Talk:Communist Party of the Soviet Union

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Surely either

The article Communist Party of the Soviet Union needs to say which! --Jerzy 12:29, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

For better undersanding what communist party was within the Soviet society IMO the section, sketched below, is needed. Does anyone dare to finish?

Contents

[edit] To be or not to be (Communist) =

Answers to this ethernal question split the history of the Soviet Union into three periods.

During the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War the answer was simple, like black ahhhhh and white.

In during the Stalin's rule being a communist was sitting on the razor blade. On one hand you had power and perks, on the other hand, you were in the limelight of Kremlin's stars that shone bright over your potential road to Siberia.

In the post-Stalin's times, if you were not party member, you could not hold any position of authority. If you were not a Komsomol member, you could not study in the University. May be the word "communist" still sounded threatening for the West, in the Soviet Union itself it had degenerated to a synonym for nomenklatura.

Mikkalai 04:25, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bolsheviks banned other parties.

Your outline states that the Bolsheviks outlawed the Mensheviks and other political parties. When? I can find no Soviet law dating from the Lenin period which did any such thing.

Maybe they got rid of the evidence? No, wait, that's just stupid. The CPSU getting rid of evidence? That's just crazy. VolatileChemical 11:57, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Succession to Lenin

We need to develop the section on the struggle between Stalin and Trotksy (as well as Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev) after the death of Lenin and how Stalin won. AndyL 00:40, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'd say first of all we need to define the relatioship between the history of the CPSU and that of the USSR. Obviously, their overlap is huge, but probably there is a way to minimize duplications, which present difficulties for the consistency of the subsequent edits. Mikkalai 01:10, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think it's a matter of focussing on party organisation, internal party disputes and manouvers (particularly over succession), internal party regime, ideological shifts etc rather than on events such as WWII, foreign policy etc except where they have an effect on the party itself. Anyway, I've expanded the parts on the succession struggles of the 20s, and 50s as well as the deposing of Khrushchev. I've also created a section on membership. What else needs to be done. Does anyone have more knowledge on the Tenth Party Congress and internal party life and debate while Lenin was still alive?AndyL

[edit] Formation of the Politburo

In the article Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee it says the following:

"Lenin set up the Politburo in 1917 to direct the Revolution, and following the Eighth Party Congress in 1919 it became and remained the true centre of political power in the Soviet Union. Originally, the Politburo consisted of 5 members: Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Krestinsky."

Whereas here it says the Politburo was set up in 1919.

If I remember right (and I can check), the Politburo was set up in 1917, but was dissolved after the revolution, and then reinstated at the 10th party congress in 1919.

A small difference, but accuracy is important!

Camillustalk|contribs 02:41, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Successor parties

CPRF is the de facto successor to the CPSU, as it is based in the Russian mainland rather than other former SSRs. As far as I know, there is only one other successor party other than CPRF to hold this distinction. It should be in the disambiguation header as many people will come here wanting to know which party, exactly, is descended from the CPSU. And for all intents and purposes this is the CPRF. metaspheres 05:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The Soviet Union was made up of 15 SSRs. CPRF can be seen as the political continuation of the CPSU organisation in Russia, but the linkage is much less direct than say the EDTP in Estonia. --Soman 14:24, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Leading role of the CPSU???

There really should be some mention of the party-state relationship's inconsistent history SOMEWHERE. Awhile back, I read this:

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/05/19/106.html

"Informed by newly published documents from the archives of the former Soviet Union as well as recent Russian literature based on them, Lukacs presents a very thoughtful and convincing analysis of Stalin's increasing emphasis before the war on the role of the state OVER that of the Communist Party."

Case in point: the USSR State Defense Committee during the Great Patriotic War.

Also consider the members of Sovnarkom during Lenin's chairmanship (Kamenev as the deputy, Trotsky for War, Chicherin for Trotsky's old Foreign Affairs, Stalin for Nationalities, Rykov for the pre-Stalin NKVD/Interior, Lunacharsky for Enlightening/Education, etc.). Darth Sidious 00:33, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Separate articles

Questions have emerged on several articles regarding the delimitation of article material on parties that merged into and/or emerged out of the CPSU. The issue is not uncomplicated as names of say Communist Party of Estonia was continued to be used after its merger into CPSU.

My suggestion is that articles dealing with CPSU entities and non-CPSU entities are kept separate. There should be separate sub-article on the history of regional entities of History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

So we would have Communist Party of Estonia dealing with the 1920-1940 party and a separate History of the Communist Party of Estonia 1940-1990 article, as a subarticle to History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. My intention is to split up the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union article into 6-7 separate chronological articles and create a navigation template for it. Links to the history articles of the regional entities could be included in such a template.

Any opinions? --Soman 11:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I second that. Many of the communist parties that emerged after the Soviet Union were completely reorganized in the early 1990s. For example, the Tajikistan Communist party was banned for a while and the leadership was completely different after the ban was lifted.--David Straub 13:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Subarticles for every republican party? Thats's 14 in the late period of Soviet history, and before the dissolution of KFSSR even 15. Too much in my opinion. CP of Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania were in fact the same organizations in May 1940 as in July, bet you offer to regard them separately. I would agree with separate articlies only for re-founded parties as the new CP of Ukraine. 217.198.224.13 01:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I do not necessarily agree with the proposal. Some CPs, like the Communist Party of Latvia retained elements of a distinct institutional identity even after subordination to the CPSU, just as it had done previously as LSD (Sotsial-demokratiia Latyshskaia kraia, a territorial section of the RSDWP) in the period 1906–1919, or when the CPL leadership in exile in Moscow operated as the Latsektsiia of the Comintern, and therefore also arguably as a subordinate unit of the CP(b)SU... Nevertheless, the CPL in the postwar Latvian SSR marked its own anniversaries, such as the events in Latvia in 1905 and 1919, which had little to do with the history of the "mother party" in the RSFSR. To declare that the Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian CPs should be treated within the general history of the CPSU from 1940 is arbitrary (as pointed out in the comment above as well). To take things to their logical conclusion, any CP that aligned itself with the Comintern would need to be included as just a section of the CPSU until 1943, due to the way that the Comintern acted as a vehicle for the CPSU to exercise control over the other formally autonomous CPs (case in point: the reactions of the Comintern parties to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact). Otherwise, if the French, American, Italian, German etc. CPs can be treated separately from the CPSU, why should not the same be true for the Baltic CPs? It's a different situation, admittedly, for those republican CPSU client parties that never previously existed outside the borders of the USSR, such as the Uzbek or Kazakh CPs. — Zalktis 15:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Soviet Union Coat of Arms?

Why is the Coat of Arms of the Soviet Union the first image on the page? It has nothing to do with the CPSU, was never associated with CPSU emblems and is in general confusing to people familiar with the matter. It's akin to putting a leaf clover on the article about IRA. Outside of the use of the hammer and the sickle CPSU didn't make use of any other symbols. However, if you really want to put something to differentiate it from other communist parties I think one of their Lenin/Marx posters would do a much better job. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anthonybsd (talk • contribs) 16:27, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of improperly placed project tag

The insertion of the totalitarian project was was inappropriate here, given that political scientists do not consider the CPSU party totalitarian after the death of Stalin. Maglev Power (talk) 01:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)