Talk:Communist Party of the Soviet Union/Archive 1

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!

Camillus talk 02:41, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)


 * There was no any separate Communist parties in the Soviet Union, as long as Soviet Union existed. That was one CPSU party, with one Central Committee, one "ustav", and very rigid up-to-down discipline. Italian and French parties were significantly independent, although affected by the Soviet policies. US communist party was basically a front organization of the KGB. So, I do not see any reasons for creation separate articles like History of the Communist Party of Estonia 1940-1990. However any communist party that emerge after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the former Soviet republics deserves articles if it is notable.Biophys (talk) 01:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

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)


 * Well the USSR symbol was definitely used at CPSU events, e.g. the front of the podium at the CPSU congresses had the State Arms (not sure about the last one, but old Vremya clips on Youtube have other stuff...). 118.90.66.84 (talk) 17:07, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

VKP(b)
What does "VKP(b)" mean? It redirects here but is not explained, which is confusing. I noticed that the "VKP" is the General Confederation of Trade Unions. Who is like God? (talk) 20:18, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It is the Latin script version Russian abbreviation of 'All Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)', one of the names used by the party. --Soman (talk) 13:04, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I should add to that that it is explained in the History section of the article. -- QUANTUM ZENO  13:12, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Political position
I propose that "position" in terms of left-right axis be removed from the infobox. Left/right-positions are not universal, they are always contextual. Was the CPSU a leftist or rightist force in Soviet society? Not an entirely easy question to respond to. Nevertheless, it was certainly not far left as it represented the mainstream political force in the country at the time. --Soman (talk) 19:25, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Ukrainian Bolsheviks
A recent edit has failed to take account of the real situation at the time. Please consider Ukrainian_National_Republic.Harrypotter (talk) 22:08, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

far left?
Shouldn't their ideology of marxism-leninism be in the infobox? Madhava 1947 (talk) 19:51, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
 * While the Nazi Party exhibited and typified the far-right, there exists serious doubts with the Communist Party. For example, how could a radically egalitarian party support such social stratification between party officials and the commoners? This seems more in line with far-right than anything else.--Drdak (talk) 13:36, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The Nazis were far-left. Nazi = National Socialist German Workers' Party.  All Communism, despite being far-left, ultimately becomes dominated/ruled by an egalitarian minority: China, Cuba, North Korea, USSR.  Therefore, one of the defining characteristics of the far-left theology of communism is the autocracy or oligarchy.  Granted, not in their initial philosophizing, but an inherent characteristic of the ultimate destination of such regimes.  173.89.18.89 (talk) 16:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Horseshit; and more to the point, irrelevant to this article. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  17:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Protected
This article should immediately be safeguarded, it is a historial piece of information and should remain indefinitely protected — Preceding unsigned comment added by ALEXOGreat (talk • contribs) 17:21, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Russian Communist Party
Russian Communist Party currently redirects to this page, however, a searcher for that term could just as easily be looking for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. I propose either changing Russian Communist Party into a disambiguation page or changing it into a re-direct to Communist Party of the Russian Federation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.8.255.124 (talk) 13:25, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Disproportionate content
The content of this article is organized very disproportionately. The intro is mostly filled with the history of the party while the history is mostly filled with how the party was dismantled, with no section on ideology or other basic info. I ask other editors to help fix this and make the article more complete and appropriately proportionate. --Michaelwuzthere (talk) 18:12, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

rfc: olny legal party?
was the cpsu the olny legal party of the soviet union? 95.199.200.34 (talk) 16:57, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Survey
it was, whose other examples were not parties! 95.199.200.34 (talk) 12:24, 7 April 2014 (UTCNo....
 * For instance, Party of Revolutionary Communism (which existed until 1927 when it was merged into the party), and the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union... Governing is correct.. I clearly know more about the CPSU then you, and yes, I don't care if I sound arrogant by this point. For most of its history, only party existed, but not always.. More parties then one can exist in one-party system; in China, in East Germany and in North Korea more parties exist then or (or existed).... "Sole governing" is the correct, "only legal party" is wrong, a multi-party system was established in 1990, and other parties existed in the 1920s. --TIAYN (talk) 17:05, 7 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The Jewish Social Democratic Labour Party (Poalei Zion) was not officially banned until 1928. --Soman (talk) 18:48, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 October 2014
"At the18th Congress" should be "At the 18th Congress"

Hnasarat (talk) 17:59, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

✅ - Thanks for pointing that out - Arjayay (talk) 18:50, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 November 2014
Spelling mistake. Please change Ukranian to Ukrainian.

Royhvaara (talk) 22:27, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done assuming you mean in the Pravda section Cannolis (talk) 23:00, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Thanks!Royhvaara (talk) 02:04, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 February 2015
The [List of leaders of the Soviet Union|party leader] was the head of government and held the office of either [General Secretary of the Communist Party of China|General Secretary], [Premier of the Soviet Union|Premier] or [List of heads of state of the Soviet Union|head of state], or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time.

Please change [General Secretary of the Communist Party of China|General Secretary] to [General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|General Secretary].

46.190.120.18 (talk) 21:41, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Stickee (talk) 22:06, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Successor parties
A few weeks ago, I inserted this edit. It was immediately reverted with the words "Simply wrong". It's not wrong though is it? "The successor parties of the CPSU in Russia were the short-lived Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1990-91) and then the still extant Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Successor parties also exist in many of the former Soviet republics, such as the Communist Party of Ukraine." BobFromBrockley (talk) 23:39, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes it is. First the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was not a successor party, it was the republican branch of the CPSU in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the successor of the CPSU republican branch, the aforementioned Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. However, none of these parties are successors to the unionwide, central CPSU. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is no more successor party than the Communist Party of Uzbekistan. --TIAYN (talk) 08:16, 12 July 2015 (UTC)


 * The issue of successor parties to CPSU is quite complex. CPRF is probably quite legit as the CPRSFSR successor party, but not the CPSU successor as such. In other cases there are some easy examples, such as KPU in Ukraine, but in cases like Latvia or Uzbekistan it is more complex. For the CPSU there are a number of different groups claiming to be the successor, the SKP-KPSS perhaps the most representative. --Soman (talk) 13:25, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Reasons for Demise section
It seems to me that the "Reasons for demise" section in this article is flawed. First, it looks at the demise of the Soviet Union and "Communism" as a whole, and not the demise of the Party itself, which is topic of the article. Second, the first half, "Western view", devotes a fair amount of space to one single analyst (Archie Brown) with no explanation of why this person's view stands for that of the West as a whole or is particularly notable. Then there is a very detailed section on the Chinese Communist Party's view, taking up more space than all other views put together, which seems to me to be undue weight. BobFromBrockley (talk) 23:37, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. I wrote the section (and the majority of the current article), but out of boredom I stopped working on the article. I stopped working on the article midway through. The CPC's view of the CPSU collapse should not be removed or minimised (its extremely interesting to read about the CPC's views on the USSR's collapse and the collapse of communism in Europe more generally), but I agree more space should given to different Western points of views.. But that should be easy to fix. --TIAYN (talk) 15:20, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 12:07, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Color
Why the hell does it say "blue" for color? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Holden3172 (talk • contribs) 17:56, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

'Stalin Era' issues?
There's an abject lack of any citations or verification in the 'Stalin Era' section of the article, as well as a few other issues (vague dates e.g. Great Purge initiated in 'the 1930s', non-academic tone e.g. use of the word 'tragic'). It reads more like a paragraph from a high school history textbook than an academic article. Could that be rectified? -- CubeJackal (talk) 21:25, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Party symbol
The image currently being used as the party symbol does not have any historical significance. To my knowledge, on Wikipedia it comes from a photograph of a party pin that was used as the symbol image prior to the use of the SVG based on it. I have spent a lot of time studying the history of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party and I have never seen this symbol in any capacity whatsoever outside of Wikipedia, let alone in any way that would justify it being used here as the official symbol of the party.

I don't doubt that as a party pin it was probably widely distributed, but so were many other pins and I'm sure other pins probably were even more widely circulated and are more recognizable today than this one. I was told in an undoing of my edit to remove it that this pin was worn during party meetings. I can say for a fact that this isn't the case, as at each party Congress there was a custom pin made in commemoration of the "## Congress of the CPSU".

It's also worth noting that on the Russian wiki page of the CPSU, there is no symbol image used. If anyone can provide a credible source that affirms that this pin was ever circulated over a long enough period of time and a wide enough capacity to be considered appropriate to be used here as an official symbol of the CPSU, please share it. Otherwise, I think that this image doesn't belong here and it should be removed.

--Mundopopular (talk) 17:01, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

cause of collapse
Should there be a section on Chernobyl? The Chernobyl explosion heavily damaged food production, consumed enormous amounts of resources, contaminated the army's supply of trucks and helicopters, consumed almost the global supply of boron and lead, consumed almost a million men in regional cleanup, damaged steel and electrical production, and expended enormous amounts of foreign exchange as they bought food to replace lost production.

Worse, Chernobyl consumed party legitimacy as people saw the party evacuate their families 3 days before the people of Pripyat and in the exclusion zone.

Gorbachev later attributed the Chernobyl event to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1137086/chernobyl-hbo-series-sky-atlantic-nuclear-disaster-gorbachev-soviet-union-spt

https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/chernobyl-and-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-gorbachevs-glasnost-allowed-the-nuclear-catastrophe-to-undermine-the-ussr.html

https://www.economist.com/europe/2016/04/26/a-nuclear-disaster-that-brought-down-an-empire

Perhaps a section should describe this theory Patbahn (talk) 15:35, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Untitled
Surely either
 * the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a new party, containing the largest fraction of the CPSU members who regretted the banning of the CPSU, or
 * the ban on CPSU was later lifted.

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?

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)

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

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Stalin-Bukharin (cropped).jpg

Ideology: Marxism-Leninism (after 1929)
Hello all! Just wondering the reasoning for this party being Marxist-Leninist specifically after the year 1929, is it when Stalin started referring to the ideology as such? Or when the party itself adopted the term Marxism-Leninism/Marxist-Leninist as its official party policy/ideology? B. M. L. Peters (talk) 22:47, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 December 2020
Change a sentence in section "Stalin era (1924–53)":

Before: The threat of fascist sabotage and imminent attack greatly exacerbating the already existing tensions within the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.

After: The threat of fascist sabotage and imminent attack greatly exacerbated the already existing tensions within the Soviet Union and the Communist Party. 73.92.226.54 (talk) 02:18, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:59, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * That reads like agitprop 2.0 trying to justify the psychopathic paranoia about "Fascism" in the USSR as reasonable concern. --105.12.2.46 (talk) 14:51, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * So, you don't put any weight on the fact that a fascist country -- Nazi Germany -- later actually attacked the Soviet Union with one of the largest invasion forces in world history? Interesting POV you've got there.BTW, the edit request was for a simple grammatical correction.  Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:22, 21 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Although not officially fascist, the Soviet Union was an authoritarian state. B. M. L. Peters (talk) 12:57, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 11:53, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Партийный билет КПСС.1989.jpg

Political Positioning
In the infobox, there was a section missing on where on the ideological spectrum the CCP falls on (far-left). I added this, only to have my edits disrupted by not one, but two rude users Drmies, and RandomCanadian.

I do not understand why they keep reverting this, it is important information. It's pretty absurd for a page on a political party not to have their political position listed. -69.121.9.199 (talk) 00:22, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Meaningless, according to whom? If it were meaningless, why is the label of "Far-right" then listed on the infobox for the page Nazi Party? Do we need to remove that too? Communism and Marxism-Leninism are far-left political ideologies, this really is not up for debate. -69.121.9.199 (talk) 00:29, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * One size doesn't fit all, maybe. I don't rightly know what the Western concept "far left" means for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Drmies (talk) 03:57, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That's not an argument. -69.121.9.199 (talk) 19:57, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * One could make the argument that the NSDAP during it's years as a parliamentary fringe party pre 1933 represented the far right in Germany. However, once the party essentially became part and parcel of the state in Germany, that label becomes meaningless. CPSU never functioned in a parliamentary system, it had monopoly on power from a quite early stage (with the exception of the early revolutionary period - but even in the 1917 Constituent Assembly election, the Bolsheviks were hardly the 'far left' in Russian politics). --Soman (talk) 23:53, 23 October 2021 (UTC)