1.
Vice President of the Soviet Union
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Under the 1924,1936 and 1977 Soviet Constitution these bodies served as the collective head of state of the Soviet Union. The Chairman of these bodies personally performed the ceremonial functions assigned to a single head of state. The Soviet Union was established in 1922, however, the countrys first constitution was adopted in 1924. Before that time, the 1918 Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was adopted as the constitution of the USSR, the CEC could also limit taxes. In periods between convocations of the Congress of Soviets the CEC held supreme power, in between sessions of the Congress of Soviets the CEC was responsible for all the affairs of the Congress of Soviets. The CEC and the Congress of Soviets was replaced by the Presidium, the Supreme Soviet was the highest organ of state power, and was the sole organ to hold legislative power in the Soviet Union. Sessions of the Supreme Soviet were convened by the Presidium twice a year, however, in the event of a disagreement between the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities the Presidium could form a conciliation commission. If this commission failed the Presidium could dissolve the Supreme Soviet, the Presidency was established in 1990 and the President would, according to the altered constitution, be elected by the Soviet people by direct and secret ballot. However, the first and only Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, was elected by the democratically elected Congress of Peoples Deputies, in connection with the dissolution of the Soviet Union national elections for the office of President never took place. To be elected to the office a person must have been a Soviet citizen and older than thirty-five, the same person could not be elected president for more than two terms. The Presidency was the highest state office, and was the most important office in the Soviet Union by influence and recognition, eclipsing that of Premier, with the establishment of the Presidency executive power was shared between the President and the Prime Minister. The first head of state was Mikhail Kalinin, who was inaugurated in 1922 after the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, at over twenty years, Kalinin spent the longest time in office, he died shortly after his resignation in 1946. Andropov spent the shortest time in office, there have been four individuals appointed vice head of state. At over eight years, Vasily Kuznetsov spent the longest time in office, gennady Yanayev spent the shortest time in office
2.
Collective leadership in the Soviet Union
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Collective leadership or Collectivity of leadership, was considered an ideal form of governance in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other socialist states espousing communism. On the national level, the heart of the leadership was officially the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Vladimir Lenin was, according to Soviet literature, the example of a leader ruling in favour of the collective. At the 20th Party Congress, Stalins reign was criticised as the cult of the individual, Nikita Khrushchev, Stalins successor, supported the ideal of collective leadership but only ruled in a collective fashion when it suited him. In 1964, Khrushchev was ousted due to his disregard of collective leadership and was replaced in his posts by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary, collective leadership was strengthened during the Brezhnev years and the later reigns of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Mikhail Gorbachevs reforms helped spawn factionalism within the Soviet leadership, the factions usually disagreed on how little or how much reform was needed to rejuvenate the Soviet system. Soviet ideologists believed that Vladimir Lenin, the first Soviet leader, after Stalins death, his successors, while vying for control over the Soviet leadership, promoted the values of collective leadership. Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria and Vyacheslav Molotov formed a collective leadership immediately after Stalins death, after the arrest of Beria, Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed collective leadership as the supreme principle of our Party. He further stated that only approved by the Central Committee could ensure good leadership for the party. In reality, however, Khrushchev promoted these ideas so that he could win support to remove his opponents from power, most notably Premier Malenkov. Khrushchev criticised Stalins rule during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a cult of the individual and he accused Stalin of reducing the Partys activities and putting an end to Party democracy among others. In the three years following Stalins death, the Central Committee and the Presidium worked consistently to uphold the leadership lost under Stalin. Khrushchevs rule as First Secretary remained highly controversial throughout his rule in the Party leadership, the first attempt to depose Khrushchev came in 1957, when the Anti-Party Group accused him of individualistic leadership. The coup failed, but Khrushchevs position weakened drastically, however, Khrushchev continued to portray his regime as a rule of the collective even after becoming Chairman of the Council of Ministers, replacing Nikolai Bulganin. Most Western observers believed that Khrushchev had become the leader of the Soviet Union by the early 1960s. This campaign culminated in 1964 with the replacement of Khrushchev in his offices of First Secretary by Leonid Brezhnev, Brezhnev and Kosygin, along with Mikhail Suslov, Andrei Kirilenko and Anastas Mikoyan, were elected to their respective offices to form and lead a functioning collective leadership. One of the reasons for Khrushchevs ousting, as Suslov told him, was his violation of collective leadership, with Khrushchevs removal, collective leadership was again praised by the Soviet media, and it was claimed to be a return to Leninist norms of Party life. At the plenum which ousted Khrushchev, the Central Committee forbade any single individual to hold the office of General Secretary, the leadership was usually referred to as the Brezhnev–Kosygin leadership, instead of the collective leadership, by First World medias
3.
State Council of the Soviet Union
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The members of the council consisted of the President of the Soviet Union, and highest officials from the Soviet Union Republics. This committee was transformed into the Committee on the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy, also chaired by Silayev. Its function was to coordinate economic policy across the Soviet Union, as Chairman of both COMSE and the IEC, Silayev presided over a quickly disintegrating Soviet Union. On 6 September 1991 a presidential decree gave the IEC the same authority as the Cabinet of Ministers. When he first took office, Silayev wanted to reduce the powers of the central government and this view changed, he demanded that Yeltsin give back much of the authority of the central government which he had usurped following the August Coup. In this he failed, and his position as Russian SFSR Premier was severely weakened as a result. Silayev, as overseer of the economy, was given the task of initiating economic reforms in the Soviet Union in a way that both the central government and the Soviet republics. Silayev tried to maintain an integrated economy while initiating the marketisation of the economy, on 19 December COMSE was dissolved by a presidential decree, and Gorbachev resigned as Soviet President on 25 December. The next day,26 December 1991, Silayev resigned from his post as IEC Chairman, and the Soviet Union was formally dissolved by the Council of Republics
4.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
5.
History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is generally conceived as also covering that of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from which it evolved. The history of the regional and republican branches of the party does however differ from the all-Russian, over twenty Party organizations were represented. In the eyes of the Bolsheviks the conference had, therefore, moreover, the conference declared the Mensheviks expelled from the party. Stalin and Sverdlov won election to the Central Committee despite their non-attendance at the conference, the elected alternate members of the Central Committee included Mikhail Kalinin. For the direction of work in Russia a practical center was set up, with Stalin at its head. Sverdlov, Spandaryan, S. Ordzhonikidze, M. Kalinin and Goloshchekin, I hope you will rejoice with us over the fact. In the summer of 1912, Lenin moved from Paris to Galicia in order to be nearer to Russia. An important instrument used by the Bolshevik Party to strengthen its organizations and to spread its influence among the masses was the Bolshevik daily newspaper Pravda and it was founded, according to Lenins instructions, on the initiative of Stalin, Olminsky and Poletayev. Pravda was intended as a legal, mass working-class paper founded simultaneously with the new rise of the revolutionary movement and its first issue appeared on May 51912. Previous to the appearance of Pravda, the Bolsheviks already had a newspaper called Zvezda. Zvezda had played an important part at the time of the Lena events and it printed a number of political articles by Lenin and Stalin. But the Party felt that with the revolutionary upsurge, a weekly newspaper no longer met the requirements of the Bolshevik Party, according to the analysis of the Party leadership, a daily mass political newspaper designed for the broadest sections of the workers was needed. Whilst the average circulation of Pravda was 40,000 copies per day, the circulation of Luch, in Moscow, the party launched Nash Put as a workers newspaper in September 1913. It was banned after just a few editions were published, another legally functioning central organ of the Party was the Bolshevik group in the Fourth State Duma. In 1912 the government decreed elections to the Fourth Duma, the RSDLP decided to participate in the elections. The RSDLP acted independently, under its own slogans, in the Duma elections, the slogans of the Bolsheviks in the election campaign were a democratic republic, an 8-hour day and the confiscation of the landed estates. The elections to the Fourth Duma were held in the autumn of 1912, in reply, the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP, on Stalins proposal, called upon the workers of the large factories to declare a one-day strike. Placed in a position, the government was forced to yield
