Decree no. 00108-1950 was not the final word. Gulag second administration chief Matevosov wrote to MVD legal section acting chief Kurbatov on 23 September 1950, asking him for comments on the draft decree “On the procedure for maintaining correspondence,” mentioned above, revised after the MVD leadership meeting on 9 May 1950, and still, apparently, pending.[219]
The Outcome?
Nearly one year after Volzhlag chief Kopaev first reported it, the problem of mixing secret and nonsecret identities in nonsecret correspondence continued to trouble camp officials. On 9 February 1951, Bazhenovlag acting chief of administration Golubev asked MVD secretariat deputy chief Diukanov for urgent clarification of MVD decree no. 0035-1949. Two months passed before Gulag organization department chief Liamin replied, on 4 Apriclass="underline"
A draft decree has been presented to the USSR MVD leadership on the procedure for correspondence about questions of the production and business activities of camps. Given a positive decision on this question, the questions raised by comrade GOLUBEV will find their solution.[220]
On 27 February 1953, the MVD finally issued decree no. 0033-1953 (again, missing from the files), with new rules to resolve the problem of unintentional disclosure of state secrets in nonsecret correspondence. Provincial MVD administrations reported new mailbox numbers to their superiors and to bank officials and other counterparties. There was no mention of “troop units” or “facilities.”[221]
By this time, it would appear, the fear had subsided. In the spring of 1953, nearly four years had passed since the Gosplan affair of 1949 (discussed in Chapter 3), which began with the loss or misplacement of secret documents. The files of the party control commission from this period show only two other cases involving carelessness with secrets. In 1944 (another incident from Chapter 3), a coded telegram from Stalin’s war cabinet got lost in Gor’kii (Nizhnii Novgorod) province between a factory director and the local party secretary. Although five years had passed, in the fevered atmosphere of 1949, an inquiry was launched. The matter was taken seriously enough for a two-year investigation, but the principals blamed each other, and evidence was lacking to determine fault, so no action was taken. And in June 1953 a case was filed against half a dozen officials of the USSR state committee for supply of food and consumer goods for the loss of secret documents.[222] Each blamed the others, and the matter was resolved by party warnings and reprimands. These were light penalties, normal in the bureaucratic career of any moderate risk taker. There was no hint of criminal charges.
Six years after the secrecy law of 9 June 1947, the number of complaints about its impact had fallen away. The officials of the Gulag had evidently learned to do business in spite of the new regime. Perhaps, through habituation, they no longer feared it. Stalin was on his way to see Marx. The Gulag would fade to a shadow before disappearing forever in 1960. But its secrets would be kept for another generation.
The impact of the June 1947 secrecy law worked its way through the Soviet system. The effects were not instantaneous, because the law took many months to implement fully. Rather, the shock rippled through the system at all its levels. At lower levels the evidence is of a sharp increase in trade costs—the costs of transacting official business among the various specialized agencies of the state.
Official business depended on the willingness of parties and counterparties to share information. For example, buyer and seller had to identify themselves to each other before setting out prices and quantities in contracts that would implement the plans already decided at higher levels. As the regulatory framework evolved, managers recalculated the risks of identifying themselves to each other as before. They found that the risks of penalization for innocent disclosures had risen. As a result, they changed their behavior. They redirected their efforts away from managing the economy toward self-protection.
In the first wave, managers tried to avoid giving away dangerous secrets or receiving them. With that aim, managers declined orders, and bank officials declined payments. By these actions, officials replaced one risk by another. While mitigating the risk that they would be charged with unintentional secrecy violations, they heightened the risk that they would fail to fulfill the state plans by which all would be judged. The state’s business still had to be done.
In the second wave, the managers embarked on a spontaneous campaign of writing letters. They appealed to their superiors for help. The object of these appeals was twofold. On the surface, they demanded solutions that would allow them to do business safely. There was also a subtext, to implicate the superiors in responsibility for the rule breaking and workarounds that might now be forced on them if they were to continue to do the state’s business. These were the efforts by which the managers sought to protect themselves.
At higher levels, officials were made forcefully aware of the spreading disorder below, the risks of paralysis, and their responsibility for finding a solution. But any solution would have unintended consequences and could even be interpreted as an attempt to work around the law. Workarounds based on joint action could quickly acquire the smell of conspiracy. When decisive action was risky, with few certain benefits, it was generally better to keep options open.
In the short term, the outcome that was safest for the higher officials might well be to procrastinate and put the decision off until tomorrow. When tomorrow came and the advantages of the various options had to be recalculated, continued delay would probably come out on top again. Thus, the short term could drift into the long term.
Economists have given considerable attention to the human tendency to procrastinate. George Akerlof attributes it to undue salience of the costs of present versus future action.[223] For Susan Rose-Ackerman, complex organizations can give rise to rational procrastination. Suppose responsibilities overlap, so that more than one official is available to solve a particular problem. In that case, a reputation for prompt decision making becomes a liability: the official that is known for timely decisions will be overwhelmed by petitioners. Delay is better because it shifts work pressure onto others.[224]
In the present context, a more plausible candidate is the explanation offered by Gomes, Kotlikoff, and Viceira. They describe a competitive democracy in which tenure is limited by the frequency of elections. Short tenures encourage short-term optimization: if the decision that would most benefit the community in the long term looks personally risky, leave it to your successor.[225] The Soviet Union of the 1940s was not a democracy, but bureaucratic circulation was still competitive. As long as the normal period of tenure was shorter than the period of payoff from tough decisions, procrastination could be the outcome in an authoritarian system, just as in democracies.
In this story, the Gulag officials did not want to risk being held accountable for wrong decisions, and the safest course was to make no decisions and hope to be promoted or transferred before the issue became a crisis. How did their indecision affect the state? There was a pure time cost: a decision that would optimally be taken now was taken later. But this was not all. While the decision was delayed, additional costs were incurred: The state’s resources were used up in the time that officials spent in committees and working parties, on fact-finding missions, and on the writing and reading of correspondence. This is because the decision was not just delayed: for the sake of delay, it had to be considered and reconsidered repeatedly. Higher officials used their time to prolong investigations and draft and redraft complicated decrees and instructions in alternative variants that were never approved. Lower officials used their time to press for information about the progress of a decision that was never made. In our story, the decision they needed had absolutely no political significance: it was of a technical nature that might be thought well suited to a committee of experts. The problem was simply that the committee did not decide.
220
Hoover/GARF, R-94i4/idop/i57,1-2. “Bazhenovskii ITL MVD,” telegraphic address “Kombinat”; address “Sverdlovsk province (oblast’), Asbest town”; mailbox number 35 or ED-35. See the entry on the Memorial website at http://www .memo.ru/history/NKVD/GULAG/r3/r3-19.htm.
221
For example, Hoover/GARF, R-94i4/idop/i87, 32-33 (Chuvash ASSR, 17 March 1953); file 204, 24-25 (Kaliningrad province, 10 March 1953); file 212,18-19 (Crimea province, 14 March 1953).
222
Hoover/RGANI, 6/6/1650,21-23 (report to KPKchairman Shkiriatov, signed by responsible controller Byshov, June 1953). The report responded to a former employee of the state committee who had complained of mismanagement and various abuses.