Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
소련 공산당 중앙위원회
The standing body, elected by the Party Congress, that led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between congresses; it elected the Politburo, the Secretariat and the General Secretary, and its departmental apparatus controlled key appointments in state and society through the nomenklatura.
In depth
The Bolsheviks’ own Central Committee was first elected at the Prague Conference of January 1912 with seven members including Lenin and Zinoviev, Stalin being co-opted later. Members were full or candidate (non-voting); the body grew from a few dozen under Lenin to 307 full and 170 candidate members elected at the Twenty-Seventh Congress in 1986. Party rules required a plenum at least once every six months, and an Orgburo existed from 1919 to 1952. The Central Committee apparatus on Staraya Square in Moscow was divided into departments for ideology, international affairs, defence, the economy and so on (cut from 20 to 10 in 1989) and controlled appointments in regional party organisations, major enterprises, state bodies, the diplomatic service and the creative unions through the nomenklatura.
Under Lenin it debated and voted in earnest, but under Stalin it was broken: of 139 members elected in 1934, 98 were shot between 1936 and 1940. Its weight returned after Stalin’s death: the June 1957 plenum overturned the Presidium majority’s attempt to remove Khrushchev (the Anti-Party Group affair), and the October 1964 plenum removed him. Its activity was suspended after the August 1991 coup, and it disappeared with the ban on the party in November.