Secretariat Of The Central Committee Of The Communist Party Of The Soviet Union
The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee was a key body within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and was responsible for the central administration of the party as opposed to drafting government policy which was usually handled by the Politburo. Its members were elected by the Communist Party's Central Committee, although in all but the first years of its existence the elections were a formality since decisions were made by the senior leadership before the voting. The General Secretary of the CPSU, who was also a Politburo member, was the leader of the Secretariat and the Party. Dual membership in the Secretariat and the Politburo was reserved for two or three very senior members of the Soviet leadership and in the post-Joseph Stalin era was a stepping stone to the ultimate power. The last four Soviet leaders (Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev) were all senior Secretaries before becoming General Secretaries.
The Secretariat was established by the Central Committee on 6 August 1917 and was initially composed of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Matvei Muranov and Yakov Sverdlov as full members and Adolph Joffe and Elena Stasova as candidate members (or alternates). Following the October Revolution of 1917, Sverdlov and Stasova became the de facto Secretariat as other members of the body assumed other duties. At the time, the Secretariat was responsible for technical issues such as coordination of the activities of regional party organizations and handling routine administrative affairs of the Party. Its staff increased from just 30 in 1919 to 600 in 1921 and 767 by 1925.
By 1922, the body had been transformed from a technical committee to one of the most important components of the party and from that point on it was responsible for day to day operations of the Communist Party. Also in 1922, the position of General Secretary was created, the General Secretary became the head of the Secretariat and, in the years following Lenin's death, became the most important figure in the party and the country.
See also Organization of the Communist Party of the USSR
Read more about Secretariat Of The Central Committee Of The Communist Party Of The Soviet Union: Members of The Secretariat 1917–1991
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, central, committee, communist, party, soviet and/or union:
“If the Soviet Union can give up the Brezhnev Doctrine for the Sinatra Doctrine, the United States can give up the James Monroe Doctrine for the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine: Let’s all go to bed wearing the perfume we like best.”
—Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928)
“In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a “dictator” substitutes himself for the central committee.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“The absence on the panel of anyone who could become pregnant accidentally or discover her salary was five thousand dollars a year less than that of her male counterpart meant there was a hole in the consciousness of the committee that empathy, however welcome, could not entirely fill.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)
“Busy people begrudge the days being short.
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“We will have to stay in this house until 8 o’clock in the morning. But we have some party favors for you in these little coffins.”
—Robb White, and William Castle. Frederick Loren (Vincent Price)
“Today he plays jazz; tomorrow he betrays his country.”
—Stalinist slogan in the Soviet Union (1920s)
“Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe.”
—Frances E. Willard 1839–1898, U.S. president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1879-1891, author, activist. The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 137-40 (January 1887)