The party became a significant electoral force in the 1993 Duma election, and by 1995 its greater visibility and organization, along with a deteriorating socio-economic climate, allowed it to become Russia’s leading party and parliamentary group. This was confirmed by regional victories between 1996 and 1997, and by the December 1999 parliamentary elections, although better campaigning by pro-government competitors contributed to a loss of Duma seats. The party mobilized a stable electorate, particularly in the rural southern “red belt,” but its inability to appeal to many younger urban voters limited its success. Though leader Zyuganov contested the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections (as a national-patriotic candidate), unfriendly media coverage reinforced this trend.
The CPRF was consistently critical of the post-1991 political system and governing elite, particularly liberal figures such as Yeltsin. It was an “anti-system” party in its rejection of many post-1991 political values and institutions, and was often regarded as anti-democratic. However, between 1995 and 1999 it increasingly became a “semi-loyal opposition,” selectively supportive of more nationalist or socially orientated policies, notably contributing two ministers to the government of Yevgeny Primakov (September 1998-May 1999). Its failed 1999 attempt to impeach Yeltsin initiated a decline in influence. It was politically marginalized in Vladimir Putin’s first presidential term and in April 2002 suffered a schism. Duma chairman Gennady Seleznyov and his supporters were expelled for forming the competitor socialist movement “Russia,” although the CPRF’s organizational and electoral support was little affected. See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH; ZYUGANOV, GENNADY ANDREYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Devlin, Judith. (1999). Slavophiles and Commissars: Enemies of Democracy in Modern Russia. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. March, Luke. (2002). The Communist Party in post-Soviet Russia. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. March, Luke. (2003). “The Pragmatic Radicalism of Russia’s Communists.” In The Left Transformed in Post-Communist Societies: The Cases of East-Central Europe, Russia, and Ukraine, ed. Jane Leftwich Curry and Joan Barth Urban. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Lit-tlefield. Sakwa, Richard. (2002). “The CPRF: The Powerlessness of the Powerful.” In A Decade of Transformation: Communist Successor Parties in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Andr?s Boz?ki and John T. Ishiyama. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Urban, Joan Barth, and Solovei, Valerii. (1997). Russia’s Communists at the Crossroads. Boulder, CO: West-view.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the ruling Party in the Soviet Union and, therefore, its most important political institution. The Party experienced a number of name changes during its history from its foundation in 1898 until the dissolution of the USSR and the banning of the Party in 1991: Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) (March 1898-March 1918), Russian Communist Party (RCP) (March 1918-December 1925), All-Union Communist Party (AUCP) (Bolsheviks) (December 1925-October 1952), and Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) (October 1952-1991). There were two chief phases in the Party’s life: pre-1917, when it was a revolutionary organization seeking the overthrow of the tsarist regime, and after the October Revolution, when it was the ruling Party.
AS REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION
The party formally was founded at a congress in Minsk in March 1898, but because most delegates were arrested soon after, the party did not take on a substantial form until its second congress in
Brussels and London in July-August 1903. From the beginning, the party was split on two major dimensions. First, because of the activities of the tsarist police, the party could not be a legal entity within Russia, with the result that most of the leaders remained in exile abroad until 1917 while “un-dergrounders” worked to build the party structure inside Russia. Contacts between these two groups were not easy, with the principal channels between them being the party press, and irregular Party meetings. The second major split within the Party was divisions among the leaders at the top of the Party structure. Such divisions were frequent occurrences, arising over a combination of personal ambitions and differences over strategy and tactics. The most important of these divisions was between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and began in 1902; despite various attempts to patch it up, the division remained an important factor in Party life until the Mensheviks were banned in 1918.
There was little to distinguish the RSDLP from the range of other parties, cliques, and shadowy organizations that constituted the Russian revolutionary movement at this time. Ultimately what was to differentiate the Party from its competitors and give it an edge in 1917 was the single-mindedness and drive of the person who was generally acknowledged as the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Ilich Lenin. When the tsarist regime disintegrated in February 1917 and Lenin returned to Russia in April, he set about radicalizing the Party’s stance from that which had been established by the underground leaders who had come to the fore in his absence, including Josef Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Vyacheslav Molotov. This culminated in the decision in September by the Party’s Central Committee to seize power. This they did in October. While the decision to seize power was supported by large numbers of rank-and-file Party members and supporters, it was also opposed by significant elements within the party, including among its leaders (Grigory Zinoviev and Kamenev). The Party was not a tightly disciplined instrument of revolution, but a much looser organization that was able to take advantage of the chaotic conditions late in 1917 to seize power in the capital. Local Party organizations set about replicating this feat throughout the country, but their rule was not to be secure for some years.
AS RULING PARTY
Having claimed power, the Party now set about consolidating it. In its first three years, the Party banned all other political parties, thereby instituting the single-party state; eliminated independent press organs; sought to institute a radical economic policy (war communism), which would have abolished the basis of independent economic activity; and, principally through the civil war, expanded the geographical area under its control. The failure of war communism forced the Party into a concession, the New Economic Policy, which in turn was replaced by the high-level centralization of economic life through agricultural collectivization and forced pace industrialization beginning in the late 1920s. Throughout this period, too, discipline was consolidated within the party.
In the early years of its rule, the Party was characterized by a continuation of the division and differences within the elite that had been characteristic of the prepower period. All aspects of the Party’s life came under vigorous debate within leading Party circles. However, during Vladimir Lenin’s lifetime, all of these debates ended with the victory of the position that he espoused. Following his death, the maneuvering between different groups of Party leaders for the succession saw conflict between a group around Stalin and, successively, Leon Trotsky, the Left Opposition, the United Opposition, and the Right Opposition. In all cases, Stalin and his supporters were victorious. With the defeat of the Right Opposition in 1929, Stalin emerged as Party leader. He consolidated his position during the 1930s, especially through the Terror of 1936 to 1938, emerging as the vozhd, or unquestioned leader of the party and the people. This process of a shift from the collective leadership of the Lenin years to the personal dictatorship of Stalin had direct implications for the Party. In the initial years of power, leading Party organs were real arenas of debate and conflict, and although Lenin manipulated Party organs, the principal basis upon which he was victorious in inner-party conflict was his ability to persuade sufficient members to support the position he advocated. With Stalin’s personal dictatorship, party organs ceased to be the scene of open political debate and instead became stylized assemblies for the laudation of Stalin. While this was not as much the case at the level of the Politburo, even here the cut and thrust of debate was blunted by the personal dominance of Stalin. In this sense, the party’s leading organs were in danger of atrophying.
This process of a shift from a situation in which open conflict and debate was the norm to one in which adherence to strict orthodoxy and the absence of public debate prevailed has been the
COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION
Stalin likely faked this photograph of himself at Lenin’s summer retreat to suggest his closeness with the Soviet leader. © HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS subject of much debate among scholars. The orthodoxy was for long the view that the emergence of Stalin and the assertion of his personal control was a direct, some even said inevitable, result of the organizational principles and practices that stemmed from Lenin. Lenin was seen to have established a highly authoritarian political structure, said to be symbolized by the principles contained in his 1901 pamphlet entitled “What Is to Be Done?” and the resolution of the Tenth Congress in 1921, entitled “On Party
