Encyclopedia of Russian History

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ciples applied within member parties as well as to

each party’s relation to the Comintern. All decisions

made by Comintern congresses and the Comintern

Executive Committee (ECCI) were binding on mem-

ber parties.

The Comintern’s primary function was to iden-

tify and enact the proper strategies and tactics to

promote international socialist revolution. During

its existence, it enacted several policies to achieve

that goal. Until 1921, it advocated the united front

policy, the goals of which were to win workers

away from Social Democratic and radical parties

and to seize power in their respective countries. A

belief in inevitable revolution drove this policy. But

in 1921 the prospects for revolution ebbed, and the

Comintern adopted a more flexible set of united

front tactics, which allowed for conditional coop-

eration with Social Democratic parties, preserving

the goal of extending Communist Party influence

among workers.

At its Sixth Congress in 1928, the Comintern

adopted a hard-line policy when it dubbed Social

Democrats and reform socialists the main enemy

and “social fascists.” Any collaboration with “so-

cial fascists” became unthinkable. The Comintern

urged workers and unions to reject and destroy So-

cial Democrats. Known as the Third Period, this

policy proved disastrous.

The Seventh Congress in 1935 rejected this pol-

icy and resolved that fascism was the primary en-

emy. It required member parties to drop their

attacks on reformists and to forge broad antifas-

cist coalitions. This policy, the Popular Front, lifted

the Comintern’s fortunes. Its call for a broad–

based, antifascist struggle won many supporters

worldwide. Popular Front coalition governments

came to power in France and Spain in 1936. The

Popular Front’s victory in Spain triggered the

Spanish Civil War, during which the Comintern

organized the International Brigades, a ragtag

COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL

303

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

General Staff of the Communist International, July 1917. © U

NDERWOOD

/CORBIS

army of international volunteers who flocked there

to fight fascism.

Following the Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression

Pact of August 1939, the Comintern abandoned its

antifascist policy and announced that communists

should not support the imperialist war in Europe.

After the Nazi invasion of the USSR on June 22,

1941, Comintern policy changed again, calling for

antifascist activities to defend the USSR. In 1943,

on Josef Stalin’s orders, the Comintern disbanded.

Although the Comintern was a collective of fra-

ternal communist parties, the Communist Party

(CPSU) wielded unrivalled influence. It did so be-

cause it was the only communist party to have

seized power, it had organized the Comintern, and

it provided the Comintern and member parties with

political, organizational, and financial assistance.

The Twenty–One Points reflected the CPSU’s orga-

nizational and operative principles. Party leaders

prepared many of the Comintern’s major decisions

and often decided which tactics and strategies the

Comintern would pursue and whom to remove

from and appoint to the leadership bodies of the

Comintern and fraternal parties.

By the late 1920s the CPSU’s values and be-

haviors had infused the Comintern. A variety of

factors accounted for this. Within the ECCI appa-

ratus there were CPSU committees. The removal of

those who opposed the party or Comintern line

hastened the process. In the 1920s the ECCI re-

moved the followers of Leon Trotsky and Grigory

Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern from 1919

to 1926, and later the followers of Nikolai

Bukharin, Zinoviev’s successor, for their opposi-

tion to party policy.

Nonetheless, the Comintern was an interna-

tional political institution and therefore possessed

some distinctive characteristics. Most members of

the ECCI and its apparatus were foreigners; repre-

sentatives from abroad routinely participated in

Comintern activities. The ECCI was responsible for

fraternal parties, each of which was assigned to a

national or regional section in the ECCI; many

members of these parties lived in the USSR.

The Comintern, therefore, existed in two worlds:

in the USSR, the socialist world; and in the inter-

national arena, the capitalist world. Within the USSR,

its roles were to elaborate policies to strengthen the

international communist movement, to defend So-

viet foreign and domestic policies, and to cooperate

with the appropriate party and Soviet offices. In

the capitalist world, the Comintern guided and di-

rected Communist parties, helped to build their or-

ganizational structures, educated party members in

Marxism–Leninism, and demanded that its follow-

ers defend the USSR’s policies and leaders.

To manage its various activities, the Comintern

had a substantial bureaucracy. Formally, Com-

intern congresses, held in 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922,

1924, 1928, and 1935, determined its polices. In

reality, the congresses approved the policies and

nominees put forth by the CPSU delegation and the

ECCI. Congresses elected the ECCI, which imple-

mented and interpreted policies between congresses.

Within the ECCI apparatus, departments provided

the ECCI’s leaders with information about the fra-

ternal parties; functional departments attended to

routine operations.

Given the Comintern’s activities abroad, it co-

operated with the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs

and with military intelligence and security organs.

Originally relations among them provided for some

measure of administrative autonomy. But from the

mid-1920s cooperation between the Comintern and

the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, security or-

gans, and the military intelligence services deep-

ened.

Although the Popular Front raised the Com-

intern’s international reputation, within the USSR

domestic pressures placed it in a vulnerable politi-

cal position. From the mid-1930s anxieties about

foreign threats, a growing spy scare, and fears that

foreign agents held CPSU party cards meant that

vigilant police and party leaders increasingly scru-

tinized the Comintern. When mass repression

erupted in 1937, Comintern workers and members

of fraternal parties living in the USSR were often

victims. By 1939 the Comintern apparatus lacked

many essential personnel. Although it was not dis-

banded until 1943, the repression of 1937 and 1938

destroyed the Comintern’s ability to function and

its reputation abroad.

See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION;

PARTY CONGRESSES AND CONFERENCES; POPULAR

FRONT POLICY; ZINOVIEV, GRIGORY YEVSEYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Braunthal, Julius. (1967). History of the International, vol.

2, tr. Henry Collins and Kenneth Mitchell. London:

Praeger.

COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL

304

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Carr, E.H. (1982). The Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-

1935. London: Pantheon Books.

Chase, William J. (2001). Enemies within the Gates? The

Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934-1939.

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Crossman, Richard, ed. (1950). The God That Failed. New

York: Harper Books.

Degras, Jane T., ed. (1956-1965). The Communist Inter-

national, 1919-1943: Documents. 3 vols. London: Ox-

ford University Press.

Kahan, Vilém, ed. (1990). Bibliography of the Communist

International (1919-1979). Leiden: E. J. Brill.

McDermott, Kevin, and Agnew, Jeremy. (1997). The

Comintern: A History of International Communism from

Lenin to Stalin. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

ILLIAM

J. C

HASE

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE

RUSSIAN FEDERATION

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation

(Kommunisticheskaya partiya Rossiiskoi Federat-

sii), or CPRF, descended from the short-lived Com-

munist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative

Socialist Republic (CP RSFSR). This was formed as

an anti-perestroika organization within the Com-

munist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1990.

Boris Yeltsin suspended it for its tacit support of

the August 1991 coup and banned it on Novem-

ber 6, 1991. A group of CP RSFSR leaders headed

by its First Secretary Valentin Kuptsov successfully

achieved the partial repeal of the ban in the Rus-

sian Constitutional Court in November 1992, and

the party reconstituted itself in February 1993 as

the CPRF. Gennady Zyuganov became party chair

at the party’s refoundation as the candidate most

likely to unite differing party trends.

The party was modeled on the template of the

CPSU as a communist mass party, from primary

party organizations (PPOs) in eighty-eight of

Russia’s regions, up to a 159-member Central

Committee representing divisional leaders, a ruling

seventeen-person presidium, and a number of

deputy chairmen below Zyuganov. Internally, it

operated on a relaxed form of hierarchical Leninist

discipline known as “democratic centralism.”

The CPRF’s financial support incited much con-

troversy. Officially it relied on membership sub-

scriptions and the voluntary work of its member-

ship of some 550,000, but the donations of sym-

pathetic “red businessmen,” the material resources

of the State Duma, and perhaps even former CPSU

funds played a role. Increasingly, as the main op-

position party, the CPRF attracted the lobbying of

Russia’s chief financial-industrial groups such as

Gazprom and YUKOS, and, in late 2002, Boris Bere-

zovsky caused a scandal by offering the party ma-

terial support.

The party’s internal composition was no less

disputed. Although it was publicly unified, and

possessed a consolidated leadership troika based

around leader Zyuganov and deputy chairmen

Kuptsov (in charge of the party’s bureaucracy and

finances) and Ivan Melnikov, observers identified

horizontal and vertical cleavages throughout the

party. In terms of the former, Zyuganov’s “statist-

patriotic communists,” who espoused a Great Rus-

sian nationalistic position, were the party trend

most influential publicly. “Marxist reformers” such

as Kuptsov and Melnikov, who espoused an anti-

bureaucratic Marxism, were less visible, owing

to their vulnerability to allegations of “Gor-

bachevism.” Much of the party professed the more

orthodox communist “Marxist-Leninist modern-

izer” viewpoint. Moreover, whilst the parliamen-

tary leadership was relatively pragmatic, the

party’s lower ranks were progressively more in-

clined to traditionalist militancy.

The CPRF program was adopted in January

1995 and only cosmetically modified thereafter.

Though there were many concessions made to Rus-

sian cultural exceptionalism, the program commit-

ted the party to “developing Marxism-Leninism”

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

305

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

CPRF election results

Election

Vote

Parliamentary

seats

Dec. 1993 Duma

12.4

Dec. 1995 Duma

22.3

157

1996 presidential

32.0

first round (Zyuganov)

1996 presidential

40.3

second round (Zyuganov)

Dec. 1999 Duma

24.3

113

2000 presidential (Zyuganov)

29.2

SOURCE: Courtesy of the author.

Table 1.

and a three-stage transition to a classless society

with concessions to parliamentary methods and pri-

vate ownership seen as temporary. The program

was strongly anti-capitalist, promising the social-

ization of property led by the working class, while

also promising the replacement of the 1993

“Yeltsin” constitution with a Soviet-style parlia-

mentary republic, and the “voluntary” resurrection

of the USSR. In public proclamations and electoral

platforms (usually aimed at alliance with a “na-

tional-patriotic bloc”), the party was progressively

more moderate, promising a mixed economy, not

mentioning programmatic aims such as national-

ization, and drawing on populist patriotism and so-

cial democracy. The contradictions between public

and party faces were controversial within and out-

side the party.

The party became a significant electoral force

in the 1993 Duma election, and by 1995 its greater

visibility and organization, along with a deterio-

rating socio-economic climate, allowed it to become

Russia’s leading party and parliamentary group.

This was confirmed by regional victories between

1996 and 1997, and by the December 1999 par-

liamentary elections, although better campaigning

by pro-government competitors contributed to a

loss of Duma seats. The party mobilized a stable

electorate, particularly in the rural southern “red

belt,” but its inability to appeal to many younger

urban voters limited its success. Though leader

Zyuganov contested the 1996 and 2000 presiden-

tial elections (as a national-patriotic candidate), un-

friendly media coverage reinforced this trend.

The CPRF was consistently critical of the

post–1991 political system and governing elite,

particularly liberal figures such as Yeltsin. It was

an “anti-system” party in its rejection of many

post–1991 political values and institutions, and

was often regarded as anti-democratic. However,

between 1995 and 1999 it increasingly became a

“semi-loyal opposition,” selectively supportive of

more nationalist or socially orientated policies, no-

tably contributing two ministers to the govern-

ment of Yevgeny Primakov (September 1998–May

1999). Its failed 1999 attempt to impeach Yeltsin

initiated a decline in influence. It was politically

marginalized in Vladimir Putin’s first presidential

term and in April 2002 suffered a schism. Duma

chairman Gennady Seleznyov and his supporters

were expelled for forming the competitor socialist

movement “Russia,” although the CPRF’s organi-

zational and electoral support was little affected.

See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; COMMUNIST PARTY OF

THE SOVIET UNION; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH;

ZYUGANOV, GENNADY ANDREYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Devlin, Judith. (1999). Slavophiles and Commissars: Ene-

mies of Democracy in Modern Russia. Basingstoke, UK:

Macmillan.

March, Luke. (2002). The Communist Party in post-Soviet

Russia. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

March, Luke. (2003). “The Pragmatic Radicalism of Rus-

sia’s Communists.” In The Left Transformed in Post-

Communist Societies: The Cases of East-Central Europe,

Russia, and Ukraine, ed. Jane Leftwich Curry and

Joan Barth Urban. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Lit-

tlefield.

Sakwa, Richard. (2002). “The CPRF: The Powerlessness

of the Powerful.” In A Decade of Transformation: Com-

munist Successor Parties in Central and Eastern Europe,

ed. András Bozóki and John T. Ishiyama. Armonk,

NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Urban, Joan Barth, and Solovei, Valerii. (1997). Russia’s

Communists at the Crossroads. Boulder, CO: West-

view.

UKE

ARCH

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE

SOVIET UNION

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)

was the ruling Party in the Soviet Union and, there-

fore, its most important political institution. The

Party experienced a number of name changes dur-

ing its history from its foundation in 1898 until

the dissolution of the USSR and the banning of the

Party in 1991: Russian Social-Democratic Labor

Party (RSDLP) (March 1898–March 1918), Russian

Communist Party (RCP) (March 1918–December

1925), All-Union Communist Party (AUCP) (Bol-

sheviks) (December 1925–October 1952), and Com-

munist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) (October

1952–1991). There were two chief phases in the

Party’s life: pre-1917, when it was a revolution-

ary organization seeking the overthrow of the

tsarist regime, and after the October Revolution,

when it was the ruling Party.

AS REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION

The party formally was founded at a congress in

Minsk in March 1898, but because most delegates

were arrested soon after, the party did not take on

a substantial form until its second congress in

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

306

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Brussels and London in July–August 1903. From

the beginning, the party was split on two major

dimensions. First, because of the activities of the

tsarist police, the party could not be a legal entity

within Russia, with the result that most of the lead-

ers remained in exile abroad until 1917 while “un-

dergrounders” worked to build the party structure

inside Russia. Contacts between these two groups

were not easy, with the principal channels between

them being the party press, and irregular Party

meetings. The second major split within the Party

was divisions among the leaders at the top of the

Party structure. Such divisions were frequent oc-

currences, arising over a combination of personal

ambitions and differences over strategy and tactics.

The most important of these divisions was between

the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and began in 1902;

despite various attempts to patch it up, the divi-

sion remained an important factor in Party life un-

til the Mensheviks were banned in 1918.

There was little to distinguish the RSDLP from

the range of other parties, cliques, and shadowy

organizations that constituted the Russian revo-

lutionary movement at this time. Ultimately what

was to differentiate the Party from its competi-

tors and give it an edge in 1917 was the single-

mindedness and drive of the person who was

generally acknowledged as the leader of the Bol-

sheviks, Vladimir Ilich Lenin. When the tsarist

regime disintegrated in February 1917 and Lenin

returned to Russia in April, he set about radicaliz-

ing the Party’s stance from that which had been

established by the underground leaders who had

come to the fore in his absence, including Josef

Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Vyacheslav Molotov. This

culminated in the decision in September by the

Party’s Central Committee to seize power. This

they did in October. While the decision to seize

power was supported by large numbers of rank-

and-file Party members and supporters, it was also

opposed by significant elements within the party,

including among its leaders (Grigory Zinoviev and

Kamenev). The Party was not a tightly disciplined

instrument of revolution, but a much looser orga-

nization that was able to take advantage of the

chaotic conditions late in 1917 to seize power in

the capital. Local Party organizations set about

replicating this feat throughout the country, but

their rule was not to be secure for some years.

AS RULING PARTY

Having claimed power, the Party now set about

consolidating it. In its first three years, the Party

banned all other political parties, thereby institut-

ing the single-party state; eliminated independent

press organs; sought to institute a radical economic

policy (war communism), which would have abol-

ished the basis of independent economic activity;

and, principally through the civil war, expanded

the geographical area under its control. The failure

of war communism forced the Party into a con-

cession, the New Economic Policy, which in turn

was replaced by the high-level centralization of eco-

nomic life through agricultural collectivization and

forced pace industrialization beginning in the late

1920s. Throughout this period, too, discipline was

consolidated within the party.

In the early years of its rule, the Party was char-

acterized by a continuation of the division and dif-

ferences within the elite that had been characteristic

of the prepower period. All aspects of the Party’s life

came under vigorous debate within leading Party

circles. However, during Vladimir Lenin’s lifetime,

all of these debates ended with the victory of the po-

sition that he espoused. Following his death, the ma-

neuvering between different groups of Party leaders

for the succession saw conflict between a group

around Stalin and, successively, Leon Trotsky, the

Left Opposition, the United Opposition, and the

Right Opposition. In all cases, Stalin and his sup-

porters were victorious. With the defeat of the Right

Opposition in 1929, Stalin emerged as Party leader.

He consolidated his position during the 1930s, es-

pecially through the Terror of 1936 to 1938, emerg-

ing as the vozhd, or unquestioned leader of the party

and the people. This process of a shift from the col-

lective leadership of the Lenin years to the personal

dictatorship of Stalin had direct implications for the

Party. In the initial years of power, leading Party

organs were real arenas of debate and conflict, and

although Lenin manipulated Party organs, the prin-

cipal basis upon which he was victorious in inner-

party conflict was his ability to persuade sufficient

members to support the position he advocated. With

Stalin’s personal dictatorship, party organs ceased

to be the scene of open political debate and instead

became stylized assemblies for the laudation of

Stalin. While this was not as much the case at the

level of the Politburo, even here the cut and thrust

of debate was blunted by the personal dominance

of Stalin. In this sense, the party’s leading organs

were in danger of atrophying.

This process of a shift from a situation in

which open conflict and debate was the norm to

one in which adherence to strict orthodoxy and

the absence of public debate prevailed has been the

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

307

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

subject of much debate among scholars. The or-

thodoxy was for long the view that the emergence

of Stalin and the assertion of his personal control

was a direct, some even said inevitable, result of

the organizational principles and practices that

stemmed from Lenin. Lenin was seen to have es-

tablished a highly authoritarian political struc-

ture, said to be symbolized by the principles

contained in his 1901 pamphlet entitled “What Is

to Be Done?” and the resolution of the Tenth Con-

gress in 1921, entitled “On Party Unity,” which

closed down discussion and made personal dicta-

torship highly likely. Alternatively, others argue

that a Stalin figure was not inevitable, that there

were a number of other possible lines of develop-

ment available to the party, and that a series of

conjunctural developments (including the person-

ality of Stalin) were central to the outcome that

emerged. Certainly the authoritarian legacy left by

Lenin may have increased the chances of such an

outcome, especially in a situation of danger and

underdevelopment like that faced by the Bolshe-

viks, but it was not inevitable. The balance of opin-

ion now favors the second position.

Under Stalin, the party’s leading organs were

not active bodies; they met when he decided they

would meet rather than according to a set time-

table, and they exercised little independent initia-

tive. During World War II, important decisions

were more often made in the State Defense Com-

mittee than in Party bodies, and in the initial seven

years of the postwar period, informal groups of

leaders organized by Stalin dominated national pol-

icy making. When Stalin died, the Party’s leading

organs became rejuvenated, and for the remainder

of the life of the Party, generally they met as sched-

uled and made most important decisions. At no

time during these last almost four decades were

these institutions arenas of public contestation,

although the publication of some of the Central

Committee proceedings under Khrushchev and

Gorbachev did provide some sense that there were

real differences being aired in some Party forums

at some times. Particularly under Gorbachev, and

especially from the beginning of 1987, leading

Party bodies were often the scene of significant dif-

ferences of opinion within the elite, with the result

that, at least in this regard, leading elite organs re-

turned to something like their Leninist forebears.

The return to this situation of a divided elite play-

ing out some of their politics in the leading organs

of the Party was one factor contributing to the

demise of the USSR and, with it, the CPSU.

Following the attempted putsch in 1991, which

discredited the Party even more widely in the peo-

ple’s eyes than it had been in the years leading up

to it (see below), General Secretary Gorbachev re-

signed from the Party and Russian president Boris

Yeltsin banned it on the territory of Russia. Al-

though this blanket ban was later overturned in

the Constitutional Court, the reversal could not

save the CPSU; it was, however, a life giver to the

Party’s chief successor, the Communist Party of the

Russian Federation.

PARTY STRUCTURE

The lowest level of Party organization was the Pri-

mary Party organization (PPO), until 1934 called

a cell. This was the body that every party member

joined. Such an organization had to be established

in any institution where there were three Com-

munist Party members. Consequently there were

PPOs organized in every institution in the USSR;

every factory, farm, university, school, shop, or-

ganizational division in the armed forces had their

own PPO comprising the members of the Party

who worked in that institution. The PPO was thus

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

308

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Stalin likely faked this photograph of himself at Lenin’s summer

retreat to suggest his closeness with the Soviet leader.

ULTON

-D

EUTSCH

OLLECTION

/CORBIS

the principal representative of the Party through-

out the institutional structure of the USSR. The

structure of the PPO differed depending upon the

size, but all PPOs were to meet regularly and in-

volve the Party membership in Party and public

life. In 1986, there were 440,363 PPOs.

Above the PPO, the Party structure followed

the administrative structure of the Soviet state.

Each republic of the USSR had its own republican-

level Party organization, except the RSFSR, which,

until 1990, was served by the national Soviet-level.

Between the republican and PPO levels, there was

a hierarchy of Party organizations shadowing the

administrative divisions of the country (e.g., re-

gion, city, district). At each of these levels there was

an assembly, called a conference (congress at the

republican level), with the membership notionally

elected by the assembly of the level next down; dis-

trict bodies were elected by the PPOs. The confer-

ence at each level would meet at set times, designed

to enable it to elect delegates to the conference at

the next level. The timing of these was thus set at

the national level by the regularity of national con-

gresses. At each level, the conference/congress

would elect a committee that, in turn, would elect

a bureau. This structure was also to be found at

the national, Soviet level.

At the national level, the congress was held an-

nually until the mid-1920s, at which time the fre-

quency and regularity decreased; there were

congresses in 1930, 1934, 1939, and 1952. From

the Twenty-Second Congress in 1961, congresses

occurred every five years. During the early period

Party conferences were also often held. These were

national-level meetings, usually smaller and with

less authority than the congress, but they, too,

became much less frequent after the 1920s; the

eighteenth conference was held in 1941 and the

nineteenth in 1988. The congress was formally the

sovereign body of the Party. It adopted resolutions

that constituted the Party’s policy on particular is-

sues, and it elected its executive body, the Central

Committee (CC), to run the Party in the period be-

tween congresses. It also formed the central audit-

ing apparatus, responsible for keeping a check on

Party finances and procedures, and until 1939 the

Party control apparatus, which exercised discipli-

nary functions. In practice, after the 1920s the con-

gress was too big to debate issues (there were some

five thousand delegates at the last, the Twenty-

Eighth Congress held in 1990) and in any case that

was not its function. Under Stalin it had been trans-

formed from an assembly in which vigorous de-

bate occurred into a tame body that did little ex-

cept hear reports and ritually vote to confirm them.

Even the voting for membership of the CC was

nothing more than ratifying a list handed down by

the leadership.

The CC began as a relatively small body. In

1922, there were twenty-seven full and nineteen

candidate members, but by 1986 this had grown

to 307 full and 170 candidate members, so this

body, too, became too big to act as an effective fo-

rum for the discussion of ideas, although like the

congress, discussion was no longer its function af-

ter Stalin gained power. Generally CC plena were

held twice per year, with each meeting devoted to

a particular area of concern, such as agriculture,

ideology, industrial development, education, and so

forth. The proceedings were stylized and standard-

ized, with usually the Party general secretary pre-

senting a keynote report and then other speakers

presenting set-piece speeches. There was no real de-

bate, merely a presentation of views that rarely

provided evidence of much difference between the

speakers, or at least of much difference from the

position taken by the general secretary. This model

was, however, disrupted under Gorbachev when,

particularly toward the end of the period, such

meetings could see quite significant criticism of the

general secretary and the course he was following.

The CC formed a series of standing executive or-

gans: the Politburo, Secretariat, until 1952 the Org-

buro, and from 1939 the central control apparatus;

from 1966, the CC formally elected the general sec-

retary. As with the congress election of the CC, elec-

tion of these bodies simply constituted the formal

ratification of lists of candidates passed down by

the leadership. Membership of the CC was of two

sorts: full and candidate, with the former having

the vote while the latter did not.

The most important of the bodies elected by the

CC were the Politburo (1952–1966 the Presidium)

and the Secretariat. Simply put, these were respec-

tively the political decision-making center of the

Party and the organization that was meant to en-

sure that those decisions were carried out. The

Politburo was a small body, divided like the CC into

full and candidate members. It generally had up to

twenty members, although nonmembers were of-

ten present when something pertaining to their

area of responsibility was being discussed. The

Politburo met weekly and was the body in which

all of the most important decisions were meant to

be made. The CC also elected people called CC sec-

retaries who, collectively, formed the Secretariat.

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION

309

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Each secretary had a particular sphere of responsi-

bility, and to assist them in this task they had at

their disposal departments of varying sizes. These

departments were organized not only so that they

could administer the Party’s internal affairs (e.g.,

departments for personnel and ideology), but also

so that they could shadow the Soviet government;

so, for example, there could be departments for

agriculture, industry, and foreign affairs. The per-

sonnel within those departments constituted the

central machinery of the Party. Some secretaries

were generally members of the Politburo, and the

leading secretary, the general secretary (1953–1966

the first secretary), was acknowledged as the leader

of the Party.

It is clear from the above that the electoral

principle was central to the Party’s formal proce-

dures with each level being elected by those be-

low. However in practice, electoral democracy was

little more than a formality throughout most of

the Party’s life. From early in the Party’s life, this

principle was undermined by what was to become

the chief power axis in the Party, the nomenklatura

system. The nomenklatura was first regularized

in 1923. Its essence was a list of responsible po-

sitions that needed to be filled and another list (or

lists) of names of people who were thought to be

competent to fill them. Committees at each level

of the Party had their own list of positions to be

filled and people who could fill them, but by far

the biggest list and the one containing all of the

crucial positions was lodged in the Party’s central

organs. Originally justified as a way of ensuring

competence and loyalty in the uncertain times of

the regime’s early years, under Stalin’s control it

became a weapon of political conflict, enabling

him to fill Party bodies with his supporters. This

sort of political loyalty remained a consideration

in the operation of the nomenklatura throughout

its life, but in terms of running the Party, its im-

portance lay in the power it gave to the leader-

ship to fill positions throughout the structure

with people acceptable to them. Thus, when elec-

tive positions had to be filled, the nomination

would come down from above and Party mem-

bers would ratify it. Only under Gorbachev was

there an attempt to change this system and in-

troduce real competition for Party posts, although

even then the changes he sought to make had their

limitations.

This power over personnel, and therefore power

over people’s careers, was a crucial mechanism for

maintaining loyalty and orthodoxy and for dis-

couraging heterodox and independent thought. It

was consistent with the principle that, from 1906,

officially governed discussion in the Party, “demo-

cratic centralism.” Democratic centralism as origi-

nally envisaged provided for full and free discussion

of an issue until a decision was reached, and then

all were expected to fall in behind that decision and

support it regardless of their own personal views

about it. The problem with this principle is that, in

a situation like the mid-late 1920s where the po-

litical leadership was keen to close down discus-

sion, it could announce a decision and then invoke

the principle to prevent any debate from taking

place. This could be backed up by the exercise of

Party discipline. Party members found guilty of

breaching Party rules were subject to discipline

procedures that could include expulsion from the

Party and, in the 1930s, loss of life. In the Soviet

Union expulsion from the Party was a significant

penalty because it could lead to the person losing

his job and housing, making it very difficult to sur-

vive.

Formally the Party was governed by a set of

rules. These rules prescribed the formal structures

and processes of Party life. They were adopted by

Party congresses and constituted the effective con-

stitution of the Party. Over the Party’s life the rules

were changed and modified on a large number of

occasions, and although they were an expression

of the formal rather than the actual way in which

the Party worked, they were not a complete fic-

tion. They did prescribe the rhythms of Party life,

when congresses were to be held and so forth, and

for much of the Party’s existence these formal as-

pects were adhered to. But the rules do not give an

accurate picture of the internal dynamics of the

Party; they were formal and legitimizing rather

than normative.

PARTY IDEOLOGY

The Party was formally guided by an ideology, a

structure of ideas that purports to explain the

course of historical development and thereby gives

the follower the capacity to make decisions consis-

tent with that understanding. This is a basis for le-

gitimacy since it constitutes the claim to be able to

make appropriate decisions for the furtherance of

the common aim. Arising from Marxism, which

constituted the core of the Soviet ideological belief

system, that aim was the achievement of commu-

nism. Thus the Party seized power in 1917 in the

name of achieving the communist utopia. During

its life, the Party continually based itself on its

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claimed adherence to those ideological tenets, var-

iously called Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Marx-

ism-Leninism-Stalinism, and Leninism at different

times. The content of that ideology also underwent

modification and change over time. The role of ide-

ology is complex. Ideally it should enthuse its be-

lievers and persuade them to commit to the

achievement of the ultimate ends, and there clearly

were very many people for whom the ideology

acted in this way. However, there were also many

less enthusiastic members, and their numbers grew

markedly during the last three decades of the

regime’s life. These people were cynical of the ide-

ology and its claims, and rather than being true

believers hid their lack of belief in a stance of pub-

lic commitment. For the Soviet system, the ideol-

ogy was central to its own conception of

legitimacy, and for this to remain unimpaired it

was important that even if people did not believe,

they should not be able openly to proclaim this.

This is one of the major reasons why all dissent

was harshly dealt with.

The ideology was related to the Party’s activi-

ties through the Party program. This was a docu-

ment that purported to lay out the long-term aims

of the Party. Party programs were adopted in 1919,

1961, and 1986; the attempt to adopt a new pro-

gram in 1990 failed because there was too much

disagreement, although a draft was adopted for dis-

cussion by the CC in June 1991 just before the at-

tempted coup. The 1961 program, adopted at the

height of Khrushchev’s enthusiasm for the great

leap into communism, was the most optimistic of

these documents, envisaging the imminent ap-

proach of communism within the USSR. But all

programs should be seen much more as a set of

ideals rather than a specific guide to policy, because

in none of them was there a clear indication of pol-

icy lines that the political leadership then followed.

But the programs were an important stone in the

basis of the Party’s ideologically based quest for le-

gitimacy.

PARTY FUNCTIONS

According to the 1977 State Constitution, the Party

was the “leading and guiding force” of Soviet soci-

ety, and it, in fact, played this role from the found-

ing of the Soviet state in 1917. In essence, this

meant that the Party was the institution in which

all major decisions about all aspects of life were to

be made. In theory, this is why there were Party

bodies in all collectives within Soviet society and

why the Party shadowed the state structure at all

levels; if an issue was coming up in a non-Party

body, the corresponding Party organ could meet

and make a decision that its members, subject to

Party discipline and therefore bound to implement

that decision, could carry into the non-Party fo-

rum. However, in practice, because at all levels all

of the chief figures were Party members, separate

Party and non-Party meetings were not always

needed. Party members were the dominant figures,

and, through them, the Party dominated the deci-

sion-making process.

This was most important at the central level,

where the Party Politburo was the chief decision-

making body in the country. It made decisions on

all of the major issues of national policy, and, as a

result of Party discipline, these decisions were car-

ried forward by Party members at all levels in the

institutions within which they worked. In this

way, the Party constituted not just the chief deci-

sion-making organization, but also the major

means of ensuring the enforcement of central de-

cisions. The Party played a crucial role in the way

the system as a whole functioned; as both a deci-

sion-making organ and the organization that was

ultimately responsible for ensuring that policy was

carried out by state and other organizations, it was

the key to the way the system functioned.

The omnipresence of Party organizations also

enabled it to exercise significant control functions

throughout society. Through its members, the

Party was able to maintain a watching brief on

what went on in all parts of Soviet society. One of

the tasks of Party members, more important in the

early years than later, was to act as the Party’s

eyes and ears to ensure that any manifestations of

oppositionist sentiment were nipped in the bud. The

reverse side of this control function was that of ed-

ucation. In principle, this remained a key respon-

sibility of Party organizations and members at all

levels, the education of non-Party members in the

ethos of the Party and the principles for which it

stood. Ideally Party members and organizations

were meant to proselytize the Party’s ideology and

its message, but more realistically they were ex-

pected to act as models of appropriate behavior to

their non-Party peers. In this sense, the Party was

a major educative actor in Soviet society, project-

ing an idealized image of how good communists

should behave and thereby playing a part in the

socialization of the Soviet populace with the ac-

cepted values.

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The all-pervasive nature of the Party plus the

highly centralized personnel system means that the

Party was the most important element in the

staffing of the whole Soviet system. The nomen-

klatura extended not simply to Party posts, but to

all of the leading posts in all of the major institu-

tions of the society. In other words, Party bodies

determined who would fill the leading posts in all

parts of the Soviet system. The Party was there-

fore the single most important determinant of the

filling of all offices throughout the Soviet Union.

In this way the Party not only controlled the fill-

ing of office, but was also the primary agent of re-

cruitment in the USSR; no one could gain leading

office without approval at higher levels of the

Party.

It is clear that the Party was the leading insti-

tution in the USSR: it made the most important de-

cisions, it ensured that those decisions were carried

out, it selected all leading office-bearers, and it

played a significant educational/socialization role

in the society. Its control was not complete, be-

cause it could never overcome both personal idio-

syncrasy and the constraints stemming from the

combination of large distances and communication

deficiencies, but it was probably the most extensive

experienced in any political system.

PARTY MEMBERSHIP

The Party was never a body that one could join at

a whim; members had to be nominated, their back-

grounds checked and, once they had been admit-

ted, serve a candidate stage before being accepted

into full membership. In the early years, class back-

ground was crucial for entry, but from 1939 the

formal preference given to members of the work-

ing class was dropped and people were admitted re-

gardless of the class to which they belonged; from

1961, the Party was officially a Party of “all the

people.” Members were always a minority within

Soviet society. In 1986, before membership began

to plummet in the late 1980s, there were 18,309,693

full and 728,253 candidate members, constituting

9.7 percent of the adult population. The Party re-

mained heavily male; in 1986 only 28.8 percent of

members were women. Members were subject to

Party discipline, had to attend regular Party meet-

ings, obey all Party instructions, pay membership

dues, and continually conduct themselves accord-

ing to the rules of the Party and the principles of

what it meant to be a good communist. While the

tasks were not onerous for non-office bearers, at

various times they did impinge on individuals’

lives. This was especially the case if someone be-

came subject to Party discipline, when such an

entry on someone’s personnel file could have sig-

nificant future consequences for career advance-

ment; being expelled from the Party was worse

than never having been a member.

Party members generally gained few advan-

tages over non-Party citizens. Officeholders were

more fortunate in this regard. Just as there was a

graduated scale of the power to fill office, there was

a similar scale regarding access to privileges and to

goods that were not widely available. In a deficit

economy like that of the Soviet Union, access to

scarce goods was a real bonus, and those who held

official positions gained such access. The level and

range of availability differed according to the level

of position one occupied, but because all of the lead-

ing positions were determined by the Party, it was

the Party that determined who got access to such

goods. The Party was thus the key to access to priv-

ilege in the Soviet Union.

PARTY FUNDING

Officially, the Party was funded through the mem-

bership dues that all members paid and the rev-

enues generated by sale of the Party’s publications.

However it is clear that, from the time of the

Party’s ascension to power, such dues were sub-

stantially supplemented by funds from the state.

The amount of money that was transferred across

in this way in unclear, but it was substantial. The

Party owned property in all cities and towns in the

Soviet Union, paid salaries to its employees, funded

a range of publications, made provision for its own

daily functioning, and funded sister parties and

movements abroad. The annual budget far exceeded

the amount of money brought in through fees and

publications. The difference was covered by money

obtained from the state. As the Soviet Union fell

during the late 1980s to the early 1990s, much of

this money was secreted abroad, its whereabouts

as uncertain as the dimensions of the Party’s real

annual budget.

The Party’s financial dependence on the state

and the way in which it was intertwined with the

state at all levels led many to argue that it was not

really a political party but more a state organ.

There is much to this argument, but it was neither

coterminous with the state nor reducible to it. It

was the first of the sort of organization that be-

came common during the twentieth century, the

ruling single party. As such, the CPSU was the pro-

totype for which many would emulate.

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