The 18th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during 10-21 March 1939 in Moscow.
This is the first Congress to be dominated by the "purified" leadership of the Soviet Union after the Great Purge. This would be the last one held for over a decade.
In the report on the work of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Stalin outlined important aspects of the foreign policy of the USSR, particularly its disappointment with the western democracies and their failure to adopt the policy of collective security advocated by Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov. Shortly after this, Stalin dismissed Litvinov and appointed Vyacheslav Molotov, a move that led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and a temporary understanding with Nazi Germany.
Famous quotes containing the words congress, communist and/or party:
“I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.”
—Robert E. Lee (1807–1870)
“I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“Party honesty is party duty, and party courage is party expediency.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)