Nineteenth Congress of the CPSU (1952)

Convocation and background

The Nineteenth Congress met in Moscow from 5 to 14 October 1952 in the assembly hall of the USSR Supreme Soviet. It was the first party congress in 13 years, since the 18th Congress of 1939. Party membership then stood at about 6 million members and about 900 thousand candidate members, and 1,359 delegates attended, of whom 1,192 had a decisive vote and 167 an advisory vote. As early as a Central Committee plenum in early 1947, A. A. Zhdanov said the congress was expected at the end of that year or in 1948, but it was repeatedly announced and postponed.

Delegations attended from the communist parties of the socialist countries, including the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, China, Poland, the GDR, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Vietnam and Mongolia, along with communist parties from capitalist countries. The Chinese delegation was led by Liu Shaoqi. A delegation of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was not admitted.

Agenda and reports

Molotov opened the congress, which observed a moment of silence for Shcherbakov, Kalinin and Zhdanov. The agenda was:

• Report of the Central Committee: delivered by G. M. Malenkov
• Report of the Central Auditing Commission: delivered by P. G. Moskatov
• Directives on the fifth five-year plan (1951-1955): delivered by M. Z. Saburov
• Changes in the party Rules: delivered by N. S. Khrushchev
• Election of the central bodies of the party

Malenkov criticized the "deterioration of the qualitative composition of the party" caused by its rapid growth, and warned of the danger that party organs would turn into "a kind of administrative and managerial institution, unable to resist all manner of localist, narrow-departmental and other anti-state aspirations." Saburov reported the fifth five-year plan directives, which the congress approved.

Renaming of the party and the new Presidium

Under the Rules changes reported by Khrushchev, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was renamed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In connection with the renaming, in August 1953 the USSR Supreme Soviet amended Article 126 of the Soviet constitution. The Politburo and the Orgburo were abolished and replaced by a broader Presidium of the Central Committee of 25 full members and 11 candidates. The Presidium was constituted at the Central Committee plenum on 16 October 1952, two days after the congress closed. The Orgburo's functions were transferred to the Secretariat. The Party Control Commission was renamed the Party Control Committee, and the institution of All-Union party conferences was abolished. The congress elected a Central Committee of 125 members and 111 candidates and a Central Auditing Commission of 37 members.

Within the Presidium an unofficial body not mentioned in the party Rules, the Bureau of the Presidium, was formed with nine members. Its initial membership was Stalin, Beria, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Saburov and Khrushchev, to which Voroshilov and Pervukhin were later added in handwriting. The party leadership veterans Molotov, Mikoyan and Andreev were left out of this list, as were most former Politburo members apart from K. Ye. Voroshilov.

Stalin's last speech and assessments of the congress

On 14 October 1952 Stalin delivered the last public speech of his life at the congress. Beria's speech on the international situation stated Soviet adherence to peaceful coexistence despite threats of nuclear strikes and warned the US leadership against a policy of nuclear blackmail. On the eve of the congress Stalin's work "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" was published and largely shaped the delegates' speeches and the congress's decisions.

The Nineteenth Congress was the last party congress held under Stalin. On 5 March 1953, on the eve of Stalin's death, a joint session of the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet virtually revoked the changes adopted by the congress, cutting the number of Presidium members and de facto turning it back into the old Politburo. In 1966 the 23rd Congress amended the Rules again and replaced the Presidium with the Politburo. Some scholars judge the congress to have been a pure formality, a conclusion grounded in the diagnosis that under Stalin the party had been subsumed by the state apparatus. Writers working from the CPSU's own documents, by contrast, treat the 19th Congress as the last congress showing the legacy Stalin left to the party, the state and the world communist movement, and set it against the 20th Congress, which they characterize as anti-Stalinist.