197-672: The Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs , СР , or Esers , эсеры , esery ; Russian : Па́ртия социали́стов-революционе́ров , romanized : Pártiya sotsialístov-revolyutsionérov , ПСР , PSR ), also known as the Socialist Revolutionary Party , was a major political party in the late Russian Empire , during both phases of the Russian Revolution , and in early Soviet Russia . The SRs were agrarian socialists and supporters of
394-426: A Tito–Stalin split , which marked the beginning of international sectarian division within the world communist movement. 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. In 1955, Khrushchev achieved the demotion of Malenkov and secured his own position as Soviet leader. Early in his rule and with
591-529: A campaign against religion was waged in which the Russian Orthodox Church , which had long been a political arm of Tsarism before the revolution, was ruthlessly repressed, organized religion was generally removed from public life and made into a completely private matter, with many churches, mosques and other shrines being repurposed or demolished. The Soviet Union was the first to warn of the impending danger of invasion from Nazi Germany to
788-674: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in
985-703: A cult of personality . Collective leadership split power between the Politburo , the Central Committee, and the Council of Ministers to hinder any attempts to create a one-man dominance over the Soviet political system. By contrast, Stalin's period as leader was characterized by an extensive cult of personality . Regardless of leadership style, all political power in the Soviet Union was concentrated in
1182-768: A democratic socialist Russian republic. The ideological heirs of the Narodniks , the SRs won a mass following among the Russian peasantry by endorsing the overthrow of the Tsar and the redistribution of land to the peasants . The SRs boycotted the elections to the First Duma following the Revolution of 1905 alongside the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , but chose to run in
1379-419: A failed coup d'état by conservative CPSU leaders against the reforming Soviet president and party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev . 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
1576-519: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to
1773-536: A damaging peace to end the war with the Germans in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and transferring estates and imperial lands to workers' and peasants' soviets. In this context, in 1918, RSDLP(b) became All-Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks). Outside of Russia, social-democrats who supported the Soviet government began to identify as communists, while those who opposed it retained the social-democratic label. In 1921, as
1970-664: A formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( CPSU ), at some points known as the Russian Communist Party , All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party , and sometimes referred to as the Soviet Communist Party ( SCP ),
2167-628: A fusion of the original ideas of German philosopher and economic theorist Karl Marx , and Lenin, became formalized by Stalin as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so throughout the rest of its existence. The party pursued state socialism , under which all industries were nationalized, and a command economy was implemented. After recovering from the Second World War , reforms were implemented which decentralized economic planning and liberalized Soviet society in general under Nikita Khrushchev . By 1980, various factors, including
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#17327721700712364-530: A higher participation rate. An organized opposition was established within the legislature under the name Inter-Regional Group of Deputies by dissident Andrei Sakharov . An unintended consequence of these reforms was the increased anti-CPSU pressure; in March 1990, at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union , the party was forced to relinquish its political monopoly of power, in effect turning
2561-753: A human face ", all non-conformist reform attempts in the Soviet Union were stopped. During his rule, Brezhnev supported détente , a passive weakening of animosity with the West with the goal of improving political and economic relations. However, by the 25th Congress held in 1976, political, economic and social problems within the Soviet Union began to mount, and the Brezhnev administration found itself in an increasingly difficult position. The previous year, Brezhnev's health began to deteriorate. He became addicted to painkillers and needed to take increasingly more potent medications to attend official meetings. Because of
2758-484: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but
2955-523: A larger role, particularly in foreign affairs, but he soon found himself marginalised and his proposals of far-reaching agrarian reform blocked by more conservative members of the government. After the failed Bolshevik uprising of July 1917, Chernov found himself on the defensive as allegedly soft on the Bolsheviks and was excluded from the revamped coalition in August 1917. The party was now represented in
3152-588: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between
3349-852: A majority in the subsequent elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly , with most of the party's seats going to the Right faction. Citing outdated voter-rolls which did not acknowledge the party split, and the Assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik-Left SR government moved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly by force in January 1918. The Left SRs left their coalition with
3546-622: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it
3743-583: A nationalist military coup which received supported from Germany and Italy, in 1939 the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, later jointly invading and partitioning Poland to fulfil a secret protocol of the pact, as well as occupying the Baltic States, this pact would be broken in June 1941 when the German military invaded the Soviet Union in the largest land invasion in history, beginning
3940-462: A number of reformers, including Yegor Ligachev , Nikolay Ryzhkov , and Mikhail Gorbachev , to important positions. He also supported a crackdown on absenteeism and corruption. 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. Andropov died on 9 February 1984 and
4137-526: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in
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#17327721700714334-665: A radical faction within the SRs rejected the Provisional Government's authority in favor of the Congress of Soviets and began to drift towards the Bolsheviks . These divisions would ultimately result in the party splitting over the course of the summer of 1917 into the Right and Left SRs . Meanwhile, Alexander Kerensky , one of the leaders of the February Revolution and the second and last head of
4531-512: 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. The factions within the soviets became increasingly polarized in the later summer after armed demonstrations by soldiers at
4728-402: 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
4925-458: A speech titled " The Personality Cult and its Consequences ". Despite delegates to Congresses losing their powers to criticize or remove party leadership, the Congresses functioned as a form of elite-mass communication . They were occasions for the party leadership to express the party line over the next five years to ordinary CPSU members and the general public. The information provided
5122-539: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,
5319-481: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under
5516-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of
5713-610: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this
5910-488: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to
6107-624: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There
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6304-573: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially
6501-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which
6698-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and
6895-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to
7092-585: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in
7289-532: Is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of
7486-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using
7683-457: The 11th Congress , the 3rd Statute was adopted with only minor amendments being made. New statutes were approved at the 17th and 18th Congresses respectively. The last party statute, which existed until the dissolution of the CPSU, was adopted at the 22nd Congress. General Secretary of the Central Committee was the title given to the overall leader of the party. The office was synonymous with
7880-529: The 1991 Soviet coup attempt as a reason. The party started in 1898 as part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . In 1903, that party split into a Menshevik ("minority") and Bolshevik ("majority") faction; the latter, led by Vladimir Lenin , is the direct ancestor of the CPSU and is the party that seized power in the October Revolution of 1917. Its activities were suspended on Soviet territory 74 years later, on 29 August 1991, soon after
8077-470: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population
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8274-1000: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian
8471-541: The CPSU Moscow City Committee . On 13 March 1988, Nina Andreyeva , a university lecturer, wrote an article titled " I Cannot Forsake My Principles ". The publication was planned to occur when both Gorbachev and his protege Alexander Yakovlev were visiting foreign countries. In their place, Yegor Ligachev led the party organization and told journalists that the article was "a benchmark for what we need in our ideology today". Upon Gorbachev's return,
8668-604: The Central Auditing Commission were approved beforehand by the Politburo and the Secretariat. A Congress could also provide a platform for the announcement of new ideological concepts. For instance, at the 22nd Congress , Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would see " communism in twenty years "— a position later retracted. A Conference, officially referred to as an All-Union Conference,
8865-612: The Civil War was drawing to a close, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy (NEP), a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and post-war recovery. The NEP ended a brief period of intense rationing called " war communism " and began a period of a market economy under Communist dictation. The Bolsheviks believed at this time that Russia, being among the most economically undeveloped and socially backward countries in Europe, had not yet reached
9062-678: The Cold War . In Europe, Yugoslavia , under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito , acquired the territory of Trieste , causing conflict both with the Western powers and with the Stalin administration who opposed such a provocative move. Furthermore, the Yugoslav communists actively supported the Greek communists during their civil war , further frustrating the Soviet government. These tensions led to
9259-490: The Communist International (Comintern). A central tenet of Leninism was that of the vanguard party. 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. Lenin decided that the party's sole responsibility was to articulate and plan the long-term interests of
9456-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in
9653-552: 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 Nicholas II (1868–1918, reigned 1894–1917) abdicated in March 1917, a republic was established and administered by a provisional government , which
9850-631: The Great Patriotic War . The Communist International was dissolved in 1943 after it was concluded that such an organization had failed to prevent the rise of fascism and the global war necessary to defeat it. After the 1945 Allied victory of World War II , the Party held to a doctrine of establishing socialist governments in the post-war occupied territories that would be administered by communists loyal to Stalin's administration. The party also sought to expand its sphere of influence beyond
10047-462: 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
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#173277217007110244-614: The Okhrana secret police, arrested, convicted of terrorism and sentenced to life at hard labour, managing to escape, flee overseas and go into exile. Azef became the new leader of the SRCO and continued working for both the SRCO and the Okhrana, simultaneously orchestrating terrorist acts and betraying his comrades. Boris Savinkov ran many of the actual operations, notably the assassination attempt on Admiral Fyodor Dubasov . However, terrorism
10441-452: The Russian Civil War alongside some Mensheviks and other banned socialist elements. The Tambov Rebellion against the Bolsheviks was led by an SR, Aleksandr Antonov . In Ufa the SRs' Provisional All-Russian Government was formed. However, after Admiral Kolchak was installed by the Whites as "Supreme Leader" in November 1918, he expelled all Socialists from the ranks. As a result, some SRs placed their organisation behind White lines at
10638-450: The Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) by 1921. The Right SRs supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, but the White movement's anti-socialist leadership increasingly marginalized and ultimately purged them. A small Right SR remnant, still calling itself the Socialist Revolutionary Party, continued to operate in exile from 1923 to 1940 as a member of the Labour and Socialist International . The party's ideology
10835-410: The Tsarist regime. The party was established in 1902 out of the Northern Union of Socialist Revolutionaries (founded in 1896), bringing together many local socialist revolutionary groups established in the 1890s, notably the Workers' Party of Political Liberation of Russia created by Catherine Breshkovsky and Grigory Gershuni in 1899. A primary party theorist emerged Viktor Chernov , the editor of
11032-476: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
11229-507: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
11426-403: The "trust in cadres" policy implemented by his administration, the CPSU leadership evolved into a gerontocracy . At the end of Brezhnev's rule, problems continued to amount; in 1979 he consented to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan to save the embattled communist regime there and supported the oppression of the Solidarity movement in Poland. As problems grew at home and abroad, Brezhnev
11623-442: The 19th Conference in 1988, the Politburo alongside the Secretariat controlled appointments and dismissals nationwide. In the post-Stalin period, the Politburo controlled the Central Committee apparatus through two channels; the General Department distributed the Politburo's orders to the Central Committee departments and through the personnel overlap which existed within the Politburo and the Secretariat. This personnel overlap gave
11820-405: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as
12017-412: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home
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#173277217007112214-427: The Bolshevik government) while the mainstream SR and their Menshevik allies walked out of the Congress. In late November, the Left SRs joined the Bolshevik government, obtaining three ministries. In the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly held two weeks after the Bolsheviks took power, the party still proved to be by far the most popular party across the country, gaining 37.6% of the popular vote as opposed to
12411-505: The Bolsheviks in March 1918 in protest against the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . An uprising against the Bolsheviks by the leadership of the Left SRs in July 1918 resulted in the immediate arrest of most of the party's members. Most of the Left SRs who opposed the uprising were gradually freed and allowed to keep their government positions, but were unable to organize a new central organ and gradually splintered into multiple pro-Bolshevik parties, which would all ultimately merge with
12608-402: The Bolsheviks' 24%. However, the Bolsheviks disbanded the Assembly in January 1918 and after that the SR lost political significance. The Left SRs became the coalition partner of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet government, although they resigned their positions after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (the peace treaty with the Central Powers that ended Russia's participation in World War I). Both wings of
12805-411: The Brezhnev period saw the rise of neo-Stalinism . While Stalin was never rehabilitated during this period, the most conservative journals in the country were allowed to highlight positive features of his rule. 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. At
13002-445: The British researcher of Russian affairs, Archie Brown , the democratization of the Soviet Union brought mixed blessings to Gorbachev; it helped him to weaken his conservative opponents within the party but brought out accumulated grievances which had been suppressed during the previous decades. In reaction to these changes, a conservative movement gained momentum in 1987 in response to Boris Yeltsin 's dismissal as First Secretary of
13199-430: The CPSU General Secretary a way of strengthening his position within the Politburo through the Secretariat. Kirill Mazurov , Politburo member from 1965 to 1978, accused Brezhnev of turning the Politburo into a "second echelon" of power. He accomplished this by discussing policies before Politburo meetings with Mikhail Suslov , Andrei Kirilenko , Fyodor Kulakov , and Dmitriy Ustinov among others, who held seats both in
13396-432: The CPSU and independent candidates. Other organized parties were not allowed. The CPD was elected in 1989 ; one-third of the seats were appointed by the CPSU and other public organizations to sustain the Soviet one-party state . The elections were democratic, but most elected CPD members opposed any more radical reform. The elections featured the highest electoral turnout in Russian history; no election before or since had
13593-402: The CPSU launched the August 1991 coup , which overthrew Gorbachev but failed to preserve the Soviet Union. When Gorbachev resumed control (21 August 1991) after the coup's collapse, he resigned from the CPSU on 24 August 1991 and operations were handed over to Ivashko. On 29 August 1991 the activity of the CPSU was suspended throughout the country, on 6 November Yeltsin banned the activities of
13790-410: 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
13987-435: The CPSU's demise, the Communist Parties of the Union Republics became independent and underwent various separate paths of reform. In Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation emerged and has been regarded as the inheritor of the CPSU's old Bolshevik legacy into the present day. The origin of the CPSU was in the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). This faction arose out of
14184-681: The Central Committee was established and based in Prague . The party was a member of the Labour and Socialist International between 1923 and 1940. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It
14381-532: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
14578-475: The Great Purge. 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. The body remained largely symbolic after Stalin's consolidation; leading party officials rarely attended meetings of the Central Committee. The Central Auditing Commission (CAC) was elected by the party Congresses and reported only to
14775-590: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
14972-538: The Kerensky led provisional government's legitimacy. The provisional government, insistent on maintaining the universally despised war effort on the Eastern Front because of treaty ties with its Allies and fears of Imperial German victory , had become socially isolated and had no enthusiastic support on the streets. On 7 November (25 October, old style), the Bolsheviks led an armed insurrection, which overthrew
15169-509: The Kerensky provisional government and left the soviets as the sole governing force in Russia. In the aftermath of the October Revolution , the soviets united federally and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic , the world's first constitutionally socialist state, was established. The Bolsheviks were the majority within the soviets and began to fulfill their campaign promises by signing
15366-526: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
15563-488: The Politburo and faced few constraints from party leaders. In the summer of 1990 the party convened the 28th Congress . A new Politburo was elected, previous incumbents (except Gorbachev and Vladimir Ivashko , the CPSU Deputy General Secretary) were removed. Later that year, the party began work on a new program with a working title, "Towards a Humane, Democratic Socialism". According to Brown,
15760-455: The Politburo and the Secretariat. Mazurov's claim was later verified by Nikolai Ryzhkov , the Chairman of the Council of Ministers under Gorbachev. Ryzhkov said that Politburo meetings lasted only 15 minutes because the people close to Brezhnev had already decided what was to be approved. The Politburo was abolished and replaced by a Presidium in 1952 at the 19th Congress. In the aftermath
15957-426: The Politburo did during the post-Stalin era, serving as the party's governing body. However, as the membership in the Central Committee increased, its role was eclipsed by the Politburo. Between Congresses, the Central Committee functioned as the Soviet leadership's source of legitimacy. The decline in the Central Committee's standing began in the 1920s; it was reduced to a compliant body of the Party leadership during
16154-448: The Provisional Government (July–November 1917) was a nominal member of the SR party but in practice acted independently of its decisions. By November 1917, the Provisional Government had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I , implement land reform or convene a Constituent Assembly to draft a Constitution, leaving the soviet councils in de facto control of
16351-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated
16548-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from
16745-558: The SR party were ultimately suppressed by the Bolsheviks through imprisoning some of its leaders and forcing others to emigrate. A few Left SRs like Yakov Grigorevich Blumkin joined the Communist Party . Dissatisfied with the large concessions granted to Imperial Germany by the Bolsheviks in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, two Chekists who were left SRs assassinated the German ambassador to Russia, Count Wilhelm Mirbach early in
16942-459: The SRCO failed and it was suspended in 1911. Gershuni had defended Azef from exile in Zürich until his death there. The Azef scandal contributed to a profound revision of SR tactics that was already underway. As a result, it renounced assassinations (" individual terror ") as a means of political protest. With the start of World War I , the party was divided on the issue of Russia's participation in
17139-661: The SRs to return to an active political role. Party leaders, including Chernov, returned to Russia. They played a major role in the formation and leadership of the soviets, albeit in most cases playing second fiddle to the Mensheviks. One member, Alexander Kerensky , joined the Russian Provisional Government in March 1917 as Minister of Justice, eventually becoming the head of a coalition socialist-liberal government in July 1917, although his connection with
17336-427: The Secretariat by the plenums of the Central Committee. In between Central Committee plenums, the Politburo and the Secretariat were legally empowered to make decisions on its behalf. The Central Committee or the Politburo and/or Secretariat on its behalf could issue nationwide decisions; decisions on behalf of the party were transmitted from the top to the bottom. Under Lenin, the Central Committee functioned much as
17533-416: The Soviet Union , the banning of the party by later last RSFSR President Boris Yeltsin and subsequent first President of the successor Russian Federation . 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 " glasnost " (political openness) was the root cause, noting that it weakened
17730-420: The Soviet Union into a liberal democracy . The CPSU's demise began in March 1990, when state bodies eclipsed party elements in power. From then until the Soviet Union's disestablishment, Gorbachev ruled the country through the newly created post of President of the Soviet Union . Following this, the central party apparatus did not play a practical role in Soviet affairs. Gorbachev had become independent from
17927-632: The Soviet Union led Western countries, such as the United States , to open diplomatic relations with the Soviet government. In 1933, after years of unsuccessful workers' revolutions (including a short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic ) and spiraling economic calamity, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, violently suppressing the revolutionary organizers and posing a direct threat to the Soviet Union that ideologically supported them. The threat of fascist sabotage and imminent attack greatly exacerbated
18124-448: The Soviet Union was stagnating but was stable and might have continued largely unchanged into the 21st century if not for Gorbachev's reforms. Gorbachev conducted a significant personnel reshuffling of the CPSU leadership, forcing old party conservatives out of office. In 1985 and early 1986 the new leadership of the party called for uskoreniye ( Russian : ускоре́ние , lit. 'acceleration'). Gorbachev reinvigorated
18321-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
18518-467: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of
18715-542: The aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis , Khrushchev's position within the party was substantially weakened. 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. 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
18912-456: The afternoon on 6 July. Following the assassination, the left SRs attempted a " Third Russian Revolution " against the Bolsheviks on 6–7 July, but it failed and led to the arrest, imprisonment, exile and execution of party leaders and members. In response, some SRs turned to violence. A former SR, Fanny Kaplan , tried to assassinate Lenin on 30 August. Many SRs fought for the Whites or Greens in
19109-613: The already existing tensions within the Soviet Union and the Communist Party. A wave of paranoia overtook Stalin and the party leadership and spread through Soviet society. Seeing potential enemies everywhere, leaders of the government security apparatuses began severe crackdowns known as the Great Purge . In total, hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom were posthumously recognized as innocent, were arrested and either sent to prison camps or executed. Also during this time,
19306-553: The article was discussed at length during a Politburo meeting; it was revealed that nearly half of its members were sympathetic to the letter and opposed further reforms which could weaken the party. The meeting lasted for two days, but on 5 April a Politburo resolution responded with a point-by-point rebuttal to Andreyeva's article. Gorbachev convened the 19th Party Conference in June 1988. He criticized leading party conservatives—Ligachev, Andrei Gromyko and Mikhail Solomentsev . In turn, conservative delegates attacked Gorbachev and
19503-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter
19700-417: The call of the Bolsheviks and an attempted military coup by commanding Gen. Lavr Kornilov to eliminate the socialists from the provisional government. As the general consensus within the soviets moved leftward, less militant forces began to abandon them, leaving the Bolsheviks in a stronger position. By October, the Bolsheviks were demanding the full transfer of power to the soviets and for total rejection of
19897-591: The close, party-to-party relations that he wanted. 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. Khrushchev also failed to improve Soviet relations with the West, partially because of a hawkish military stance. In
20094-517: The continuing Cold War , and ongoing nuclear arms race with the United States and other Western European powers and unaddressed inefficiencies in the economy, led to stagnant economic growth under Alexei Kosygin , and further with Leonid Brezhnev and growing disillusionment. After the younger, vigorous Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership in 1985 (following two short-term elderly leaders, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko , who quickly died in succession), rapid steps were taken to transform
20291-451: The convocation of the Russian Constituent Assembly instead of immediately confiscating the land from the landowners and redistributing it to the peasants. Left SRs and Bolsheviks referred to the mainstream SR party as the "Right SR" party whereas mainstream SRs referred to the party as just "SR" and reserved the term "Right SR" for the right-wing faction of the party led by Catherine Breshkovsky and Avksentiev. The primary issues motivating
20488-572: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language
20685-635: The country. The Bolsheviks thus moved to hand power to the 2nd Congress of Soviets in the October Revolution . After a few weeks of deliberation, the Left SRs ultimately formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks – the Council of People's Commissioners – from November 1917 to March 1918 while the Right SRs boycotted the Soviets and denounced the Revolution as an illegal coup . The SRs obtained
20882-603: The defectors from the PSR as Maximalists disagreed with the SRs' strategy of a two-stage revolution as advocated by Chernov, the first stage being popular-democratic and the second labour-socialist. To Maximalists, this seemed like the RSDLP distinction between bourgeois-democratic and proletarian-socialist stages of revolution. Maximalism stood for immediate socialist revolution. Meanwhile, the Popular Socialists disagreed with
21079-606: The dissolution of the governing structures of the CPSU and the governing structures of its republican organization—the Communist Party of the RSFSR. 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
21276-526: The distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of the consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
21473-530: The elections to the Second Duma and received the majority of the few seats allotted to the peasantry. Following the 1907 coup , the SRs boycotted all subsequent Dumas until the fall of the Tsar in the February Revolution of March 1917. Controversially, the party leadership endorsed the Russian Provisional Government and participated in multiple coalitions with liberal and social-democratic parties, while
21670-409: 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. 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. The Congress, nominally the highest organ of the party,
21867-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,
22064-456: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or
22261-409: The first definition, small-holding subsistence farmers who do not employ wage labour are – as owners of their land – members of the petty bourgeoisie, whereas on the second definition, they can be grouped with all who provide rather than purchase labour-power, and hence with the proletariat as part of the labouring class. Chernov considered the proletariat as vanguard and the peasantry as the main body of
22458-475: The first party organ, Revolutsionnaya Rossiya ( Revolutionary Russia ). Later party periodicals included Znamia Truda ( Labour's Banner ), Delo Naroda ( People's Cause ) and Volia Naroda ( People's Will ). Party leaders included Grigori Gershuni, Catherine Breshkovsky, Andrei Argunov , Nikolai Avksentiev , Mikhail Gots , Mark Natanson , Rakitnikov (Maksimov), Vadim Rudnev , Nikolay Rusanov , Ilya Rubanovich and Boris Savinkov . The party's programme
22655-427: The founding of the Soviet Union in 1922, Lenin had introduced a mixed economy , commonly referred to as the New Economic Policy , which allowed for capitalist practices to resume under the Communist Party dictation in order to develop the necessary conditions for socialism to become a practical pursuit in the economically undeveloped country. In 1929, as Joseph Stalin became the leader of the party, Marxism–Leninism ,
22852-472: 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. Khrushchev's foreign policies led to the Sino-Soviet split , in part a consequence of his public denunciation of Stalin. Khrushchev improved relations with Josip Broz Tito 's League of Communists of Yugoslavia but failed to establish
23049-631: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
23246-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and
23443-461: The government by Nikolai Avksentiev, a defensist, as Minister of the Interior. This weakening of the party's position intensified the growing divide within it between supporters of the pluralistic Constituent Assembly, and those inclined toward more resolute, unilateral action. In August 1917, Maria Spiridonova advocated scuttling the Constituent Assembly and forming an SR-only government, but she
23640-507: 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
23837-474: The international community. The Western powers, however, remained committed to maintaining peace and avoiding another war breaking out, many considering the Soviet Union's warnings to be an unwanted provocation. After many unsuccessful attempts to create an anti-fascist alliance among the Western countries, including trying to rally international support for the Spanish Republic in its struggle against
24034-483: 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. 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. Until
24231-419: 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. Lenin believed that the party needed to be ruled from the center and have at its disposal power to mobilize party members at will. This system was later introduced in communist parties abroad through
24428-618: 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. He was succeeded in office by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers . The Brezhnev era began with a rejection of Khrushchevism in virtually every arena except one: continued opposition to Stalinist methods of terror and political violence. Khrushchev's policies were criticized as voluntarism, and
24625-486: 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
24822-579: 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. The style of governance in the party alternated between collective leadership and
25019-528: The necessary conditions of development for socialism to become a practical pursuit and that this would have to wait for such conditions to arrive under capitalist development as had been achieved in more advanced countries such as England and Germany. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), of which Lenin
25216-524: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of
25413-532: The occupied territories, using proxy wars and espionage and providing training and funding to promote communist elements abroad, leading to the establishment of the Cominform in 1947. In 1949, the communists emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil War , causing an extreme shift in the global balance of forces and greatly escalating tensions between the communists and the Western powers, fueling
25610-481: 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
25807-465: The oppressed classes. It was not responsible for the daily grievances of those classes; that was the responsibility of the trade unions . 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. The basic idea was that a small group of organized people could wield power disproportionate to their size with superior organizational skills. Despite this, until
26004-416: The organization of the CPSU. Democratic centralism is an organizational principle conceived by Lenin. According to Soviet pronouncements, democratic centralism was distinguished from " bureaucratic centralism", which referred to high-handed formulae without knowledge or discussion. In democratic centralism, decisions are taken after discussions, but once the general party line has been formed, discussion on
26201-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to
26398-461: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,
26595-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held
26792-511: The party Congress. It had about as many members as the Central Committee. 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. It was also responsible for supervising the Central Committee apparatus, making sure that its directives were implemented and that Central Committee directives complied with
26989-716: The party Statute. The Statute (also referred to as the Rules, Charter and Constitution) was the party's by-laws and controlled life within the CPSU. The 1st Statute was adopted at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party —the forerunner of the CPSU. How the Statute was to be structured and organized led to a schism within the party, leading to the establishment of two competing factions; Bolsheviks (literally majority ) and Mensheviks (literally minority ). The 1st Statute
27186-421: The party ideology, adding new concepts and updating older ones. Positive consequences of this included the allowance of "pluralism of thought" and a call for the establishment of "socialist pluralism" (literally, socialist democracy). Gorbachev introduced a policy of glasnost ( Russian : гла́сность , meaning openness or transparency ) in 1986, which led to a wave of unintended democratization. According to
27383-533: The party in Russia and Gorbachev resigned from the presidency on 25 December; the following day the Soviet of Republics dissolved the Soviet Union. 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
27580-591: The party was tenuous. He had served in the Duma with the social democratic Trudoviks , breakaway SRs that defied the party's refusal to participate in the Duma. After the fall of the first coalition in April–May 1917 and the reshuffling of the Provisional Government, the party played a larger role. Its key government official at the time was Chernov who joined the government as Minister of Agriculture. Chernov also tried to play
27777-623: The party's control over society. Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the economic stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. In the final years of the CPSU's existence, the Communist Parties of the federal subjects of Russia were united into the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). After
27974-441: The party's proposal to socialise the land (i.e. turn it over to collective peasant ownership) and instead wanted to nationalise it (i.e. turn it over to the state). They also wanted landowners to be compensated while the PSR rejected indemnities. Many SRs held a mixture of these positions. In late 1908, a Russian Narodnik and amateur spy hunter Vladimir Burtsev suggested that Azef might be a police spy. The party's Central Committee
28171-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or
28368-418: 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
28565-459: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian
28762-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in
28959-464: The program reflected Gorbachev's journey from an orthodox communist to a European social democrat . The freedoms of thought and organization which Gorbachev allowed led to a rise in nationalism in the Soviet republics, indirectly weakening the central authorities. In response to this, a referendum took place in 1991 , in which most of the union republics voted to preserve the union in a different form . In reaction to this, conservative elements within
29156-479: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration
29353-472: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,
29550-457: The pursuit of peace through cooperation with socialist parties in both military blocs. This led them to participate in the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences with Bolshevik emigres led by Lenin. This fact was later used against Chernov and his followers by their right-wing opponents as alleged evidence of their lack of patriotism and Bolshevik sympathies. The February Revolution allowed
29747-542: The reformers. According to Brown, there had not been as much open discussion and dissent at a party meeting since the early 1920s. 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 19th Conference approved the establishment of the Congress of People's Deputies (CPD) and allowed for contested elections between
29944-523: 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
30141-403: 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
30338-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed
30535-466: The revolution towards the transformation of the ongoing war into a war of the working class against capitalism. The rebellion proved not yet to be over, as tensions between the social forces aligned with the soviets (councils) and those with the provisional government now led by Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970, in power 1917), came into explosive tensions during that summer. The Bolsheviks had rapidly increased their political presence from May onward through
30732-581: The revolutionary army. The party played an active role in the 1905 Russian Revolution and in the Moscow and Saint Petersburg Soviets . Although the party officially boycotted the first State Duma in 1906, 34 SRs were elected while 37 were elected to the second Duma in 1907. The party also boycotted both the third Duma (1907–1912) and fourth Duma (1912–1917). In this period, party membership drastically declined and most of its leaders emigrated from Russia. A distinctive feature of party tactics until about 1909
30929-585: The service of the Red Guards and the Cheka. Following Lenin's and Stalin's instructions, a trial of SRs was held in Moscow in 1922 , which led to protests by Eugene V. Debs , Karl Kautsky , and Albert Einstein among others. Most of the defendants were found guilty, but they did not plead guilty like the defendants in the later show trials in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and the 1930s. The party continued its activities in exile. A Foreign Delegation of
31126-567: The six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and
31323-552: 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
31520-630: The split were participation in the war and the timing of land redistribution. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on 25 October, when the Bolsheviks proclaimed the deposition of the Provisional government in Petrograd , the split within the SR party became final. The Left SR stayed at the Congress and were elected to the permanent All-Russian Central Executive Committee executive (while initially refusing to join
31717-547: 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. 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
31914-457: The subject must cease. No member or organizational institution may dissent on a policy after it has been agreed upon by the party's governing body; to do so would lead to expulsion from the party (formalized at the 10th Congress ). Because of this stance, Lenin initiated a ban on factions , which was approved at the 10th Congress. Lenin believed that democratic centralism safeguarded both party unity and ideological correctness. He conceived of
32111-553: 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. 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. His economic policies, while bringing about improvements, were not enough to fix
32308-626: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In
32505-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to
32702-412: The system after the events of 1917 when several socialist parties "deformed" themselves and actively began supporting nationalist sentiments. Lenin intended that the devotion to policy required by centralism would protect the parties from such revisionist ills and bourgeois deformation of socialism. Lenin supported the notion of a highly centralized vanguard party, in which ordinary party members elected
32899-456: 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
33096-410: The tottering Soviet economic system in the direction of a market economy once again. Gorbachev and his allies envisioned the introduction of an economy similar to Lenin's earlier New Economic Policy through a program of " perestroika ", or restructuring, but their reforms, along with the institution of free multi-candidate elections led to a decline in the party's power, and after the dissolution of
33293-786: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature
33490-454: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to
33687-433: The war. Most SR activists and leaders, particularly those remaining in Russia, chose to support the Tsarist government mobilisation against Germany. Together with the like-minded members of the Menshevik Party, they became known as oborontsy ("defensists"). Many younger defensists living in exile joined the French Army as Russia's closest ally in the war. A smaller group, the internationalists, which included Chernov, favoured
33884-464: Was democratic and socialist – it garnered much support among Russia's rural peasantry , who in particular supported their programme of land-socialization as opposed to the Bolshevik programme of land-nationalization – division of land into peasant tenants rather than collectivization into state management. The party's policy platform differed from that of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) – both Bolshevik and Menshevik – in that it
34081-404: Was a collective body elected at the annual party congress . It was mandated to meet at least twice a year to act as the party's supreme governing body. Membership of the Central Committee increased from 71 full members in 1934 to 287 in 1976. Central Committee members were elected to the seats because of the offices they held, not on their personal merit. Because of this, the Central Committee
34278-463: Was a renewed dialogue with Marxism and integration of some of the key Marxist concepts into their thinking and practice. In this way, with the economic spurt and industrialisation in Russia in the 1890s, they attempted to broaden their appeal in order to attract the rapidly growing urban workforce to their traditionally peasant-oriented programme. The intention was to widen the concept of the people so that it encompassed all elements in society that opposed
34475-405: Was at this time in exile in Switzerland where he, with other dissidents in exile, managed to arrange with the Imperial German government safe passage through Germany in a sealed train back to Russia through the continent amidst the ongoing World War . In April, Lenin arrived in Petrograd (renamed former St. Petersburg ) and condemned the provisional government, calling for the advancement of
34672-404: Was based upon Lenin's idea of a centralized vanguard party. The 4th Congress , despite a majority of Menshevik delegates, added the concept of democratic centralism to Article 2 of the Statute. The 1st Statute lasted until 1919 when the 8th Congress adopted the 2nd Statute. It was nearly five times as long as the 1st Statute and contained 66 articles. It was amended at the 9th Congress . At
34869-484: Was built upon the philosophical foundation of Russia's Narodnik – populist movement of the 1860s–1870s and its worldview developed primarily by Alexander Herzen and Pyotr Lavrov . After a period of decline and marginalisation in the 1880s, the Narodnik–populist school of thought about social change in Russia was revived and substantially modified by a group of writers and activists known as neonarodniki (neo-populists), particularly Viktor Chernov . Their main innovation
35066-413: Was commonly considered an indicator for Sovietologists to study the strength of the different institutions. The Politburo was elected by and reported to the Central Committee. Besides the Politburo, the Central Committee also elected the Secretariat and the General Secretary —the de facto leader of the Soviet Union. In 1919–1952, the Orgburo was also elected in the same manner as the Politburo and
35263-464: Was controversial for the party from the beginning. At its 2nd Congress in Imatra in 1906, the controversy over terrorism was one of the main reasons for the split between the SR Maximalists and the Popular Socialists . The Maximalists endorsed not only attacks on political and government targets, but also economic terror (i.e. attacks on landowners, factory owners and so on) whereas the Popular Socialists rejected all terrorism. Other issues also divided
35460-433: Was convened between Congresses by the Central Committee to discuss party policy and to make personnel changes within the Central Committee. 19 conferences were convened during the CPSU's existence. The 19th Congress held in 1952 removed the clause in the party's statute which stipulated that a party Conference could be convened. The clause was reinstated at the 23rd Congress, which was held in 1966. The Central Committee
35657-416: Was convened every five years. Leading up to the October Revolution and until Stalin's consolidation of power, the Congress was the party's main decision-making body. However, after Stalin's ascension, the Congresses became largely symbolic. CPSU leaders used Congresses as a propaganda and control tool. The most noteworthy Congress since the 1930s was the 20th Congress, in which Khrushchev denounced Stalin in
35854-405: Was elected leader. On 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924, only thirteen months after the founding of the Soviet Union, of which he would become regarded as the founding father. After Lenin's death, a power struggle ensued between Joseph Stalin , the party's General Secretary , and Leon Trotsky ,
36051-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian
36248-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of
36445-420: Was general, ensuring that party leadership retained the ability to make specific policy changes as they saw fit. 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. The elections at Congresses were all predetermined and the candidates who stood for seats to the Central Committee and
36642-457: Was increasingly ineffective in responding to the growing criticism of the Soviet Union by Western leaders, most prominently by US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan , and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher . The CPSU, which had wishfully interpreted the financial crisis of the 1970s as the beginning of the end of capitalism, found its country falling far behind the West in its economic development. Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982, and
36839-405: Was initially led by Gershuni and operated separately from the party so as not to jeopardise its political actions. SRCO agents assassinated two Ministers of the Interior, Dmitry Sipyagin and Vyacheslav von Plehve , Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich , the Governor of Ufa N. M. Bogdanovich and many other high-ranking officials. In 1903, Gershuni was betrayed by his deputy, Yevno Azef , an agent of
37036-449: Was its heavy reliance on assassinations of individual government officials. These tactics were inherited from SRs' predecessor in the populist movement, Narodnaya Volya (“People's Will”), a conspiratorial organisation of the 1880s. They were intended to embolden the "masses" and intimidate ("terrorise") the Tsarist government into political concessions . The SR Combat Organisation (SRCO), responsible for assassinating government officials,
37233-409: Was largely dominated by the interests of the military, former nobility, major capitalists business owners and democratic socialists. Alongside it, grassroots general assemblies spontaneously formed, called soviets , and a dual-power structure between the soviets and the provisional government was in place until such a time that their differences would be reconciled in a post-provisional government. Lenin
37430-503: Was not officially Marxist (though some of its ideologues considered themselves such). The SRs agreed with Marx's analysis of capitalism, but not with his proposed solution. The SRs believed that both the labouring peasantry as well as the industrial proletariat were revolutionary classes in Russia. Whereas RSDLP defined class membership in terms of ownership of the means of production, Chernov and other SR theorists defined class membership in terms of extraction of surplus value from labour. On
37627-411: Was not supported by Chernov and his followers. This spurred the formation a small breakaway faction of the SR party known as the "Left SRs". The Left SRs were willing to temporarily cooperate with the Bolsheviks. The Left SRs believed that Russia should withdraw immediately from World War I and they were frustrated that the Provisional Government wanted to postpone addressing the land question until after
37824-425: Was outraged and set up a tribunal to try Burtsev for slander. At the trial, Azef was confronted with evidence and was caught lying, therefore he fled and left the party in disarray. The party's Central Committee, most of whose members had close ties to Azef, felt obliged to resign. Many regional organisations, already weakened by the revolution's defeat in 1907, collapsed or became inactive. Savinkov's attempt to rebuild
38021-437: Was succeeded by Yuri Andropov on 12 November. Andropov, a staunch anti-Stalinist, chaired the KGB during most of Brezhnev's reign. He had appointed several reformers to leadership positions in the KGB, many of whom later became leading officials under Gorbachev. Andropov supported increased openness in the press, particularly regarding the challenges facing the Soviet Union. Andropov was in office briefly, but he appointed
38218-533: Was succeeded by Chernenko. 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. When Chernenko died on 10 March 1985, his succession was already settled in favor of Gorbachev. 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. When Gorbachev acceded to power,
38415-444: Was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It
38612-461: 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 1977 Soviet Constitution , which had previously granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party's main ideology was Marxism–Leninism . The party was outlawed under Russian President Boris Yeltsin 's decree on 6 November 1991, citing
38809-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between
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