BOLSHEVIK: Name of the group (later party) that split from the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1903; in the first decades after the October 1917 Revolution, it was used as the party name jointly with “Communist,” which ultimately replaced it.
CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY: Elected by Communist Party congresses, it was nominally the party’s leading organ, although in practice the Politburo became the decision-making body.
CHEKA: Security police in the Civil War period (later known as GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MVD/MGB, KGB).
CIVIL WAR: Fought in 1918–20 between the Reds (Bolsheviks) and the Whites, the latter with foreign support from Western “interventionists.”
COMINTERN: International organization of Communist Parties set up in 1919 and run from Moscow.
COMMUNIST: Name of the ruling party from October 1917; see Bolshevik.
COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS OF THE SOVIET UNION (Sovnarkom): Highest organ of the government before the war, renamed Council of Ministers after the war.
DACHA: Weekend place outside town.
FEBRUARY REVOLUTION: Event that resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917 and that established the Provisional Government, which was then overthrown by the Bolsheviks in October 1917.
GKO: State Defense Committee, key wartime body.
GPU: See Cheka.
GULAG : The chief administration of camps under the NKVD, which applied to the entire labor camp system.
JAC: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (1942–48), headed by Solomon Mikhoels, under the supervision of Solomon Lozovsky.
KOMSOMOL: Communist youth organization.
kULAK: Prosperous peasant, regarded by the Bolsheviks as an exploiter of the poor.
LEFT OPPOSITION: Groups headed by Trotsky (1923–24) and Zinoviev (1925–26) that were in political struggles with the Stalin team.
LENINGRAD: Capital of the Russian Empire (under the names of Saint Petersburg and Petrograd [1914–24]); renamed after Lenin’s death, now again Saint Petersburg.
MENSHEVIKS: The larger group (party) produced by the split in the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1903.
MGB: Ministry of State Security in the 1940s (see also Cheka). NEP: New Economic Policy of the 1920s.
NKVD: The name of the security police from 1934 to the war; the initials stand for Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) (see also Cheka).
OCTOBER REVOLUTION: Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. OGPU: See Cheka.
OLD BOLSHEVIK: Term used informally for party members who had joined before the revolution.
ORGBURO: One of two bureaus of the party’s Central Committee (the other being the Politburo) in charge of organizational functions.
PALE: Area in Ukraine and Belorussia to which the Jewish population was restricted in imperial Russia.
PETROGRAD: Capital of the Russian Empire/Soviet Russia until 1918, so named in 1914–24; previously Saint Petersburg (see also Leningrad).
POLITBURO: Bureau of the party’s Central Committee, consisting of full and “candidate” (nonvoting) members elected by party congresses; top Soviet decision-making body (see also Presidium).
PRESIDIUM OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY: Name given to the Politburo in 1952–66 (note that, confusingly, other institutions also had presidia).
RAPP: Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, headed by Genrikh Yagoda’s brother-in-law Averbakh; closed down by the Central Committee in 1932.
RIGHT OPPOSITION: Strictly not an opposition but a tendency (“Rightism”), personified in 1929–30 by Rykov, Bukharin, and Tomsky.
RSDLP (RUSSIAN INITIALS: RSDRP): Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, founded in 1898; split into the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in 1903.
SHAKHTY AFFAIR: Show trial, in 1928, against nonparty experts and Communist industrial administrators in the Shakhty region of Ukraine.
SOVNARKOM: See Council of People’s Commissars.
STALINGRAD: Volga city and site of a crucial battle during the Second World War in the winter of 1942–43; previously known as Tsaritsyn, now Volgograd.
THERMIDOR: Month of the fall of Robespierre in 1794 during the French Revolution; used by Bolsheviks as shorthand for the degeneration and waning of revolutionary vigor.
USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics established in 1924. Constituent republics were the Russian Federation (RSFSR), Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Transcaucasian Federation (later split into Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan); the Central Asian republics of Kazakh, Uzbek, Kirgiz, Tadjik, and Turkmen, which were established at various times before the war; and the Baltic republics (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and the Moldavian Republic, added in 1940.
VOKS: Soviet society for cultural ties with foreign countries, headed by Olga Kameneva in the 1920s and Alexander Arosev in the 1930s.
VOZHD′: Exalted term for leader, applied to Stalin from the 1930s onward. The plural vozhdi was applied to the whole Stalin team.