The Observance of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by the Soviet Union,

The fact that the Soviet state is under the total control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is widely known. Party control over the Soviet state has not received legal elaboration full enough to be considered a match to what is effectuated in practice. Throughout the entire history of the Soviet state, starting at any rate with the disbanding of the Constituent assembly in 1918, the party of the Bolsheviks, subsequently renamed the Communist party of the Soviet Union, has exercised total control over the activity of the state in Russia and then in the USSR. This fact has never been reflected in Soviet legislation fully the maximum degree of its attestation was achieved in the USSR Constitution of 1977, which states Art. 6 The leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public organizations, is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union... Even without mentioning the numerous, commonly known facts concerning party control over the state, those words of the Soviet Constitution indicate that, in analyzing practice relating to the effectuation of human rights in the Soviet Union, one must pay attention not only to the prescriptions of the law and accounts of legal practice, but also to party documents, including the Statute of the CPSU and the Program of the CPSU.