Question by Steven Earle: What exactly was the Bureau of the Central Committee during the era of the USSR? Khrushchev and Brezhnev……?
…were the only two leaders to have held it. On their Wikipedia pages, they were listed as Chairmen of the “Bureau of the Central Committee”. Central Committee of what? What function did the Bureau serve.
Wikipedia has an article about it, but it’s very short, uninformative, confusing, and does not have a single reference in support of it’s claims.
Answers and Views:
Answer by Szopen Feldziarz
Okay, try to keep up:
All (at least European) communist countries (USSR and satellites) had a specific dual political system. They all had very democratic, yet not enforced, constitutions. However, democratic institutions were just for show, because the real power lay by the communist party.
Communist parties had similar organs to state offices and – in fact – made the decisions.
The Bureau of the Central Commitee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the real government of the USSR.
The Chairman was the actual head of state.
The Central Commitee was the ‘parliament’.
Read all the answers in the comments.
What do you think?
Spellbound says
The Bureau of the Central Committee was the highest decision making part of the Russian (not Soviet) Communist Party. Each republic had their own communist party mirroring the functions of the all union Communist Party – the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The actual highest body of the CPSU was the Politburo, in the republican parties it was the Central Committee of the respective communist parties.
See:
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Leonard Schapiro
Edit – other answerers are refering to the similarly named Central Committee of the CPSU, not the Bureau of the CC. This body was nominally the highest body of the CPSU, its members elected the Politburo members.