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Soviet Union [USSR] Republic Party Organization
The republic party organization replicated the party structure
on the all-union level except for the Russian Republic, which had
no republic-level party organization in 1989. A congress, made up
of delegates from the oblast or district and town organizations,
elected a central committee to govern the republic in the five-year
interval between party congresses. The central committee of the
republic, which held a plenum once every four months, named a
bureau (in the case of the Ukrainian Republic, this body was called
a politburo) and a secretariat to run the affairs of the republic
between plenums of the central committee.
Full and candidate (nonvoting) members of republic bureaus
included officials who held seats on this body by virtue of their
party or government positions. Party officials who sat on the
republic party bureaus normally included the first secretary of the
republic and the second secretary for party-organizational work, as
well as others selected from among the following: the first
secretary of the party organization in the capital city of the
republic, the chairman of the republic party control committee, and
the first secretary of an outlying city or province. Government
officials who could serve on the republic bureau were elected from
among the following: the chairman of the republic's council of
ministers, the chairman of the presidium of the republic's supreme
soviet, the first deputy chairman of the republic's council of
ministers, the republic's KGB chairman, and the troop commander of
the Soviet armed forces stationed in the republic.
In 1989 the secretariats of the fourteen republic party
organizations included a second secretary for party-organizational
work and a secretary for ideology. The number of departments has,
however, shrunk as the party has attempted to limit its role in
economic management. Some sources also indicated the formation of
commissions similar to those of the central party apparatus. Thus,
the republic first secretaries in the Kazakh, Latvian, Lithuanian,
and Moldavian republics and the second secretaries in the
Belorussian and Turkmen republics assumed the chairmanships of
their republics' commissions on state and legal policy.
With the exception of the Kazakh Republic (where a Russian,
Gennadii Kolbin, served as first secretary), the first secretaries
of the republic party organizations in 1989 were all members of
their republic's dominant nationality. However, in 1989 the
officials responsible for party-organizational work--the second
secretaries--were predominantly Russians. (The Kazakh party's
second secretary was Sergei M. Titarenko, a Ukrainian; the second
secretary in the Ukrainian Republic was a Ukrainian.) The second
secretary supervised cadre policy in the republic and hence managed
the republic's nomenklatura appointments. As an official
whose primary loyalty was to Moscow, the second secretary acted as
a vehicle for the influence of the CPSU's central apparatus on the
affairs of the republic's party organization and as a watchdog to
ensure the republic organization's adherence to Moscow's demands.
Data as of May 1989
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