Politizdat

(Political Literature Publishing House of the Central Committee of the CPSU), the central party publishing house of the Soviet Union. It was founded in Moscow in 1918 as the Kommunist party publishing house, and in 1919 became the party literature division of Gosizdat (State Publishing House of the RSFSR). Beginning in 1931, it was called Partizdat (Party Publishing House), and in 1940 it merged with Sotsekgiz (Socio-economic State Publishing House). In January 1941 this was renamed Gospolitizdat (State Publishing House of Political Literature); in 1963 the name was changed to Politizdat.

Politizdat publishes the classics of Marxism-Leninism and minutes and resolutions of party congresses and Central Committee plenums, as well as other party documents and reports and speeches by leaders of the CPSU and leaders of fraternal Communist and workers’ parties. It also publishes scholarly, popularized, and educational works on scientific communism, Marxist-Leninist philosophy, political economy, the history of the CPSU, the party’s structure, scientific atheism, Soviet foreign policy, and the world revolutionary process. In addition, it publishes literary and documentary works and calendars.

Of particular importance among Politizdat’s publications are Lenin’s Collected Works (55 vols., 1958–65), the Lenin Miscellanies, the 2nd edition of Marx and Engels’ Works, biographies of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, the five-volume Reminiscences of V. I. Lenin (5 vols.), a ten-volume edition of The Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences, and Plenums of the Central Committee, and L. I. Brezhnev’s four-volume The Leninist Course. The series On Life and Himself, Heroes of the Country of Soviets, Ardent Revolutionaries, Rulers of the Capitalist World, and Behind the Façade of Bourgeois Theories published by Politizdat enjoy wide popularity.

In 1973, Politizdat published 398 titles with a total of 108,676,000 copies and 1,431,326,000 printer’s sheets. This constituted 20 percent of all Soviet publications on sociopolitical and socioeconomic topics. Politizdat was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1970.