Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU; Russian: Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза, Kommunistíchieskaya pártiya Sovietskogo Soyuza; abbreviated as КПСС, KPSS) was the only legal political party of the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world. It lost its dominance as a result of the failed coup attempt in August 1991 led by a group of members of the so-called hard line.

Emerged from the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, from which it split under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and led the October Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and established the world's first socialist state (the SFSR From Russia). Due to its central role in the Constitution of the Soviet Union, the Party controlled all orders of government in the Soviet Union and did not tolerate any opposition. His organization was subdivided into the communist parties of the Soviet constituent republics, as well as the Komsomol, the mass youth organization. The party was also the driving force behind the Third International.

It ceased to exist after the attempted coup in 1991 and was succeeded by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), the second largest political force in Russia, and by the communist parties of the now independent former Soviet republics.

The CPSU was a communist party, organized on the basis of democratic centralism. This principle, conceived by Lenin, implies an open and democratic discussion of political questions within the party, followed by the requirement of total unity in the defense of agreed policies. The supreme body within the CPSU was the Party Congress, which met 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 of the day-to-day duties and responsibilities fell to the Politburo (formerly the Presidium), the Secretariat, and the Orgburo (until 1952). The party leader was the head of state and held the position of secretary general, prime minister, or president of the Presidium, or any of the three offices simultaneously, but never all three at the same time. The party leader was the de facto Chairman of the CPSU Political Bureau and the Executive Director of the Soviet Union. The tension between the party and the State (Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union) due to the change in the focus of power was never formally resolved, but in reality the party dominated and there was always a supreme leader (first Lenin and then the General Secretary)..

A neighborhood in the Kozhukhovsky Bay of the Moskva River with a large poster promoting the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow, 1975

After the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922, Lenin introduced a mixed economy, commonly known as the New Economic Policy, which allowed capitalist practices to resume under the dictation of the Communist Party to develop the conditions necessary for the Socialism became the practical pursuit in an economically underdeveloped country. In 1929, when Joseph Stalin became the party's leader, Marxism-Leninism, a fusion of the original ideas of German philosopher and economic theorist Karl Marx, and Lenin, became formalized as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so throughout the rest of his existence. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized and a command economy was implemented. After recovering from World War II, reforms were implemented that decentralized economic planning and liberalized Soviet society in general under Nikita Khrushchev. By 1980, various factors, including the continuing Cold War, the ongoing arms race with the United States and other Western European powers, and unresolved inefficiencies in the economy, led to greatly reduced economic growth under Alexei Kosygin, and even more so. with Leonid Brezhnev and a growth of disappointment. After Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership in 1985 (following two leaders who died in quick succession), swift steps were taken to transform the tottering Soviet economic system into a true market economy. Gorbachev and his allies envisioned the introduction of an economy similar to Lenin's earlier New Economic Policy through a program dubbed perestroika, or restructuring, but his reforms, along with the institution of free elections for candidates multiples led to a decline in party power, and later to the dissolution of the Soviet Union; the party was banned by Russian SFSR President Boris Yeltsin, who would later become the first President of the Russian Federation.

History

Origins and evolution of the party

In March 1898, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) was founded from various social democratic circles, as well as many other Marxist groups, after its First Congress was held in Minsk. Then, as a consequence of the separation between the Bolshevik (that is, the majority) and the Menshevik (minority) factions in 1903, the Bolsheviks constituted in January 1912 the «Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik)».

During the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks seized political power with the insurrection of November 7, 1917, and in March 1918 their Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). In 1925, with the Soviet Union already constituted, it became the "All-Union (Bolshevik) Communist Party." Finally, in 1952 it was simplified to "Communist Party of the Soviet Union".

Function as Ruling Party in the Soviet Union

One year after the founding of the Soviet Union, in 1923, the party officially became the only legal party. Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution stated:

"The leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the core of its political system, of state and social organizations is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CPUS exists for the people and serves the people.

Rejected with the Marxist Leninist doctrine the Communist Party determines the general perspective of the development of society, the line of the internal and foreign policy of the USSR, directs the great creative activity of the Soviet people and prints a systematic and scientifically formulated character to its struggle for the triumph of communism.

All party organizations operate within the framework of the Constitution of the USSR. »

Under the strong pressure of groups opposed to the Unipartidism system, in 1990 the Supreme Sóviet of the Soviet Union approved a law with a series of amendments and adhes to the Constitution replacing, among other changes, the phrase « the leader and guidance force »for that of« the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and other political parties ».

Illegalization and dissolution

Borís Yeltsin celebrates the readoption of the tricolour flag as a symbol of the Russian State on 22 August 1991.

Following the failed coup attempt in August 1991, Russian SFSR President Boris Yeltsin's decrees suspended the party's activities on RSFSR territory and its property was confiscated. By decree of the On November 6, 1991, the activity of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was ceased and its organizational structure was dissolved.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, in November 1992 the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation ruled on the "case of the CPSU". The court found it incompatible with the Constitution that President Yeltsin forced an investigation into the facts of the Russian Communist Party's unconstitutional activity and the nationalization of CPSU property. The suspension of the activities of the bodies and organizations of the Russian Communist Party and the dissolution of the government structures of the CPSU and the PCR were constitutionally recognized, but not the organizational structures of the primary organizations of the Party constituted by the principle of territoriality.

Successor Organizations to the CPSU

Symbol of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, second political force of the country.

Several of the organizational structures of the CPSU did not recognize the legality of the prohibition and refused to comply with it, going on to act practically clandestinely.

The greatest of the heirs of the CPSU organizations is the Union of Communist Parties - Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This organization arose on March 27, 1993, when the conversion of the CPSU into the UPC-CPSU was announced at the XXIX Congress of the CPSU held in Moscow. The organization's leader from 1993 to 2001 was Oleg Shenin, a former member of the Komsomol Central Committee.

After Shenin's death, the organization was headed by the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) Gennady Zyuganov.

In addition, a few more parties were created during the 1990s under the name of the CPSU and the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik). As of June 2, 2009, none of the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and Communist Parties of the Union are registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.

The organizational structure of the CPSU in Russia became the basis for the creation of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Structure of the CPSU

Central authorities

The governing body of the CPSU was the Party Congress which was originally convened annually, but over time its meetings became less frequent, especially during the government of Joseph Stalin. The Party Congresses would elect a Central Committee which, in turn, would elect a Politburo. Under Stalin, the position of General Secretary, who was chosen by the Politburo, became the most powerful in the party. In 1953 the position of General Secretary (which between 1952 and 1953 had been abolished) became First Secretary and the Politburo became Presidium before reverting to their former names under Leonid Brezhnev in 1966.

Former building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, now a unit of the Administration of the President of Russia.

In theory, the supreme power in the CPSU rested with the Party Congress. However, in practice, all executive power was in the hands of the Secretary General.

At the lower levels, the hierarchical party organization was managed by Party Committees or partkóms (партком). The partkom was headed by the elected partkom secretary (секретарь парткома). In companies, institutions, collective farms, etc., they were known as such, ie "partkóms". At the higher levels the name of the Committees was abbreviated following the same logic: raikóms (райком) at the raion level, obkóms (обком) for the oblast levels (known previously as gubkóms (губком) for gubérniyas), gorkóms (горком) for city level, etc.

The base of the party was the "primary organization of the party" (первичная партийная организация) or "party cell" (partijanaya yacheyka). It was created without any organizational entity, wherever there were at least three communists. The management body of a cell was the "party bureau" (partynoe bюro, partbюro). This partburo was headed by the "secretaries of the bureau" (secretar partbyuro) elected.

In the smallest cells of the party, the secretaries were regular workers of the corresponding factory, hospital, school, etc. If the party organization was large enough, it was headed by a "liberated secretary" (освобожденный секретарь), whose salary was in charge of the party.

Republican authorities

The supreme organs of the party in the republics of the Soviet Union (subnational entities of the first level) were the Communist Parties of the Republics, which were a total of 14 for each one, with the exception of the Russian SFSR, which up to 1990 lacked its own party. These were subordinate to the Central Committee of the CPSU. The Congresses of the republican communist parties were elected by the conferences of the regional committees of each republic (or conferences of the district committees in case the republic administered the districts directly). During the time between sessions of the republican congresses, the republican Central Committees (elected by the congresses) acted. The central committees elected, in turn, the Republican First Secretary.

Republic	Rama
Russian RSFS	Communist Party of the Russian RSF (1990–1991)
RSS Feeds of Ukraine	Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR
Belarus RSS	Communist Party of the Belarusian SSR
Ubekistan RSS	Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR
SSR of Kazakhstan	Communist Party of the SSR of Kazakhstan
RSS of Georgia	Communist Party of the Georgian SSR
Azerbaijan SSR	Communist Party of the SSR of Azerbaijan
RSS of Lithuania	Communist Party of the SSR of Lithuania
RSS of Moldova	Communist Party of the SSR of Moldova
RSS of Latvia	Communist Party of the Latvian SSR
SSR of Kyrgyzstan	Communist Party of the SSR of Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan	Communist Party of the Tajik SSR
SSR of Armenia	Communist Party of the SSR of Armenia
RSS feeds of Turkmenistan	Communist Party of the SSR of Turkmenistan
Estonian RSS	Communist Party of the SSR of Estonia
Ephemeral Republics	Rama
Turkestan RASS (1918-1924)	Communist Party of Turkestan
RPS de Bujará (1920–1925)	Communist Party of Bukhara
Corasmia RSS (1920–1925)	Communist Party of Corasmia
RSS Carelo-Finesa (1940–1956)	Communist Party of the Carelo-Finesa RSS
RSFS of Transcaucasia (1922–1936)	Communist Party of Transcaucasia

Source: Справочник по истории Коммунистической партии и Советского Союза 1898-1991 (Handbook on the history of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union)

Regional authorities

The Communist Parties of the Republics were subdivided into Regional Committees, one for each region (autonomous republics, oblasts, autonomous oblasts, and krais), though the smaller republics (Moldavian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, and Armenian SSRs) they lacked these, and were organized by district committees directly administered by the communist party of the republic in question. The supreme bodies of these were the Regional Conferences, which elected the Regional Committees, and the administrative bodies of said committees were the regional secretariats, directed by the First Regional Secretary, who were elected by the regional committees. The Regional Committees were subordinate to the Central Committee of the respective republic.

Provincial authorities

The Provincial Committees were the party organs in the okrugs, or autonomous districts, which were territories of the Russian SFSR inhabited by non-Russian ethnic minorities. In the party hierarchy, they had a higher status than district committees but less than regional ones, and were headed by the First Secretary of the autonomous okrug.

District authorities

The District Committees were the party organs in the districts, which made up the regional and provincial committees. The District Committees were elected by the District Conferences, and directed the committee during the time between their sessions. The District Committees were directed by the First Secretary of the district.

Youth Organizations

The youth organization of the Communist Party was the Communist Youth Union (Komsomol), which oversaw the Vladimir Lenin Pioneer Organization, made up of young children.

Membership

Carnet de militante del PCUS, fechado en 1989.

To participate in the Communist Party, the recommendation of two members of the Communist Party who had party experience of at least one year was necessary. After the approval of these recommendations, the applicant became a candidate for membership of the CPSU and was issued a candidate's card. Finally, after passing the qualification test period, the candidate could be definitively admitted to the party.

Throughout its history, the number of recommendations required changed and, between 1920 and 1940, it could depend on social status (two, three or five recommendations) and the duration of the trial period could be varied (one, two or three years).

All members and candidates of the CPSU had to pay a series of monthly installments based on their personal situation.

In 1918, the number of members of the RCP(b) was around 200,000 people and, after Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin promoted the well-known campaign "Lenin's Levy", in which they tightened entry requirements and a large number of workers and peasants were recruited, rising from 386,000 members in 1923 to 736,000 in 1924. By 1933, the number of party members and substitutes was approximately 3.5 million.

In relation to the large number of members of the CPSU (which according to 1986 data numbered 19 million people, or about 10% of the adult population of the Soviet Union), most of them were ordinary communists who did not have any benefits or privileges. In its social composition, 44% of the CPSU members were industrial workers and 12% were collective farmers.

The peculiarity of the CPSU was its organizational structure. It was made up of the communist parties of 14 of the 15 Soviet republics, but the Russian SFSR, which was the largest of the republics, did not have its own Party and the CPSU organizations in its territory submitted to the direct authority of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and only already in 1990 the Communist Party of the Russian SFSR was established. However, after the attempted coup in August 1991 it was dissolved by decree of RSFSR Chairman Boris Yeltsin, being reestablished as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 1993.

Advertising

The main role in disseminating party propaganda was carried out both by television and cinema, as well as by newspapers that enjoyed great popularity in the Soviet Union.

The official publication of the Central Committee was the newspaper Pravda, one of the main national dailies of the Soviet Union, along with the official newspaper of the Supreme Soviet, Izvestia, the trade union daily Trud (newspaper) and other newspapers.

On the model of the newspaper Pravda, many other popular newspapers were founded, such as the Komsomol daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, the pioneer organization Pionerskaya Pravda and various regional newspapers (republican, oblast, city, etc.).

Reasons for his disappearance

Western view

There were few, if any, who believed that the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse in 1985. The economy was stagnant, but stable enough for the Soviet Union to continue into the 21st century. The political situation was calm due to twenty years of systematic repression against any threat to the country and one-party rule, and the Soviet Union was at its height of influence in world affairs. The immediate causes of the dissolution of the Union Soviet were the policies and thoughts of Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the CPSU. His policies of perestroika and glasnost attempted to revitalize the Soviet economy and the country's social and political culture. Throughout his rule, he placed more emphasis on democratizing the Soviet Union because he believed it had lost its moral legitimacy to rule. These policies led to the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and indirectly destabilized Gorbachev's control and of the CPSU on the Soviet Union. Archie Brown said:

The expectations of Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians, above all again, increased enormously so they saw that it was happening in the "outdoor empire" [Eastern Europe], and began to believe that they could leave the "inner empire". Indeed, a democratic Soviet Union was incompatible with the denial of the independence of the Baltic states, since, insofar as those Soviet republics were democratized, their opposition to remain in a political entity whose centre was Moscow would become increasingly evident. However, it was not predetermined that the entire Soviet Union would disintegrate.

However, Brown said the system did not need to collapse or collapse the way it did. Democratization from the top weakened the party's grip on the country and put it on the defensive. Brown added that a leader Unlike Gorbachev, he probably would have suppressed the opposition and continued with economic reform. Nonetheless, Gorbachev accepted that the people sought a different path and consented to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. He said that because of its peaceful collapse, the fall of Soviet communism is "one of the great success stories." of politics of the 20th century". According to Lars T. Lih, the Soviet Union collapsed because people stopped believing in its ideology. He wrote:

When in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed not with a thunder but with a groan, this unexpected result was in part the result of the previous outcomes 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 was dissolved, the Soviet Union itself was dissolved.

According to the Communist Party of China

Early investigations of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were very simple and did not take several factors into account. However, these examinations became more advanced in the 1990s and, unlike most Western scholars, who focus on the role of Gorbachev and his reform efforts, the Communist Party of China (CCP) examined "central (political) issues of life and death" so that you can learn from them and not make the same mistakes. After the demise of the CPSU and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CCP's analysis began to examine the systemic causes. Several senior CCP officials began to praise the government of Khrushchev, saying that he was the first reformer and that if he had continued after 1964, the Soviet Union would not have witnessed the beginning of the era of stagnation under Brezhnev and continued under Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. The main economic failure was that the The political leadership did not pursue any reforms to address the economic malaise that had gripped the country, dismissing certain techniques as capitalist and never untangling the planned economy from socialism. Xu Zhixin of the CASS Institute of Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, argued that Soviet planners placed too much emphasis on heavy industry, leading to shortages of consumer goods. Unlike his counterparts, Xu argued that the shortage of consumer goods was not a mistake but "a consciously planned feature of the system." Other failures of the CPSU included the implementation of the policy of state socialism, high spending on the military-industrial complex, a low tax base, and subsidizing the economy. The CCP argued that when Gorbachev came to power and introduced his economic reforms, they were "too small, too late, and too fast& #34;.

In my opinion, the fundamental cause of drastic changes in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the loss of dynamism of the Soviet socialist model of Stalin... The disadvantages of this model were institutional and fundamental: not a single reform after Stalin's death brought fundamental changes to Stalin's Soviet socialist model. This model, with its problems and contradictions that accumulated day by day, was finally in crisis, and the peoples of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe lost their confidence in it. The [only] departure was to abandon the Soviet-Stalinist socialist model and seek another way for social development. - Lu Nanqun, CASS sociologist.

While most CCP researchers are critical of the CPSU's economic policies, many have criticized what they see as "Soviet totalitarianism." They accuse Joseph Stalin of creating a system of mass terror, intimidation,, nullifying the democratic component of democratic centralism and emphasizing centralism, which led to the creation of an internal party dictatorship. Other points were Russian nationalism, the lack of separation between the party and state bureaucracies, the suppression of non-Russian ethnicities, distortion of the economy through the introduction of over-centralization, and collectivization of agriculture. According to CCP researcher Xiao Guisen, Stalin's policies led to "stunted economic growth, a close surveillance of society, a lack of democratic decision-making, an absence of the rule of law, the burden of bureaucracy, the alienation of the CPSU from the concerns of the people, and a buildup of ethnic tensions". Stalin's effect on ideology was also criticized; several researchers accused his policies of being his "leftist", "dogmatic"; and a deviation from "true Marxism-Leninism". He is criticized for initiating the "bastardization of Leninism," party consultation, for misinterpreting Lenin's theory of imperialism, and for supporting foreign revolutionary movements only when the Soviet Union could get something out of it. Yu Sui, a CCP theorist, said that "the collapse of the Soviet Union and the CPSU is a punishment for their past mistakes!" having] a bureaucratic ideology and thinking', while Yuri Andropov is described by some as having the potential to become a new Khrushchev if he had not died early.

While the CCP agrees with Gorbachev's assessment that the CPSU needed internal reform, they disagree on how it was implemented, criticizing his idea of "humanistic and democratic socialism," to deny the leading role of the CPSU, to deny Marxism, to deny the analysis of class contradictions and class struggle, and to deny the "ultimate socialist goal of realizing communism". Other Soviet leaders, Gorbachev is criticized for pursuing wrong reformist policies and for being too flexible and too right-wing. The CCP Organization Department said: "What Gorbachev actually did was not transform the CPSU with correct principles; indeed, the Soviet Communist Party needed a transformation"—but instead, step by step, and ultimately, eroded the ruling party's dominance ideologically, politically, and organizationally".

The CPSU was also criticized for not taking enough care in building the party's primary organization and for not having internal party democracy. Others, more radically, agree with Milovan Đilas's assessment, saying that a new class was established within the CPSU central party leadership and that a "corrupt and privileged class" had developed; due to the nomenklatura system. Others criticized the special privileges granted to the CPSU elite, the nomenklatura system—which according to some had continually declined since the Stalin regime—and the relationship between the Soviet military and the CPSU. Unlike China, the Soviet military was a state institution, while in China it is a party (and state) institution. The CCP criticizes the CPSU for persecuting Soviet imperialism in its foreign policy.

Conventions (1917-1991)

Source: A.A. Soloviov, Syezdy i konferéntsii KPSS: Správochnik. ("Congresses and conferences of the CPSU: manual.") Moscow: Politizdat, 1986. All dates in the new calendar.