The Politburos of Communist Eastern Europe: Introducing New Individual-Level Data on Candidate and Full Members

Who comprised the political bureaus of the Eastern Bloc? There exists a wealth of literature on the former communist party elites, studying their personal biographies and group dynamics. However, we still lack an accessible resource cataloguing these individuals and documenting their personal and professional histories. This research note introduces new individual-level data on 787 candidate and full members from the ruling politburos of nine communist regimes across Eastern Europe. Along with compiling a centralized roster establishing who made up the politburos and at what times, I also code a range of descriptive variables for each elite, opening for better study of their comparative traits within and across space and time. These data are an important step toward more accessible documentation of the histories of ruling party elites in communist regimes, centralizing valuable information for future scholars to study, reference, and utilize.