7 - The party

Summary

The economic functions of the party

The Communist Party is heavily involved in Soviet economic affairs. Although little is known about how the Central Committee and its apparatus works, the committee is known to set general priorities, which are implemented through its executive arms, the Council of Ministers and Gosplan USSR. The Central Committee is organized into branch departments that supervise industrial ministries but are not held responsible for the ministries' results. The committee plays a key role in high-level staffing decisions through its cadres department. Western literature and Soviet autobiographical sources reveal that Central Committee involvement has gone beyond policy setting and appointments to include direct intervention in operational economic decisions. The micromanagement by high party officials has been chronicled since the trouble shooting by war communism commissars. Stalin and Molotov were known for their micromanagement of the economy, and the agendas of the Central Committee focused on operational matters during the early 1980s. Respondents reported numerous cases of micromanagement by high-ranking party officials of the Central Committee and republican central committees. The preoccupation of the Central Committee with economic affairs is evidenced by the fact that more than half of all its decrees deal with economic matters.

The Central Committee stands at the apex of the Soviet party structure. The local party apparatus occupies the middle level of the party organization. The term “local” (mestny) party apparatus is misleading because the “local” level encompasses party organizations ranging from the central committees of powerful regions and the city committees of Moscow or Leningrad at the top to small regional organizations (regional committees, or raikomy) at the bottom.