Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The governing party of the USSR from 1917 to 1991, the model of the Leninist vanguard party.

Overview

The CPSU descended from the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, becoming the Communist Party under Lenin, the All Union CPSU under Stalin. Its nomenklatura appointed every official, its Politburo ruled the state, and its membership of millions made career and belief inseparable. It industrialized the USSR, won the Great Patriotic War, imposed control over Eastern Europe, and stagnated into gerontocracy. Gorbachev reforms of glasnost and perestroika loosened its monopoly until the failed 1991 coup, after which Yeltsin banned it. Article 6 of the 1977 Constitution had guaranteed its leading role; successor parties rule post Soviet states to this day, in Belarus and Central Asia.