THE NEW APPROACH
New sources – in particular, the minutes of closed meetings of the cadres directorate, probably something unprecedented in the history of the apparatus – offer a sense of how the Politburo intended to put its own house in order. In the first place, this involved an attempt to redefine the functions of the whole apparatus, to clarify the division of labour within it, and – no less important – to change the way in which the central apparatus ran the economy. Astonishing as it might seem, the apparatus was to disengage from any direct involvement in economic management.
The functions and spheres of operation of party and state were henceforth to be redefined and separated. According to the new organizational doctrine, the Central Committee was a body charged with setting policy orientation, which it conveyed to the government. Through its personnel management, the party was responsible for the leading cadres of the state. Its mission consisted in the ideological education of the nation and supervision of its local organizations.
There was nothing inherently new about this, but the apparatchiks were surprised to learn that the Central Committee would no longer be dealing directly with economic questions. Its economic departments, such as those for agriculture and transport, were abolished. The main task of the apparatus was now to manage the party itself and supervise cadres in each domain, but without concerning itself with the details of their activities or the way in which they fulfilled their duties. The Central Committee would, of course, continue to issue directives, including on the economy, to the government. And in the context of its responsibility for supervising the cadres in government bodies, it did involve itself indirectly in monitoring economic policy. Finally, the party’s local bodies, such as regional committees fulfilling ‘executive functions’, continued to supervise economic activity, as in the past. Their responsibilities were not a carbon copy of the Central Committee’s.
To introduce some clarity into the ever more obscure division of labour between the two bodies situated immediately below the Politburo – the Orgburo and the Secretariat – it was decided that the former should take responsibility for local party organs. It summoned them, listened to their reports, and proposed improvements – though this was not how party statutes had previously defined its role. Its meetings were regular and their dates were fixed in advance. For its part, the Secretariat was a permanent body. It met each day, even several times a day, as and when required. It prepared the agenda and relevant materials for Orgburo meetings, and checked that the decisions taken by it and by the Politburo were properly implemented. It was also responsible for the distribution of leading cadres throughout the system via the appropriate departments.
Helping local party organizations to control state and economic bodies effectively; criticizing them; taking responsibility for political leadership of the masses: these were the main concerns of the top party leadership – and these were the terms in which they were defined.
The sources available to us shed light on the reasons for this disengagement from economic matters at the summit. The party’s local bodies – all those below the Central Committee – were in a far from healthy condition; and even the Central Committee itself was in a spot of trouble. The main cause for anxiety was party officials’ widespread dependency on, and submission to, economic ministries.
One aspect of this dependency was what has been called ‘self-procurement’ (samosnabzhenie), which covered various practices. Heads of government agencies, particularly those of economic ministries and their local branches, offered party bosses illegal inducements in the form of premiums, prizes, bonuses, valuable gifts, and services of all sorts – construction of dachas, house repairs, reservations in comfortable sanatoria for local party secretaries (and their families, of course). All of this was at the state’s expense. According to our source, such economic cushioning of the party elite ‘assumed vast proportions’.
Further information on this score derives from another Kuznetsov document, dating from late 1947. The Politburo had just issued a stern decree against the rewards offered to party officials by economic managers. During the war the practice had been generalized, and it was now ubiquitous, ‘from top to bottom’. In these times of rationing and low living standards, the situation more closely approximated famine than simple everyday shortages. Many members of the party hierarchy actually engaged in illegal requisition – even extortion – of food and other merchandise from economic bodies. These were, of course, crimes. According to Kuznetsov, they were ‘in essence a form of corruption that makes representatives of the party dependent on economic agencies’. The latter were prioritizing their own interests over those of the state they were supposed to represent. If the defence of state interests was to take precedence over private interests, how could party cadres ensure it when improvement in their own material situation depended on bonuses and benefits from economic managers?
Such cases of corruption, in which economic ministries ‘remunerated’ party officials throughout the country – some of them highly placed in the apparatus – had been uncovered and reported to Stalin by his right-hand man, Lev Mekhlis, Minister of State Control. Kuznetsov clearly had access to this information. Numerous documents which I have collected indicate that many local apparatchiks and their bosses expended much of their energy laying their hands on housing, goods and bribes – when they were not organizing profligate binges where the alcohol flowed, at the expense of local soviet or government agencies. Inspection authorities reported in enormous detail on the number of bottles of alcohol drained, their cost, the total bill charged by the restaurant that had supplied the food, and the name of the public institution that had paid for all this. Bribes were not simply offered; they were solicited, even demanded. The offices of the State Prosecutor were heaving with documents concerning cases against party bosses accused of misconduct or criminal behaviour.
Local party leaderships were manifestly in poor shape after the war. The central apparatus was perfectly well aware of the situation, but did not report it because it did not attribute much significance to such behaviour, which was so widespread that everyone had grown used to it. However, it was said that Stalin had declared such pillaging of national resources to be a crime. For Kuznetsov, bribes created cosy ‘family’ relations, making party organizations playthings in the hands of economic managers. ‘If this situation persists, it will spell the end of the party’, he declared: it was imperative for ‘party organizations to recover their independence’. For those who regarded party primacy as firmly established, this phrase would have come as a surprise. It is clear that he was repeating what he had heard during a closed meeting of the cadres directorate in 1946, shortly after his appointment. A consultation of this kind, with all the ranks of the apparatus present, had possibly never occurred before. Kuznetsov had asked participants to be frank and had heard plenty: heads of department in the directorate itself were super-bureaucrats, inaccessible to their subordinates; they formed cliques and enjoyed special privileges; the hierarchy was very strict and did not allow for any party camaraderie; finally, the climate of secrecy was stifling. No less revealing was the apparatchiks’ appraisal of important ministers: they were perceived as feudal lords who looked down scornfully on officials. Someone had interjected: ‘When did you last see a minister come and visit us in the Central Committee?’ And someone else added: ‘Not even a deputy minister!’