The crisis and decay of the CPSU-CPU in 1986-1991

Abstract

The study of the history of the CPSU-CPU is relevant to modern Ukraine, which in no way can fully endorse its communist past. The purpose of the article is to study the preconditions and analysis of crisis phenomena in the environment of the CPSU-CPU, which led to its decline. The author investigates the deployment of crisis phenomena in the CPSU-CPU during 1985-1991, analyzes the causes of the crisis of confidence of ordinary communists in the policy of the CPSU-CPU, attempts to counteract the Communist Party structures for the development of the national liberation movement, examines the quantitative indicators of the composition of the CPSU-CPU, their changes under the influence of the social -political transformations. The crisis of the CPSU-KPU, which resulted in a mass exit from the party, reflected the unwillingness of the Communist Party apparatus to decisively change in the transformation of society from totalitarian to democratic. During the years of "restructuring", the leadership of the CPSU-KPU lost authority and support among the majority of socio-demographic groups of the Ukrainian population. Commitment to the dogmatic Marxist-Leninist ideology, the support of the idea of an updated Union treaty, the recognition of the Communist Party's status as a branch of the All-Union CPSU testified to the atrophy of political will. In the regions where the support of the informal population, including the opposition CPU, was the largest (in Galicia, the national-democratic organizations, in the East of Ukraine, the workers' strike committees), conditions were created for the mass exodus of the party. The failed August 1991 coup attempt put an end to the existence of not only the USSR. Established by the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Temporary Investigation Commission came to the conclusion of the support of the rebels by the leadership of the Communist Party. On August 30, 1991, the CPSU-CPU was banned.