Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

Communist Party
of the Soviet Union
History
Organization
Congress · Central Committee
Politburo · General Secretary
Secretariat · Orgburo
Control Committee
Auditing Commission
Leaders
Vladimir Lenin
Joseph Stalin
Nikita Khrushchev
Leonid Brezhnev
Yuri Andropov
Konstantin Chernenko
Mikhail Gorbachev
Vladimir Ivashko (acting)
Other topics
Pravda
Komsomol
Communism portal
v • d • e

The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee was a key body within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 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-Stalin era was a stepping stone to the ultimate power. The last 4 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 August 6, 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.


tokyo bdsm escort
sex cams