politburo

[Russian, contraction of Polit(icheskoe) Byuro, political bureau.]

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The highest executive body of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, the Politburo was headed by the General Secretary and included powerful members of the party and the government. It did not function as an effective collective body under Stalin, and while Khrushchev was both head of the Council of Ministers and the Party, its position was uncertain. However, with the victory of Leonid Brezhnev, its pre-eminence was established.

— Stephen Whitefield

The Politburo, or Political Bureau, was the most important decision-making and leadership organ in the Communist Party, and has commonly been seen as equivalent to the cabinet in Western political systems. For most of the life of the Soviet system, the Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952 and 1966) was the major focus of elite political life and the arena within which all important issues of policy were decided. It was the heart of the political system.

The Politburo was formally established at the Eighth Congress of the Party in March 1919 and held its first session on April 16. Formed by the Central Committee (CC), the Politburo was to make decisions that could not await the next meeting of the CC, but over time its smaller size and more frequent meeting schedule meant that effective power drained into it and away from the CC. There had been smaller groupings of leaders before, but these had never become formalized nor had they taken an institutional form. The establishment of the Politburo was part of the regularization of the leading levels of the Party that saw the simultaneous creation of the Orgburo and Secretariat, with these latter two bodies meant to ensure the implementation of the decisions of leading Party organs, in practice mostly the Politburo.

From its formation until late 1930, the Politburo was one arena within which the conflict between Josef Stalin and his supporters on the one side and successive groups of oppositionists among the Party leadership was fought out, but with the removal of Mikhail Tomsky in 1930, the last open oppositionist disappeared from the Politburo. Henceforth the body remained largely controlled by Stalin. Its lack of institutional integrity and power is illustrated by the fact that various of its members were arrested and executed during the terror of the mid-to late 1930s. After World War II, the Politburo ceased even to meet regularly, being effectively replaced by ad hoc groupings of leaders that Stalin mobilized on particular issues and when it suited him.

Following Stalin's death in 1953, the leading Party organs resumed a more regular existence, although Nikita Khrushchev's style was not one well suited to the demands of collective leadership; he often sought to bypass the Presidium. Under Leonid Brezhnev, the Politburo became more regularized, and the overwhelming majority of national issues seem to have been discussed in that body, although an important exception was the decision to send troops into Afghanistan in 1979. For much of the Mikhail Gorbachev period, too, the Politburo was at the heart of Soviet national decision making, although the shift of the Soviet system to a presidential one and the restructuring of the Politburo at the Twenty-Eighth Congress in 1990 effectively sidelined this body as an important institution.

The Politburo was always a small body. The first Politburo consisted of five full and three candidate (or nonvoting) members; at its largest, when it was elected at the Nineteenth Congress in 1952 and was probably artificially large because Stalin was planning a further purge of the leadership (it was also envisaged that there would be a small, inner body), it comprised twenty-five full and eleven candidate members. Generally in the post-Stalin period it had between ten and fifteen full and five to nine candidates. Membership has tended to include a number of CC secretaries, leading representatives from state institutions (although the foreign and defense ministers did not become automatic members until 1973) and sometimes one or two republican party leaders. Gorbachev changed this pattern completely in 1990 by making all republican party leaders members of the Politburo along with the general secretary and his deputy, and eliminating candidate membership. It was over-whelmingly a male institution, with only two women (Ekaterina Furtseva and Alexandra Biriukova) gaining membership, and it was always dominated by ethnic Slavs, especially Russians.

While the frequency of Politburo meetings is somewhat uncertain for much of its life, it seems to have met on average about once per week in the Brezhnev period and after, with provision for a further meeting if required. Meetings were attended by all members plus a range of other people who might be called in to address specific items on the agenda. In addition, some issues were handled by circulation among the members, thereby not requiring explicit discussion at a meeting. No public differences of opinion between Politburo members were aired before the breakdown of many of the rules of Party life under Gorbachev, and public unanimity prevailed. It is not clear that votes were actually taken; issues seem to have been resolved through discussion and consensus. Whatever the process, the Politburo was the central leadership site of the Party and the Soviet system as a whole.

Bibliography

Laird, Roy D. (1986). The Politburo: Demographic Trends, Gorbachev and the Future. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Lowenhardt, John; Ozinga, James R.; and van Ree, Erik. (1992). The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Politburo. London: UCL Press.

—GRAEME GILL

A commonly used name for those who made the major governmental decisions in the former Soviet Union. A politburo, in general, is the chief committee of a communist party.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009)

Politburo, from German Politbüro, short for Politisches Büro des Zentralkomitees (literally the Central Committee's Political Office), (Russian: Политическое Бюро; Politicheskoye Buro), is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.

Contents 1 Marxist-Leninist states 2 Trotskyist parties 3 See also 4 References

Marxist-Leninist states

In Marxist-Leninist states, the party is seen as "the vanguard of the people" and therefore usually has the power to control the state, and the non-state party officials in the politburo generally hold extreme power.

In the Soviet Union for example,^[1][2] the General Secretary of the Communist Party did not necessarily hold a state office like president or prime minister to effectively control the system of government. Instead, party members answerable to or controlled by the party held these posts, often as honorific posts as a reward for their long years of service to the party. On other occasions, having governed as General Secretary, the party leader might assume a state office in addition. For example, Mikhail Gorbachev initially did not hold the presidency of the Soviet Union, that office being given as an honour to former Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for well over a decade before assuming the governmental position of Premier of the Soviet Union during World War II.

Officially, the Party Congress elects a Central Committee which, in turn, elects a General Secretary. Under Stalin however, this model was essentially reversed and it was the General Secretary who determined the composition of the Politburo and Central Committee.

Trotskyist parties

In Trotskyist parties, the Politburo is a bureau of the Central Committee tasked with taking day-to-day political decisions, which must later be ratified by the Central Committee. It is appointed by the Central Committee from among its members. The post of General Secretary carries far less weight than in the Stalinist model. See, for example, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

See also

• Orgburo
• Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• Politburo of the Communist Party of China
• Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam
• Politburo of the Communist Party of North Korea
• Politburo of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
• Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party
• Politburo of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party
• Politburo of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front
• Politburo of the Party of Labour of Albania
• Eastern Bloc politics

References

1. ^ "Soviet Politburo Warns Poland on Debt to West" NY Times Article 23 AUG 1981
2. ^ "When the Soviet Union nearly blinked BBC Reynolds, Paul. 23 OCT 2006

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - politbureau

Nederlands (Dutch)
politbureau (Rusland)

Français (French)
n. - Politburo

Deutsch (German)
n. - Politbüro

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - Πολιτικό Γραφείο, το Πολίτμπιρο της Σοβ. Ενωσης

Italiano (Italian)
politburo

Português (Portuguese)
abbr. - Politburo
n. - Politburo (m)

Русский (Russian)
политбюро

Español (Spanish)
n. - Politburó

Svenska (Swedish)
abbr. - politiska byrån
n. - politbyå

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
共产党政治局

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 共產黨政治局

한국어 (Korean)
n. - (소련공산당) 정치국

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 共産党政治局

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) المكتب السياسي : اللجنه التنفيذيه في حزب شيوعي‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮הגוף מקבל ההחלטות הראשי במפלגה קומוניסטית, במיוחד בברה"מ לשעבר, פוליטביורו‬

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