The 25th congress of the Communist party of the USSR met in Moscow from February 24 to March 5 1976. The general secretary of the party Leonid Brezhnev greeted 4,998 Soviet delegates and representatives from 96 foreign countries. Among Communist-ruled nations, only the People's Republic of China and Albania did not send representatives. The congress itself produced few surprises, with the main emphasis placed on the stability of the political and economic situation and the prospects of continued success in the future, Brezhnev declared that the USSR will not invade or fight other countries. Little mention was made of fundamental problems facing the Soviet Union— the slowdown of the rate of economic growth, the low output of agriculture despite heavy investment. The only critical voices raised were those of foreign Communists. French Communist leader Georges Marchais boycotted the congress after criticizing the Soviet Union's suppression of dissidents. A major problem faced Soviet leaders, and one that has been continually evaded was the need to rejuvenate the Politburo. Once again the membership remained virtually unchanged, as did the members' average age of 66. Brezhnev himself was 69. Two new members were elevated to the Politburo, Dmitriy Ustinov and Gregory Romanov, bringing its total number to 16.
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, congress, communist, party, soviet and/or union:
“Today he plays jazz; tomorrow he betrays his country.”
—Stalinist slogan in the Soviet Union (1920s)
“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)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The women’s liberation movement at this point in history makes the American Communist Party of the 1930s look like a monolith.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“The tremendous outflow of intellectuals that formed such a prominent part of the general exodus from Soviet Russia in the first years of the Bolshevist Revolution seems today like the wanderings of some mythical tribe whose bird-signs and moon-signs I now retrieve from the desert dust.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“... as women become free, economic, social factors, so becomes possible the full social combination of individuals in collective industry. With such freedom, such independence, such wider union, becomes possible also a union between man and woman such as the world has long dreamed of in vain.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)