1st issue. Military overprint.
In March 1918, the 7th Party Congress was held, where it was decided to rename the RSDLP into the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) — RCP(b). In 1919, the 8th Congress resolved to conduct a general re-registration of Communists and, at the same time, to exchange old membership cards for new ones. At the beginning of 1920, the first exchange of Party documents took place: each губерния developed its own design of Party card.
In March 1920, the 9th Congress of the RCP(b) resolved to introduce a unified Party card system with a single numbering scheme. Thus, the year 1920 saw two separate issues of Party documents.
In 1921, by decision of the 10th Party Congress, a new purge of the Party ranks was carried out to remove socially alien elements. In 1922, an All-Russian census of RCP(b) members was conducted; as a result, centralized accounting of issued Party cards was introduced, and 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, on the basis of in-person interviews with Communists, filled out questionnaires for re-registration.
In December 1925, the Bolsheviks eliminated an important political inconsistency: the country had been called the USSR for almost three years already, while the Party was still merely “Russian.” The 14th Congress was marked by the renaming of the RCP(b) into the AUCP(b) — the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Accordingly, another document exchange was required under the new Party name. In the spring of 1927, the 1922 booklets were exchanged for a new model 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 to закрепить forever for the late leader Party card No. 1 “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 a membership card with No. 2 for the first time.
In December 1935, the Plenum of the Central Committee resolved that between February 1 and May 1, 1936, a new exchange of documents for all Party members should be carried out. Subject to replacement (already the fifth such exchange) were the 1926-model cards, кандидат cards, and old registration cards. The 1936 AUCP(b) membership card is popularly called the “Stalin” one. Certain changes and additions were made to the unified Party card system. From then on, photographs of the holder were required to be affixed to all documents.