The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), also known by various other names during its history, was the founding and ruling party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990 when the Congress of People's Deputies modified Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which had previously granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party has its roots in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). The RSDLP was founded in 1898, when Russia was ruled by an absolute monarchy. The broad anti-Tsarist ideology was the driving factor in its initial growth. Russians across the political spectrum flocked to the party, as Marxists, socialists, and centrists made up its ranks. Despite the Tsar's harsh oppression including imprisoning and even executing party members, the RSDLP continued to grow albeit underground. Initially the party operated in a unified and cohesive manner, but by 1900 cracks within party unity began to show.
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, Marxist philosopher and economist and prolific author on revolutionary theory.
The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of world socialism via international revolution. The Fourth International was established in France in 1938, as Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Communist International as effectively puppets of Stalinism and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power. Thus, Trotskyists founded their own competing Fourth International.
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state". The Comintern was preceded by the 1916 dissolution of the Second International.
The Right Opposition or Right Tendency, in VKP(b) was a conditional label formulated by Stalin in fall of 1928 in regards the opposition against certain measures included within the first five-year plan by Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union that did not follow the so called "general line of the party". It is also the name given to "right-wing" critics within the Communist movement internationally, particularly those who coalesced in the International Communist Opposition, regardless of whether they identified with Bukharin and Rykov.
The Third Period is an ideological concept adopted by the Communist International (Comintern) at its Sixth World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928. It set policy until reversed when the Nazis took over Germany in 1933.
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:
The Red International of Labor Unions, commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Communist International with the aim of coordinating Communist activities within trade unions. Formally established in 1921, the Profintern was intended to act as a counterweight to the influence of the so-called "Amsterdam International", the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions, an organization branded as class collaborationist and an impediment to revolution by the Comintern. After entering a period of decline in the middle 1930s, the organization was finally terminated in 1937 with the advent of the Popular Front.
Social fascism was a theory that was supported by the Communist International (Comintern) and affiliated communist parties in the early 1930s that held that social democracy was a variant of fascism because it stood in the way of a dictatorship of the proletariat, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model.
The 11th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held during 27 March – 2 April 1922 in Moscow. The congress was attended by 522 with a casting vote alongside 165 with consultative vote, and elected the 11th Central Committee.
The 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (b) was held in Moscow 18–23 March 1919. The Congress was attended by 301 voting delegates who represented 313,766 Party members. A further 102 delegates attended with speaking rights, but no vote. It elected the 8th Central Committee.
Ghiță Moscu was a Romanian socialist and communist activist, one of the early leaders of the Romanian Communist Party and its permanent delegate to the Third International.
Victorio Codovilla, born Vittorio Codovilla, was an Italian-born Argentine socialist and later communist politician. At first a member of the Italian Socialist Party, he emigrated to Argentina in 1912 and went on to hold prominent posts in the Comintern and the Communist Party of Argentina (PCA), of which he was General Secretary in 1941–1963 and President in 1963–1970.
Milan Gorkić, born as Josef Čižinský, was a high-ranking and prominent Yugoslav communist politician and activist. He was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) in exile from 1932 until 1937 and also a prominent member of the Comintern.
The Communist Women's International was launched as an autonomous offshoot of the Communist International in April 1920 for the purpose of advancing communist ideas among women. The Communist Women's International was intended to play the same role for the international women's movement that the Red Peasant International played for poor agrarians and the Red International of Labor Unions played for the international labor movement.
Karl Berngardovich Radek was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a Communist International leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution.
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevization by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress.
The 4th World Congress of the Communist International was an assembly of delegates to the Communist International held in Petrograd and Moscow, Soviet Russia, between November 5 and December 5, 1922. A total of 343 voting delegates from 58 countries were in attendance. The 4th World Congress is best remembered for having amplified the tactic of the United Front into a fundamental part of international Communist policy. The gathering also elected a new set of leaders to the Comintern's governing body, the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI).
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI (Russian acronym ИККИ), was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body. The ECCI was established by the Founding Congress of the Comintern in 1919 and was dissolved with the rest of the Comintern in May 1943.
The Seventh World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) was a multinational conference held in Moscow from July 25 through August 20, 1935 by delegated representatives of ruling and non-ruling communist parties from around the world and invited guests representing other political and organized labor organizations. The gathering was attended by 513 delegates, of whom 371 were accorded full voting rights, representing 65 Comintern member parties as well as 19 sympathizing parties.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic