|
Soviet Union [USSR] Oblast-Level Organization
Below the all-union organization in the Russian Republic (which
sufficed for the Russian Republic's party organization in 1989) and
the union republic party organizations in the Azerbaydzhan,
Belorussian, Georgian, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Tadzhik, Turkmen, Ukrainian,
and Uzbek republics stood the oblast party organization, 122 of
which existed in the Soviet Union in 1989. (Six large, thinly
populated regions in the Russian Republic have been designated by
the term krai; these regions are treated herein as oblasts.)
The Armenian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Moldavian
republics had no oblasts. An oblast could embrace a large city or
nationality unit. According to the Party Rules, the
authoritative body in the province was the party conference, which
met twice every five years and consisted of delegates elected by
the district or city party conference. Between oblast party
conferences, an oblast committee (obkom) comprising full and
candidate members selected by the conference supervised the
provincial party organization and, through it, the province as a
whole. The oblast party committee met once every four months. That
committee chose a bureau made up of voting and nonvoting members
and a secretariat.
The bureau integrated officials from the most important sectors
of the provincial party, economic, and governmental organizations
into a unified political elite. Membership on the bureau enabled
these officials to coordinate policies in their respective
administrative spheres.
American Sovietologist Joel C. Moses found that as of the mid1980s five different kinds of specialists served on the
obkom bureau. The first category, composed of agricultural
specialists, could be selected from among the obkom
agricultural secretary, the agricultural administration of the
oblast, or the obkom first secretary in predominantly rural
regions. A second category of bureau membership consisted of
industrial specialists, who were drawn from among the obkom
industry secretary, the first secretary of the provincial capital
(where most provincial industries were located), the provincial
trade union council chairman, the first secretary of a large
industrialized city district, or the obkom first secretary.
Ideology specialists made up the third category. They were selected
from the obkom secretary for ideology, the editor of the
provincial party newspaper, or the first secretary of the
Komsomol (see Glossary). A fourth category was the cadres specialist, who
supervised nomenklatura appointments in the province. The
cadres specialist on the provincial party bureau normally occupied
one of the following positions: obkom first secretary, head
of the obkom party-organizational department, chairman of
the provincial trade union council, or obkom cadres
secretary. "Mixed generalists" made up the fifth category. These
officials served on the obkom bureau to fulfill positions
that required a broader background than those possessed by the
functional specialists. A wide range of roles prepared the mixed
generalists to carry out their tasks. Prior to serving on the
provincial party bureau, these officials generally worked in
industry, agriculture, party administration, or ideology.
Reform of the party's central apparatus, however, portended
significant changes at the regional level. According to Georgii
Kriuchkov, a senior official of the Central Committee, "the party
is shedding the functions of dealing with day-to-day problems as
they arise, because these problems are within the competence of the
state, managerial, and public bodies." Hence, parts of the
obkom bureau that paralleled government and managerial
bodies--mainly in the area of economic management--were to be
dismantled.
The first secretary of the party obkom was the most
powerful official in the province. Paradoxically, much of that
power stemmed from Soviet economic inefficiency. According to the
norms of democratic centralism, the obkom secretary had to
carry out decisions made by leaders at the all-union and republic
levels of the party hierarchy. Nevertheless, the obkom
secretary preserved some scope for independent political initiative
on issues of national importance. Initiative, perseverance, and
ruthlessness were necessary characteristics of the successful
obkom secretary, who had to aggregate scarce resources to
meet economic targets and lobby central planners for low targets.
Soviet émigré Alexander Yanov has argued that the interest of the
obkom secretary, however, lay in preserving an inefficient
provincial economy. Yanov has written that the obkom
secretaries were "the fixers and chasers" after scarce resources
who made the provincial economy work. If the economy were
decentralized to allow greater initiative and if efforts were made
to ensure greater agricultural productivity, one element of the
obkom secretary's power--the ability to find resources to
meet the plan--would diminish. For this reason, the obkom
secretaries formed an important source of resistance to
Khrushchev's efforts at economic reform
(see Soviet Union USSR - Khrushchev's Reforms and Fall
, ch. 2). Western observers held that these officials were
an important source of opposition to Gorbachev's economic reforms
because these reforms envisaged a greater role for the government
and the market at the expense of the party.
Data as of May 1989
|
