General Secretary of the Communist Party

General Secretary or First Secretary is the official title of leaders of most Communist political parties. When a Communist party is the ruling party in a Communist-led one-party state, the General Secretary is typically the country's de facto leader—though sometimes this leader also holds state-level positions (such as a presidency or premiership) in order to hold de jure leadership of the state as well. One exception to this rule is the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1990 where the Chairman and then General Secretary of the Communist Party were subordinate to Deng Xiaoping who was the de facto paramount leader of China.

Leaders of current communist parties

Official title	Incumbent	Term start	Other names
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China	Xi Jinping	15 November 2012	Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (1922–25 & 1943–82)
Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea	Kim Jong-un	17 December 2011	Chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (1946–1966) General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (1966–1997) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (1997–2012) First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (2012–2016)
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba	Raúl Castro	19 April 2011
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam	Nguyễn Phú Trọng	8 January 2011	Chairman of the Workers' Party of Vietnam (1951–69) First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam (1951–76)
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party	Bounnhang Vorachit	22 January 2016	Chairman of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (1991–2006)
General Secretary of the Progressive Party of Working People	Andros Kyprianou	21 February 2009
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain	Robert Griffiths	1 January 1998
First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation	Gennady Zyuganov	14 February 1993
General Secretary of the Communist Party of India	D. Raja	21 July 2019
General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)	Sitaram Yechury	19 April 2015
General Secretary of the Communist Party USA	Rossana Cambron and Joe Sims (as co-chairs)	23 June 2019
General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party	Jerónimo de Sousa	27 November 2004
General Secretary of the Japanese Communist Party	Kazuo Shii	24 November 2000
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain	Enrique Santiago	8 April 2018
National Secretary of the French Communist Party	Fabien Roussel	25 November 2018	General Secretary of the French Communist Party (1921–1994)
General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party	Mauro Alboresi	26 June 2016

Leaders of former communist parties

Official title	Last	Term end	Other names
First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania	Ramiz Alia	4 May 1991
General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party	Petar Mladenov	15 January 1990
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea	Pol Pot	8 December 1981
General Secretary of the People's Revolutionary Party of Benin	Mathieu Kérékou	1 March 1990
General Secretary of the New Jewel Movement	Maurice Bishop	19 October 1983
General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia	Mengistu Haile Mariam	21 May 1991
General Secretary of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party	Siad Barre	26 January 1991
General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan	Mohammad Najibullah	16 April 1992
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union	Mikhail Gorbachev	24 August 1991	Technical Secretary of the Bolshevik Party (1917–18) Chairman of the Secretariat of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1918–19) Responsible Secretary of the RCP(b) (1919–22) First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953–66)
General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party	Károly Grósz	7 October 1989
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia	Karel Urbánek	20 December 1989
First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party	Mieczysław Rakowski	29 January 1990
General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party	Nicolae Ceaușescu	22 December 1989
General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany	Egon Krenz	3 December 1989
President of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia	Milan Pančevski	30 June 1990

See also

• Secretary (title)
• Secretary-general

External links