Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin with senior party leaders at the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party in December 1927.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the supreme governing body of the party of the Soviet Union in the intervals between its periodic congresses. Elected by the Party Congress, the Central Committee was charged with directing the party's work, and in turn elected the smaller executive organs such as the Politburo, the Orgburo, and the Secretariat. The Central Committee existed as the leading organ of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and then of its Bolshevik faction, from the founding of the party way before the establishment of the Soviets. The Central Committee operated out of democratic centralism, in which full discussion and decision-making by the elected bodies of the party, combined with the strictest unity of action once a decision was reached was the rule.

Before the revolution, the Central Committee operated as an underground directing center of professional revolutionaries, coordinating the illegal press, the underground apparatus, and the work of local organizations. Regular meetings of all members of the Central Committee were practically impossible and extremely dangerous at the time; on February 9th, 1905 during a meeting, nine members of the Central Committee were arrested; by chance, only two were saved. But due to their secrecy, documents on the activities of the Central Committee of the party before 1917 have survived only partially.

Structure

The hierarchy ran from the Party Congress, the nominal supreme authority, convened at irregular intervals through the Central Committee, which it elected, and down through the executive bodies the Central Committee in turn selected. The Politburo was the highest political organ, making decisions on all major questions of state and party policy. The Orgburo oversaw the party's organizational work. The Secretariat, headed from 1922 by a General Secretary, supervised the party's administrative apparatus and personnel assignments.

Prominent party and government figures possessing a high level of knowledge of Marxist-Leninist theory and extensive political experience are elected to the Central Committee. These include employees of economic and administrative bodies, leading workers in various sectors of the national economy, builders, financiers, military personnel, diplomats, lawyers, scientists, and cultural figures

The Central Committee regularly held plenary sessions of all members and candidate members of the Central Committee, every six months. The Central Committee considers at its plenary sessions fundamental questions of the policy of the Soviet state, the most important national economic problems, the immediate tasks of communist construction and makes decisions on them that are binding on all party organizations and on all party members.