Technically the Politburo, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)—or other communist party organized along Soviet lines—was just a committee in permanent session of the irregularly meeting Party Congress, no more than, for example, the National Executive Committee of the British Labour Party. In practice the Politburo was as near as the Soviet Union came to having a cabinet, a body continuously directing policy and making all urgent, and many day-to-day, decisions. Its exact role and power, as well as its membership, varied enormously over the period from 1917 to 1991. Under Stalin it hardly met, while under Khrushchev it was more or less a rubber stamp for his decisions, being packed with his men. (When Khrushchev was overthrown, this was achieved by a majority forming against him not in the Politburo, but in the Central Committee of the party, a much larger and less controllable body.) After Khrushchev’s time it became more representative of the various forces and interests in the Soviet Union, and subsequent leaders had to make sure they had a majority in the Politburo for any policy.
It was by winning the fight for control of the Politburo that Yuri Andropov became undisputed leader of the country in 1982, and it was Mikhail Gorbachev’s power base in the Politburo that enabled him to launch the political restructuring (see glasnost and perestroika) that ultimately caused the demise of the entire CPSU. Although officially a party body rather than a constitutional organ of state, the party and the state were so intertwined that the distinction was largely without meaning. Those who headed the vital state ministries (and who were, of course, senior party members) were also on the Politburo, thus linking the two pillars of the political system in one decision-making body. It was a small body, usually with only about 16 full members, somewhat smaller than the British cabinet but about the same size as the US federal cabinet, making it relatively easy to agree upon and then enforce policies. Its membership in a typical year during the 1980s consisted of perhaps half a dozen people there purely through holding high central party office, four or five who held vital regional party leaderships, as well as representatives of the most important state organs, principally the ministers of defence and foreign affairs, and the head of the KGB.
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