II.

The USSR

Throughout the 1980s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the dominant legal political party in the USSR. Its parent organization was the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, established in 1898. That group split into Bolshevik (“majority”) and Menshevik (“minority”) factions in 1903. The Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, were actually a minority of the party membership after 1904. In 1912 they broke away from the Mensheviks to form a separate party, which in 1917 seized control of the Russian revolutionary movement and founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1918 Bolsheviks adopted the name Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). In 1925 this name was changed to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik). The name Communist Party of the Soviet Union was adopted in 1952.

A.

Organization and Composition

Traditionally, the structure of the CPSU paralleled the administrative structure of the USSR. At the lowest level were an estimated 400,000 primary party organizations; above them, in ascending order of power, were a much smaller number of rural, city, district, regional, and republic committees. At the apex of the pyramid were the All-Union Congress, nominally the party's supreme policymaking body; the Central Committee, elected by the Congress; the Political Bureau (Politburo), chosen by the Central Committee; and the Secretariat. The general secretary of the CPSU, the party's highest official, wielded pre-eminent political power in the USSR. The composition of the Politburo and Secretariat generally reflected the preponderance of ethnic Russians in party affairs.

B.

Leading Role

The 1977 constitution recognized the CPSU as “the leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, all state organizations and public organizations”. As such, the party permeated all facets of Soviet economic, political, military, and cultural life. Mass organizations that regularly carried out CPSU policies included the Communist Youth League (Komsomol), from which nearly 75 per cent of party members were recruited, and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, with more than 100 million members. The main CPSU organs were the newspaper Pravda (Truth), with a circulation of nearly 10 million, and the ideological journal Kommunist.

Until the end of the 1980s, the CPSU was the leader of the international Communist movement by virtue of the power and prestige of the USSR, despite the changes made under glasnost and perestroika. Its authority was particularly evident in relations with the Communist parties in Eastern Europe and with the smaller parties of Western Europe and the western hemisphere. Although the primacy of the CPSU was challenged by certain European parties, and above all by the Chinese Communist Party, the CPSU long remained the most powerful Communist political organization in the world.

C.

The CPSU in Crisis

As the 1990s began, economic and political upheavals in Eastern Europe and the USSR forced the CPSU to give up its leading role both domestically and internationally. CPSU membership declined from about 19.5 million in 1988 to 15 million in 1991. The USSR legalized opposition parties in February 1990, and a new party charter proposed in July 1991 veered away from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. In August hardline Communists sought to re-establish their authority by ousting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The collapse of the coup marked a disastrous defeat for the CPSU. Within days, the Central Committee was disbanded, CPSU operations were suspended, and the party's files were sealed and its property was nationalized. By the end of 1991 the USSR had dissolved and its Communist remnant was in disarray. Communists remained active in Russia following the dissolution of the USSR, despite the ban by President Boris Yeltsin on the CPSU. Several new communist political parties formed, including the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (AUCPB), the Union of Communists, the Russian Communist Workers' Party (RCWP), and the People's Party of Free Russia. The membership of these parties consisted primarily of Russian citizens opposed to Yeltsin's market reforms, although the People's Party was founded and headed by Vice-President Aleksandr Rutskoy. These parties grew rapidly by taking in ex-CPSU members after Yeltsin's ban was decreed. In April 1992 the RCWP claimed to have 150,000 members, which would have made it the largest party in Russia at the time. These parties organized numerous public rallies against government domestic and foreign policies, with some of the rallies ending in violence.

Yeltsin's decree banning the CPSU was challenged in Russia's Constitutional Court. The court's decision in November 1992 supported the ban of the national organization of the CPSU, but ruled against the ban at the local level. As a result of the decision, local remnants of the CPSU in Russia banded together to form the Russian Federation Communist Party (RFCP), which grew rapidly. By April 1993 the RFCP claimed 600,000 members. The RFCP established relations with other Russian communist parties and communist groups in other republics of the former Soviet Union. In February 1993 the Constitutional Court delivered another political blow to Yeltsin by rejecting his ban on the National Salvation Front, a Communist-nationalist organization that sought Yeltsin's removal from office. Nonetheless, the revived Communist forces showed little ability to alter policy or reimpose Communist rule.