General Secretary of the CPSU (TheodoresTomfooleries)

General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Генеральный секретарь ЦК КПСС
Emblem of the CPSU
Flag of the CPSU
Incumbent Sabrican Garayev since 2010
Central Committee of the CPSU Secretariat of the CPSU
Style	Comrade General Secretary (Informal)
Abbreviation	General Secretary of the CPSU
Member of	Politburo Secretariat
Reports to	CPSU
Residence	Kremlin Senate
Seat	Kremlin, Moscow
Appointer	Central Committee
Precursor	Position created
Formation	3 April, 1922
First holder	Joseph Stalin
Unofficial names	Gensek

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the sole-ruling party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It is, in practice, the highest position in the government of the Soviet Union. Since 1924, the general secretary has been recognized as the de-facto leader of the country.

The general secretary heads the Secretariat and sets the agenda of the Central Committee and Politburo. The general secretary, by ex-officio, also heads the Council of Defence as the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Armed Forces. Since Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary has also concurrently served as the head of state of the Soviet Union as the president.

History

After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks created the Secretariat to oversee the day-to-day activities of the Communist party. In 1922, the position of general secretary was established to manage and direct the activities of the Secretariat. The original intention was for the general secretary to have a purely administrative and disciplinary role. Vladimir Lenin appointed Joseph Stalin as general secretary with the expectation that he would remain a largely unimportant bureaucrat. In practice however, because of the powers of the office and Stalin's close connections, he was able to transform, after Lenin's death, the office of general secretary into the de-facto party leader, and thus the leader of the Soviet Union. Through his nearly thirty-year long tenure, Stalin turned the office synonymous with not just the party leadership, but the leadership of the country as a whole.

The position was briefly abolished by Stalin on 16 October 1952, but it was resurrected with the title First Secretary by his successor Nikita Khrushchev. After Khrushchev's ousting, the office was renamed back to general secretary once more. Since then, little has changed about the powers of the general secretary.

List of officeholders

Portrait	Name (Birth–Death)	Term			Notes
		Took office	Left office	Duration
Chairman of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1918–1919)
	Yakov Sverdlov (1885–1919)	8 March 1918	16 March 1919 †	1 year, 8 days	Sverdlov was elected chairman of the Secretariat at the 7th Party Congress in 1918.
Responsible Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1919–1922)
	Elena Stasova (1873–1966)	25 March 1919	29 November 1919	249 days	Stasova was elected responsible secretary of the Central Committee at the 8th Party Congress to replace Sverdlov following his death.
	Nikolay Krestinsky (1883–1938)	29 November 1919	16 March 1921	1 year, 107 days
	Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986)	16 March 1921	3 April 1922	1 year, 18 days
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1922–1952)
	Joseph Stalin (1878–1953)	3 April 1922s	16 October 1952	30 years, 196 days	Stalin was elected General Secretary at the 11th Party Congress in 1922. Under Stalin, the office turned from a purely bureaucratical position to the administrative leader of the party and the Soviet Union at large. Stalin was never formally re-elected as General Secretary at the 17th Party Congress in 1934, but retained power in the position until he abolished the position in 1952. Stalin retained ultimate power over both the Soviet government and the Communist party until his death on 5 March, 1953. His tenure of 30 years was the longest in the Soviet Union's history.
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953–1966)
	Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971)	7 September 1953	14 October 1964	11 years, 30 days	After briefly succeeding Stalin as the de-facto leader of the Soviet Union, Georgy Malenkov was forced to give up his position in the secretariat to Khrushchev. Khrushchev reestablished the position of General Secretary with the name "First Secretary" less than a year after it had been abolished. Khrushchev was ousted from office in 1964.
	Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982)	14 October 1964	8 April 1966	1 year, 176 days	Brezhnev initially ruled in a troika consisting of himself as General Secretary, Alexei Kosygin as Premier, and Nikolai Podgorny as head of state. At the 23rd Party Congress in 1966 the position was renamed back to General Secretary
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1966-)
	Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982)	8 April 1966	10 November 1982 †	16 years, 216 days	Brezhnev's influence and power was initially checked by the collective leadership that had formed following the ousting of Khrushchev. Following Kosygin's fall from grace and Podgorny's resignation as head of state, Brezhnev regained hegemonic control over the party.
	Yuri Andropov (1914–1984)	12 November 1982	9 February 1984 †	1 year, 89 days	Andropov emerged as Brezhnev's successor. His tenure set the precedence for the rule of his successor; marked by pragmatic reform and centralized leadership. He died after under two years in office.
	Grigory Romanov (1923–2008)	13 February 1984	6 July 2003	19 years, 143 days	Romanov was the second-longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, behind only Stalin.
	Nikolai Ryzhkov (1929–2024)	9 July 2003	17 September 2010	7 years, 70 days	Ryzhkov succeeded Romanov following his resignation. A party coup led to his resignation for "health-related reasons".
	Sabrican Garayev (born 1951)	17 September 2010		14 years, 68 days