1977 Soviet Constitution in the context of "All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)"

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and sometimes referred to as the Bolshevik Party and Soviet Communist Party, was the founding and ruling political party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990 when the Congress of People's Deputies modified Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which had previously granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party's main ideology was Marxism–Leninism. The party was outlawed under Russian president Boris Yeltsin's decree on 6 November 1991, citing the 1991 Soviet coup attempt as a reason.

The party started in 1898 as part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In 1903, that party split into a Menshevik (m) ("minority") and Bolshevik (b) ("majority") faction; the latter, led by Vladimir Lenin, is the direct ancestor of the CPSU and is the party that seized power in the October Revolution of 1917. Its activities were suspended on Soviet territory 74 years later, on 29 August 1991, soon after a failed coup d'état by conservative CPSU leaders against the reforming Soviet president and party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

The socialist state of the whole people as a term was introduced by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) as the all-people's state under Nikita Khrushchev's leadership to describe the class system of the Soviet Union. It denoted that the Soviet Union had moved away from the dictatorship of the proletariat to a new state of the whole people since the exploitative classes had been vanquished. The working class (known as the proletariat in Marxist discourse) was no longer to be the ruling class of the state alone, and all social groups were to be given equal representation in the state. This term was redeveloped during Leonid Brezhnev's leadership of the CPSU as the state of the whole people, and added into the 1977 Soviet Constitution. The state of the whole people is, according to Soviet ideologue Aleksei Rumyantsev, the class system of developed socialism.

The Soviet of the Union (Russian: Сове́т Сою́за, Sovet Soyuza) was the lower chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage in accordance with the principles of Soviet democracy, and with the rule that each deputy would represent the same number of voters. Under the 1936 Soviet Constitution, there was one deputy for every 300,000 people; this was changed by the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which provided that both chambers would have an equal number of members. Although the party gave general guidelines on nominations, such as the ratio of the social composition of the nominees, much of the work was left to local bodies and people's representatives. As opposed to the upper chamber, the Soviet of Nationalities, the Soviet of the Union represented the interests of all of the people of the Soviet Union no matter what their nationality was.

The Soviet of the Union had the same rights and competence as the Soviet of Nationalities, including the right for legislative initiative. In practice, until 1989, it did little more than approve decisions already made by the top leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After the 1989 elections the Soviet of the Union acquired a much greater role, and was the scene of many lively debates.