to Gorbachev's demands in deference to his position as the CPSU General Secretary.
The CPSU's demise began in March 1990, when state bodies eclipsed party elements in power.
On 30 November 1992, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation recognized the ban on the activities of the primary organizations of the Communist Party, formed on a territorial basis, as inconsistent with the Constitution of Russia, but upheld the dissolution of the governing structures of the CPSU and the governing structures of its republican organization—the Communist Party of the RSFSR.[70]
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian adherents to the CPSU tradition, particularly as it existed before Gorbachev, reorganized themselves within the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). Today a wide range of parties in Russia present themselves as successors of CPSU. Several of them have used the name "CPSU". However, the CPRF is generally seen (due to its massive size) as the heir of the CPSU in Russia. Additionally, the CPRF was initially founded as the Communist Party of the Russian SFSR in 1990 (sometime before the abolition of the CPSU) and was seen by critics as a "Russian-nationalist" counterpart to the CPSU.[citation needed]
Governing style
The style of governance in the party alternated between collective leadership and a
Democratic centralism
Democratic centralism is an organizational principle conceived by Lenin.
Lenin believed that democratic centralism safeguarded both party unity and ideological correctness.[71] He conceived of the system after the events of 1917 when several socialist parties "deformed" themselves and actively began supporting nationalist sentiments.[73] Lenin intended that the devotion to policy required by centralism would protect the parties from such revisionist ills and bourgeois deformation of socialism.[73] Lenin supported the notion of a highly centralized vanguard party, in which ordinary party members elected the local party committee, the local party committee elected the regional committee, the regional committee elected the Central Committee, and the Central Committee elected the Politburo, Orgburo, and the Secretariat.[71] Lenin believed that the party needed to be ruled from the center and have at its disposal power to mobilize party members at will.[71] This system was later introduced in communist parties abroad through the Communist International (Comintern).[72]
Vanguardism
A central tenet of Leninism was that of the vanguard party.[74] In a capitalist society, the party was to represent the interests of the working class and all of those who were exploited by capitalism in general; however, it was not to become a part of that class.[74] Lenin decided that the party's sole responsibility was to articulate and plan the long-term interests of the oppressed classes. It was not responsible for the daily grievances of those classes; that was the responsibility of the trade unions.[74] According to Lenin, the party and the oppressed classes could never become one because the party was responsible for leading the oppressed classes to victory.[75] The basic idea was that a small group of organized people could wield power disproportionate to their size with superior organizational skills.[75] Despite this, until the end of his life, Lenin warned of the danger that the party could be taken over by bureaucrats, by a small clique, or by an individual.[75] Toward the end of his life, he criticized the bureaucratic inertia of certain officials and admitted to problems with some of the party's control structures, which were to supervise organizational life.[75]
Organization
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Congress
The Congress, nominally the highest organ of the party, was convened every five years.
Despite delegates to Congresses losing their powers to criticize or remove party leadership, the Congresses functioned as a form of
The Congresses also provided the party leadership with formal legitimacy by providing a mechanism for the election of new members and the retirement of old members who had lost favor.[79] The elections at Congresses were all predetermined and the candidates who stood for seats to the Central Committee and the Central Auditing Commission were approved beforehand by the Politburo and the Secretariat.[79] A Congress could also provide a platform for the announcement of new ideological concepts.[79] For instance, at the 22nd Congress, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would see "communism in twenty years"—[80] a position later retracted.
A Conference, officially referred to as an All-Union Conference, was convened between Congresses by the Central Committee to discuss party policy and to make personnel changes within the Central Committee.[81] 19 conferences were convened during the CPSU's existence.[81] The 19th Congress held in 1952 removed the clause in the party's statute which stipulated that a party Conference could be convened.[81] The clause was reinstated at the 23rd Congress, which was held in 1966.[81]
Central Committee
The Central Committee was a
Under Lenin, the Central Committee functioned much as the Politburo did during the post-Stalin era, serving as the party's governing body.[87] However, as the membership in the Central Committee increased, its role was eclipsed by the Politburo.[87] Between Congresses, the Central Committee functioned as the Soviet leadership's source of legitimacy.[87] The decline in the Central Committee's standing began in the 1920s; it was reduced to a compliant body of the Party leadership during the Great Purge.[87] According to party rules, the Central Committee was to convene at least twice a year to discuss political matters—but not matters relating to military policy.[88] The body remained largely symbolic after Stalin's consolidation; leading party officials rarely attended meetings of the Central Committee.[89]
Central Auditing Commission
The Central Auditing Commission (CAC) was elected by the party Congresses and reported only to the party Congress.[90] It had about as many members as the Central Committee.[90] It was responsible for supervising the expeditious and proper handling of affairs by the central bodies of the Party; it audited the accounts of the Treasury and the enterprises of the Central Committee.[90] It was also responsible for supervising the Central Committee apparatus, making sure that its directives were implemented and that Central Committee directives complied with the party Statute.[90]
Statute
The Statute (also referred to as the Rules, Charter and Constitution) was the party's by-laws and controlled life within the CPSU.
Central Committee apparatus
General Secretary
General Secretary of the Central Committee was the title given to the overall leader of the party. The office was synonymous with the leader of the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1920s. Stalin used the office of General Secretary to create a strong power base for himself. The office was formally titled First Secretary between 1953 and 1966.
Politburo
The Political Bureau (Politburo), known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, was the highest party organ when the Congress and the Central Committee were not in session.
The Politburo was abolished and replaced by a Presidium in 1952 at the 19th Congress.
Until 1990, the CPSU General Secretary acted as the informal chairman of the Politburo.
To be elected to the Politburo, a member had to serve in the Central Committee.[105] The Central Committee elected the Politburo in the aftermath of a party Congress.[105] Members of the Central Committee were given a predetermined list of candidates for the Politburo having only one candidate for each seat; for this reason, the election of the Politburo was usually passed unanimously.[105] The greater the power held by the sitting CPSU General Secretary, the higher the chance that the Politburo membership would be approved.[105]
Secretariat
The Secretariat headed the CPSU's central apparatus and was solely responsible for the development and implementation of party policies.[106] It was legally empowered to take over the duties and functions of the Central Committee when it was not in the plenum (did not hold a meeting).[106] Many members of the Secretariat concurrently held a seat in the Politburo.[107] According to a Soviet textbook on party procedures, the Secretariat's role was that of "leadership of current work, chiefly in the realm of personnel selection and in the organization of the verification of fulfillment of party-state decisions".[107] "Selections of personnel" (Russian: podbor kadrov) in this instance meant the maintenance of general standards and the criteria for selecting various personnel. "Verification of fulfillment" (Russian: proverka ispolneniia) of party and state decisions meant that the Secretariat instructed other bodies.[108]
The powers of the Secretariat were weakened under Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Central Committee Commissions took over the functions of the Secretariat in 1988.[109] Yegor Ligachev, a Secretariat member, said that the changes completely destroyed the Secretariat's hold on power and made the body almost superfluous.[109] Because of this, the Secretariat rarely met during the next two years.[109] It was revitalized at the 28th Party Congress in 1990, and the Deputy General Secretary became the official head of the Secretariat.[110]
Orgburo
The Organizational Bureau, or Orgburo, existed from 1919 to 1952 and was one of three leading bodies of the party when the Central Committee was not in session.[97] It was responsible for "organizational questions, the recruitment, and allocation of personnel, the coordination of activities of the party, government and social organizations (e.g., trade unions and youth organizations), improvement to the party's structure, the distribution of information and reports within the party".[105] The 19th Congress abolished the Orgburo and its duties and responsibilities were taken over by the Secretariat.[105] At the beginning, the Orgburo held three meetings a week and reported to the Central Committee every second week.[111] Lenin described the relation between the Politburo and the Orgburo as "the Orgburo allocates forces, while the Politburo decides policy".[112] A decision of the Orgburo was implemented by the Secretariat.[112] However, the Secretariat could make decisions in the Orgburo's name without consulting its members, but if one Orgburo member objected to a Secretariat resolution, the resolution would not be implemented.[112] In the 1920s, if the Central Committee could not convene the Politburo and the Orgburo would hold a joint session in its place.[112]
Control Commission
The Central Control Commission (CCC) functioned as the party's supreme court.[113] The CCC was established at the 9th All-Russian Conference in September 1920, but rules organizing its procedure were not enacted before the 10th Congress.[114] The 10th Congress formally established the CCC on all party levels and stated that it could only be elected at a party congress or a party conference.[114] The CCC and the CCs were formally independent but had to make decisions through the party committees at their level, which led them in practice to lose their administrative independence.[114] At first, the primary responsibility of the CCs was to respond to party complaints, focusing mostly on party complaints of factionalism and bureaucratism.[115] At the 11th Congress, the brief of the CCs was expanded; it became responsible for overseeing party discipline.[116] In a bid to further centralize the powers of the CCC, a Presidium of the CCC, which functioned in a similar manner to the Politburo in relation to the Central Committee, was established in 1923.[117] At the 18th Congress, party rules regarding the CCC were changed; it was now elected by the Central Committee and was subordinate to the Central Committee.[118]
CCC members could not concurrently be members of the Central Committee.[119] To create an organizational link between the CCC and other central-level organs, the 9th All-Russian Conference created the joint CC–CCC plenums.[119] The CCC was a powerful organ; the 10th Congress allowed it to expel full and candidate Central Committee members and members of their subordinate organs if two-thirds of attendants at a CC–CCC plenum voted for such.[119] At its first such session in 1921, Lenin tried to persuade the joint plenum to expel Alexander Shliapnikov from the party; instead of expelling him, Shliapnikov was given a severe reprimand.[119]
Departments
The leader of a department was usually given the title "head" (Russian: zaveduiuschchii).[120] In practice, the Secretariat had a major say in the running of the departments; for example, five of eleven secretaries headed their own departments in 1978.[121] Normally, specific secretaries were given supervising duties over one or more departments.[121] Each department established its own cells—called sections—which specialized in one or more fields.[122] During the Gorbachev era, a variety of departments made up the Central Committee apparatus.[123] The Party Building and Cadre Work Department assigned party personnel in the nomenklatura system.[123] The State and Legal Department supervised the armed forces, KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the trade unions, and the Procuracy.[123] Before 1989, the Central Committee had several departments, but some were abolished that year.[123] Among these departments was the Economics Department that was responsible for the economy as a whole, one for machine building, one for the chemical industry, etc.[123] The party abolished these departments to remove itself from the day-to-day management of the economy in favor of government bodies and a greater role for the market, as a part of the perestroika process.[123] In their place, Gorbachev called for the creations of commissions with the same responsibilities as departments, but giving more independence from the state apparatus. This change was approved at the 19th Conference, which was held in 1988.[124] Six commissions were established by late 1988.[124]
Pravda
Higher Party School
The Higher Party School (HPS) was the organ responsible for teaching cadres in the Soviet Union.[131] It was the successor of the Communist Academy, which was established in 1918.[131] The HPS was established in 1939 as the Moscow Higher Party School and it offered its students a two-year training course for becoming a CPSU official.[132] It was reorganized in 1956 to that it could offer more specialized ideological training.[132] In 1956, the school in Moscow was opened for students from socialist countries outside the Soviet Union.[132] The Moscow Higher Party School was the party school with the highest standing.[132] The school itself had eleven faculties until a 1972 Central Committee resolution demanded a reorganization of the curriculum.[133] The first regional HPS outside Moscow was established in 1946[133] and by the early 1950s there were 70 Higher Party Schools.[133] During the reorganization drive of 1956, Khrushchev closed 13 of them and reclassified 29 as inter-republican and inter-oblast schools.[133]
Lower-level organization
Republican and local organization
The lowest organ above the
Day-to-day responsibility of the raikom was handed over to a Politburo, which usually composed of 12 members.[134] The district-level First Secretary chaired the meetings of the local Politburo and the raikom, and was the direct link between the district and the higher party echelons.[134] The First Secretary was responsible for the smooth running of operations.[134] The raikom was headed by the local apparat—the local agitation department or industry department.[135] A raikom usually had no more than 4 or 5 departments, each of which was responsible for overseeing the work of the state sector but would not interfere in their work.[135]
This system remained identical at all other levels of the CPSU hierarchy.[135] The other levels were cities, oblasts (regions) and republics.[135] The district-level elected delegates to a conference held at least every three years to elect the party committee.[135] The only difference between the oblast and the district level was that the oblast had its own Secretariat and had more departments at its disposal.[135] The oblast's party committee in turn elected delegates to the republican-level Congress, which was held every five years.[136] The Congress then elected the Central Committee of the republic, which in turn elected a First Secretary and a Politburo.[136] Until 1990, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the only republic that did not have its own republican branch, being instead represented by the CPSU Central Committee.
Primary party organizations
The primary party organization (PPO) was the lowest level in the CPSU hierarchy.[137] PPOs were organized cells consisting of three or more members.[137] A PPO could exist anywhere; for example, in a factory or a student dormitory.[137] They functioned as the party's "eyes and ears" at the lowest level and were used to mobilize support for party policies.[137] All CPSU members had to be a member of a local PPO.[138] The size of a PPO varied from three people to several hundred, depending upon its setting.[138] In a large enterprise, a PPO usually had several hundred members.[138] In such cases, the PPO was divided into bureaus based upon production-units.[138] Each PPO was led by an executive committee and an executive committee secretary.[138] Each executive committee is responsible for the PPO executive committee and its secretary.[138] In small PPOs, members met periodically to mainly discuss party policies, ideology, or practical matters. In such a case, the PPO secretary was responsible for collecting party dues, reporting to higher organs, and maintaining the party records.[138] A secretary could be elected democratically through a secret ballot, but that was not often the case; in 1979, only 88 out of the over 400,000 PPOs were elected in this fashion.[138] The remainder were chosen by a higher party organ and ratified by the general meetings of the PPO.[138] The PPO general meeting was responsible for electing delegates to the party conference at either the district- or town-level, depending on where the PPO was located.[139]
Membership
Membership of the party was not open. To become a party member, one had to be approved by various committees, and one's past was closely scrutinized. As generations grew up having known nothing before the Soviet Union, party membership became something one generally achieved after passing a series of stages. Children would join the
In 1918, party membership was approximately 200,000. In the late 1920s under Stalin, the party engaged in an intensive recruitment campaign, the "Lenin Levy", resulting in new members referred to as the Lenin Enrolment,[140] from both the working class and rural areas. This represented 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. In 1925, the party had 1,025,000 members in a Soviet population of 147 million. In 1927, membership had risen to 1,200,000. During the collectivization campaign and industrialization campaigns of the first five-year plan from 1929 to 1933, party membership grew rapidly to approximately 3.5 million members. However, party leaders suspected that the mass intake of new members had allowed "social-alien elements" to penetrate the party's ranks and document verifications of membership ensued in 1933 and 1935, removing supposedly unreliable members. Meanwhile, the party closed its ranks to new members from 1933 to November 1936. Even after the reopening of party recruiting, membership fell to 1.9 million by 1939.[citation needed] Nicholas DeWitt gives 2.307 million members in 1939, including candidate members, compared with 1.535 million in 1929 and 6.3 million in 1947. In 1986, the CPSU had over 19 million members—approximately 10% of the Soviet Union's adult population. Over 44% of party members were classified as industrial workers and 12% as collective farmers. The CPSU had party organizations in 14 of the Soviet Union's 15 republics. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic itself had no separate Communist Party until 1990 because the CPSU controlled affairs there directly.[citation needed]
Komsomol
The All-Union Leninist Communist Youth League, commonly referred to as Komsomol, was the party's youth wing.[141] The Komsomol acted under the direction of the CPSU Central Committee.[141] It was responsible for indoctrinating youths in communist ideology and organizing social events.[142] It was closely modeled on the CPSU; nominally the highest body was the Congress, followed by the Central Committee, Secretariat and the Politburo.[141] The Komsomol participated in nationwide policy-making by appointing members to the collegiums of the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education, the Ministry of Education and the State Committee for Physical Culture and Sports.[141] The organization's newspaper was the Komsomolskaya Pravda.[143] The First Secretary and the Second Secretary were commonly members of the Central Committee but were never elected to the Politburo.[143] However, at the republican level, several Komsomol first secretaries were appointed to the Politburo.[143]
Ideology
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism was the cornerstone of Soviet ideology.[7] It explained and legitimized the CPSU's right to rule while explaining its role as a vanguard party.[7] For instance, the ideology explained that the CPSU's policies, even if they were unpopular, were correct because the party was enlightened.[7] It was represented as the only truth in Soviet society; the party rejected the notion of multiple truths.[7] Marxism–Leninism was used to justify CPSU rule and Soviet policy, but it was not used as a means to an end.[7] The relationship between ideology and decision-making was at best ambivalent; most policy decisions were made in the light of the continued, permanent development of Marxism–Leninism.[144] Marxism–Leninism as the only truth could not—by its very nature—become outdated.[144]
Despite having evolved over the years, Marxism–Leninism had several central tenets.
Marxism–Leninism believed in the feasibility of a
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organization of a revolutionary vanguard party and the achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat as a political prelude to the establishment of the socialist mode of production developed by Lenin.[149] Since Karl Marx rarely, if ever wrote about how the socialist mode of production would function, these tasks were left for Lenin to solve.[149] Lenin's main contribution to Marxist thought is the concept of the vanguard party of the working class.[149] He conceived the vanguard party as a highly knit, centralized organization that was led by intellectuals rather than by the working class itself.[149] The CPSU was open only to a small number of workers because the workers in Russia still had not developed class consciousness and needed to be educated to reach such a state.[149] Lenin believed that the vanguard party could initiate policies in the name of the working class even if the working class did not support them. The vanguard party would know what was best for the workers because the party functionaries had attained consciousness.[149]
Lenin, in light of the
Stalinism
Stalinism, while not an ideology per se, refers to Stalin's thoughts and policies.
We stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the mightiest and most powerful authority of all forms of State that have ever existed. The highest development of the State power for the withering away of State power —this is the Marxian formula. Is this contradictory? Yes, it is contradictory. But this contradiction springs from life itself and reflects completely Marxist dialectic.[154]
At the 1939 18th Congress, Stalin abandoned the idea that the state would wither away. In its place, he expressed confidence that the state would exist, even if the Soviet Union reached communism, as long as it was encircled by capitalism.
Concepts
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Either the dictatorship of the landowners and capitalists or the dictatorship of the proletariat ... There is no middle course ... There is no middle course anywhere in the world, nor can there be.
— Lenin, claiming that people had only two choices between two different, but distinct class dictatorships[156]
Lenin, supporting Marx's theory of the state, believed democracy to be unattainable anywhere in the world before the proletariat seized power.
Marx and Lenin did not care if a bourgeois state was ruled in accordance with a
Bukharin and Trotsky agreed with Lenin; both said that the revolution had destroyed the old but had failed to create anything new.[162] Lenin had now concluded that the dictatorship of the proletariat would not alter the relationship of power between men, but would rather "transform their productive relations so that, in the long run, the realm of necessity could be overcome and, with that, genuine social freedom realized".[163] From 1920 to 1921, Soviet leaders and ideologists began differentiating between socialism and communism; hitherto the two terms had been used interchangeably and used to explain the same things.[163] From then, the two terms had different meanings; Russia was in transition from capitalism to socialism—referred to interchangeably under Lenin as the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialism was the intermediate stage to communism and communism was considered the last stage of social development.[163] By now, the party leaders believed that because of Russia's backward state, universal mass participation and true democracy could only take form in the last stage.[163]
[Because] the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, so corrupted in parts ... that an organization taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class.
— Lenin, explaining why the regime had become increasingly dictatorial[164]
In early Bolshevik discourse, the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" was of little significance, and the few times it was mentioned it was likened to the form of government which had existed in the Paris Commune.[163] However, with the ensuing Russian Civil War and the social and material devastation that followed, its meaning altered from commune-type democracy to rule by iron-discipline.[165] By now, Lenin had concluded that only a proletarian regime as oppressive as its opponents could survive in this world.[166] The powers previously bestowed upon the Soviets were now given to the Council of People's Commissars, the central government, which was, in turn, to be governed by "an army of steeled revolutionary Communists [by Communists he referred to the Party]".[164] In a letter to Gavril Myasnikov in late 1920, Lenin explained his new interpretation of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat":[167]
Dictatorship means nothing more nor less than authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force. The term 'dictatorship' has no other meaning but this.[167]
Lenin justified these policies by claiming that all states were class states by nature and that these states were maintained through
Anti-imperialism
Imperialism is capitalism at the stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts as begun; in which divisions of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
— Lenin, citing the main features of capitalism in the age of imperialism in Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism[173]
The Marxist theory on imperialism was conceived by Lenin in his book,
Lenin did not know when the imperialist stage of capitalism began; he said it would be foolish to look for a specific year, however, said it began at the beginning of the 20th century (at least in Europe).[173] Lenin believed that the economic crisis of 1900 accelerated and intensified the concentration of industry and banking, which led to the transformation of the finance capital connection to industry into the monopoly of large banks.[176] In Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin wrote; "the twentieth century marks the turning point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital".[176] Lenin defines imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism.[177]
The 1986 Party Program claimed the Tsarist regime collapsed because the contradictions of imperialism, which he held to be the gap "between the social nature of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation" manifesting itself in wars,
Peaceful coexistence
The loss by imperialism of its dominating role in world affairs and the utmost expansion of the sphere in which the laws of socialist foreign policy operate are a distinctive feature of the present stage of social development. The main direction of this development is toward even greater changes in the correlation of forces in the world arena in favor of socialism.
— Nikolay Inozemtsev, a Soviet foreign policy analyst, referring to series of events (which he believed) would lead to the ultimate victory of socialism[179]
"Peaceful coexistence" was an ideological concept introduced under Khrushchev's rule.[180] While the concept has been interpreted by fellow communists as proposing an end to the conflict between the systems of capitalism and socialism, Khrushchev saw it as a continuation of the conflict in every area except in the military field.[181] The concept said that the two systems were developed "by way of diametrically opposed laws", which led to "opposite principles in foreign policy".[179]
Peaceful coexistence was steeped in Leninist and Stalinist thought.
The emphasis on peaceful coexistence did not mean that the Soviet Union accepted a static world with clear lines.[179] It continued to uphold the creed that socialism was inevitable and they sincerely believed that the world had reached a stage in which the "correlations of forces" were moving towards socialism.[179] With the establishment of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and Asia, Soviet foreign policy planners believed that capitalism had lost its dominance as an economic system.[179]
Socialism in One Country
The concept of "Socialism in One Country" was conceived by Stalin in his struggle against Leon Trotsky and his concept of
According to Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev supported the resolution of the 14th Conference held in 1925, which stated that "we cannot complete the building of socialism due to our technological backwardness".[183] Despite this cynical attitude, Zinoviev and Kamenev believed that a defective form of socialism could be constructed.[183] At the 14th Conference, Stalin reiterated his position that socialism in one country was feasible despite the capitalist blockade of the Soviet Union.[184] After the conference, Stalin wrote "Concerning the Results of the XIV Conference of the RCP(b)", in which he stated that the peasantry would not turn against the socialist system because they had a self-interest in preserving it.[184] Stalin said the contradictions which arose within the peasantry during the socialist transition could "be overcome by our own efforts".[184] He concluded that the only viable threat to socialism in the Soviet Union was a military intervention.[185]
In late 1925, Stalin received a letter from a party official which stated that his position of "Socialism in One Country" was in contradiction with
Reasons for demise
Western view
There were few, if any, who believed that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse by 1985.[189] The economy was stagnating, but stable enough for the Soviet Union to continue into the 21st century. The political situation was calm because of twenty years of systematic repression against any threat to the country and one-party rule, and the Soviet Union was in its peak of influence in world affairs.[189] The immediate causes for the Soviet Union's dissolution were the policies and thoughts of Mikhail Gorbachev, the CPSU General Secretary.[189] His policies of perestroika and glasnost tried to revitalize the Soviet economy and the social and political culture of the country.[189] Throughout his rule, he put more emphasis on democratizing the Soviet Union because he believed it had lost its moral legitimacy to rule.[189] These policies led to the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and indirectly destabilized Gorbachev's and the CPSU's control over the Soviet Union.[190] Archie Brown said:[190]
The expectations of, again most notably, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians were enormously enhanced by what they saw happening in the 'outer empire' [Eastern Europe], and they began to believe that they could remove themselves from the 'inner empire'. In truth, a democratized Soviet Union was incompatible with denial of the Baltic states' independence for, to the extent that those Soviet republics became democratic, their opposition to remaining in a political entity whose center was Moscow would become increasingly evident. Yet, it was not preordained that the entire Soviet Union would break up.[190]
However, Brown said that the system did not need to collapse or to do so in the way it did.[190] The democratization from above weakened the party's control over the country and put it on the defensive.[190] Brown added that a different leader than Gorbachev would probably have oppressed the opposition and continued with economic reform.[190] Nonetheless, Gorbachev accepted that the people sought a different road and consented to the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991.[190] He said that because of its peaceful collapse, the fall of Soviet communism is "one of the great success stories of 20th-century politics".[190] According to Lars T. Lih, the Soviet Union collapsed because people stopped believing in its ideology. He wrote:[191]
When in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed not with a bang but a whimper, this unexpected outcome was partly the result of the previous disenchantments of the narrative of class leadership. The Soviet Union had always been based on the fervent belief in this narrative in its various permutations. When the binding power of the narrative dissolved, the Soviet Union itself dissolved.[191]
According to the Chinese Communist Party
The first research into the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were very simple and did not take into account several factors.[192] However, these examinations became more advanced by the 1990s, and unlike most Western scholarship, which focuses on the role of Gorbachev and his reform efforts, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) examined "core (political) life and death issues" so that it could learn from them and not make the same mistakes.[193] Following the CPSU's demise and the Soviet Union's collapse, the CCP's analysis began examining systematic causes.[194] Several leading CCP officials began hailing Khrushchev's rule, saying that he was the first reformer and that if he had continued after 1964, the Soviet Union would not have witnessed the Era of Stagnation begun under Brezhnev and continued under Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.[195] The main economic failure was that the political leadership did not pursue any reforms to tackle the economic malaise that had taken hold, dismissing certain techniques as capitalist, and never disentangling the planned economy from socialism.[196] Xu Zhixin from the CASS Institute of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia, argued that Soviet planners laid too much emphasis on heavy industry, which led to shortages of consumer goods. Unlike his counterparts, Xu argued that the shortages of consumer goods were not an error but "was a consciously planned feature of the system".[196] Other CPSU failures were pursuing the policy of state socialism, the high spending on the military-industrial complex, a low tax base, and the subsidizing of the economy.[196] The CCP argued that when Gorbachev came to power and introduced his economic reforms, they were "too little, too late, and too fast".[197]
In my opinion, the fundamental cause of the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and East European countries at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s was the loss of dynamism of the Stalin–Soviet Socialist Model ... The demerits of this model were institutional and fundamental—not a single reform after Stalin's death brought fundamental changes to the Stalin–Soviet Socialist Model. This model, with its problems and contradictions accumulating by day, was finally in crisis, and the people of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe lost their confidence in it. The [only] way out was to abandon the Stalin–Soviet Socialist Model and seek another road for social development.
While most CCP researchers criticize the CPSU's economic policies, many have criticized what they see as "Soviet totalitarianism".
While the CCP concur with Gorbachev's assessment that the CPSU needed internal reform, they do not agree on how it was implemented, criticizing his idea of "humanistic and democratic socialism", of negating the leading role of the CPSU, of negating Marxism, of negating the analysis of class contradictions and class struggle, and of negating the "ultimate socialist goal of realizing communism".[202] Unlike the other Soviet leaders, Gorbachev is criticized for pursuing the wrong reformist policies and for being too flexible and too rightist.[202] The CCP Organization Department said, "What Gorbachev in fact did was not to transform the CPSU by correct principles—indeed the Soviet Communist Party needed transformation—but instead he, step-by-step, and ultimately, eroded the ruling party's dominance in ideological, political and organizational aspects".[202]
The CPSU was also criticized for not taking enough care in building the primary party organization and not having inner-party democracy.
Electoral history
Presidential election
Election | Party candidate | Votes | % | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
1990 | Mikhail Gorbachev | 1,329 | 72.9% | Elected |
Supreme Soviet elections
Election | Soviet of the Union | Soviet of Nationalities | Position | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | |||
1937 | Joseph Stalin | 89,844,271 | 99.3% | 461 / 569
|
89,063,169 | 99.4% | 409 / 574
|
1st | 1st | ||
1946 | 100,621,225 | 99.2% | 576 / 682
|
115 | 100,603,567 | 99.2% | 509 / 657
|
100 | 1st | 1st | |
1950 | 110,788,377 | 99.7% | 580 / 678
|
4 | 110,782,009 | 99.7% | 519 / 638
|
10 | 1st | 1st | |
1954 | Nikita Khrushchev | 120,479,249 | 99.8% | 565 / 708
|
15 | 120,539,860 | 99.8% | 485 / 639
|
34 | 1st | 1st |
1958 | 133,214,652 | 99.6% | 563 / 738
|
2 | 133,431,524 | 99.7% | 485 / 640
|
1st | 1st | ||
1962 | 139,210,431 | 99.5% | 604 / 791
|
41 | 139,391,455 | 99.6% | 490 / 750
|
5 | 1st | 1st | |
1966 | Leonid Brezhnev | 143,570,976 | 99.8% | 573 / 767
|
31 | 143,595,678 | 99.8% | 568 / 750
|
78 | 1st | 1st |
1970 | 152,771,739 | 99.7% | 562 / 767
|
11 | 152,843,228 | 99.8% | 534 / 750
|
34 | 1st | 1st | |
1974 | 161,355,959 | 99.8% | 562 / 767
|
161,443,605 | 99.8% | 534 / 750
|
1st | 1st | |||
1979 | 174,734,459 | 99.9% | 549 / 750
|
13 | 174,770,398 | 99.9% | 526 / 750
|
8 | 1st | 1st | |
1984 | Konstantin Chernenko | 183,897,278 | 99.94% | 551 / 750
|
2 | 183,892,271 | 99.95% | 521 / 750
|
5 | 1st | 1st |
See also
Communist parties within the Warsaw Pact
- Bulgarian Communist Party
- Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
- Socialist Unity Party of Germany
- Hungarian Working People's Party
- Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party
- Polish United Workers' Party
- Romanian Communist Party
Other ruling communist parties
- People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
- Party of Labour of Albania
- People's Revolutionary Party of Benin
- Communist Party of Kampuchea
- Chinese Communist Party
- Communist Party of Cuba
- Workers' Party of Ethiopia
- New Jewel Movement
- Workers' Party of Korea
- Lao People's Revolutionary Party
- Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party
- Communist Party of Vietnam
- League of Communists of Yugoslavia
Footnotes
Notes
- ^ De facto Presiding member of the Central Committee (1912-1922, 1952-1953)
General Secretary (1922-1952, 1966-1991)
Secretary (1953)
First Secretary (1953-1966) - ^
- August 1903 (faction of the RSDLP)
- January 1912 (split with RSDLP)
- May 1917 (separate VII congress held)
- 8 March 1918 (official name change)
- ^ "Workers of the world, unite!" is the most common English translation of the original phrase in German: "Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch!" The translation of the phrase in Russian is also the translation of the original phrase in German: "Proletarians of all nations, unite!"
- ^ Russian: Интернациона́л, tr. Internatsionál
- ^ Used from 1939 to 1952
- ^ Russian: Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза, tr. Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskovo Soyuza, IPA: [kəmʊnʲɪsʲˈtʲitɕɪskəjə ˈpartʲɪjə sɐˈvʲetskəvə sɐˈjuzə]. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС or KPSS.
- ^ The Soviet Republics of Armenia, Estonia, and Georgia all boycotted the 1991 referendum.
Citations
- ^ "Указ Президента РСФСР от 6 ноября 1991 г. № 169 «О деятельности КПСС и КП РСФСР»".
- ISBN 9780719060441.
- ^ Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher (1980). The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers. pp. 242–249
- ^ Britannica Komsomol article
- ISBN 0300084803
- ^ White, Pravda & Gitelman 1990, p. 68.
- ^ a b c d e f Sakwa 1990, p. 206.
- ISBN 978-0761426288.
- ISBN 978-0275947637.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Left". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 April 2009. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
... communism is a more radical leftist ideology.
- JSTOR 128810. "The Soviet policy of state atheism (gosateizm), albeit inconsistently applied, remains a major goal of official ideology. Massive state resources have been expended not only to prevent the implanting of religious belief in nonbelievers but also to eradicate 'prerevolutionary remnants' already existing. The regime is not merely passively committed to a godless polity but takes an aggressive stance of official forced atheization. Thus a major task of the police apparatus is the persecution of forms of religious practice. Not surprisingly, the Committee for State Security (KGB) is reported to have a division dealing specifically with 'churchmen and sectarians'."
- ^ 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
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- ^ Healey, Denis. "The Cominform and World Communism". International Affairs. 24, 3: 339–349.
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- ^ Trotsky, Leon (1934). History of the Russian Revolution. London: The Camelot Press ltd. p. 808.
- ^ a b Suny 2006, p. xvi.
- ^ Suny 2006, pp. 22–24.
- ^ a b Suny 2006, p. xvii.
- ^ "Recognition of the Soviet Union, 1933". Office of the Historian. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
- ^ Taubman 2006, pp. 274–275.
- ^ Taubman 2006, p. 276.
- ^ Taubman 2006, pp. 274–276.
- ^ Taubman 2006, pp. 268–269.
- ^ a b Taubman 2006, pp. 278–280.
- ^ Taubman 2006, pp. 282–284.
- ^ a b Taubman 2006, pp. 284–287.
- ^ Taubman 2006, pp. 288–289.
- ^ Taubman 2006, p. 289.
- ^ Taubman 2006, p. 289–290.
- ^ Hanson 2006, p. 292.
- ^ Hanson 2006, pp. 292–296.
- ^ Hanson 2006, pp. 296–299.
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- ^ Hanson 2006, p. 299.
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- ^ Hanson 2006, pp. 310–314.
- ^ Hanson 2006, p. 313.
- ^ Hanson 2006, p. 315.
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- ^ a b c Brown 2006, p. 317.
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- ^ Brown 2006, p. 319.
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- ^ a b c Brown 2006, p. 320.
- ^ Brown 2006, p. 322.
- ^ a b Brown 2006, p. 323.
- ^ Brown 2006, p. 325.
- ^ a b c d e f Brown 2006, p. 326.
- ^ a b c d e Brown 2006, p. 327.
- ^ Brown 2006, pp. 327–328.
- ^ a b Brown 2006, p. 328.
- ^ a b c d e Brown 2006, p. 329.
- ^ a b c d Brown 2006, p. 330.
- ^ a b c Brown 2006, pp. 344–348.
- ^ Brown 2006, pp. 344–349.
- ^ "Постановление Верховного Совета СССР от 29 августа 1991 г. № 2371-I «О ситуации, возникшей в стране в связи с имевшим место государственным переворотом»" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2021. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
- ^ "Указ Президента РСФСР от 6 ноября 1991 г. № 169 «О деятельности КПСС и КП РСФСР»".
- ^ Brown 2006, p. 349.
- ^ "Постановление Конституционного Суда РФ от 30 ноября 1992 г. N 9-П "По делу о проверке конституционности Указов Президента РФ от 23 августа 1991 года N 79 "О приостановлении деятельности Коммунистической партии РСФСР", от 25 августа 1991 года N 90 "Об имуществе КПСС и Коммунистической партии РСФСР" и от 6 ноября 1991 года N 169 "О деятельности КПСС и КП РСФСР", а также о проверке конституционности КПСС и КП РСФСР"".
- ^ a b c d e f g Harding 1996, p. 186.
- ^ a b Harding 1996, p. 187.
- ^ a b Harding 1996, p. 183–184.
- ^ a b c Harding 1996, p. 179.
- ^ a b c d Harding 1996, p. 181.
- ^ Smith 1988, p. 71.
- ^ a b c d Zimmerman 1977, p. 1.
- ^ a b c Zimmerman 1977, p. 2.
- ^ a b c Zimmerman 1977, p. 3.
- ^ Evans 1993, pp. 62–64.
- ^ a b c d Staff writer. Всесоюзная конференция КПСС [All-Union Conference of the CPSU]. Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian). bse.sci-lib.com. Retrieved 27 March 2014.
- ^ a b Fainsod & Hough 1979, p. 455.
- ^ Fainsod & Hough 1979, pp. 455–456.
- ^ a b Fainsod & Hough 1979, p. 458.
- ^ a b c d Getty 1987, pp. 25–26.
- ^ Getty 1987, p. 27.
- ^ a b c d Sakwa 1998, p. 93.
- ^ Sakwa 1998, p. 94.
- ^ Fainsod & Hough 1979, p. 462.
- ^ a b c d Staff writer. Центральная ревизионная комиссия КПСС [Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU]. Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian). bse.sci-lib.com. Retrieved 27 March 2014.
- ^ a b c d Simons 1984, p. 393.
- ^ Simons 1984, p. 394.
- ^ a b Simons 1984, p. 396.
- ^ Simons 1984, p. 398.
- ^ Simons 1984, pp. 399–404.
- ^ Simons 1984, pp. 404–408.
- ^ a b Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, p. 85.
- ^ a b Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, p. 98.
- ^ a b c d Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, p. 99.
- ^ Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, pp. 37–38.
- ^ Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, p. 38.
- ^ Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, p. 45.
- ^ a b c d e Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, p. 101.
- ^ a b c d Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, p. 102.
- ^ a b c d e f Lowenhardt, van Ree & Ozinga 1992, p. 87.
- ^ a b Getty 1987, p. 26.
- ^ a b Fainsod & Hough 1979, p. 430.
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- ^ Eaton 2004, p. 58.
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- ^ Gill 2002, pp. 167.
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- ^ a b c d Matthews 1983, p. 186.
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- ^ a b c d e f Smith 1988, p. 69.
- ^ a b Smith 1988, p. 70.
- ^ a b c d Smith 1988, p. 65.
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- ^ a b c Smith 1991, p. 81.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Smith 1991, p. 82.
- ^ Smith 1991, p. 83.
- ^ Sakwa 1990, pp. 206–212.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Smith 1991, p. 76.
- ^ Smith 1991, p. 77.
- ^ Smith 1991, p. 767.
- ^ a b c d e f Smith 1991, p. 78.
- ^ Smith 1991, pp. 78–79.
- ^ a b c d e f Smith 1991, p. 79.
- ^ a b c d van Ree 2003, p. 133.
- ^ a b c Harding 1996, pp. 154–155.
- ^ a b c Harding 1996, p. 155.
- ^ Harding 1996, p. 156.
- ^ Harding 1996, pp. 155–156.
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- ^ a b c Harding 1996, p. 158.
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- ^ a b c d e Harding 1996, p. 159.
- ^ a b Harding 1996, p. 161.
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- ^ a b c d e Harding 1996, p. 162.
- ^ Harding 1996, pp. 162–163.
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- ^ a b c McDonough 1995, p. 339.
- ^ a b c d e McDonough 1995, pp. 344–347.
- ^ a b McDonough 1995, p. 353.
- ^ McDonough 1995, p. 354.
- ^ "Program of the CPSU, 27th Congress, 1986 – Part One". eurodos.home.xs4all.nl. Archived from the original on 27 May 2019. Retrieved 12 January 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Evans 1993, p. 72.
- ^ Evans 1993, p. 71.
- ^ Evans 1993, pp. 71–72.
- ^ a b van Ree 2003, p. 126.
- ^ a b c d e f van Ree 2003, p. 127.
- ^ a b c van Ree 2003, p. 128.
- ^ a b c d e van Ree 2003, p. 129.
- ^ van Ree 2003, pp. 129–130.
- ^ van Ree 2003, p. 130.
- ^ van Ree 2003, pp. 134–135.
- ^ a b c d e Aron, Leon (20 June 2011). "Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 11 April 2014. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- ^ British Broadcasting Corporation. BBC Online. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- ^ a b Lih 2006, p. 731.
- ^ Shambaugh 2008, pp. 49–51.
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- ^ Shambaugh 2008, p. 60.
- ^ Shambaugh 2008, pp. 60–61.
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