Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee
소련 공산당 정치국
The supreme policy-making body elected by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, set up as a permanent organ by the Eighth Congress in March 1919 and called the Presidium from 1952 to 1966.
In depth
A temporary Politburo had been created in October 1917 to direct the revolution, but the permanent Politburo was set up by the Eighth Congress on 25 March 1919 with five members: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamenev and Krestinsky. Intended to handle questions too urgent to await the full Central Committee, it soon became the real seat of power. Made up of full and candidate members, it usually met weekly to formulate state policy, issue directives and ratify appointments.
The Nineteenth Congress renamed it the Presidium in October 1952, and the Twenty-Third Congress restored the name Politburo in 1966. Under Brezhnev it took decisions such as the 1979 intervention in Afghanistan. The Twenty-Eighth Congress in 1990 brought in the first secretaries of the republican parties, giving every republic a representative for the first time, but the Politburo was no longer the centre of state decision-making. It was disbanded when the party was banned in late 1991.