History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was generally perceived as covering that of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from which it evolved. In 1912, the party formally split, and the predecessor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became a distinct entity. Its history since then can roughly be divided into the following periods:

• the early years of the Bolshevik Party in secrecy and exile
• the period of the October Revolution of 1917
• consolidation of the party as the governing force of the Soviet Union
• the Great Purge of the 1930s
• the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods (1956–1982)
• the Gorbachev era of reform (1985–1991), which eventually led to the break-up of the party in 1991. The history of the regional and republican branches of the party does however differ from the all-Russian and all-Union party on several points.