Communist Party of the Soviet Union
소련 공산당
The party formed when the Bolsheviks of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party constituted themselves as a separate organisation at the Prague Conference of January 1912; after taking power in the October Revolution of 1917 it was the Marxist–Leninist ruling party of the Soviet Union until 1991.
In depth
The party changed its name several times: Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) from 1917, Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) at the Seventh Congress in March 1918, All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) at the Fourteenth Congress in December 1925, and Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the Nineteenth Congress in October 1952. Under democratic centralism the Congress elected the Central Committee, which elected the Politburo and the Secretariat, though decisions were taken in practice by those two bodies. After Lenin it was led as General or First Secretary by Stalin (1922–1953), Khrushchev (1953–1964), Brezhnev (1964–1982), Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev (1985–1991).
Article 6 of the 1977 constitution called the party “the leading and guiding force of Soviet society” until the Congress of People’s Deputies amended it in March 1990, ending the party’s monopoly. After the failed coup of August 1991 Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary on 24 August, and Yeltsin decreed the suspension of the party’s activity in Russia on 23 August and its ban on 6 November. On 30 November 1992 the Russian Constitutional Court ruled that the ban on its primary organisations had been unconstitutional.