List of leaders of the Soviet Union

Under the 1977 Soviet Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the Chairman of the Council of Ministers was the head of government and the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was the head of state. The office of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers was the equivalent to a First World Prime Minister, while the office of the Chairman of the Presidium was equivalent to the office of the President. In the Soviet Union's seventy-year history there was no official leader of the Soviet Union offices but a Soviet leader usually led the country through the office of the Premier and/or the office of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In the idea of Vladimir Lenin the head of the Soviet state was a collegiate body of the vanguard party (see What is to Be Done?).

Following Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1920s the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party became synonymous with 'Leader of the Soviet Union' because the post controlled both the CPSU and the Soviet Government. The post of the General Secretary was abolished under Stalin and later re-established by Nikita Khrushchev under the name of First Secretary; in 1966 Leonid Brezhnev reverted the office title to its former name. Being the head of the communist party, the office of the General Secretary was the highest in the Soviet Union until 1990. The post of General Secretary lacked clear guidelines of succession, so after the death or removal of a Soviet leader, the successor usually needed the support of the Politburo, the Central Committee, or another government or party apparatus to both take and stay in power. The President of the Soviet Union, an office created in March 1990, replaced the General Secretary as the highest Soviet political office.

Contemporaneously to establishment of the office of the President, representatives of the Congress of People's Deputies voted to remove Article 6 from the Soviet constitution which stated that the Soviet Union was a one-party state controlled by the Communist Party which, in turn, played the leading role in society. This vote weakened the Party and its hegemony over the Soviet Union and its people. Upon death, resignation, or removal from office of an incumbent President, the Vice President of the Soviet Union would assume the office, though the Soviet Union collapsed before this was actually tested. After the failed August Coup the Vice President was replaced by an elected member of the State Council of the Soviet Union.

Summary
Vladimir Lenin was voted the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (Sovnarkom) on 30 December 1922 by the Congress of Soviets. His health, at the age of 53, declined from effects of two bullet wounds, later aggravated by three strokes which culminated with his death in 1924. Irrespective of his health status in his final days, Lenin was already losing much of his power to Stalin. Alexei Rykov succeeded Lenin as Chairman of the Sovnarkom, and although he was de jure the most powerful person in the country, the Politburo of the Communist Party began to overshadow the Sovnarkom in the mid-1920s. By the end of the decade, Rykov merely rubber stamped the decisions predetermined by Stalin and the Politburo.

Stalin's early policies pushed for rapid industrialisation, nationalisation of private industry and the collectivisation of private plots created under Lenin's New Economic Policy. As leader of the Politburo, Stalin consolidated near-absolute power by 1938 after the Great Purge, a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution. Nazi German troops invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, but were repulsed by the Soviets in December. On Stalin's orders, the USSR launched a counter-attack on Nazi Germany. Stalin died in March 1953, his death triggered a power struggle in which Khrushchev after several years emerged victorious against Georgy Malenkov.

Khrushchev denounced Stalin on two occasions: in 1956 and 1962. His policy of de-Stalinisation earned him many enemies within the party, especially from old Stalinist appointees. Many saw this approach as destructive and destabilising. A group known as Anti-Party Group tried, but failed, to oust Khrushchev from office in 1957. As Khrushchev grew older, his erratic behavior became worse, usually making decisions without discussing or confirming them with the Politburo. Leonid Brezhnev, a close companion of Khrushchev, was elected First Secretary the same day of Khrushchev's removal from power; Alexei Kosygin became the new Premier and Anastas Mikoyan kept his office as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In 1965, on the orders of the Politburo, Mikoyan was forced to retire; Nikolai Podgorny took over the office of Chairman of the Presidium. The USSR in the post-Khrushchev 1960s was governed by a collective leadership. Henry A. Kissinger, the American National Security Advisor, mistakenly believed that Kosygin was the 'Leader of the Soviet Union' and that he was at the helm of 'Soviet foreign policy' because he represented the Soviet Union at the 1967 Glassboro Summit Conference. The "Era of Stagnation", a derogatory term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev, was a period marked by low socio-economic efficiency in the country and a gerontocracy ruling the country. Yuri Andropov succeeded Brezhnev in his post as General Secretary in 1982. In 1983 Andropov was hospitalised, and rarely met up at work to chair the politburo meetings due to his declining health. Nikolai Tikhonov usually chaired the meetings in his place. Following Andropov's death, an even older leader, Konstantin Chernenko was elected to the General Secretariat. His rule lasted for little more than a year.

Gorbachev was elected to the General Secretariat by the Politburo on 11 March 1985. By the mid-to-late 1980s Gorbachev had launched the policies of perestroika (literally meaning "reconstruction", but varies) and glasnost ("openness" and "transparency"). The dismantling of the principal defining features of communism in 1988 and 1989 in the Soviet Union led to the unintended consequence of breaking-up the Soviet state into 15 successor states after the failed August Coup of 1991 led by Gennady Yanayev.

List of supreme leaders
The following list includes only those persons who were able to gather enough support from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the government, or one of these to lead the Soviet Union.

List of troikas
On three occasions, between Lenin's death and Stalin's rise, Stalin's death and Nikita Khrushchev's rise to power, and between Khrushchev's fall and Leonid Brezhnev's consolidation of power in the government apparatus, a collective leadership known as the troika (meaning "threesome") governed the country, with no single individual holding leadership alone.