List Of Leaders Of The Soviet Union

During its 69-year history, the Soviet Union usually had a ''de facto'' leader who would not necessarily be head of state but would lead while holding an office such as premier or general secretary. Under the 1977 Constitution, the chairman of the Council of Ministers, or premier, was the head of government and the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The office of the chairman of the Council of Ministers was comparable to a prime minister in the First World whereas the office of the chairman of the Presidium was comparable to a president. In the ideology of Vladimir Lenin, the head of the Soviet state was a collegiate body of the vanguard party (as described in ''What Is To Be Done?'').

Following Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1920s, the post of the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party became synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union, because the post controlled both the Communist Party and the Soviet government both indirectly via party membership and via the tradition of a single person holding two highest posts in the party and in the government. The post of the general secretary was abolished in 1952 under Stalin and later re-established by Nikita Khrushchev under the name of the first secretary. In 1966, Leonid Brezhnev reverted the office title to its former name. Being the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the office of the general secretary was the highest in the Soviet Union until 1990. The post of general secretary lacked clear guidelines of succession, so after the death or removal of a Soviet leader the successor usually needed the support of the Political Bureau (Politburo), the Central Committee, or another government or party apparatus to both take and stay in power. The president of the Soviet Union, an office created in March 1990, replaced the general secretary as the highest Soviet political office.

Contemporaneously to the establishment of the office of the president, representatives of the Congress of People's Deputies voted to remove Article 6 from the Soviet Constitution which stated that the Soviet Union was a one-party state controlled by the Communist Party which in turn played the leading role in society. This vote weakened the party and its hegemony over the Soviet Union and its people. Upon death, resignation, or removal from office of an incumbent president, the vice president of the Soviet Union would assume the office, though the Soviet Union dissolved before this was actually tested. After the failed August 1991 coup, the vice president was replaced by an elected member of the State Council of the Soviet Union.

Summary

Vladimir Lenin was voted the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union (Sovnarkom) on 30 December 1922 by the Congress of Soviets. At the age of 53, his health declined from the effects of two bullet wounds, later aggravated by three strokes which culminated with his death in 1924. Irrespective of his health status in his final days, Lenin was already losing much of his power to Joseph Stalin. Alexei Rykov succeeded Lenin as chairman of the Sovnarkom and although he was ''de jure'' the most powerful person in the country, in fact, all power was concentrated in the hands of the "troika" - the union of three influential party figures: Grigory Zinoviev, Joseph Stalin, and Lev Kamenev. Stalin continued to increase his influence in the party, and by the end of the 1920s, he became the sole dictator of the USSR, defeating all his political opponents. The post of general secretary of the party, which was held by Stalin, became the most important post in the Soviet hierarchy

Stalin's early policies pushed for rapid industrialisation, nationalisation of private industry and the collectivisation of private plots created under Lenin's New Economic Policy. As leader of the Politburo, Stalin consolidated near-absolute power by 1938 after the Great Purge, a series of campaigns of political murder, repression and persecution. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, but by December the Soviet Army managed to stop the attack just shy of Moscow. On Stalin's orders, the Soviet Union launched a counter-attack on Nazi Germany which finally succeeded in 1945. Stalin died in March 1953 and his death triggered a power struggle in which Nikita Khrushchev after several years emerged victorious against Georgy Malenkov.

Khrushchev denounced Stalin on two occasions, first in 1956 and then in 1962. His policy of de-Stalinisation earned him many enemies within the party, especially from old Stalinist appointees. Many saw this approach as destructive and destabilizing. A group known as Anti-Party Group tried to oust Khrushchev from office in 1957, but it failed. As Khrushchev grew older, his erratic behavior became worse, usually making decisions without discussing or confirming them with the Politburo. Leonid Brezhnev, a close companion of Khrushchev, was elected the first secretary the same day of Khrushchev's removal from power. Alexei Kosygin became the new premier and Anastas Mikoyan kept his office as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet

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