The last Politburo member who tried to save the USSR and went to prison for it
The GKChP members made the main mistake — having said 'A,' they did not say 'B' and all the rest of the alphabet.
A Politburo member and CC Secretary who oversaw organizational-party work in the late USSR, making him effectively the third-ranking figure in the CPSU after Gorbachev and Ivashko. As First Secretary of Krasnoyarsk Krai from 1987 he managed a key Siberian industrial region before entering the Politburo in 1990, where he became a driving force of the conservative counter-offensive inside the party apparatus during perestroika's final phase. During the August 1991 coup he backed the GKChP and was one of the four men, with Baklanov, Boldin and Varennikov, who flew to Foros to confront Gorbachev; after the coup collapsed he was imprisoned for over a year and amnestied in 1994. After the USSR's dissolution he led efforts to rebuild a unified communist party and restore the Soviet system, chairing the Union of Communist Parties (UCP-CPSU) and later the reconstituted CPSU.
Career Timeline
- 1962Joined the CPSU
- 1974–1977First Secretary, Achinsk City Party Committee
- 1977–1983Second Secretary, Khakass Obkom → Party adviser, Afghanistan
- 1985–1987First Secretary, Khakass Oblast Committee
- 1987–1990First Secretary, Krasnoyarsk Krai Committee
- 1990–1991Politburo member & CC Secretary, organizational-party work
- 1993–2001Chairman, Council of the UCP-CPSU
- 2004–2009Chairman, reconstituted CPSU
Related historical events
- 1979–1989The Soviet-Afghan Warparty advisor in Afghanistan
- 1985–1991Perestroika and Glasnostpolitburo member, joined August coup
- 1991The Novo-Ogaryovo Process and the New Union TreatyPolitburo representative in the Foros delegationAs Politburo member and Central Committee secretary, formed part of the Foros delegation that demanded Gorbachev declare a state of emergency on 18 August. Not a formal GKChP member but central to planning the coup.
- 1991The August Coup and the Collapse of the USSRparticipated in the coup
Reconstruction Communism After the USSR
Shenin's political significance did not end with the failure of the August 1991 coup. He refused to treat the dissolution of the USSR as an unavoidable historical endpoint and became a politician devoted to rebuilding a union-wide communist organization and a renewed state unity. Elected founding chairman while still on trial in 1993, the Union of Communist Parties, Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU), sought to bind the communist parties of the former Soviet republics within a common coordinating framework. Shenin used the organization to preserve international and federal links within the communist movement, including a 1997 visit to Pyongyang where he met Kim Jong Il.
This approach increasingly conflicted with the electoral orientation of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. In 2000, Shenin broke with Gennady Zyuganov over his proposal for a united communist party of Russia and Belarus, accusing the party leadership of retreating from socialism's ideological standards. The UCP-CPSU split in 2001, and the faction supporting Shenin reorganized itself as the CPSU in 2004. It did not restore Soviet power as an actual state authority, but the project traces how Shenin transferred the organizational experience of late Soviet politics into a post-Soviet campaign to reconstruct communism.