The New Course

This chapter looks at why Leonid Brezhnev extended the principles of indigenization to the Slavic republics. It assesses the changing balance of co-optation, repression, and political exclusion after Khrushchev. It also discusses how political exclusion took on a more muted form as levels of repression fell. The chapter highlights how Nikita Khrushchev's heirs reunified the regional party committees, dismantled the system of party-state control, dissolved the sovnarkhozy, and reinstated the central industrial ministries. It describes how Brezhnev oversaw a massive infusion of resources into the agricultural sector and adopted a more inclusive, conciliatory approach to the countryside. The chapter also discusses the acknowledgment of the diminished motivational power of Marxism–Leninism, in which functionaries at the Central Committee apparatus turned to Russian nationalism as an agent of mobilization.

Administrative Revolution

This chapter recounts the most radical, most puzzling, and least understood organizational reform launched by Nikita Khrushchev. It examines Khrushchev's proposal to cleave the regional party-state in two, which entailed not only dividing the obkoms, the obkom buros, and the obkom bureaucracies but also having two obkom first secretaries in each region. It points out how Khrushchev's reform struck at the nerve center of the regional power network and the regional party apparatus. The chapter traces the effects of the reforms on regional leaders and their networks in order to see what they can reveal about the nature of their power. It also emphasizes how the institutional reforms of 1962 became a genuine test of the cohesiveness and resilience of the regional networks that had formed in the 1940s.

Authoritarian Checks and Balances

This chapter shows how substate dictators did not always have things their own way despite their immense power. It assesses institutional constraints on the plane of authoritarian power sharing and authoritarian control that trace how substate dictators began to adapt their behavior. It also investigates Obkom first secretaries, the directors of large factories, and heads of regional state and security organizations that operated at the level of authoritarian power sharing. The chapter explains the limits of authoritarian control and looks at the variety of institutional checks by the statewide dictator to test the effectiveness of regional leaders. It also discusses the key function of elections, which conveys information on the ability of obkom secretaries in order to “lead the aktiv.”

Substate Nationalism

This chapter shows how formal recognition by the Soviet state of ethnolinguistic elites and cultures created opportunities for republican leaders to negotiate the problems of authoritarian control and authoritarian power sharing through ethnic mobilization. It looks at the early post-Stalin era that witnessed various campaigns to raise the political or cultural autonomy of national groups. The chapter describes the campaigns that rode on the coattails of the center's policy of reinvigorated indigenization and designed to promote ethnoterritorial elites and cultures. It talks about the litmus test of nationalism, in which an ethnoterritorial elite presented its interests as being opposed not only to those of other ethnoterritorial groups but also to those of the Soviet Union as a whole. It also explains ethnic mobilization that meant going over the heads of the party membership and appealing to the wider titular ethnic group.