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The Soviet Regional Leadership: The Brezhnev Generation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

T. H. Rigby
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The secretaries of republic and regional party committees are the most important category of officials in the USSR after the supreme leadership. They formed 36 percent of the full members of the Central Committee chosen in 1976, while the next largest group, comprising members of the Council of Ministers, made up 24 percent. They are also the most important reserve from which members of the supreme leadership are co-opted. A study of the careers of Politburo members in 1971 showed that two-thirds of them had spent at least five years as regional or republic party first secretaries before being promoted to senior jobs at the center. The same applies to nine of the twelve present members of the Central Committee Secretariat.

This article focuses on the first secretaries of regional (oblast') and territorial (krai) party committees—the obkom and kraikom secretaries—of the Russian Republic (RSFSR). They make up almost two-thirds of all republic and regional party officials elected as full members of the present Central Committee, but their importance lies not only in their numerical weight within the political elite.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1978

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References

1. T. H., Rigby, “The Soviet Politburo: A Comparative Profile 1951-1971,” Soviet Studies, 24, no. 1 (July 1972)Google Scholar: 18. Changes in the Politburo since that date have slightly reduced'the proportion.

2. This assumes that D. F. Ustinov, who was appointed minister of defense in April 1976, remains a member of the Secretariat, from which he has not been formally removed. Ustinov has never been an obkom secretary, and his career has been devoted to administration of the defense industry. The other two exceptions are B. N. Ponomarev and N. V. Zimianin, both ideology specialists. Ponomarev made his career entirely within the central agitprop establishment. Zimianin spent some years as a regional and later republican secretary (but not first secretary) in Belorussia before moving to Foreign Ministry and media jobs at the center. Another somewhat ambiguous case is Chernenko, who worked in the central party apparatus for a considerable period before his promotion to the Secretariat, but he also served for five or six years as a regional party secretary during the 1940s.

3. The criterion for inclusion is whether the party committee concerned comes directly under the Central Committee. The analysis therefore includes the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee (gorkom), since this body is not subordinate to the Moscow obkom, but excludes the first secretaries of obkoms of autonomous oblasts which are subordinate to krai administrations. By the same token, it includes the obkom first secretaries in Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics; although the state authorities in these areas enjoy a distinctive status, the rights, obligations, and status of their party bodies are indistinguishable from those of “ordinary” RSFSR obkoms. Altogether we are dealing with seventy-two party committees, comprising six kraikoms, sixty-five obkoms (of which sixteen are located in ASSR's) and one gorkom (Moscow). In terms of their current role and their prospects for advancement to top office, the RSFSR obkom and kraikom first secretaries have no real equivalent in the other Union republics. The central committees of the other republics are analogous to the RSFSR obkoms in coming directly under the CPSU Central Committee, but their first secretaries have no real prospect of promotion to high office in Moscow, with the exception of the Ukrainian and Belorussian first secretary. The second secretaries in the Union republics, who are usually Russians, are more similar in their career profiles to the RSFSR obkom secretaries, but it is unusual for men to go directly from this post to major appointments in Moscow (the recent appointment of the second secretary in Uzbekistan, V. G. Lomonosov, as chairman of the State Committee on Labor and Wages of the USSR is an exception). Four of the Union republics have oblast divisions, but with the exception of the Ukraine, their obkom first secretaries exercise responsibilities far inferior to those of the RSFSR, and their career prospects are effectively confined to their own republic. Ukrainian officials occupy an ambiguous position in these respects. The population and economic resources entrusted to them are comparable with those in an average RSFSR oblast, and in certain respects the position of their party organizations is also more analogous (for example, in electing delegates to CPSU congresses) to the RSFSR. Thus certain “elite” studies group the Ukrainian obkom first secretaries with those of the RSFSR. For the present analysis, however, this was felt to be misleading. Relations between the Ukrainian obkom first secretaries and the central party authorities are normally mediated through the Ukrainian Central Committee, and it is unusual for them to move to senior office in Moscow without either first (like Podgorny) gaining Ukrainian Republic first secretaryship, or (like Kirilenko) serving for a period in an RSFSR obkom. 4, On the role and powers of tsarist provincial governors, see Korkunov, N. M., Russkoe gosudarstvennoe pravo, vol. 2: Chast’ osobennaia (St. Petersburg, 1905), pp. 311–24 Google Scholar; Gribovskii, V. M., Gosudarstvennoe ustroistvo i upravlcnic rossiiskoi imperii (Odessa, 1912), pp. 133–38 Google Scholar; and Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole, L'Empire des tsars et les russes, vol. 2: Les institutions (Paris, 1882), pp. 97–99 Google Scholar. See also John A. Armstrong, The European Administrative Elite (Princeton, N.J., 1973). The obvious difference in the career prospects of provincial governors and obkom first secretaries is that the former could never achieve the topmost post in the country, whereas the latter may—and two of them, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, have achieved it. Apart from the tsar, however, most other leading positions, in the state were filled by appointment, and provincial governors were a major source of recruitment to such positions.

5. Thus George, Trevor, Russia Ancient and Modern (London, 1862), p. 339 Google Scholar, stated that “a provincial governor in Russia resembles a military commander quartered on a subjugated people, more than a public officer among his fellow subjects.”

6. See Hough, Jerry F., The Soviet Prefects: The Local Party Organs in Industrial Decision-Making (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, introduction. Similar characterizations of the role and status of obkom secretaries may be found in other studies of the Soviet political system, and several analyses of the characteristics of obkom secretaries are available. While in no case does the coverage permit direct comparison with the data presented in the present study, the following contain many relevant findings and evaluations: Robert E. Blackwell, Jr., “Elite Recruitment and Functional Change: An Analysis of the Soviet Obkom Elite 1950-1968,” Journal of Politics, 34 (1972): 124-52 (covers obkom first secretaries in all republics); Robert E. Blackwell, Jr., “Career Development in the Soviet Obkom Elite: A Conservative Trend,” Soviet Studies, 24, no. 1 (July 1972): 24-40 (same coverage) ; Peter Frank, “The CPSU Obkom First Secretary: A Profile,” British Journal of Political Science, 1 (1971): 173-90 (obkom first secretaries in all republics in 1966); Grey Hodnett, “The Obkom First Secretaries,” Slavic Review, 24, no. 4 (December 1965): 636-52 (obkom first secretaries of all republics during the bifurcation of 1962-64 and immediately before and after it); Philip D. Stewart, Political Power in the Soviet Union: A Study of Decision- Making in Stalingrad (New York, 1968), chapter 7 (covers obkom first secretaries in all republics 1950-66) ; K. A. Jagannathan, “The Political Recruitment and Career Patterns of Obkom First Secretaries in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1971), chapters 4 and 5 (covers all obkom first sec'retaries elected to the Central Committee between 1952 and 1966); and Moses, Joel C., Regional Party Leadership and Policy-Making in the USSR (New York, 1974)Google Scholar, chapter 6 (covers first secretaries of twenty-five obkoms in the RSFSR and the Ukraine 1955-73). Also useful are several studies of wider groups in the Soviet political elite, especially George, Fischer, The Soviet System and Modern Society (New York, 1968)Google Scholar (obkom first secretaries of all republics comprise two-thirds of the 230 posts analyzed for the early 1960s); Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., “Representation of Career Types in the Soviet Political Leadership,” in Political Leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, ed. R. Barry Farrell (Chicago, 1970) (covers all members of the CPSU Central Committee 1952-61); and Michael P. Gehlen, “The Soviet Apparatchiki,” in ibid, (covers all party officials among the full members of the Central Committee elected between 1952 and 1966). Scattered data of relevance may be found in the specialized literature, particularly in articles appearing in the journals Osteuropa, Soviet Studies, and Problems of Communism, and in the Research Bulletins of Radio Liberty; see especially Jerry F. Hough, “The Soviet System: Petrifaction or Pluralism,” Problems of Communism, 1972, no. 2, pp. 25-45. The information on the backgrounds and careers of officials analyzed in this paper is assembled from the Soviet press and official biographical compilations, particularly the series Deputaty Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR (Moscow, 1962, 1966, 1970, and 1974), and the yearbooks (ezhegodniki) of the Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia. It would be unwieldly to give specific references in these footnotes, but they can be supplied on request 7. Mikoian, A. I., V nachalc dvadtsatykh . , . (Moscow, 1975), pp. 26 ffGoogle Scholar.

8. Shakhurin, M. I., in Sovetskii tyl v Vclikoi otechcstvennoi voine, ed. P. N. Pospelov, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1974), pp. 68–69 Google Scholar.

9. This discussion assumes, of course, the basic accuracy of Shakhurin's account, and also ignores several important questions, such as Shakhurin's estimate (when recommending Rodionov) of the patronage enjoyed by Rodionov in Stalin's entourage; Rodionov was later executed in the “Leningrad case,” thus being identified as a protege of Central Committee Secretary A. A. Zhdanov, who was an extremely powerful figure at this time.

10. The exceptions were from the peripheral national minority areas of Tuva and Dagestan. In many cases more than one change of first secretary occurred in these years, as Khrushchev's initial choice proved unsatisfactory or alternatively went on to higher things. Thus thirty-three RSFSR first secretaryships changed hands twice between 19S3 and 1961, sixteen changed hands three times, and three changed hands four times. In addition, all five of the first secretaries appointed to new obkoms formed after 19S3 were replaced by 1961.

11. Thus, in 19SS A. P. Kirilenko (now number four in the Politburo hierarchy) was moved from the Ukrainian party organization, where he had made his early career under Khrushchev, to be first secretary of the large industrial Sverdlovsk obkom in the Urals and in 1962 was brought up to Moscow to be first vice-chairman of the Central Committee Bureau for the RSFSR. Similarly, A. I. Struev, another of Khrushchev's Ukrainian cadres, became first secretary of the Molotov (now Perm) obkom in 1954 and in 1959 was made vice-premier of the RSFSR (he is now USSR minister of trade). E. A. Furtseva, one of Khrushchev's proteges from the local party apparatus in Moscow, was made first secretary of the Moscow City Committee in 1954 (which had obkom status from 1956) and later went on to be Central Committee secretary and then minister of culture. There were numerous other such cases 12. See John A., Armstrong, “Party Bifurcation and Elite Interests,” Soviet Studies, 17 (1965-66): 418-30Google Scholar, especially pp. 425-26. This article provides a valuable analysis of personnel changes and administrative and power relationships involved in the reorganization. It covers the kraikoms and obkoms of both the RSFSR and the Ukraine, but excludes the obkoms responsible for the sixteen Autonomous Republics of the RSFSR. See also Hodnett, “The Obkom First Secretaries.”

13. It would appear that the major speech at the October 1964 plenum, given by Central Committee Secretary Suslov, contained a strong critique of Khrushchev's style and methods (see Michel, Tatu, Poivcr in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev's Decline to Collective Leadership [London, 1969], pp. 416–Google Scholar). If so, the features that so concerned the obkom secretaries would undoubtedly have been mentioned, and an undertaking to remedy them at least implied.

14. Partiinaia shizn', 1964, no. 20, p. 6.

15. Ibid., 1964, no. 23, p. 4.

16. Kommunist, 1964, no. 16, pp. 7-8.

17. Pravda, November 17, 1964. The decision also restored the old rural district party committees (raikomy) which Khrushchev had replaced by party committees of collective farm/state farm production directorates. The raikoms were able to absorb some of the surplus (mainly junior) staff released from the duplicated obkom apparatus. In practice, the completion of these arrangements took longer than anticipated by the Central Committee after the November 1964 decision, but the regional party conferences had all been completed before the next plenary meeting of the Central Committee in March 196S (see Plenum Tsentral'nogo Komiteta Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza 24-26 marta 1965 goda: Stenograficheskii otchet [Moscow, 196S], p. S).

18. Agriculture is of little relative importance in this region, but at the time of the split Lubennikov had been relegated to the agriculture obkom, and it was the man appointed to head the industry obkom under Khrushchev, A. F. Eshtokin, who now became first secretary of the reunified obkom.

19. This is an intriguing case because Skriabin had worked under Brezhnev in Zaporozhe in 1946-47, and his election as first secretary of the Rostov obkom in 1962, at a plenum over which Brezhnev's crony Kirilenko presided, looked remarkably like the installation of a Brezhnev protégé in an area where Suslov is thought by some to retain a special interest (dating from his service there before World War II). In this case, Skriabin's replacement when the Rostov obkom was reunified might appear as a concession to Suslov. If this line of speculation had any basis, however, one would have expected Brezhnev to contrive some other position of importance for Skriabin, but this did not happen.

20. See Pravda, November 17, 1964.

21. See T. H., Rigby, “The Soviet Leadership: Towards a Self-Stabilizing Oligarchy?,” Soviet Studies, 22 (October 1970): 167–91 Google Scholar.

22. The sharpest blow in this campaign was a Central Committee decision of July 20, 196S, which assailed “serious shortcomings” in party recruitment and training in the Kharkov region—Podgorny's (and Titov's) primary patronage base (see Spravochnik partiinogo. rabotnika, vol. 6 [Moscow, 1966], pp. 383-86). For a good summary of the campaign against the ” Kharkov group,” see Tatu, , Power in the Kremlin, pp. 499–502. 23Google Scholar. Rodionov's career has been a curious one. He first rose to prominence under Kozlov in the Leningrad party machine, and in 1960 was made second secretary of the Kazakh Central Committee. In December 1962, however, he was removed from this position at a plenum presided over by Kozlov himself, in a purge of the Kazakh leadership that has been interpreted as an attack on Brezhnev's influence in that republic (see Tatu, , Power in the Kremlin, pp. 155 and 515Google Scholar). For a fuller analysis of political alignments in Kazakhstan at this period, see J. W. Cleary, “Politics and Administration in Soviet Kazakhstan 1955-1964” (Ph.D. diss., Australian National University, Canberra, 1967), especially chapter 9. A contrary interpretation by Ploss, Sidney I., in his Conflict and Decision-Making in Soviet Russia: A Case Study of Agriculture Policy 1953-1963 (Princeton, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially chapter 4, seems to the present author to be less plausible than Cleary's analysis, especially in the light of later events. Rodionov returned to Leningrad, where he received a relatively minor post as deputy chairman of the Regional Economic Council. Whatever his earlier links with Kozlov, the revival of his fortunes after Kozlov's rival Brezhnev assumed the first secretaryship of the CPSU suggests that he had, indeed, forged bonds with the Brezhnev “camp” that were now being rewarded. Rodionov remained first secretary of the Cheliabinsk obkom till 1970, when he was appointed deputy minister of foreign affairs, with responsibility for the “socialist” countries. He remains a full member of the Central Committee. 24. It is true that the regional party conferences preceding the CPSU congress provided an appropriate occasion for leadership changes, but the number of such changes is striking coming so soon after the post-Khrushchev reorganization and it is also noteworthy that the majority of them occurred at special “organizational plenums” held before the oblast conferences.

25. Brezhnev's gambit closely parallels Khrushchev's similar display of power, at an equivalent stage in his own rise, when in November 1953 he went personally to Leningrad to preside over the removal of Malenkov's protégé Andrianov and to install F. R. Kozlov as obkom first secretary.

26. Four years earlier, when he was merely party secretary in the Gorki Automobile Works, Katushev had attended the Twenty-second Party Congress in Moscow: perhaps he caught someone's (Brezhnev's?) eye there. Since 1963 he had been first secretary of the Gorki City Party Committee. He was only 38 years old in 1965.

27. See Tatu, , Power in the Kremlin, p. 35 Google Scholar.

28. See Geary, “Politics and Administration in Soviet Kazakhstan.” Ignatov received the relatively minor appointment of deputy minister in one of the less important machine building ministries.

29. Marchenko, like Ignatov, had served under Kapitonov when he was first secretary of the Moscow City Committee from 1954 to 1959. He was appointed a minister in the RSFSR government, which was a demotion, though not as drastic a one as Ignatov's.

30. XXIII s “ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza: 29 marta-8 aprelia 1966 goda: Stenograficheskii otchet, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1966), p. 90.

31. Moses, , Regional Party Leadership, pp. 230–34Google Scholar, also notes the increasing appointment of “insiders” to obkom first secretaryships, and offers some valuable discussion of the motivation behind it and its effects.

32. XXIV s “esd Kommunistichcskoi Partii Sovctskogo Soiuza: 30 marta-9 aprelia 1971 goda: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1971), p. 124.

33. Hough, “The Soviet System: Petrifaction or Pluralism,” p. 40. See also Blackwell, “Career Development in the Soviet Obkom Elite.”

34. See Rigby, T. H., “The Soviet Government since Khrushchev,” Politics (Adelaide), 12 (1977): 5–22 Google Scholar.

35. See Blackwell, “Elite Recruitment and Functional Change,” especially p. 136. Blackwell's data show a marked shift from agricultural to industrial training in appointments of obkom first secretaries in the early post-Khrushchev years. Some caution is needed in interpreting the patterns of educational qualifications found among obkom first secretaries, for, as Hodnett points out, “many received their higher education while holding full-time jobs, and many were preoccupied with Komsomol and other extracurricular activities. The circumstances in which a number of diplomas were granted lead one to surmise that not much education, if any, occurred” (Hodnett, “The Obkom First Secretaries,” p. 644).

36. Most government positions held were as chairman of the executive committee of a local or regional soviet, or in some cases as head of its agriculture department. Hodnett ( “The Obkom First Secretaries,” p. 650) is correct in labeling these as essentially “party” functions, characteristically performed by officials already well set on a party career. Occupancy of a paid Komsomol office is a common initiation to a subsequent career in the party apparatus.

37. See Blackwell, “Elite Recruitment and Functional Change,” p. 141.

38. One curious aspect here was that in the early 1960s two-thirds of obkom first secretaries were of peasant origin, compared with only one-sixth of the party membership at large (see Hodnett, , “The Obkom First Secretaries,” p. 643CrossRefGoogle Scholar). 39. Ibid., p. 652.

40. See Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., “Representation of Career Types” ; and also Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., “Toward a Reconceptualisation of Political Change in the Soviet Union: The Political Leadership System,” Comparative Politics, 1 (1969): 228–44Google Scholar.

41. Moses, , Regional Party Leadership, p. 236 Google Scholar, found an increase in the proportion of “co-opted ” first secretaries in 1965-73 as compared with 1955-64, which is contrary to the evidence adduced by Blackwell and the present article. This contradiction does not seem to be more than partially explicable in terms of definitional differences. An important factor may be the different periods of comparison. As Blackwell's evidence shows, there was a marked increase in the proportion of “co-opted” officials appointed as first secretaries in the period 1958-64 as compared with 1953-57. It is possible, however, that the contradictory findings may be partly due to differences in the groups studied. As mentioned earlier, the present article is based on appointments in all RSFSR kraikoms and obkoms and the Moscow gorkom, and Blackwell's analysis relates to all obkoms in all republics, while that of Moses is based on a sample of twenty-five obkoms in the RSFSR and the Ukraine: perhaps the sample was not entirely representative with respect to the variable under consideration.

42. Blackwell, “Elite Recruitment and Functional Change,” p. 144.

43. Blackwell, “Career Development in the Soviet Obkom Elite.” Blackwell further demonstrates that greater party or party-related experience is the main factor in the longer careers of those first secretaries he designates as “specialists” (having both specialist training and career experience) and “semi-specialists” (having one of these), as well as those designated as “professional politicians” (having party and party-related experience only) (ibid., pp. 36-38).

44. In this connection it is worth considering the representation of first secretaries of RSFSR obkoms (including the six kraikoms and the Moscow gorkom) in the Central Committee and the Central Revision Commission (membership of which mostly goes to officials next in standing to those elected to the Central Committee). In the Central Committee formed in 1966 there were thirty-six RSFSR obkom first secretaries among the full members, thirty-one among the candidate members, and five among the members of the Central Revision Commission. In the Central Committee formed in 1971 these numbers were respectively forty-one, twenty-nine, and two, and in that formed in 1976 there were sixty among the full members and the remaining twelve were candidate members of the Central Committee. To put the figures in perspective, however, it must be noted that there was a considerable expansion in these bodies over this period—the full members of the Central Committee, for example, increasing from 195 in 1966 to 287 in 1976. Thus the obkom first secretaries grew from 18 to 21 percent of the full members of the Central Committee over the decade. The other major group of officials who improved their Central Committee representation over the same period were the members of the Council of Ministers who increased from 22 to 24 percent of the full members. Of course, the RSFSR obkom first secretaries are not the only category of party officials in the Central Committee, although they are the largest of them. Altȯgether 42 percent of the full members in 1976 were party officials. The proportion of RSFSR obkom first secretaries among them increased from 43 percent in 1966 to 50 percent in 1976.

45. See T. H. Rigby, “Politics in the Mono-organizational Society,” in Authoritarian Politics in Communist Europe: Uniformity and Diversity in One-Party States, ed. Andrew C. Janos (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1976), pp. 55-60. Under Soviet conditions cases of patronage based on shared policies or ideas are difficult to identify, but this factor may be present more often than is supposed.

46. This was a factor in Khrushchev's early patronage of Brezhnev himself, and in Brezhnev's patronage of the Kazakh first secretary Kunaev, whose previous demotion had involved Brezhnev's rival F. R. Kozlov.

47. See Moses, , Regional Party Leadership, pp. 229–40Google Scholar.