HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 120

Joseph Stalin addressing the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the Kremlin in
Moscow, 1952 (Library of Congress)

argue, at the cost of silencing more democratic
voices within the party, the Communists out-
lasted their rivals and emerged victorious by
1921. In 1921, other political parties were
banned and Soviet Russia (known as the Soviet
Union since 1923) became a one-party dictator-
ship. After Lenin's death, a period of stormy
intraparty debates over the Soviet Union's future
path developed among his closest advisers, with
Joseph STALIN eventually emerging as his succes-
sor by 1929. Stalin's victory reinforced the
already strong authoritarian tendencies within
the party, which had been renamed All-Union
Communist Party (Bolshevik) in 1925 to account
for the multiethnic nature of the Soviet Union.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the party
presided over a period of dramatic social trans-

formations in the areas of industrialization and
the collectivization of agriculture. By 1933, the
party had about 3 million members, mostly
based in urban centers, although collectivization
expanded the rural base of the party. Yet,
another social trauma still lay ahead for the
party and the Soviet Union. The assassination of
Sergei Kirov in 1934, the party leader of Lenin-
grad, triggered a period of mass terror that
greatly affected the Communist Party. The show
trials and execution of former leaders and rivals
of Stalin such as Nikolai BUKHARIN , Grigorii
ZINOVIEV , and Lev KAMENEV on grounds of trea-
son were only the tip of a nationwide campaign,
now known as the Great Terror, or Great Purge.
With the purges drawing to a close in 1938,
party membership declined to 1.9 million. Party