The Central Committee Secretariat, the Nomenklatura, and the Politics of Personnel Management in the Soviet Order, 1921-1927

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Monty
Keyword(s):  
Personnel Management ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Administrative Power ◽  
Formal Authority ◽  
Executive Agencies ◽  
Economic Administration

This article re-examines early efforts to put into practice the nomenklatura system for assigning elite office holders adopted by the Organization Bureau of the Central Committee (Orgburo) of the Russian Communist Party in late 1923. Until recently, scholarly treatments of this issue have largely taken for granted Stalin’s ability to transform the formal authority this initiative concentrated in the executive agencies of the Central Committee into effective administrative power. This article challenges that assumption by looking past official regulations in order to examine the operational records of the body most closely involved in managing the assignment of responsible officials across the soviet political order, the Organization-Assignment Department of the Central Committee Secretariat. The working papers of the Organization-Assignment Department, the Secretariat and the Orgburo make it evident that the nomenklatura had not yet evolved into the central vehicle for managing elite office holding that it was intended to be prior to the Stalin Revolution. The evidence suggests the persistence of ad hoc improvisation in the management of personnel, which produced a hybrid order that relied on an unstable mix of bureaucratic, personalistic and campaign-style methods to extend communist influence over government and economic administration.

Эволюция корпуса первых секретарей Калмыцкой организации ВКП(б) в 1921–1943 гг.

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-50
Author(s):  
Evgeniya V. Sartikova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
National Archive ◽  
The Body ◽  
Party Committee ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Regional Committee ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Poor Peasant

The article discusses the main trends in the rotation of the executive (the first) secretaries of the Kalmyk regional party committee in 1921–1943. The study is based on the documents from the fund of the Kalmyk regional committee of the USSR Communist Party kept at the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia. The principles of objectivism and historicism were used for the analysis of the archive materials that allowed to examine the problem in its relation to the existing specific historical circumstances. The goal of the article is to investigate the body of the first secretaries of the Russian Communist Party — All-Russia Communist Party in Kalmykia. The use of the common in the historical research methods (the broadside examination of the archive sources, historical description, chronological method) allowed to investigate the historical phenomena in the close relation to the historical situation. The author concludes that the specific feature of the rotation of the first secretaries of the Kalmyk regional party committee was the appointment of people from other regions of the country to this position. Mainly these were formal representatives, supervisors recommended by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party — All-Russia Communist Party for the positions of the first or second secretaries of the regional party committee. The analysis of the characteristics of the body of the first secretaries of the Kalmyk regional party in the given time period showed that all these people were from poor peasant families, without high education but with sufficient party service record who combined party and soviet activities.

„Arvīd, uz kurieni Tu aizgāji?”: Arvīda Griguļa personības loma Rakstnieku savienības vēsturē

2020 ◽  
pp. 74-84
Author(s):  
Madara Eversone
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
State Archive ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Impact

The article aims to highlight the role of Arvīds Grigulis’ (1906–1989) personality in the Latvian Soviet literary process in the context of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union, attempting to discover the contradictions and significance of Arvīds Grigulis’ personality. Arvīds Grigulis was a long-time member of the Writers’ Union, a member of the Soviet nomenklatura, and an authority of the soviet literary process. His evaluations of pre-soviet literary heritage and writings of his contemporaries were often harsh and ruthless, and also influenced the development of the further literary process. The article is based on the documents of the Central Committee of the Latvian Communist Party, the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the Communist Party local organization of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union that are available at the Latvian State Archive of the National Archives of Latvia, as well as memories of Grigulis’ contemporaries. It is concluded that the personality of the writer Arvīds Grigulis, although unfolding less in the context of the Writers’ Union, is essential for the exploration of the soviet literary process and events behind the scenes. The article mainly describes events and episodes taking place until 1965, when Arvīds Grigulis’ influence in the Writers’ Union was more remarkable. Individual and further studies should analyse changes and the impact of his decisions in the cultural process of the 70s and 80s of the 20th century.

Political Intimacy

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 658-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neringa Klumbytė
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The State ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
The Public ◽  
Shared Meanings ◽  
Political Aesthetics ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
Power Orders

This article explores intersections between power, subjectivity, and laughter by focusing on Šluota ( The Broom), a humor and satire journal published by the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party during late socialism (1970s to mid-1980s). In Lithuania, while the official newspapers and journals were commonly distrusted, The Broom was perceived as a grassroots media. In this article, the author asks how officially sanctioned socialist humor was translated into readers’ sincere laughter; how sensual and political dialogue was created between state authorities, artists, and readers. The author shows that in the case of the official culture of humor presented in The Broom, laughter cannot be easily classified as performance of resistance or support for the regime. In The Broom, the discourse of power was never monologic and simply oppressive. It was situational, contextual, and changing. Officially sanctioned laughter was infused with and mediated by private emotions and values. Moreover, the journal provided space for artistic creativity and self-expression that reshaped official political aesthetics. Laughter blurred the distinctions between the state and the citizen, the public and the private, the hegemonic and the sincere. The author argues that laughter is an experience and a performance of political intimacy through which various agents imagine a self, society, and the state and reproduce various power orders. Political intimacy refers to coexistence of state authorities and other subjects in fields of social and political comfort, togetherness, and dialogue as well as in the zones of shared meanings and values.

Revitalizing the State's Urban “Nerve Tips”

2000 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 806-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Read
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Base Level ◽  
International Attention ◽  
Party State ◽  
Mao Era

While observers of China have always paid attention to the “base-level” administrative institutions and mass organizations created by the Communist party-state, urban Residents' Committees (RCs; jumin weiyuanhui) have received relatively little study in recent years. Though the RCs remain pervasive in most areas of most cities and engage the energies of millions of activists and volunteers, this neglect is understandable. During the Mao era, Western writing on neighbourhood organizations emphasized their role in helping to police and administer the harsh political order that gripped the cities. In the 1980s and 1990s, the authorities have yielded much greater space to a private sphere in which law-abiding individuals are relatively free from intrusion. Instruments of state penetration such as the RCs have seemed less worthy of analysis. They also lack the requisite autonomy to qualify as part of an emergent civil society, and moreover their limited progress in serving as a focus for democratic participation earns them much less international attention than their rural equivalents, the Villagers' Committees. They may even seem worthy of derision rather than study; merely mentioning the term juweihui often brings an amused smile to people's faces, as it connotes ageing, officious busy bodies poking into people's personal matters.

For our readers

1930 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee

Regarding the appeal of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b.) Of September 3, pp. g.

Latvijas Komunistiskās (boļševiku) partijas Ventspils apriņķa komitejas slepenā sarakste ar Prokuratūras, Iekšlietu un Valsts drošības iestādēm (1945–1949)

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Dzintars Ērglis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Fire Safety ◽  
Military Personnel ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The State ◽  
State Security ◽  
Safety Regulations ◽  
Supreme Council

The secret correspondence of the Ventspils District Committee of the Latvian Communist (Bol-shevik) Party (LC(b)P) with the Prosecutor’s Office, the Interior and the State Security Institutions dur-ing the last years of the district’s existence, from 1945 to 1949, shows how the Communist Party man-aged and controlled life in the region. The research is based on the scope of documents dedicated to Ventspils District Committee of the LC(b)P. The secret correspondence covers the following issues: collection of compromising materials on the nominees; abuse of authority performed by officials and military personnel; events organized by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of State Security in Ventspils District on election days of the Supreme Council, local councils and the People's Court; sending the best communists to work in the sys-tem of the Ministry of the State Security and the Ministry of the Interior, as decided by the Central Committee Bureau of LC(b)P; the staff conflicts within the Interior and State Security Institutions; defi-ciencies in the work of people's courts; non-compliance with the fire safety regulations, etc.

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