The last-generation secretary who rebuilt the Russian Communist Party
On 25 October 1991 Kuptsov met Yeltsin at the Kremlin and urged him to rescind the ban on the Russian Communist Party. Yeltsin refused; Kuptsov then spent a year and a half as the underground First Secretary, steering the party to its reconstituting congress.
A metallurgical engineer who rose from a Vologda collective farm and steel mill through the party ranks, he served as First Secretary of the Vologda Regional Committee (1985–1990). In 1990 he was brought to Moscow as a CPSU Central Committee Secretary, heading the department for socio-political organizations and helping found the Communist Party of the RSFSR. Elected its First Secretary in August 1991 to replace the hardline Ivan Polozkov, he refused to endorse the GKChP coup but was nonetheless investigated for 'complicity.' After Yeltsin banned the party, Kuptsov kept its organizational skeleton alive underground and steered the February 1993 reconstituting congress that became the CPRF, then served eleven years as Zyuganov's first deputy chairman while the new Russian Communist Party consolidated.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1955–1958Collective farm worker, reading-room manager, and military service, Vologda Oblast
- 1958–1974Rolling-mill operator, foreman, and party committee secretary, Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant
- 1974–1979First Secretary, Cherepovets City Party Committee
- 1979–1984First Secretary, Vologda City Party Committee
- 1984–1985Second Secretary, Vologda Regional Party Committee
- 1985–1990First Secretary, Vologda Regional Party Committee
- 1989–1991People's Deputy of the USSR
- 1990–1991CPSU CC Secretary for socio-political organizations
- 1991.8–11First Secretary, CP RSFSR Central Committee
- 1993–2004First Deputy Chairman, CPRF Central Committee
- 1995–2011Deputy, State Duma of the Russian Federation (2nd–5th convocations)
Related historical events
Rebuilding the Russian Communist Party after the ban
After the August 1991 coup attempt, President Boris Yeltsin first suspended the Russian Communist Party and then, in November, terminated its activity and dissolved its organizational structures. Kuptsov, its First Secretary, continued in practice in that role until the February 1993 restoration congress. He headed the organizing committee convening a congress of Russia’s communists in 1992–1993, and in May 1992 the Constitutional Court restored him to the First Secretary post so that he could serve as a defendant in a case challenging the constitutionality of the CPSU and the Russian Communist Party. In November the Court lifted the ban on local primary organizations but upheld the dissolution of the central leadership structures.
The February 1993 restoration congress had initially considered a co-chair system in which Kuptsov would play a leading role. After Aleksandr Makashov criticized him, however, Kuptsov yielded the party’s top position to Gennady Zyuganov. Elected deputy chairman, he became First Deputy Chairman of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation’s Central Committee in March 1993 and held the post until July 2004; he remained a member of its Presidium until 2008. The episode shows both Kuptsov’s central part in organizational restoration and the fact that Zyuganov assumed the party’s leading position.