Two Russian terms are especially useful when dealing with the bureaucratic universe. The first, just mentioned, is soglasovyvanie, which perfectly encapsulates the interminable process of negotiation-coordination – similar to a variety of bargaining – between ministerial departments, as well as between government and party officials. The second is upravlentsy, referring to the administrative cadres engaged in upravlenie, which means something like ‘managing-governing-commanding’.
Having registered the depressed state of the party apparatus after the war compared with the influence and arrogance of ministers – something bitterly resented by party apparatchiks – we are in a position to follow the policy initially pursued by Khrushchev. It aimed to reinvigorate the party and restore the status and power of its apparatus by strengthening its ideological role (this policy and the hopes it raised would subsequently fade). To this end, Khrushchev put much effort into his own reformulation, at once new and old, of socialist aspirations. He set particular store by such practical measures as raising the living standards not only of the population as a whole but also of the apparatchiks themselves, so that the latter could approximate to the level of material comfort enjoyed by top ministerial officials – the yardstick for party bosses and the ranks below them. It was not only a matter of wages, but in particular of an array of perks that were an intense object of desire among different upper strata. In their eyes, such perks were the only way of measuring their real status (something not invented by Soviet bureaucrats). The Central Committee had to do something urgently to satisfy the personnel of the party apparatus at central and republican levels alike, so that they did not remain a second-rate group composed of impoverished malcontents. As this was the only way of preventing an exodus of the brightest or cleverest apparatchiks to work for the ‘competition’, steps were taken to ensure that they once again felt themselves to be in the saddle and were seen as so being, as befitted a ruling party.
THE STATE ADMINISTRATION
In our sketch of the state administration, as in Part One we shall make a clear distinction between the upravlentsy on the one hand, and the apparatchiks of the Central Committee apparatus and party bodies on the other.
Predictably, in every sector the powerful state administration was, like the rest of society, highly sensitive to the transition under way to a different kind of social, cultural and, in some respects, political organization. The bureaucracy had to react to the spontaneous waves of change and, in so doing, exhibited a ‘spontaneity’ of its own – i.e. the various trends at work within it. It adopted new patterns of behaviour; its self-image and ways of conceiving its own interests evolved. Our inquiry will focus on this last point: the predominant orientation of the bureaucracy, especially in its upper echelons, to its own interests and its assessment of its position within the system.
The story of the Soviet bureaucracy remains little known. The complex, troubled history of the construction of the state’s administrative structures and recruitment of its personnel, constantly on the agenda since Lenin first asked for an inventory of officials after the Civil War, contains a shadow history: the invention of new bodies to control this administration. Like the administrative structures themselves, these were constantly being disbanded and replaced by different ones. There is no need to go into the details. Suffice it to say that Soviet administrative history exhibited an astonishing tendency for ‘bureau-creativity’, replete with endless restructuring that finally subsided in the regime’s last years. But by then, as wicked tongues had it, senior bureaucrats no longer retired: they died in their office chairs.
Whatever the supervisory agency in question (the first dated from 1921), its task was to define, classify, and of course inventory the numbers and cost of the monster. This in itself proved onerous. In the first two decades of the regime, there were numerous computations, inventories and classifications. But we shall pass directly to 1947, when the Central Statistical Office conducted a complete census of the various administrative strata and reliable figures were communicated to the leadership. Naturally, numbers were just the start of the operation. Assessing the cost of administrative agencies, establishing remuneration rules, working on organizational structures, handling appointments (the nomenklatura or rather nomenklaturas, for there were several) – this was a mammoth undertaking. Wages policy alone (assuming some order was desirable in it) required a huge amount of work: job definitions, pay scales (with special treatment for priority and privileged sectors), control over the use of the wages fund – not to mention the broader problem of how ministries actually managed the budgets accorded them by the Finance Ministry, after approval by the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers. Each of the tasks signalled here demanded considerable time and effort on the part of the supervisory agencies; and the top leadership also immersed itself in the matter. The ‘circular’ complexity of the venture (one apparatus controlling another apparatus) was such that no so-called ‘state control’ agency could effectively oversee a constantly expanding bureaucratic universe.
The first of the ‘controllers’ was the Finance Ministry, since it held the purse-strings. Next came Gosplan, which assigned ministries their economic tasks and therefore had to know the number, structure and cost of their personnel. The Central Statistical Office, whose services no one could dispense with, periodically conducted general or partial inventories. Then there was the ‘state control’ agency proper (frequently reorganized and renamed in the course of its history). It studied and investigated administrative bodies, uncovering a proliferation of agencies and officials. Its archives contain a wealth of data for researchers to delve into. Among other things, we learn from them that the state administration suffered from something like a propensity to ‘parcellization’ – that is to say, to the creation of multiple sub-units with overlapping functions and myriad malfunctions. Finally, the Prosecutor’s Office, the police and the KGB had their hands full with cases of gross negligence, derelictions and criminal behaviour. Party organizations – particularly its own apparatus – made their own contribution to analysing the phenomenon with a view to formulating policy proposals. They frequently initiated investigations or created committees of inquiry to analyze the problems of the ‘administrative system’ in general or some particular agency. The Russian term for the whole bureaucratic phenomenon – administrativno-upravlencheskaia-sistema (command-administrative system) – is apt. But it covers both state administration and party apparatus. To round off our picture of a bureaucracy that was constantly being inspected, investigated and restructured, we shall mention in passing that each administrative body had its own inspectorate. Yet nothing could stop this ever more complex structure from expanding by its own momentum in a direction no one desired.
We cannot disregard the leadership’s ability to wield its axe and launch anti-bureaucratic offensives. Stalin’s purges are a case in point. But efforts to reduce and rationalize the administration, to make it more efficient, less expensive and more responsive to both the leadership and public opinion, had been as ineffectual as they were legion. This probably explains why the impetuous, cocksure Khrushchev opted for a frontal assault in order to settle the problem at one stroke, but as ever without having thought his strategy through. Initially, such shock treatment was highly impressive, because it was not wanting in plausibility.