Old Bolsheviks

While some died over the years from natural causes, many were removed from power, imprisoned in gulags or executed by the late 1930s, as a result of the Great Purge by Joseph Stalin.

The first Statute required membership before January 1, 1905, with admission in some cases of other Social Democrats with the same career time who later joined the Bolsheviks.

[4][verification needed] By the end of the Russian Revolution in 1923, Old Bolsheviks filled many of the powerful positions in the state apparatus of the Soviet Union, its constituent republics, and the ruling All-Union Communist Party.

By the mid-1930s, General Secretary Joseph Stalin and the upper ranks of the party were predicting that major social upheaval would occur in the aftermath of the forced collectivization process since 1928 and the subsequent Soviet famine of 1932–1933.

[citation needed] In his memoirs, Nikita Khrushchev argued that Stalin's widespread purges of the "most advanced nucleus of people" among the Old Bolsheviks and leading figures in the military and scientific fields had "undoubtedly" weakened the nation.