The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the founding and ruling political party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990, when the Congress of People's Deputies modified Article 6 of the most recent 1977 Soviet constitution, which had granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system.
The organization of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was nominally based on the principles of democratic centralism.
Perestroika was a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s and is widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is "restructuring", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system.
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the social and economic goals of communism through revolution and the establishment of a strong state. The term communist party was popularized by the title of The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a vanguard party, the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As the ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vladimir Lenin developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when social democracy in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction and the Menshevik faction. To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries. Once the policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals required every Bolshevik's total commitment to the agreed-upon policy.
The Russian Communist Workers' Party of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or RCWP-CPSU, is a currently unregistered communist party in Russia. It is considered the republican branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (2001).
The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was an office of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) that by the late 1920s had evolved into the most powerful of the Central Committee's various secretaries. With a few exceptions, from 1929 until the union's dissolution the holder of the office was the de facto leader of the Soviet Union, because the post controlled both the CPSU and the Soviet government. Joseph Stalin elevated the office to overall command of the Communist Party and by extension the whole Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev renamed the post First Secretary in 1953; the change was reverted in 1966.
The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was generally perceived as covering that of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from which it evolved. The date 1912 is often identified as the time of the formation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a distinct party, and its history since then can roughly be divided into the following periods:
Arvīds Pelše was a Latvian Soviet politician, functionary, and historian.
CPSU, the Community and Public Sector Union is a national trade union in Australia. The union came into existence on 1 July 1994 with the amalgamation of the Public Sector, Professional, Scientific, Research, Technical, Communication, Aviation and Broadcasting Union ("PSU") with the State Public Service Federation. The CPSU is one of the largest trade unions in Australia with 120,000 members.
Demokratizatsiya was a slogan introduced by Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in January 1987 calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Union's single-party government. Gorbachev's Demokratizatsiya meant the introduction of multi-candidate—though not multiparty—elections for local Communist Party (CPSU) officials and Soviets. In this way, he hoped to rejuvenate the party with progressive personnel who would carry out his institutional and policy reforms. The CPSU would retain sole custody of the ballot box.
The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held from 17 to 31 October 1961. In fourteen days of sessions, 4,413 delegates, in addition to delegates from 83 foreign Communist parties, listened to Nikita Khrushchev and others review policy issues. At the Congress, the Sino-Soviet split hardened, especially due to Soviet de-Stalinization efforts, and it was the last Congress to be attended by the Chinese Communist Party. The Congress elected the 22nd Central Committee.
The 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during 2–19 December 1927 in Moscow. It was attended by 898 delegates with a casting vote and 771 with a consultative vote.
The 16th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during 26 June - 13 July 1930 in Moscow. The congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was attended by 1,268 voting delegates and 891 delegates with observer status. It elected the 16th Central Committee.
In 1989, elections were held for the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. The main elections were held on 26 March and a second round on 9 April. They were the first partially free nationwide elections held in the Soviet Union, and would prove to be the final national elections held as the country ceased to exist in 1991. The elections were followed by regional elections in 1990, the last legislative elections to take place in the country.
The Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union was the highest body of state authority of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a communist political party in Russia that adheres to Marxist–Leninist philosophy. The party is often viewed as the immediate successor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which was banned in 1991 by then–Russian President Boris Yeltsin after a failed coup attempt. It is the second-largest political party in the Russian Federation after United Russia. The youth organisation of the party is the Leninist Young Communist League. The party is administered by a Central Committee.
The economy of the Soviet Union was based on a system of state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, industrial manufacturing and centralized administrative planning. The Soviet economy was characterized by state control of investment, a dependence on natural resources, shortages, public ownership of industrial assets, macroeconomic stability, negligible unemployment, high growth rates and high job security.
The International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was a department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that oversaw the Party's relationships with foreign Communist Parties as well as with international communist front organizations.
The Central Committee (CC) composition was elected by the 16th Congress, and sat from 13 July 1930 until 10 February 1934. Its 1st Plenary Session renewed the composition of the Politburo, Secretariat and the Orgburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The 16th Congress was the first party convention since the 13th Congress which saw no organized opposition, and the first congress in party history in which there was no opposition to the party leadership. Ukrainian historian Oleg Khlevniuk considers the period 1930–1934 to be a "transitional period" between collective leadership and Joseph Stalin's personal dictatorship (autocracy). The removal of Alexei Rykov, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, from the Politburo at the 1st Joint Plenary Session of the CC and the Central Control Commission (CCC) has been marked in historic literature as "the definitive Stalinization of that body [Politburo]" according to Khlevniuk.
Kirill Feodorovich Ilyashenko was a Moldavian politician who served as the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR from 1963 to 1980. He served the longest as Chairman of the Presidium, serving a total of 17 years.
