Tribuna ( Russian : Трибуна ) is a weekly Russian newspaper that focuses largely on industry and the energy sector .
218-794: Tribunas published its first publication in July 1969. Until 1990, the newspaper titled the Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya , then it was renamed into the Rabochaya Tribuna . In 1989 the newspaper was closed by the CPSU Central Committee ; one year later it was reorganized as Rabochaya Tribuna. Since April 1998 for newspaper fixed the current title. Since the 2000s (decade) it is owned by media holding Gazprom Media . Oleg Kuzin has been serving as chief-editor since 2004. In 2009, on its 40th anniversary,
436-622: A Corsier conference they agreed to launch the paper from Munich , where Lenin relocated in September. Containing contributions from prominent European Marxists, Iskra was smuggled into Russia, becoming the country's most successful underground publication since 1850s. He first adopted the pseudonym Lenin in December 1901, possibly based on the Siberian River Lena ; he often used the fuller pseudonym of N. Lenin, and while
654-436: A Lutheran by upbringing, was largely indifferent to Christianity , a view that influenced her children. Ilya Ulyanov was from a family of former serfs ; Ilya's father's ethnicity remains unclear, with suggestions that he was of Russian , Chuvash , Mordvin , or Kalmyk ancestry. Despite a lower-class background, he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan University before teaching at
872-480: A Slavophile , which was an advantage. The Communist Party was his institutional base; he was the General Secretary – another advantage. But there was a problem; Stalin was known for his brutality. As one Party faithful put it, "A savage man ... a bloody man. You have to have swords like him in a revolution but I don't like that fact, nor like him." In his testament, Lenin said of Stalin: Stalin
1090-585: A one-party state under the Communist Party . Ideologically a Marxist , his developments to the ideology are called Leninism . Born into a middle-class family in Simbirsk , Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother 's 1887 execution. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Tsarist government , he devoted the following years to
1308-528: A one-party state . Within the party, a Political Bureau (Politburo) and Organisation Bureau (Orgburo) were established to accompany the existing Central Committee ; decisions of these bodies had to be adopted by Sovnarkom and the Council of Labour and Defence . Lenin was the most significant figure in this governance structure, being Chairman of Sovnarkom and sitting on the Council of Labour and Defence,
1526-949: A "bourgeoisie-democratic revolution" of the middle classes had to take place before a "socialist revolution" of the proletariat, Lenin believed that in Russia the proletariat could overthrow the Tsarist regime without an intermediate revolution. In February 1917, the February Revolution broke out in Saint Petersburg, renamed Petrograd at the beginning of the First World War, as industrial workers went on strike over food shortages and deteriorating factory conditions. The unrest spread to other parts of Russia, and fearing that he would be violently overthrown, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. The State Duma took over control of
1744-576: A 78 percent decrease. By the 18th Congress there were only 31 members of the Central Committee, and of these only two were reelected. Many of the victims of the Moscow Trials were not rehabilitated until 1988. Under Khrushchev, an investigation into the matter concluded that the Central Committee had lost its ruling function under Stalin; from 1929 onwards all decisions in the Central Committee were taken unanimously. In other words,
1962-571: A General Secretary not supported by the Central Committee. Even so, several leading Politburo members supported Chernenko, such as Nikolai Tikhonov and Viktor Grishin . To make matters worse for Chernenko, he did not have control over the Politburo; both Andrei Gromyko and Dmitriy Ustinov were both very independent politically, and the Politburo still contained several leading Andropov protégés, such as Gorbachev, Vorotnikov, Solomontsev and Heydar Aliyev . Chernenko never got complete control over
2180-683: A Marxist interpretation of societal development and counter the claims of the Narodniks. He wrote a paper on peasant economics; it was rejected by the liberal journal Russian Thought . In late 1893, Lenin moved to Saint Petersburg . There, he worked as a barrister's assistant and rose to a senior position in a Marxist revolutionary cell that called itself the Social-Democrats after the Marxist Social Democratic Party of Germany . Championing Marxism within
2398-518: A Russian language translation of Marx and Friedrich Engels 's 1848 political pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto . He began to read the works of the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov , agreeing with Plekhanov's argument that Russia was moving from feudalism to capitalism and so socialism would be implemented by the proletariat , or urban working class, rather than the peasantry. This Marxist perspective contrasted with
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#17327728587032616-511: A bad relationship with the General Secretary would not be elected to the Central Committee. The view that the Politburo nominated the members of the Central Committee is also controversial, considering the fact that each new Central Committee were, in most cases, filled with supporters of the General Secretary. If the Politburo indeed nominated members and candidates of the Central Committee, various factions would have arisen. While
2834-540: A bomb. Before the attack could take place, the conspirators were arrested and tried, and Alexander was executed by hanging in May 1887. Despite the emotional trauma of his father's and brother's deaths, Lenin continued studying, graduated from school at the top of his class with a gold medal for exceptional performance, and decided to study law at Kazan University. Upon entering Kazan University in August 1887, Lenin moved into
3052-704: A coalition government with other socialist parties. Though Sovnarkom refused a coalition with the Mensheviks or Socialist-Revolutionaries, it allowed the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries five cabinet posts in December 1917. This coalition lasted only until March 1918, when the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries left the government over disagreements about the Bolsheviks' approach to ending the First World War. At their 7th Congress in March 1918,
3270-571: A coalition with Trotsky and others, were negotiations with the Germans voted through with a simple majority. Criticism of other officials was allowed during these meetings, for instance, Karl Radek said to Lenin (criticising his position of supporting peace with the Germans), "If there were five hundred courageous men in Petrograd, we would put you in prison." The decision to negotiate peace with
3488-606: A consultative voice, but could not vote unless they were members. Following Lenin's death in January 1924, Stalin gradually increased his power in the Communist Party through the office of General Secretary of the Central Committee , the leading Secretary of the Secretariat. With Stalin's takeover, the role of the Central Committee was eclipsed by the Politburo, which consisted of a small clique of loyal Stalinists. By
3706-695: A convened Central Committee voted Khrushchev out of office, both as first secretary of the Central Committee and chairman of the Council of Ministers . At the beginning, Brezhnev's principal rival was Nikolai Podgorny , a member of the Secretariat. Podgorny was later "promoted" to the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union , and Andrei Kirilenko replaced him as secretary in charge of personnel policy. At
3924-510: A country controlled by the workers and power to the Soviets. Lenin and many other Bolsheviks expected proletariat revolution to sweep across Europe in days or months. The Provisional Government had planned for a Constituent Assembly to be elected in November 1917; despite Lenin's objections, Sovnarkom allowed the vote as scheduled. In the election , the Bolsheviks gained about a quarter of
4142-539: A country estate in Alakaevka village, Samara Oblast , in the hope that her son would turn his attention to agriculture. He had little interest in farm management, and his mother soon sold the land, keeping the house as a summer home. In September 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to the city of Samara , where Lenin joined Alexei Sklyarenko 's socialist discussion circle. There, Lenin fully embraced Marxism and produced
4360-666: A culturally Polish part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire , he used Jagiellonian University 's library to conduct research. He stayed in close contact with the RSDLP, which was operating in the Russian Empire, convincing the Duma's Bolshevik members to split from their parliamentary alliance with the Mensheviks. In January 1913, Stalin, whom Lenin referred to as the "wonderful Georgian", visited him, and they discussed
4578-492: A family life with Nadya's mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna, in Shushenskoye the couple translated English socialist literature into Russian. There, Lenin wrote A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats to criticise German Marxist revisionists like Eduard Bernstein who advocated a peaceful, electoral path to socialism. He also finished The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), his longest book to date, which criticised
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#17327728587034796-735: A few were known by name outside the Soviet Union. An example of a department is, for instance, the Land Cultivation section of the Agriculture Department or the Africa section of the International Department. As with the departments, a section was headed by an office named head. The official name for a departmental staff member was instructor ( Russian : instruktor ). During the Gorbachev era,
5014-528: A job in Nizhny Novgorod , rising to become Director of Primary Schools in the Simbirsk district six years later. Five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the government's plans for modernisation. In January 1882, his dedication to education earned him the Order of Saint Vladimir , which bestowed on him
5232-548: A law degree before relocating to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and becoming a prominent Marxist activist. In 1897, Lenin was arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years. He then moved to Western Europe, where he became a key figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . In the party's 1903 schism, he led his Bolshevik faction against Julius Martov 's Mensheviks . Lenin briefly returned to Russia during
5450-465: A maximum of two term-periods in each party body, including the Central Committee, others supported Nikita Khrushchev 's policy of compulsory turnover rules, which had been ended by the Brezhnev leadership. Other people called for the General Secretary to either be elected by the people, or a "kind of party referendum". There was also talk about introducing age limits, and decentralising, and weakening
5668-581: A meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on 10 October, where he again argued that the party should lead an armed insurrection to topple the Provisional Government. This time the argument won with ten votes against two. Critics of the plan, Zinoviev and Kamenev, argued that Russian workers would not support a violent coup against the regime and that there was no clear evidence for Lenin's assertion that all of Europe
5886-660: A minor role in the running of the party and state – the Politburo once again operated as the highest political organ in the Soviet Union. For the majority of Central Committee's history, plenums were held in the meeting chamber of the Soviet of the Union in the Grand Kremlin Palace . The offices of the administrative staff of the Central Committee were located in the 4th building of Staraya Square in Moscow, in what
6104-594: A multi-party Constituent Assembly , but by 1918 centralised power in the new Communist Party. Opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror , and tens of thousands were killed or interned in concentration camps. Responding to devastation, famine , and popular uprisings, Lenin reversed his policy of war communism in 1921, and encouraged economic growth through the New Economic Policy . His administration defeated right and left-wing anti-Bolshevik armies in
6322-400: A nearby flat. There, he joined a zemlyachestvo , a form of university society that represented the men of a particular region. This group elected him as its representative to the university's zemlyachestvo council, and he took part in a December demonstration against government restrictions that banned student societies. The police arrested Lenin and accused him of being a ringleader in
6540-474: A news sheet, Rabochee delo ( Workers' Cause ), he was among 40 activists arrested in St. Petersburg and charged with sedition. Refused legal representation or bail, Lenin denied all charges against him but remained imprisoned for a year before sentencing. He spent this time theorising and writing. In this work he noted that the rise of industrial capitalism in Russia had caused large numbers of peasants to move to
6758-501: A passage for them through Germany, with which Russia was then at war. Recognising that these dissidents could cause problems for their Russian enemies, the German government agreed to permit 32 Russian citizens to travel by train through their territory, among them Lenin and his wife. For political reasons, Lenin and the Germans agreed to a cover story that Lenin had travelled by sealed train carriage through German territory, but in fact
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6976-585: A person, not the people – the true nature of the party had become deformed under Stalin, and needed to be revitalised. These points, and more, were used against him, when Khrushchev was forced to resign from all his posts in 1964. Khrushchev had begun to initiate nepotistic policies, initiated policies without the consent of either the Presidium or the Central Committee, a cult of personality had developed and, in general, Khrushchev had developed several characteristics which he himself criticised Stalin of having at
7194-433: A post, was a purely administrative and disciplinary position, whose role was to do no more than determine party membership composition. Stalin used the principles of democratic centralism to transform his office into that of party leader, and later leader of the Soviet Union. In 1934, the 17th Party Congress did not elect a General Secretary and Stalin was an ordinary secretary until his death in 1953, although he remained
7412-480: A pure communist society . He began arguing for a Bolshevik-led armed insurrection to topple the government, but at a clandestine meeting of the party's central committee this idea was rejected. Lenin then headed by train and by foot to Finland, arriving at Helsinki on 10 August, where he hid away in safe houses belonging to Bolshevik sympathisers. In August 1917, while Lenin was in Finland, General Lavr Kornilov ,
7630-474: A revolutionary government which took steps towards socialism, while his critics accuse him of establishing a dictatorship which oversaw mass killings and political repression . Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Streletskaya Ulitsa, Simbirsk, now Ulyanovsk , on 22 April 1870, and baptised six days later; as a child, he was known as Volodya the common nickname variant of Vladimir. He
7848-415: A rumour of a potential coup led by Beria began to take hold within the party leadership. Afraid of the power Beria held, Khrushchev and Malenkov were prepared for a potential civil war. This did not happen, and Beria was forced to resign from all his party posts on 26 June, and was later executed on 23 December. Beria's fall also led to criticism of Stalin; the party leadership accused Beria of using Stalin,
8066-479: A savings of 20.2 billion rubles for Soviet taxpayers. In contrast, Khrushchev tried to strengthen the central party apparatus by focusing on the Central Committee. The Central Committee had not played a notable role in Soviet politics since Nikolai Bukharin 's downfall in 1929. Stalin weakened the powers of the Central Committee by a mixture of repression and organisational restructuring. Khrushchev also called for
8284-424: A series of Petrograd safe houses. Fearing that he would be killed, Lenin and fellow senior Bolshevik Grigory Zinoviev escaped Petrograd in disguise, relocating to Razliv . There, Lenin began work on the book that became The State and Revolution , an exposition on how he believed the socialist state would develop after the proletariat revolution, and how from then on the state would gradually wither away, leaving
8502-474: A sick and old man, to force his own will on the Soviet Union during Stalin's last days. This criticism, and much more, led party and state newspapers to launch more general criticism of Stalin and the Stalin era. A party history pamphlet went so far as to state that the party needed to eliminate "the incorrect, un- Marxist interpretation of the role of the individual in history, which is expressed in propaganda by
8720-486: A situation where a minority of this majority remained within the Central Committee ;... Such was the gradual but rather rapid process of clearing the way." Several members were expelled from the Central Committee through voting. Of the 139 members elected to the Central Committee at the 17th Congress, 98 people were killed in the period 1936–40. In this period the Central Committee decreased in size;
8938-425: A speech to Bolshevik supporters condemning the Provisional Government and again calling for a continent-wide European proletarian revolution. Over the following days, he spoke at Bolshevik meetings, lambasting those who wanted reconciliation with the Mensheviks and revealing his " April Theses ", an outline of his plans for the Bolsheviks, which he had written on the journey from Switzerland. He publicly condemned both
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9156-630: A spy, Roman Malinovsky , to act as a vocal Lenin supporter within the party. Various Bolsheviks expressed their suspicions about Malinovsky to Lenin, although it is unclear if the latter was aware of the spy's duplicity; it is possible that he used Malinovsky to feed false information to the Okhrana. In August 1910, Lenin attended the 8th Congress of the Second International , an international meeting of socialists, in Copenhagen as
9374-550: A variety of departments made up the Central Committee apparatus. The Party Building and Cadre Work Department assigned party personnel in the nomenklatura system. The State and Legal Department supervised the armed forces, KGB , the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the trade unions, and the Procuracy. Before 1989 the Central Committee had several departments, but several were abolished in that year. Among these departments there
9592-450: Is conceivable, according to historian Archie Brown , that Konayev and Shcherbytsky would rather have voted in favour of Viktor Grishin as General Secretary, than Gorbachev. At the same meeting, Grishin was asked to chair the commission responsible for Chernenko's funeral; Grishin turned down the offer, claiming that Gorbachev was closer to Chernenko than he was. By doing this, he practically signaled his support for Gorbachev's accession to
9810-718: Is now the Russian Presidential Administration Building. At the founding congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (the predecessor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) Vladimir Lenin was able to gain enough support for the establishment of an all-powerful central organ at the next congress . This central organ was to become the Central Committee, and it had the rights to decide all party issues, with
10028-427: Is perhaps the most able man in the present central committee." Trotsky did face a problem however: he had previously disagreed with Lenin on several matters. He was also of Jewish descent. Stalin, the second major contender, and future leader of the Soviet Union, was the least known, and he was not a popular figure with the masses. Even though he was a Georgian , and he opposed Georgian nationalism, he talked like
10246-719: Is too rude, and this fault, fully tolerable in our midst and in the relations among us Communists, becomes intolerable in the office of General Secretary. Therefore I propose to the comrades that they devise a way of shifting Stalin from this position and appointing to it another man who in all other respects falls on the other side of the scale from Comrade Stalin, namely, more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and considerate of comrades, less capricious and so forth. Inner-party democracy became an important topic following Lenin's health leave; Trotsky and Zinoviev were its main backers, but Zinoviev later changed his position when he aligned himself with Stalin. Trotsky and Rykov tried to reorganise
10464-670: The de facto leader without diminishing his own authority. Nikita Khrushchev reestablished the office on 14 September 1953 under the name First Secretary. In 1957 he was nearly removed from office by the Anti-Party Group . Georgy Malenkov , a leading member of the Anti-Party Group, worried that the powers of the First Secretary were virtually unlimited. Khrushchev was removed as leader on 14 October 1964, and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev . At first there
10682-561: The 18th Party Conference (15–20 February 1941) it was concluded that the abolition of the Central Committee Department on Industry had led to the neglect of industry. Because of this, specialised secretaries became responsible for industry and transport from the center down to the city level. The 17th Party Congress (26 January – 10 February 1934) has gone down in history as the Congress of Victors, because of
10900-543: The 8th Party Congress (March 1919) and the 9th Party Congress (March 1920). At the 9th Party Congress the Democratic Centralists , an opposition faction within the party, accused Lenin and his associates, of creating a Central Committee in which a "small handful of party oligarchs ... was banning those who hold deviant views." Several delegates to the Congress were quite specific in the criticism, one of them accusing Lenin and his associates of making
11118-522: The Comintern . The Comintern, not unexpectedly, supported the position of the Central Committee. During the 11th Party Congress Alexander Shliapnikov , the leader of the Workers' Opposition, claimed that certain individuals from the Central Committee had threatened him. Lenin's reply was evasive, but he stated that party discipline needed to be strengthened during "a retreat" – the New Economic Policy
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#173277285870311336-474: The Communist International (Comintern), opposed Stalin's policy. Zinoviev began attacking Stalin within a matter of months, while Trotsky began attacking Stalin for this stance in 1926. At the 14th Party Congress (18–31 December 1925) Kamenev and Zinoviev were forced into the same position that Trotsky had been forced into previously; they proclaimed that the center was usurping power from
11554-520: The Doctor's Plot as a fraud. Beria was no easy man to defeat, and his ethnicisation policies (that a local or republican leaders had to have ethnic origins, and speak the language of the given area) proved to be a tool to strengthen the MVD's grip on local party organs. Khrushchev and Malenkov, who had begun receiving information which stated that the MVD had begun spying on party officials, started to act in
11772-455: The July Days , took place while Lenin was away, but upon learning that demonstrators had violently clashed with government forces, he returned to Petrograd and called for calm. Responding to the violence, the government ordered the arrest of Lenin and other prominent Bolsheviks, raiding their offices, and publicly alleging that he was a German agent provocateur . Evading arrest, Lenin hid in
11990-521: The N did not stand for anything, a popular misconception later arose that it represented Nikolai . Under this pseudonym, in 1902 he published his most influential publication to date, the pamphlet What Is to Be Done? , which outlined his thoughts on the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat to revolution. Nadya joined Lenin in Munich and became his secretary. They continued their political agitation, as Lenin wrote for Iskra and drafted
12208-539: The NKVD . Grigory Kaminsky , at a Central Committee meeting, spoke against the Great Purge, and shortly after was arrested and killed. In short, during the Great Purge, the Central Committee was liquidated. Stalin managed to liquidate the Central Committee with the committee's own consent, as Molotov once put it "This gradually occurred. Seventy expelled 10–15 persons, then 60 expelled 15 ... In essence this led to
12426-712: The October Revolution , in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the regime. Lenin's government redistributed land to the peasantry, issued a number of legislative decrees , nationalised banks and industry, withdrew from the war by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers , and promoted world revolution through the Communist International . It initially shared power with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and allowed
12644-462: The Paris Commune of 1871 , which he considered an early prototype for a proletarian government. Financed by his mother, he stayed in a Swiss health spa before travelling to Berlin , where he studied for six weeks at the Staatsbibliothek and met the Marxist Wilhelm Liebknecht . Returning to Russia with a stash of illegal revolutionary publications, he travelled to various cities distributing literature to striking workers. While involved in producing
12862-445: The Penza Institute for the Nobility . In mid-1863, Ilya married Maria, the well-educated daughter of a wealthy Swedish Lutheran mother and a Russian Jewish father who had converted to Christianity and worked as a physician. According to historian Petrovsky-Shtern , it is likely that Lenin was unaware of his mother's half-Jewish ancestry, which was only discovered by Anna after his death. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained
13080-469: The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic a place of exile for opponents. Lenin reply was evasive, he conceded that faults had been made, but noted that if such policies had in fact been carried out the criticism of him during the 9th Party Congress could not have occurred. During the 10th Party Congress (March 1921) Lenin condemned the Workers Opposition , a faction within the Communist Party, for deviating from communism . Lenin did state that factionalism
13298-465: The de facto most powerful decision-making body would oscillate back and forth between the Central Committee and the Political Bureau or Politburo (and, under Joseph Stalin , the Secretariat ). Some committee delegates objected to the re-establishment of the Politburo in 1919, and in response, the Politburo became organizationally responsible to the Central Committee. Subsequently, the Central Committee members could participate in Politburo sessions with
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#173277285870313516-403: The highest organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between two congresses . According to party statutes, the committee directed all party and governmental activities. The Party Congress elected its members. During Vladimir Lenin 's leadership of the Communist Party, the Central Committee functioned as the highest party authority between Congresses. However, in the following decades,
13734-426: The "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats ; around 200 copies were illegally printed in 1894. Hoping to cement connections between his Social-Democrats and Emancipation of Labour , a group of Russian Marxists based in Switzerland , Lenin visited the country to meet group members Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod . He proceeded to Paris to meet Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue and to research
13952-473: The 17th Party Congress was different from its predecessors; several old oppositionists became delegates, and were re-elected to the Central Committee. For instance, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Yevgeni Preobrazhensky and Georgy Pyatakov were all rehabilitated . All of them spoke at the congress, even if most of them were interrupted. The Congress was split between two dominant factions, radicals (mostly Stalinists) and moderates. Several groups were established before
14170-409: The 1920s. Malenkov spoke twice to the plenum, but it failed to alter his position, and on 8 March 1955 he was forced to resign from his post as chairman of the Council of Ministers; he was succeeded by Nikolai Bulganin , a protege of Khrushchev dating back to the 1930s. Malenkov still remained a powerful figure, and he retained his seat in the Presidium. The anti-Khrushchev minority in the Presidium
14388-414: The 20th Party Congress. At the 21st Party Congress Khrushchev boldly declared that Leninist legality had been reestablished, when in reality, he himself was beginning to following some of the same policies, albeit not at the same level, as Stalin had. On 14 October 1964 the Central Committee, alongside the Presidium, made it clear that Khrushchev himself did not fit the model of a "Leninist leader", and he
14606-447: The Bolshevik Centre to Paris; although Lenin disagreed, he moved to the city in December 1908. Lenin disliked Paris, lambasting it as "a foul hole", and while there he sued a motorist who knocked him off his bike. Lenin became very critical of Bogdanov's view that Russia's proletariat had to develop a socialist culture to become a successful revolutionary vehicle. Instead, Lenin favoured a vanguard of socialist intelligentsia who would lead
14824-553: The Bolshevik faction between his and Bogdanov's followers, accusing the latter of deviating from Marxism. In May 1908, Lenin lived briefly in London, where he used the British Museum Reading Room to write Materialism and Empirio-criticism , an attack on what he described as the "bourgeois-reactionary falsehood" of Bogdanov's relativism. Lenin's factionalism began to alienate increasing numbers of Bolsheviks, including his former close supporters Alexei Rykov and Lev Kamenev . The Okhrana exploited his factionalist attitude by sending
15042-438: The Bolshevik newspaper Pravda , and giving public speeches in Petrograd aimed at converting workers, soldiers, sailors, and peasants to his cause. Sensing growing frustration among Bolshevik supporters, Lenin suggested an armed political demonstration in Petrograd to test the government's response. Amid deteriorating health, he left the city to recuperate in the Finnish village of Neivola. The Bolsheviks' armed demonstration,
15260-416: The Bolsheviks changed their name from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to the Russian Communist Party, as Lenin wanted to distance his group from the increasingly reformist German Social Democratic Party and emphasize its goal of a communist society. Although ultimate power officially rested with Sovnarkom and the Executive Committee (VTSIK) elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets (ARCS),
15478-519: The Bolsheviks regained dominance of the RSDLP at its Fifth Congress , held in London in May 1907. As the Tsarist government cracked down on opposition, both by disbanding Russia's legislative assembly, the Second Duma , and by ordering its secret police, the Okhrana , to arrest revolutionaries, Lenin fled Finland for Switzerland. There, he tried to exchange those banknotes stolen in Tiflis that had identifiable serial numbers on them. Alexander Bogdanov and other prominent Bolsheviks decided to relocate
15696-681: The Bolsheviks split completely with the Mensheviks; many Bolsheviks refused, and both groups attended the Third RSDLP Congress , held in London in April 1905. Lenin presented many of his ideas in the pamphlet Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution , published in August 1905. Here, he predicted that Russia's liberal bourgeoisie would be sated by a transition to constitutional monarchy and thus betray
15914-485: The Bolsheviks to return to the open political arena. Fearing a counter-revolution from right-wing forces hostile to socialism, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who dominated the Petrograd Soviet had been instrumental in pressuring the government to normalise relations with the Bolsheviks. Both the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had lost much popular support because of their affiliation with
16132-592: The Bolsheviks' activities, Lenin endorsed the idea of robbing post offices, railway stations, trains, and banks. Under the lead of Leonid Krasin , a group of Bolsheviks began carrying out such criminal actions, the best-known taking place in June 1907, when a group of Bolsheviks acting under the leadership of Joseph Stalin committed an armed robbery of the State Bank in Tiflis , Georgia. Although he briefly supported
16350-467: The Brezhnev era were speakers during Central Committee meetings. The speaker at the Central Committee meeting which elected the Council of Ministers (the Government) and the Politburo was never listed during the Brezhnev era. Because the average duration of a Central Committee meeting decreased, and fewer meetings were held, many Central Committee members were unable to speak. Some members consulted
16568-421: The Central Committee an organ where discussion took place; and in this Gorbachev succeeded. By 1988, several people demanded reform within the Communist Party itself. At the 19th Conference , the first party conference held since 1941, several delegates asked for the introduction of term limits, and an end to appointments of officials, and to introduce multi-candidate elections within the party. Some called for
16786-453: The Central Committee and Party apparatus; while Andropov never succeeded in removing the majority of Brezhnev appointees in the Central Committee, he had succeeding in dividing the Central Committee along factional lines. In this confusion, Chernenko was never able to become a strong leader. For example, Gorbachev quickly became the party's de facto Second Secretary, even though Chernenko did not support him. The distribution of power within
17004-425: The Central Committee featured open debate, where even leading officials could be criticised. This did not occur during the Brezhnev era, and Politburo officials rarely participated in its meetings; from 1966 to 1976, Alexei Kosygin , Podgorny and Mikhail Suslov attended a Central Committee meeting once; it was in 1973 to ratify the Soviet Union's treaty with West Germany . No Politburo or Secretariat members during
17222-416: The Central Committee functioned like the Politburo did during the post-Stalin era, as the party's leading collective organ. However, as the membership in the Central Committee steadily increased, its role was eclipsed by the Politburo. Between congresses the Central Committee functioned as the Soviet leadership's source for legitimacy. The decline in the Central Committee's standing began in the 1920s, and it
17440-467: The Central Committee plenums. While no other Presidium members were enthusiastic for such an approach, Khrushchev held several Central Committee meetings from February to March 1954 to discuss agriculture alone. By doing this, Khrushchev was acknowledging a long forgotten fact; the Presidium, the Secretariat and he himself were responsible to the Central Committee. Khrushchev could have gone the other way, since some people were already calling for decreasing
17658-579: The Central Committee turned Chernenko into little more than a figurehead. In contrast to previous general secretaries, Chernenko did not control the Cadre Department of the Central Committee, making Chernenko's position considerably weaker. However, Chernenko did strengthen his position considerably at the beginning of 1985, not long before his death. Chernenko died on 10 March 1985, and the Central Committee appointed Gorbachev General Secretary on 11 March. Gorbachev's election as General Secretary
17876-493: The Central Committee voted for or against signing a peace treaty with the Germans between 1917 and 1918 during World War I ; the majority voted in favour of peace when Trotsky backed down in 1918. The result of the vote was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . During the heated debates in the Central Committee about a possible peace with the Germans, Lenin did not have a majority; both Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin had more support for their own position than Lenin. Only when Lenin sought
18094-512: The Central Committee 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
18312-523: The Central Committee was too weak to protect itself from Stalin and his hangmen. Stalin had managed to turn Lenin's hierarchical model on its head; under Lenin the Party Congress and the Central Committee were the highest decision-making organs, under Stalin the Politburo, Secretariat and the Orgburo became the most important decision-making bodies. In the post- World War II period, Stalin ruled
18530-417: The Central Committee were Gleb Krzhizhanovsky , Friedrich Lengnik and Vladimir Noskov . Throughout its history, the party and the Central Committee were riven by factional infighting and repression by government authorities. Lenin was able to persuade the Central Committee, after a long and heated discussion, to initiate the October Revolution . The majority of the members had been skeptical of initiating
18748-439: The Central Committee's role to "cadres and propaganda alone". A further change was democratisation at the top of the party hierarchy, as Voroshilov noted at a Presidium meeting in 1954. By August 1954 Malenkov's role as de facto head of government was over; Nikolai Bulganin began signing Council of Ministers decrees (a right beholden to the chairman) and the Presidium gave in to Khrushchev's wishes to replace Malenkov. Malenkov
18966-622: The Central Committee, and the Politburo. The only individual with comparable influence was Lenin's right-hand man, Yakov Sverdlov , who died in March 1919 as a result of the Spanish flu pandemic. In November 1917, Lenin and his wife took a two-room flat within the Smolny Institute; the following month, they went on a brief holiday in Halila, Finland. In January 1918, he survived an assassination attempt in Petrograd; Fritz Platten , who
19184-454: The Central Committee. From then on Stalin was the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union, and other leading officials, such as Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov were considerably weakened. The Central Committee which was elected at the 16th Party Congress (26 June – 13 July 1930) removed Tomsky and Rykov. Rykov also lost the Council of People's Commissars chairmanship, from the Politburo. From 1934 to 1953, three congresses were held (a breach of
19402-661: The Central Committee. In the Brezhnev era, for instance, delegates at Party Congresses lost the power to vote in secret against candidates endorsed by the leadership. For instance, at the congresses in 1962 and 1971, the delegates elected the Central Committee unanimously. According to Robert Vincent Daniels the Central Committee was instead an assembly of representatives than an assembly of individuals. The election of members often had "an automatic character"; members were elected to represent various institutions. While Jerry F. Hough agrees with Daniels's analysis, he states that other factors must be included; for example, an official with
19620-592: The Commission on Party Building and Personnel; Vadim Medvedev became head of the Commission on Ideology; the Commission of Socio-economic Questions was led by Nikolay Slyunkov ; and Viktor Chebrikov became the head of the Commission on Legal Affairs. The establishment of these commissions was explained in different ways, but Gorbachev later claimed that they were established to end the power struggle between Yakovlev and Ligachev on cultural and ideological matters, without forcing Ligachev out of politics. Ligachev, on
19838-469: The Communist Party was de facto in control of Russia, as acknowledged by its members at the time. By 1918, Sovnarkom began acting unilaterally, citing a need for expediency, with the ARCS and VTSIK becoming increasingly marginalized, so the soviets no longer had a role in governing Russia. During 1918 and 1919, the government expelled Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries from the soviets. Russia had become
20056-467: The Council of People's Commissars was a de facto demotion of Kamenev. Kamenev was acting chairman of the Council of People's Commissars in Lenin's absence. To make matters worse, Stalin began espousing his policy of socialism in one country – a policy often viewed, wrongly, as an attack on Trotsky, when it was really aimed at Zinoviev. Zinoviev, from his position as chairman of the executive committee of
20274-584: The Democratic Centralists and the Workers Opposition, were allowed. Factions, in Lenin's mind, were groups within the Communist Party who subverted party discipline. Despite the ban on factionalism, the Workers' Opposition continued its open agitation against the policies of the Central Committee, and before the 11th Party Congress (March 1922) the Workers' Opposition made an ill-conceived bid to win support for their position in
20492-467: The Department for Personnel. Stalin's emphasis on the importance of political and economic work led to another wave of reorganisation of the Central Committee departments in the late-1930s and 1940s. At the 18th Party Congress (10–21 March 1939) the department specializing in industry was abolished and replaced by a division focusing on personnel management, ideology and verification fulfillment. At
20710-490: The General Secretaryship. Andrei Gromyko, the longtime foreign minister, proposed Gorbachev as a candidate for the General Secretaryship. The Politburo and the Central Committee elected Gorbachev as General Secretary unanimously. Ryzhkov, in retrospect, claimed that the Soviet system had "created, nursed and formed" Gorbachev, but that "long ago Gorbachev had internally rebelled against the native System." In
20928-414: The Germans was only reached when Lenin threatened to resign, which in turn led to a temporary coalition between Lenin's supporters and those of Trotsky and others. No sanctions were invoked on the opposition in the Central Committee following the decision. The system had many faults, and opposition to Lenin and what many saw as his excessive centralisation policies came to the leadership's attention during
21146-533: The Highest Stage of Capitalism , which argued that imperialism was a product of monopoly capitalism , as capitalists sought to increase their profits by extending into new territories where wages were lower and raw materials cheaper. He believed that competition and conflict would increase and that war between the imperialist powers would continue until they were overthrown by proletariat revolution and socialism established. He spent much of this time reading
21364-547: The Mensheviks accused Lenin of being a despot and autocrat. Enraged at the Mensheviks, Lenin resigned from the Iskra editorial board and in May 1904 published the anti-Menshevik tract One Step Forward, Two Steps Back . The stress made Lenin ill, and to recuperate he holidayed in Switzerland. The Bolshevik faction grew in strength; by spring 1905, the whole RSDLP Central Committee was Bolshevik, and in December they founded
21582-503: The Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, who dominated the influential Petrograd Soviet , for supporting the Provisional Government, denouncing them as traitors to socialism. Considering the government to be just as imperialist as the Tsarist regime, he advocated immediate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, rule by soviets , the nationalisation of industry and banks, and the state expropriation of land, all with
21800-559: The NEP, as Lenin had suggested late in his life, or ending it and replacing it with a planned economy , a position Lenin held when he initiated NEP. Following Lenin's forced departure due to ill health, a power struggle began, which involved Nikolai Bukharin , Lev Kamenev , Alexei Rykov , Joseph Stalin , Mikhail Tomsky , Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev . Of these, Trotsky was the most notable one. In his testament , Lenin referred to Trotsky's "exceptional abilities", adding "personally he
22018-675: The Party control. The congress decided that the Control Commission would be, from then on, elected by the Central Committee in the immediate aftermath of the Congress, instead of being elected by the congress itself. Changes were also made to the constitution. It stated that the "Control Commission a) oversaw the implementation of the directives of the CPSU, (b) and the Soviet-economic agencies and party organisations; c) examined
22236-506: The Party's role to supervise local organs, economic endeavors and central government activities. In September 1953, the Central Committee bestowed Khrushchev with the title of First Secretary, which made his seniority in the Central Committee official. With new acquired powers, Khrushchev was able to appoint associates to the leadership in Georgia , Azerbaijan , Ukraine , Armenia and Moldavia (modern Moldova), while Malenkov, in contrast,
22454-455: The Politburo announced a resolution where it reaffirmed party democracy, and even declared the possibility of ending the appointment powers of the center. This was not enough for Trotsky, and he wrote an article in Pravda where he condemned the Soviet leadership and the powers of the center. Zinoviev, Stalin and other members of the Soviet leadership then accused him of factionalism . Trotsky
22672-418: The Politburo theory states indirectly that the Party Congress is a non-important process, another theory, the circular-flow-of-power theory assumed that the General Secretary was able to build a power base among the party's regional secretaries. These secretaries, in turn, would elect delegates who supported the General Secretary. At the 19th Conference , the first since 1941, Mikhail Gorbachev called for
22890-704: The Politburo was abolished and replaced by the Presidium . In 1930 the Central Committee departments were reorganised, because the Secretariat had lost control over the economy, because of the First Five-Year Plan , and needed more party personnel to supervise the economy. Prior to 1930, Central Committee departments focused on major components of "political work". During Stalin's rule they were specialised. The departments supervised local party officials and ministerial branches within their particular sphere. Four years later, in 1934, new Central Committee departments were established which were independent from
23108-419: The Politburo's decision to remove Khrushchev from office in 1957. In 1964 the Central Committee ousted Khrushchev from power and elected Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary. The Central Committee was an important organ in the beginning of Brezhnev's rule, but lost effective power to the Politburo. From then on, until the era of Mikhail Gorbachev (General Secretary from 1985 to 1991), the Central Committee played
23326-408: The Provisional Government and its unpopular continuation of the war. The Bolsheviks capitalised on this, and soon the pro-Bolshevik Marxist Trotsky was elected leader of the Petrograd Soviet. In September, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the workers' sections of both the Moscow and Petrograd Soviets. Recognising that the situation was safer for him, Lenin returned to Petrograd. There he attended
23544-801: The RSDLP programme, attacking ideological dissenters and external critics, particularly the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), a Narodnik agrarian-socialist group founded in 1901. Despite remaining a Marxist, he accepted the Narodnik view on the revolutionary power of the Russian peasantry, accordingly, penning the 1903 pamphlet To the Village Poor . To evade Bavarian police, Lenin moved to London with Iskra in April 1902, where he befriended fellow Russian-Ukrainian Marxist Leon Trotsky . Lenin fell ill with erysipelas and
23762-748: The RSDLP's representative, following this with a holiday in Stockholm with his mother. With his wife and sisters, he then moved to France, settling first in Bombon and then Paris. Here, he became a close friend to the French Bolshevik Inessa Armand ; some biographers suggest that they had an extra-marital affair from 1910 to 1912. Meanwhile, at a Paris meeting in June 1911, the RSDLP Central Committee decided to move their focus of operations back to Russia, ordering
23980-473: The Russian Civil War, after which several non-Russian nations that had broken away from the empire after 1917 were re-united in the new Soviet Union in 1922; others, notably Poland, gained independence. Lenin suffered three debilitating strokes in 1922 and 1923 before his death in 1924, with Joseph Stalin succeeding him as the pre-eminent figure in the Soviet government. Widely considered one of
24198-761: The Russian Republic into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic . The government also switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar , aligning Russia with Europe. In November 1917, Sovnarkom abolished Russia's legal system, replacing it with "revolutionary conscience". Courts were replaced by Revolutionary Tribunals for counter-revolutionary crimes, and People's Courts for civil and criminal cases, instructed to follow Sovnarkom decrees and
24416-549: The Secretariat. Ryzhkov became the Head of the Economic Department of the Central Committee, and became the leading Central Committee member on matters regarding economic planning. Shortly afterwards, Ryzhkov, after replacing Vladimir Dolgikh , began to oversee the civilian economy. At the 14–15 June 1983 Central Committee meeting, Vitaly Vorotnikov was elected as a candidate member of the Politburo, Grigory Romanov
24634-652: The Soviet Union through the office of the General Secretary until 1990, when the Congress of People's Deputies voted to remove Article 6 from the 1977 Soviet Constitution . This meant that the Communist Party lost its position as the "leading and guiding force of the Soviet society" and the powers of the General Secretary were drastically curtailed. Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [ O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin ,
24852-466: The Soviet Union through the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers . The powers of the Secretariat decreased during this period, and only one member of the Secretariat, Nikita Khrushchev , was a member of the Presidium (the Politburo). The frequency of Central Committee meetings decreased sharply under Stalin, but increased again following his death. After Khrushchev's consolidation of power,
25070-506: The Soviet leadership and only 65 against. The newly elected Central Committee demoted Kamenev to a non-voting member of the Politburo. In April 1926 Zinoviev was removed from the Politburo and in December, Trotsky lost his membership too. All of them retained their seats in the Central Committee until October 1927. At the 15th Party Congress (2–19 December 1927) the Left Opposition was crushed; none of its members were elected to
25288-659: The agrarian-socialists and promoted a Marxist analysis of Russian economic development. Published under the pseudonym of Vladimir Ilin, upon publication it received predominantly poor reviews. After his exile, Lenin settled in Pskov in early 1900. There, he began raising funds for a newspaper, Iskra ( Spark ), a new organ of the Russian Marxist party, now calling itself the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In July 1900, Lenin left Russia for Western Europe; in Switzerland he met other Russian Marxists, and at
25506-554: The appointment of Mikhail Pervukhin , Ivan Tevosian and Maksim Saburov to the Deputy Chairmanship of the Council of Ministers. During the height of the Malenkov–Khrushchev struggle, Khrushchev actively fought for improvements in Soviet agriculture and the strengthening of the role of the Central Committee. Khrushchev tried to revitalise the Central Committee by hosting several discussions on agriculture at
25724-401: The center, citing that 55.1% of the voting delegates at the congress were full-time members, at the previous congress only 24.8% of the voting-delegates were full-members. He had cause for alarm, because as Anastas Mikoyan noted in his memoirs, Stalin strived to prevent as many pro-Trotsky officials as possible being elected as congress delegates. Trotsky's views went unheeded until 1923, when
25942-446: The cities, where they formed a proletariat. From his Marxist perspective, Lenin argued that this Russian proletariat would develop class consciousness , which would in turn lead them to violently overthrow Tsarism , the aristocracy , and the bourgeoisie and to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat that would move toward socialism. In February 1897, Lenin was sentenced without trial to three years' exile in eastern Siberia. He
26160-558: The city of Kazan , but not the university. On his return, he joined Nikolai Fedoseev 's revolutionary circle, through which he discovered Karl Marx 's 1867 book Capital . This sparked his interest in Marxism , a socio-political theory that argued that society developed in stages, that this development resulted from class struggle , and that capitalist society would ultimately give way to socialist society and then communist society . Wary of his political views, Lenin's mother bought
26378-656: The civil war for freedom is blazing up. Moscow and the South, the Caucasus and Poland are ready to join the proletariat of St. Petersburg. The slogan of the workers has become: Death or Freedom! — Lenin on the Revolution of 1905 In response to the revolution of 1905, which had failed to overthrow the government, Tsar Nicholas II accepted a series of liberal reforms in his October Manifesto . In this climate, Lenin felt it safe to return to Saint Petersburg. Joining
26596-594: The closure of the Bolshevik Centre and its newspaper, Proletari . Seeking to rebuild his influence in the party, Lenin arranged for a party conference to be held in Prague in January 1912, and although 16 of the 18 attendants were Bolsheviks, he was heavily criticised for his factionalist tendencies and failed to boost his status within the party. Moving to Kraków in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria ,
26814-478: The commander-in-chief of the Russian Army, sent troops to Petrograd in what appeared to be a military coup attempt against the Provisional Government. Premier Alexander Kerensky turned to the Petrograd Soviet, including its Bolshevik members, for help, allowing the revolutionaries to organise workers as Red Guards to defend the city. The coup petered out before it reached Petrograd, but the events had allowed
27032-629: The congress, which either opposed the Stalinist leadership (the Ryutin Group ) or opposed socio-economic policies of the Stalinist leadership (the Syrtsov–Lominadze Group , Eismont–Tolmachev Group and the group headed by Alexander Petrovich Smirnov amongst others). Politicians, who had previously opposed the Stalinist leadership, could be rehabilitated if they renounced their former beliefs and began supporting Stalin's rule. However,
27250-408: The continent to convert the "imperialist war" into a continent-wide "civil war" with the proletariat pitted against the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. In July 1916, Lenin's mother died, but he was unable to attend her funeral. Her death deeply affected him, and he became depressed, fearing that he too would die before seeing the proletarian revolution. In September 1917, Lenin published Imperialism,
27468-475: The control of the party apparatus; three big system hierarchs, Brezhnev, Kosygin and Suslov had all died. A fourth, Kirilenko, was forced into retirement. At the Central Committee meeting of 22 November 1982, Kirilenko lost his membership in the Politburo (after a decision within the Politburo itself), and Nikolai Ryzhkov , the deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee , was elected to
27686-559: The country, establishing the Russian Provisional Government and converting the Empire into a new Russian Republic . When Lenin learned of this from his base in Switzerland, he celebrated with other dissidents. He decided to return to Russia to take charge of the Bolsheviks but found that most passages into the country were blocked due to the ongoing conflict. He organised a plan with other dissidents to negotiate
27904-539: The demonstration; he was expelled from the university, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs exiled him to his family's Kokushkino estate. There, he read voraciously, becoming enamoured with Nikolay Chernyshevsky 's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is to Be Done? Lenin's mother was concerned by her son's radicalisation, and was instrumental in convincing the Interior Ministry to allow him to return to
28122-446: The editorial board of Novaya Zhizn ( New Life ), a radical legal newspaper run by Maria Andreyeva , he used it to discuss issues facing the RSDLP. He encouraged the party to seek out a much wider membership, and advocated the continual escalation of violent confrontation, believing both to be necessary for a successful revolution. Recognising that membership fees and donations from a few wealthy sympathisers were insufficient to finance
28340-622: The era. At the 23rd Congress (29 March – 8 April 1966) the survival ratio was 79.4 percent, it decreased to 76.5 percent at the 24th Congress (30 March – 9 April 1971), increased to 83.4 percent at the 25th Congress (24 February – 5 March 1976) and at its peak, at the 26th Congress (23 February – 3 March 1981), it reached 89 percent. Because the size of the Central Committee expanded, the majority of members were either in their first or second term. It expanded to 195 in 1966, 141 in 1971, 287 in 1976 and 319 in 1981; of these, new membership consisted of 37, 30 and 28 percent respectively. Andropov
28558-436: The establishment of Commissions of the Central Committee to allow Central Committee members more leeway in actual policy implementation. On 30 September 1988, a Central Committee Resolution established six Commissions, all of which were led either by Politburo members or Secretaries. The Commission on International Affairs was led by Alexander Yakovlev ; Yegor Ligachev led the Commission on Agriculture; Georgy Razumovsky led
28776-460: The exception of local ones. The group which supported the establishment of a Central Committee at the 2nd Congress called themselves the Bolsheviks , and the losers (the minority) were given the name Mensheviks by their own leader, Julius Martov . The Central Committee would contain three members, and would supervise the editorial board of Iskra , the party newspaper. The first members of
28994-470: The failed Revolution of 1905 , and during the First World War campaigned for its transformation into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution , which, as a Marxist, he believed would cause the end of capitalism and the rise of socialism . After the February Revolution of 1917 ousted Tsar Nicholas II and established a Provisional Government , Lenin returned to Russia and played a leading role in
29212-413: The future of non-Russian ethnic groups in the Empire. Due to the ailing health of both Lenin and his wife, they moved to the rural town of Biały Dunajec , before heading to Bern for Nadya to have surgery on her goitre . The [First World] war is being waged for the division of colonies and the robbery of foreign territory; thieves have fallen out–and to refer to the defeats at a given moment of one of
29430-536: The government in the Winter Palace and overcame it and arrested its ministers after the cruiser Aurora , controlled by Bolshevik seamen, fired a blank shot to signal the start of the revolution. During the insurrection, Lenin gave a speech to the Petrograd Soviet announcing that the Provisional Government had been overthrown. The Bolsheviks declared the formation of a new government, the Council of People's Commissars , or Sovnarkom. Lenin initially turned down
29648-624: The heavy industrial sector was still in recession, and had barely recovered from the pre-war levels. The State Planning Commission (Gosplan) supported giving subsidies to heavy industries, while the People's Commissariat for Finance opposed this, citing major inflation as their reason. Trotsky was the only one in the Politburo who supported Gosplan in its feud with the Commissariat for Finance. In 1925, Stalin began moving against Zinoviev and Kamenev. The appointment of Rykov as chairman of
29866-603: The idea of reconciliation between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin's advocacy of violence and robbery was condemned by the Mensheviks at the Fourth RSDLP Congress , held in Stockholm in April 1906. After Lenin escaped to Finland from Russia, he was involved in setting up a Bolshevik Centre in Kuokkala , Grand Duchy of Finland , which was at the time an autonomous state controlled by the Russian Empire, before
30084-520: The idealist theory of the cult of personality , which is alien to Marxism". Beria's downfall led to the collapse of his "empire"; the powers of the MVD was curtailed, and the KGB was established. Malenkov, while losing his secretaryship, was still chairman of the Council of Ministers, and remained so until 1955. He initiated a policy of strengthening the central ministries , while at the same time ensuing populist policies, one example being to establish
30302-413: The intention of establishing a proletariat government and pushing toward a socialist society. By contrast, the Mensheviks believed that Russia was insufficiently developed to transition to socialism and accused Lenin of trying to plunge the new Republic into civil war. Over the coming months Lenin campaigned for his policies, attending the meetings of the Bolshevik Central Committee, prolifically writing for
30520-515: The last possible moment because of Andropov's health. Changes continued however, and the Andropov appointees continued Andropov's course of introducing new blood into the Central Committee and Party apparatus. Vorotnikov and Mikhail Solomentsev were given full membership in the Politburo, Chebrikov was elected a candidate member of the Politburo and Ligachev became a member of the Secretariat. Chernenko's position began to look precarious; Gorbachev
30738-452: The leadership beforehand, to ask to speak during meetings. During the May 1966 Central Committee plenum, Brezhnev openly complained that only one member had asked him personally to be allowed to speak. The majority of speakers at Central Committee plenums were high-standing officials. By 1971, Brezhnev had succeeded in becoming first amongst equals in the Politburo and the Central Committee. Six years later, Brezhnev had succeeded in filling
30956-485: The leadership was not opening up; Kamenev and Zinoviev were arrested in 1932 (or in the beginning of 1933), and set free in 1934, and then rearrested in 1935, accused of being part of an assassination plot which killed Sergei Kirov . The majority of the Central Committee members elected at the 17th Party Congress were killed during, or shortly after, the Great Purge when Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria headed
31174-557: The leading position of Chairman , suggesting Trotsky for the job, but other Bolsheviks insisted and ultimately Lenin relented. Lenin and other Bolsheviks then attended the Second Congress of Soviets on 26 and 27 October and announced the creation of the new government. Menshevik attendees condemned the illegitimate seizure of power and the risk of civil war. In the early days of the regime, Lenin adjusted his rhetoric so as not to alienate Russia's population, and spoke about having
31392-422: The majority of the Central Committee with Brezhnevites. But as Peter M.E. Volten noted, "the relationship between the general secretary and the central committee remained mutually vulnerable and mutually dependent." The collective leadership of the Brezhnev era emphasised the stability of cadres in the party. Because of this, the survival ratio of full members of the Central Committee increased gradually during
31610-427: The meeting. While they were not admitted, there were soon enough Central Committee members in Moscow to call an emergency Party Congress, which effectively forced the leadership to allow a Central Committee plenum. At that meeting, the three main conspirators were dubbed the Anti-Party Group , accused of factionalism and complicity in Stalin's crimes. The three were expelled from the Central Committee and Presidium, as
31828-428: The most significant and influential figures of the 20th century, Lenin was the posthumous subject of a pervasive personality cult within the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. Under Stalin, he became an ideological figurehead of Marxism–Leninism and a prominent influence over the international communist movement . A controversial and highly divisive figure, Lenin is praised by his supporters for establishing
32046-470: The need for a strong leadership with complete control over the party. Lenin's supporters were in the majority, and he termed them the "majoritarians" ( bol'sheviki in Russian; Bolsheviks ); in response, Martov termed his followers the "minoritarians" ( men'sheviki ; Mensheviks ). Arguments between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks continued after the conference; the Bolsheviks accused their rivals of being opportunists and reformists who lacked discipline, while
32264-775: The newspaper Vperyod ( Forward ). In January 1905, the Bloody Sunday massacre of protesters in St. Petersburg sparked a spate of civil unrest in the Russian Empire known as the Revolution of 1905 . Lenin urged Bolsheviks to take a greater role in the events, encouraging violent insurrection. In doing so, he adopted SR slogans regarding "armed insurrection", "mass terror", and "the expropriation of gentry land", resulting in Menshevik accusations that he had deviated from orthodox Marxism. In turn, he insisted that
32482-491: The newspaper was awarded the national Iskra prize in the special category For a significant contribution to the development of civil society . This Russian newspaper–related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was
32700-561: The number of Central Committee meetings decreased yet again, but it increased during his later rule, and together with the Politburo , the Central Committee voted to remove Khrushchev as First Secretary in 1964. When Stalin died on 5 March 1953, Georgy Malenkov , a deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers succeeded him as chairman and as the de facto leading figure of the Presidium (the renamed Politburo). A power struggle between Malenkov and Khrushchev began, and on 14 March Malenkov
32918-507: The other hand, claimed that the commissions were established to weaken the prestige and power of the Secretariat. The number of meetings held by the Secretariat, following the establishments of the commissions, decreased drastically, before the body was revitalised following the 28th Party Congress (2 July 1990 – 13 July 1990) (see "Secretariat" section ). The commissions did not convene until early 1989, but some commission heads were given responsibilities immediately. For instance, Medvedev
33136-450: The others, has often been viewed as standing alone; as Jerry F. Hough explained, he has often been viewed as "a cynical Machiavellian interested only in power." None of the leading figures of that era were rigid in economic policy, and all of them had supported the NEP previously. With the good harvests in 1922, several problems arose, especially the role of heavy industry and inflation . While agriculture had recovered substantially,
33354-521: The party in early 1923, by debureaucratising it, however, in this they failed, and Stalin managed to enlarge the Central Committee. This was opposed by certain leading party members and a week later; the Declaration of the Forty-Six was issued, which condemned Stalin's centralisation policies. The declaration stated that the Politburo, Orgburo and the Secretariat was taking complete control over
33572-435: The party rule which stated that a congress must be convened every third year), one conference and 23 Central Committee meetings. This is in deep contrast to the Lenin era (1917–1924), when six Congresses were held, five conferences and 69 meetings of the Central Committee. The Politburo did not convene once between 1950, when Nikolai Voznesensky was killed, and 1953. In 1952, at the 19th Party Congress (5–14 October 1952)
33790-508: The party toward its parts, that is, supervision over all local, district, national and other organisations ... the organisation of the party takes place of the party itself; the Central Committee takes the place of the organisation; and finally the dictator takes the place of the Central Committee." During the first years in power, under Lenin's rule, the Central Committee was the key decision-making body in both practice and theory, and decisions were made through majority votes. For example,
34008-537: The party's bureaucracy. The nomenklatura system came under attack; several delegates asked why the leading party members had rights to a better life, at least materially, and why the leadership was more-or-less untouchable, as they had been under Leonid Brezhnev , even if their incompetence was clear to everyone. Others complained that the Soviet working class was given too large a role in party organisation; scientific personnel and other white-collar employees were legally discriminated against. The Central Committee
34226-465: The party, and it was these bodies which elected the delegates to the Party Congresses – in effect making the executive branch , the Party Congress, a tool of the Soviet leadership. On this issue, Trotsky said, "as this regime becomes consolidated all affairs are concentrated in the hands of a small group , sometimes only of a secretary who appoints, removes, gives the instructions, inflicts
34444-411: The penalties, etc." In many ways Trotsky's argument was valid, but he was overlooking the changes, which were taking place. Under Lenin the party ruled through the government, for instance, the only political office held by Lenin was chairman of the Council of People's Commissars , but following Lenin's health the party took control of government activities. The system before Lenin was forced to leave
34662-421: The powers of the nomenklatura . Even so, by the time he had succeeded in dominating the Central Committee, Andropov fell ill. He was unable to attend the annual parade celebrating the victory of the October Revolution . Chernenko, the official second-ranking secretary, competed for power with Mikhail Gorbachev . The meetings of the Central Committee and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union were postponed to
34880-510: The rate of economic growth. The dispute between Ordzhonikidze and Molotov, who represented the Soviet leadership, was settled by the establishment of a Congress Commission, which consisted of Stalin, Molotov, Ordzhonikidze, other Politburo members and certain economic experts. They eventually reached an agreement, and the planned target for economic growth in the Second Five-Year Plan was reduced from 19% to 16.5%. The tone of
35098-406: The regional branches, and that Stalin was a danger to inner-party democracy. The Congress became divided between two factions, between the one supporting Stalin, and those who supported Kamenev and Zinoviev. The Leningrad delegation, which supported Zinoviev, shouted "Long live the Central Committee of our party". Even so, Kamenev and Zinoviev were crushed at the congress, and 559 voted in favour of
35316-534: The revolution so early, and it was Lenin who was able to persuade them. The motion to carry out a revolution in October 1917 was passed with 10 in favour, and two against by the Central Committee. The Central Committee, according to Lenin, was to be the supreme authority of the party. Long before he joined forces with Lenin and became the Soviet military leader, Leon Trotsky had once criticised this view, stating "our rules represent 'organisational nonconfidence' of
35534-421: The revolution; instead, he argued that the proletariat would have to build an alliance with the peasantry to overthrow the Tsarist regime and establish the "provisional revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry". The uprising has begun. Force against Force. Street fighting is raging, barricades are being thrown up, rifles are cracking, guns are booming. Rivers of blood are flowing,
35752-560: The right of self-determination ... Long live the revolution! — Lenin's political programme, October 1917 Upon taking power, Lenin's regime issued several decrees. The first was the Decree on Land , nationalizing the landed estates of the aristocracy and the Orthodox Church for redistribution to peasants by local governments. This contrasted with Lenin's preference for agricultural collectivisation but acknowledged
35970-415: The right to secede and form independent nation-states. Many declared independence ( Finland , Lithuania in December 1917, Latvia and Ukraine in January 1918, Estonia in February 1918, Transcaucasia in April 1918, and Poland in November 1918). The Bolsheviks then promoted communist parties in these new states, while at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of the Soviets in July 1918, a constitution reformed
36188-423: The same manner as the Politburo and the Secretariat by the plenums of the Central Committee. In between Central Committee plenums, the Politburo and the Secretariat was legally empowered to make decisions on its behalf. The Central Committee (or the Politburo and/or Secretariat in its behalf) could issue nationwide decisions; decisions on behalf of the party were transmitted from the top to the bottom. Under Lenin
36406-505: The same time, Alexander Shelepin , another rival, was replaced as chairman of the Party-State Control Commission and lost his post as deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers. Shelepin was given a further blow when he was removed from the Secretariat. The number of Central Committee meetings rose again during Brezhnev's early tenure as elected First Secretary, but the number of meetings and their duration steadily decreased during Brezhnev's rule. Before Stalin's consolidation of power,
36624-405: The same vein, Gorbachev's adviser Andrey Grachev , noted that he was a "genetic error of the system." Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (literally openness ) meant the gradual democratisation of the party. Because of this, the role of the Central Committee was strengthened. Several old apparatchiks lost their seats to more open-minded officials during the Gorbachev era. The plan was to make
36842-514: The scheme, take the chair, and proposed other moves which would effectively demote Khrushchev and put themselves in control. Khrushchev objected on the grounds that not all Presidium members had been notified, an objection which would have been quickly dismissed had Khrushchev not held firm control over the military. As word leaked of the power struggle, members of the Central Committee, which Khrushchev controlled, streamed to Moscow, many flown there aboard military planes, and demanded to be admitted to
37060-404: The socialist movement, he encouraged the founding of revolutionary cells in Russia's industrial centres. By late 1894, he was leading a Marxist workers' circle, and meticulously covered his tracks to evade police spies. He began a romantic relationship with Nadezhda "Nadya" Krupskaya , a Marxist school teacher. He also authored a political tract criticising the Narodnik agrarian-socialists, What
37278-528: The spring of 1953. Beria was defeated at the next Presidium plenums by a majority against him, and not long after, Khrushchev and Malenkov started to plan Beria's fall from power. However, this was no easy task, as Beria was able to inspire fear in his colleagues. In Khrushchev's and Malenkov's first discussion with Kliment Voroshilov , Voroshilov did not want anything to do with it, because he feared "Beria's ears". However, Khrushchev and Malenkov were able to gather enough support for Beria's ouster, but only when
37496-431: The status of hereditary nobleman . Both of Lenin's parents were monarchists and liberal conservatives , being committed to the emancipation reform of 1861 introduced by the reformist Tsar Alexander II ; they avoided political radicals and there is no evidence that the police ever put them under surveillance for subversive thought. Every summer they holidayed at a rural manor in Kokushkino . Among his siblings, Lenin
37714-411: The success of the First-Five Year Plan. During it several delegates formed an anti-Stalin bloc. Several delegates discussed the possibility of either removing or reducing Stalin's powers. Not all conflicts were below the surface, and Grigory Ordzhonikidze , the People's Commissar for Heavy Industry openly disputed with Vyacheslav Molotov , the chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars, about
37932-572: The thieves in order to identify the interests of all thieves with the interests of the nation or the fatherland is an unconscionable bourgeois lie. — Lenin on his interpretation of the First World War Lenin was in Galicia when the First World War broke out. The war pitted the Russian Empire against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and due to his Russian citizenship, Lenin was arrested and briefly imprisoned until his anti-Tsarist credentials were explained. Lenin and his wife returned to Bern, before relocating to Zürich in February 1916. Lenin
38150-418: The time of Stalin's death in 1953, the Central Committee had become largely a symbolic organ that was responsible to the Politburo, and not the other way around. The death of Stalin revitalised the Central Committee, and it became an important institution during the power struggle to succeed Stalin. Following Nikita Khrushchev 's accession to power, the Central Committee still played a leading role; it overturned
38368-414: The time, Lenin's elder brother Alexander, whom he affectionately knew as Sasha, was studying at Saint Petersburg University . Involved in political agitation against the absolute monarchy of the reactionary Tsar Alexander III , Alexander studied the writings of banned leftists and organised anti-government protests. He joined a revolutionary cell bent on assassinating the Tsar and was selected to construct
38586-417: The train was not truly sealed, and the passengers were allowed to disembark to, for example, spend the night in Frankfurt. The group travelled by train from Zürich to Sassnitz , proceeding by ferry to Trelleborg , Sweden, and from there to the Haparanda – Tornio border crossing and then to Helsinki before taking the final train to Petrograd. Arriving at Petrograd's Finland Station in April, Lenin gave
38804-469: The transfer without compensation of all land—landlord, imperial, and monastery—to the peasants' committees; it will defend the soldiers' rights, introducing a complete democratisation of the army; it will establish workers' control over industry; it will ensure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly on the date set; it will supply the cities with bread and the villages with articles of first necessity; and it will secure to all nationalities inhabiting Russia
39022-562: The view of the agrarian-socialist Narodnik movement, which held that the peasantry could establish socialism in Russia by forming peasant communes, thereby bypassing capitalism. This Narodnik view developed in the 1860s with the People's Freedom Party and was then dominant within the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin rejected the premise of the agrarian-socialist argument but was influenced by agrarian-socialists like Pyotr Tkachev and Sergei Nechaev and befriended several Narodniks. In May 1890, Maria, who retained societal influence as
39240-470: The vote, losing to the agrarian-focused Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin argued that the election did not reflect the people's will, claiming the electorate was unaware of the Bolsheviks' programme, and that candidacy lists were outdated, having been drawn up before the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries split from the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the newly elected Russian Constituent Assembly convened in Petrograd in January 1918. Sovnarkom claimed it
39458-451: The widespread peasant land seizures that had already taken place. In November 1917, the government issued the Decree on the Press, closing opposition media outlets deemed counter-revolutionary. Although claimed to be temporary, the decree faced criticism, including from Bolsheviks, for undermining freedom of the press . In November 1917, Lenin issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia , granting non-Russian ethnic groups
39676-645: The widow of a nobleman, persuaded the authorities to allow Lenin to take his exams externally at the University of St Petersburg, where he obtained the equivalent of a first-class degree with honours. The graduation celebrations were marred when his sister Olga died of typhoid . Lenin remained in Samara for several years, working first as a legal assistant for a regional court and then for a local lawyer. He devoted much time to radical politics, remaining active in Sklyarenko's group and formulating ideas about how Marxism applied to Russia. Inspired by Plekhanov's work, Lenin collected data on Russian society, using it to support
39894-672: The work of local party organisations, d) investigate those responsible for abusing party discipline and the Party constitution". The leader of a department was usually given the titles "head" ( Russian : zaveduiuschchii ), but in practice the Secretariat had a major say in the running of the departments; for example, five of eleven secretaries headed their own departments in 1978. But normally specific secretaries were given supervising duties over one or more departments. Each department established its own cells, which specialised in one or more fields. These cells were called sections. By 1979, there were between 150 and 175 sections, of these only
40112-405: The working-classes in revolution. Furthermore, Bogdanov, influenced by Ernst Mach , believed that all concepts of the world were relative, whereas Lenin stuck to the orthodox Marxist view that there was an objective reality independent of human observation. Bogdanov and Lenin holidayed together at Maxim Gorky 's villa in Capri in April 1908; on returning to Paris, Lenin encouraged a split within
40330-529: The works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Ludwig Feuerbach , and Aristotle , all of whom had been key influences on Marx. This changed Lenin's interpretation of Marxism; whereas he once believed that policies could be developed based on predetermined scientific principles, he concluded that the only test of whether a policy was correct was its practice. He still perceived himself as an orthodox Marxist, but he began to diverge from some of Marx's predictions about societal development; whereas Marx had believed that
40548-416: Was a collective organ elected at the annual party congress . It was mandated to meet at least twice a year to act as the party's supreme organ. Over the years, membership in the Central Committee increased; in 1934 there were 71 full members, in 1976 there were 287 full members. Central Committee members were elected to the seats because of the offices they held, not their personal merit. Because of this,
40766-399: Was a Central Committee Department responsible for the economy as a whole, one for machine building, and one for the chemical industry, and so on. The party abolished these departments in an effort to remove itself from the day-to-day management of the economy in favor of government bodies and a greater role for the market, as a part of the perestroika process. The post of General Secretary
40984-425: Was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist who was the founder and first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. The founder and leader of the Bolsheviks , Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world's first socialist state . His government won the Russian Civil War and consolidated power in
41202-421: Was able to appoint an associate to leadership only in Moscow . Under Khrushchev the local party leadership in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR) witnessed the largest turnover in provincial leaders since the Great Purge ; two out of three provincial leaders were replaced in 1953 alone. Malenkov was assured an identical policy in government institutions; the most notable change being
41420-413: Was able to consolidate his powers within the party machine after Malenkov's resignation, but Malenkov remained the de facto leading figure of the Party. Together with Malenkov's and Khrushchev's accession of power, another figure, Lavrentiy Beria was also contending for power. The three formed a short-lived Troika , which lasted until Khrushchev and Malenkov betrayed Beria. Beria, an ethnic Georgian,
41638-477: Was allowed, but only allowed before and during Party Congresses when the different sides needed to win votes. Several Central Committee members, who were members of the Workers Opposition, offered their resignation to Lenin but their resignations were not accepted, and they were instead asked to submit to party discipline. The 10th Party Congress also introduced a ban on factionalism within the Communist Party; however, what Lenin considered to be 'platforms', such as
41856-399: Was angry that the German Social Democratic Party was supporting the German war effort, which was a direct contravention of the Second International's Stuttgart resolution that socialist parties would oppose the conflict and saw the Second International as defunct. He attended the Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915 and the Kienthal Conference in April 1916, urging socialists across
42074-421: Was augmented by those opposed to Khrushchev's proposals to decentralize authority over industry, which struck at the heart of Malenkov's power base. During the first half of 1957, Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov , and Lazar Kaganovich worked to quietly build support to dismiss Khrushchev. At an 18 June Presidium meeting at which two Khrushchev supporters were absent, the plotters moved that Bulganin, who had joined
42292-424: Was called of revisionism because of his wishes to prioritise light industry over heavy industry . At the same time, Malenkov was accused of being involved in the Leningrad Affair which led to the deaths of innocent party officials. At the Central Committee plenum of 25 January 1955, Khrushchev accused Malenkov of ideological deviations at the same level as former, anti- Stalinist Bukharin and Alexey Rykov of
42510-517: Was closest to his sister Olga , whom he often bossed around; he had an extremely competitive nature and could be destructive, but usually admitted his misbehaviour. A keen sportsman, he spent much of his free time outdoors or playing chess, and excelled at school, the disciplinarian and conservative Simbirsk Classical Gymnasium. In January 1886, when Lenin was 15, his father died of a brain haemorrhage. Subsequently, his behaviour became erratic and confrontational, and he renounced his belief in God. At
42728-408: Was counter-revolutionary because it sought to remove power from the soviets, but the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks denied this. The Bolsheviks presented a motion to strip the Assembly of most of its legal powers; when the Assembly rejected this, Sovnarkom declared it counter-revolutionary and forcibly disbanded it. Lenin rejected repeated calls, including from some Bolsheviks, to establish
42946-408: Was elected the party's General Secretary on 12 November 1982 by a decision of the Central Committee. The Central Committee meeting was held less than 24 hours after the announcement of Brezhnev's death . A.R. Judson Mitchell claims that the Central Committee meeting which elected Andropov as General Secretary, was little more than a rubber stamp meeting. Andropov was in a good position to take over
43164-450: Was elected to the Secretariat and five members of the Central Committee were given full membership. The election of Romanov in the Secretariat, weakened Chernenko's control considerably. Later, Yegor Ligachev was appointed as Head of the Party Organisational Work Department of the Central Committee. Certain Brezhnev appointees were kept, such as Viktor Chebrikov and Nikolai Savinkin . With these appointments, Andropov effectively wielded
43382-429: Was established under the name Technical Secretary in April 1917, and was first held by Elena Stasova . Originally, in its first two incarnations, the office performed mostly secretarial work. The post of Responsible Secretary was then established in 1919 to perform administrative work. The post of General Secretary was established in 1922, and Joseph Stalin was elected its first officeholder. The General Secretary, as
43600-452: Was forced to resign from all his post, and was succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as chairman of the Council of Ministers. Before initiating the palace coup against Khrushchev, Brezhnev had talked to several Central Committee members, and had a list which contained all of the Central Committee members who supported ousting Khrushchev. Brezhnev phoned Khrushchev, and asked him to meet him in Moscow. There,
43818-427: Was forced to resign from the Secretariat . The official explanation for his resignation was "to grant the request of chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers G. M. Malenkov to be released from the duties of the Party Central Committee". Malenkov's resignation made Khrushchev the senior member within the Secretariat, and made him powerful enough to set the agenda of the Presidium meetings alongside Malenkov. Khrushchev
44036-507: Was former Foreign Minister and Khrushchev client Dmitri Shepilov who joined them in the plot. Molotov was sent as Ambassador to Mongolian People's Republic ; the others were sent to head industrial facilities and institutes far from Moscow. At the 20th Party Congress Khrushchev, in his speech " On the Personality Cult and its Consequences ", stated that Stalin, the Stalinist cult of personality and Stalinist repression had deformed true Leninist legality . The party became synonymous with
44254-424: Was getting stronger by the day. Four days after Andropov's death, on 9 February 1984, Chernenko was elected as the party's General Secretary. Chernenko was elected as a compromise candidate by the Politburo; the Central Committee could never have accepted another candidate, considering that the majority of the Central Committee members were old Brezhnev appointees. The Politburo could not, despite its powers, elect
44472-441: Was granted a few days in Saint Petersburg to put his affairs in order and used this time to meet with the Social-Democrats, who had renamed themselves the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class . His journey to eastern Siberia took 11 weeks, for much of which he was accompanied by his mother and sisters. Deemed only a minor threat to the government, he was exiled to Shushenskoye , Minusinsky District , where he
44690-429: Was introduced at the 10th Party Congress. The 11th Party Congress would prove to be the last congress chaired by Lenin, he suffered one stroke in May 1922, was paralysed by a second in December later that year, was removed from public life in March 1923 and died on 21 January 1924. When Lenin died, the Soviet leadership was uncertain how the building of the new, socialist society should proceed. Some supported extending
44908-476: Was kept under police surveillance; he was nevertheless able to correspond with other revolutionaries, many of whom visited him, and permitted to go on trips to swim in the Yenisei River and to hunt duck and snipe . In May 1898, Nadya joined him in exile, having been arrested in August 1896 for organising a strike. She was initially posted to Ufa , but persuaded the authorities to move her to Shushenskoye, where she and Lenin married on 10 July 1898. Settling into
45126-478: Was no clear leader of the collective leadership with Brezhnev and Premier Alexei Kosygin ruling as equals. However, by the 1970s Brezhnev's influence exceeded that of Kosygin's and he was able to retain this support by avoiding any radical reforms. The powers and functions of the General Secretary were limited by the collective leadership during Brezhnev's, and later Yuri Andropov 's and Konstantin Chernenko 's tenures. Mikhail Gorbachev , elected in 1985, ruled
45344-413: Was not elected as a delegate to the 13th Party Congress (23–31 May 1924). Following the 13th Congress, another power struggle with a different focus began; this time socio-economic policies were the prime motivators for the struggle. Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev supported rapid industrialisation and a planned economy , while Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky supported keeping the NEP. Stalin, in contrast to
45562-533: Was on the verge of proletarian revolution. The party began plans to organise the offensive, holding a final meeting at the Smolny Institute on 24 October. This was the base of the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), an armed militia largely loyal to the Bolsheviks that had been established by the Petrograd Soviet during Kornilov's alleged coup. In October, the MRC was ordered to take control of Petrograd's key transport, communication, printing and utilities hubs, and did so without bloodshed. Bolsheviks besieged
45780-477: Was reduced to a compliant body of the Party leadership during 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). Delegates at the Party Congresses elected the members of the Central Committee. Nevertheless, there were no competitions for the seats of the Central Committee. The Soviet leadership decided beforehand who would be nominated to
45998-399: Was responsible for, in the words of the Party constitution , "... a) to oversee the implementation of decisions of the Party and the CPSU (b), b) investigate those responsible for violating party discipline, and c) to prosecute violations of party ethics." The 18th Party Congress , held in 1939, recognised that the central task of the Control Commission would be to enhance the control of
46216-474: Was similar to that of parliamentary systems where the party cabinet, and not the party leadership, were the actual leaders of the country. It was the power of the center which disturbed Trotsky and his followers. If the Soviet leadership had the power to appoint regional officials, they had the indirect power to elect the delegates of the Party Congresses. Trotsky accused the delegates of the 12th Party Congress (17–25 April 1923) of being indirectly elected by
46434-417: Was tasked with creating "a new definition of socialism", a task which would prove impossible once Gorbachev became an enthusiastic supporter of some social democratic policies and thinking. Medvedev eventually concluded that the party still upheld Marxism–Leninism , but would have to accept some bourgeois policies . The Party Control Commission ( Russian : Комиссия партийного контроля при ЦК КПСС (КПК) )
46652-419: Was the Presidium member for internal security affairs, and he was a strong supporter for minority rights and even supported reuniting East and West Germany to establish a strong, and neutral Germany between the capitalist and socialist nations. It was Beria, through an official pronouncement by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and not by the Central Committee or the Council of Ministers, who renounced
46870-494: Was the quickest in Soviet history. The Politburo recommended Gorbachev to the Central Committee, and the Central Committee approved him. The Politburo meeting, which elected Gorbachev to the General Secretaryship, did not include such members as Dinmukhamed Konayev , Volodymyr Shcherbytsky and Vitaly Vorotnikov . Of these three, Konayev and Shcherbytsky were Brezhnevites, and Vorotnikov, while not supporting Gorbachev, took it for granted that Gorbachev would succeed Chernenko. It
47088-447: Was the third of eight children, having two older siblings, Anna (born 1864) and Alexander (born 1866). They were followed by three more children, Olga (born 1871), Dmitry (born 1874), and Maria (born 1878). Two later siblings died in infancy. His father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov , was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although his mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank),
47306-434: Was unable to take such a leading role on the Iskra editorial board; in his absence, the board moved its base of operations to Geneva . The second RSDLP Congress was held in London in July 1903. At the conference, a schism emerged between Lenin's supporters and those of Julius Martov . Martov argued that party members should be able to express themselves independently of the party leadership; Lenin disagreed, emphasising
47524-489: Was with Lenin at the time, shielded him and was injured by a bullet. Concerned by Petrograd's vulnerability to German attack, Sovnarkom began relocating to Moscow in March 1918. Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders moved into the Kremlin . He survived another assassination attempt in August 1918. To All Workers, Soldiers and Peasants. The Soviet authority will at once propose a democratic peace to all nations and an immediate armistice on all fronts. It will safeguard
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