1st issue.
In March 1918, the 7th Party Congress was held, where a decision was made to rename the RSDLP as the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) — RCP(b). In 1919, the 8th Congress decreed a general re-registration of communists and, at the same time, the exchange of old membership cards for new ones. At the beginning of 1920, the first exchange of party documents took place: each province developed its own membership card design.
In March 1920, the 9th Congress of the RCP(b) decreed the introduction of a unified party card system with a single numbering sequence. Thus, 1920 saw two separate issues of party documents.
In 1921, by decision of the 10th Party Congress, a new purge of the party ranks of socially alien elements was carried out. In 1922, an All-Russian census of RCP(b) members took place, following which centralized accounting of issued party cards was introduced; from then on, they were produced at a single central facility. For the first time, personal files were opened for party members, and special registrars, based on in-person interviews with communists, filled out questionnaires for re-registration.
In December 1925, the Bolsheviks eliminated an important political mismatch: the country had already been called the USSR for almost three years, while the party still remained merely Russian. The 14th Congress was marked by the renaming of the RCP(b) to the AUCP(b) — the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Accordingly, another exchange of documents was required under the new party name. In the spring of 1927, the 1922 booklets were exchanged for a new design printed in forty languages (after all, the party had become all-union). At a meeting of the bureau of the Zamoskvoretsky District Committee of the AUCP(b), an old Bolshevik, Alexander Stopani, proposed permanently assigning party card No. 1 to the deceased leader “as a tribute of respect and nationwide love for the founder of the Communist Party and the Soviet state.” The initiative was supported warmly and unanimously. On March 16, 1927, party card No. 0000001 was issued to a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1893, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-Lenin (by the way, there was still no photograph on the document). In 1927, Stalin received for the first time a membership card with No. 2.
In December 1935, the Plenum of the Central Committee decreed that between February 1 and May 1, 1936, a new exchange of documents for all party members be carried out. Subject to replacement (already the fifth such exchange) were the 1926-model cards, candidate cards, and old registration cards. The 1936 AUCP(b) membership card is popularly called the “Stalin card.” Certain changes and additions were made to the unified party card system. From then on, photographs of the holder were mandatory and were pasted onto all documents.