COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION (CPSU)
Major political party of Russia and the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to 1991
The CPSU arose from the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party. Also known as the All-Union Communist Party (1925-52), from Н9I8 to the 1980s the CPSU was a monolithic, monopolistic ruling party that dominated the Soviet Union's political, economic, social, and cultural life. The constitution and other legal documents that supposedly regulated the government were actually subordinate to the CPSU, which also dominated communist parties abroad. Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to reform the country's economy and political structure weakened the party, and in 1990 it voted to surrender its constitutionally guaranteed monopoly of power. The Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 marked the party's formal demise.
third grouping that struggled for power in this period was formed by the Socialist Revolutionaries, the main agrarian party.
Lenin quickly sensed the weakness of the Provisional Government and the inherent instability of "dual power". He returned to Russia in April 1917, hoping to launch a revolution immediately. The majority of his followers, however, doubted it would succeed: they were vindicated in July 1917 when a putsch led by the Bolsheviks badly misfired. They were near success when the government released information on Lenin's dealings with the Germans, which caused angry troops to disperse the rebels and end the uprising. Abandoning his followers, Lenin again left the country, seeking refuge in Finland.
The Bolsheviks remained a minority in the soviets until autumn, by which time the Provisional Government had lost popular support, and many were rallying to Lenin's battle cry, "All power to the soviets!" Increasing war-weariness and the breakdown of the economy overtaxed the patience of the workers, peasants, and soldiers, who demanded immediate and fundamental change. Leon Trotsky, a recent convert to Bolshevism, became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, the country's most important, and immediately turned it into a vehicle for the seizure of power. The result was the so-called October Revolution (November), a classic coup d'йtat carried out by a small group of conspirators - in complete contrast to the spontaneous events of February 1917. The Bolshevik Central Committee made the decision to seize power at a clandestine meeting held on the night of October 10 (October 23). In the meantime they built up an armed force to carry out the coup. Since the Bolsheviks were the only organization with an independent armed force, they took over the Military Revolutionary Committee and used it to topple the government. During the night of October 24-5, Bolshevik Red
LEON TROTSKY (1879-1940) Russian communist leader
Born to Russian Jewish farmers, Lev Davidovich Bronshtein joined an underground socialist group and was exiled to Siberia in 1898 for his revolutionary activities. He escaped in 1902 with a forged passport using the name Trotsky. He fled to London, where he met Vladimir Lenin. In 1903, when the Russian Social- Democratic Workers' Party split, Trotsky became a Menshevik, allying himself with Lenin's opponents. He returned to St Petersburg to help lead the Russian Revolution of 1905. Arrested and again exiled to Siberia, he wrote Resu/ts and Prospects, setting forth his theory of "permanent revolution". He escaped to Vienna in 1907, worked as a journalist in the Balkan Wars (I9S2-I3), and moved around Europe and the United States until the Russian Revolution of 1917 brought him back to St Petersburg (then Petrograd). There he became a Bolshevik and was elected leader of the workers' soviet.
Trotsky played a major role in the overthrow of the provisional government and the establishment of Lenin's communist regime. As commissar of war (1918-24} Trotsky rebuilt and brilliantly commanded the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Although favoured by Lenin to succeed him, Trotsky lost support after Lenin's death (1924) and was forced out of power by Joseph Stalin. After a campaign of denunciation, he was expelled from the Politburo (1926) and Central Committee (1927), then banished from Russia (1929), He lived in Turkey and France, where he wrote his
memoirs and a history of the revolution. Under Soviet pressure, he was forced to move around Europe, and he eventually found asylum in 1936 in Mexico, where, having been falsely accused in the purge trials as the chief conspirator against Stalin, he was murdered in 1940 by a Spanish communist.
Guards peacefully occupied strategic points in Petrograd. On the morning of October 25, Lenin, re-emerging from his hideaway, issued a declaration in the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee that the Provisional Government had been overthrown and all power had been assumed by the soviets. The declaration referred neither to the Bolsheviks nor to socialism - unsurprisingly, the inhabitants of the city had no inkling of how profound a change had occurred.
Although Lenin and Trotsky had carried out the October coup in the name of soviets, they intended from the beginning to concentrate all power in the hands of the ruling organs of the Bolshevik Party. The resulting novel arrangement - the prototype of all totalitarian regimes - vested actual sovereignty in the hands of a private organization, called "the Party", which, however, exercised it indirectly, through state institutions. Bolsheviks held leading posts in the state: no decisions could be taken and no laws passed without their consent. The legislative organs, centred in the soviets, merely rubber- stamped Bolshevik orders. The state apparatus was headed by a cabinet called the Council of People's Commissars, chaired by Lenin, all of whose members were drawn from the elite of the party. This governmental structure was to last until the convocation of an elected Constituent Assembly in January 1918. However, when it became clear that the
Bolsheviks did not hold a majority, Lenin disbanded the assembly. If the October Revolution was accepted as democratic - supported by a majority of the population - then it ceased to be so soon after this event.
Lenin's hand was strengthened by his conclusion of the Brest- Litovsk armistice (December 1917) and treaty (March 1918) with the Central Powers. Though the terms were harsh - Russia lost territories inhabited by more than one-quarter of its citizens and providing more than one-third of its grain harvest - the treaty saved the Bolshevik regime: for the next eight months it received critical diplomatic and financial support from Germany that enabled it to beat back political opponents.
In March 1918 the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party in order to distinguish it from Social Democratic parties in Russia and Europe, and to separate the followers of Lenin from those affiliated with the non- revolutionary Socialist International. The party was directed by a Central Committee. To streamline work, from March 1919 onwards its management was entrusted to the Secretariat, the Organizational Bureau (Orgburo), and the Political Bureau (Politburo). The Secretariat and Orgburo dealt largely with personnel matters, while the Politburo combined legislative and executive powers.