Encyclopedia of Russian History
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supervize policy for training skilled workers both in vocational and technical institutions and in the workplace, to develop a system of educational institutions in this area, and to watch over students in these institutions. State Committee for Science and Technology (Gosudarstvenny komitet po nauke i tekhnike). Formed in 1965 to coordinate policy to maximize the development and utilization of science and technology for economic purposes. State Committee for Material and Technical Supply (Gossnab or Gosudarstvenny komitet po materialno-tekhnicheskomu snab-zheniyu). Formed in 1965 to supervise distribution to consumers, coordinate cooperation in delivery, and ensure fulfilment of plans for supply of output. State Price Committee (Gosudarstvenny komitet tsen). Formed in 1965 as a subcommittee of Gosplan, it became a full state committee in 1969. Its tasks included price regulation, pricing policy, and the use of prices to stimulate production. State Forestry Committee (Gosudarstvenny komitet lesnogo khozyaistva). Formed in 1966 to manage state forests and coordinate the activities of forest agencies. State Committee for Television and Radio (Gosudarstvenny komitet po televideniyu i ra-dioveshchaniyu). Formed in 1970. State Committee on Standards (Gossstandart or Gosudarstvenny komitet standartov). Established in 1970 to encourage standardization and ensure standards in the quality of output. State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers on Cinematography (Gosudarstvenny komitet po kinematografii). Created in 1972, its main task was to supervise the activities of film studios in the USSR. State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers on Publishing, Printing, and the Book Trade (Gosudarstvenny komitet po pe-chati). Established in 1972 to supervise publishing and the content of literature in the USSR. State Committee for Inventions and Discoveries (Gosudarstvenny komitet po delam izo-breteny i otkryty). Established in 1973.
A law of 1978 granted membership in the Council of Ministers to all chairpersons of state committees.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
After the fall of the USSR, the RSFSR continued the use of state committees, forming the State Committee of the Russian Federation on Communications and Informatization (Goskomsvyaz or Gosudarstvenny Komitet Rossisskoi Federatsii po Svyazi i Informatizatsii) in 1997 from its Ministry of Communications. It was responsible for state management of communications and the development of many forms of telecommunications and postal services, including space communication in conjunction with the Federal Space Program of Russia. See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1936; GOSPLAN; POLITBURO; SOVNARKOM; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Prokhorev, A. M., ed. (1975). Great Soviet Encyclopedia.: A Translation of the Third Edition, vol. 7. New York: Macmillan. Unger, Aryeh. (1981). Constitutional Development in the USSR: A Guide to the Soviet Constitutions. London: Methuen. Watson, Derek. (1996). Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom, 1930-41. Basingstoke, UK: CREES-Macmillan.
DEREK WATSON
STATE COUNCIL
The State Council was founded by Alexander I in 1810. It was the highest consultative institution of the Russian Empire. The tsar appointed its membership that consisted of ministers and other high dignitaries. While no legislative project could be presented to the tsar without its approval, it had no prerogatives to initiate legislation. Ministers sent bills to the State Council on the tsar’s command, reflecting the Council’s ultimate dependence on the tsar for its institutional standing and activity. Since the right of legislation belonged to the autocratic tsar, the State Council could only make recommendations on bills sent to it that the tsar could accept or reject. Additionally the State Council examined administrative disputes between the different governmental organs.
After the Revolution of 1905 and the October Manifesto the State Council’s role changed: It became the upper house of Russia’s new parliamentary system. Every legislative bill needed the
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Council’s approval before becoming law. It also had the right to review internal policy of the Council of Ministers, the state’s budget, declarations of war and making of peace, and ministerial reports. Several departments under the State Council’s jurisdiction prepared briefs and more importantly analyzed legislation proposed by the Council of Ministers.
The State Council, like all upper houses in Europe at the time, served as a check on the lower house, the Duma. The tsar appointed half of the Council’s members, while the other half were elected on a restricted franchise from the zemstvos, noble societies, and various other sections of the elite, making it by nature more conservative. In the period 1906-1914 the State Council, with the support of Nicholas II, played a large role in checking the authority and activities of the Duma, which led to general discontent with the post-1905 system.
Following the failed coup of August 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev created a State Council consisting of himself and the leaders of the remaining Union Republics. Gorbachev hoped the State Council could craft a reconfigured USSR, but republic representatives increasingly failed to attend Council meetings. By the end of 1991, the State Council-and the USSR-had petered out.
Russian President Vladimir Putin created his own State Council in 2000, consisting of the leaders of Russia’s eighty-nine administrative components. See also: ALEXANDER I; DUMA; FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF 1906; PUTIN, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Seton-Watson, Hugh. (1991). The Russian Empire 1801-1917. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yaney, George. (1973). The Systemization of Russian Government. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
ZHAND P. SHAKIBI
STATE DEFENSE COMMITTEE
With the intent of more effectively coordinating decision-making for the war effort, on June 30, 1941, Josef Stalin created the State Defense Council (also known as State Defense Committee or GKO). According to his speech in which he announced this
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body “all the power and authority of the state are vested in it.” Its decisions and resolutions had the force of law. The initial membership was composed of Stalin as Chairman, Vyacheslav Molotov as Deputy Chairman, Kliment Voroshilov, Georgy Malenkov, and Lavrenti Beria. Stalin added Nikolai Voznesensky, Lazar Kaganovich, and Anastas Mikoyan in February, 1942.
The GKO met frequently, but informally, sometimes on short notice and often without a prepared agenda but acted on issues that were foremost on Stalin’s mind. Meetings always included people additional to the GKO, usually some Politburo members, members of the Central Committee, officers of the High Command, and various others with special knowledge requested to help address specific issues. The GKO did not develop its own administrative apparatus, but primarily implemented its decisions through the existing government bureaucracy, especially the Council of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom), the individual commissariats, and the State Planning Commission (Gosplan). Emulating Vladimir Lenin and his use of the Defense Council during the crisis years of the civil war, Stalin and the GKO often relied on plenipotentiaries endowed with broad powers to handle critical tasks. Decision-making bodies of the Communist Party and government were no longer asked for input and were seldom called upon to ratify the GKO’s decisions.
Each GKO member had specific areas of responsibility to supervise and obtain results. Molotov was to oversee tank production; Malenkov aircraft engine production and the forming of aviation regiments; Beria armaments, ammunition, and mortars, Voznesensky heavy and light metals, oil, and chemicals; Mikoyan supplying the Red Army with food, gasoline, pay, and artillery. Rather less specific was the requirement that each member of the GKO assist in inspecting fulfillment of decisions of Peoples’ Commissars in the course of their work.
The chief strengths of the GKO were that it provided for quick decision-making on critical issues and speedily disseminated vital information to those at the top who needed to use it. The weaknesses of the GKO were that a few men were burdened with a multitude of tasks without a supporting administrative st
ructure to distribute authority rationally and evenly, or to allow initiative. By relying on the existing Party and government structures, which had proven inefficient and prone to parochialism in defending their bureaucratic turf, the GKO was unable to capitalize fully on the unity at the top.
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Furthermore, the commissariats other government offices through which the GKO implemented its decisions had been evacuated to the interior of the USSR while the GKO remained in Moscow. The physical distance between the GKO and the commissariats hindered communication and efficient supervision. The government apparatus did not begin returning to the capital until 1943. With the end of the war, the GKO was formally dissolved on September 4,1945. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; STALIN, JOSEPH VISSARIONOVICH; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barber, John, and Harrison, Mark. (1991). The Soviet Home Front 1941-1945. London: Longman. Werth, Alexander.(1964). Russia at War. New York: Carrol and Graf.
ROGER R. REESE STATE DEFENSE COUNCIL See STATE DEFENSE
COMMITTEE; WORLD WAR II.
STATE ENTERPRISE, LAW OF THE
Of the many pieces of legislation passed during the period of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, the Law of the State Enterprise (enacted 1987) was perhaps the most important. It represented yet another effort to separate long-term perspective planning from day-to-day operational control of enterprises. The latter function was to be the exclusive responsibility of the management, without the petty tutelage characteristic of the Soviet system. Enterprises could now enter into contracts (direct links), make quality improvements, and sell over-plan output without the approval of superior agencies. Local party organs would be banned from using enterprise personnel and materials for their own purposes. The centralized system of supply would control only the essential minimum necessary through orders (zakazy) from customers, rather than plan targets, as before. Accordingly, legal enforcement of contracts through arbitrazh (civil arbitration) courts and other legal institutions would be enhanced. A new agency was instituted, Gospriyemka (State Acceptance), independent of enterprise management along the military model, with the duty to check whether quality met state standards. Along with enhanced managerial accountability, these provisions were designed to assure that enterprises produced what the public really wanted to buy.
But, perhaps inevitably, the centralized supply organs would still have to check whether the correct volumes, assortments, and qualities of goods had been delivered on time to essential operations, such as the military-industrial complex. Ministries would retain some influence through norms and other indirect instruments, if not direct orders. Aside from some minor products, the State Standards Committee would still set minimum quality requirements. Moreover, party control of personnel and promotions remained untouched until the end of Soviet rule. See also: GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; PERESTROIKA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (1998). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure, 6th ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Spechler, Martin C. (1989). “Gorbachev’s Economic Reforms: Early Assessments.” Problems of Communism 47(5):116-120.
MARTIN C. SPECHLER
STATE ORDERS
The introduction of state orders, as a part of perestroika, was an attempt to move from a total state control over the economy toward introduction of some market elements. During the mid-1980s, the Soviet communist leadership realized that the country was losing the economic competition to the West. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, introduced cautious policies designed to set up some market elements. One such change was the introduction of state orders.
Prior to perestroika, state enterprises were supposed to produce goods according to the state plan and deliver them to the state for distribution. Gorbachev’s idea was to replace the state plan with state orders. Enterprises first had to produce and sell to the state production to fulfill their state orders. However, the state order should be for only part of their production. After enterprises fulfilled the state order-a guaranteed quantity of products that would be purchased by the state and production for which the state provided necessary resources-they
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could sell the remainder to customers at negotiated prices. The state order was supposed to constitute only a portion of a plant’s potential output. It was included in the state plan, and the resources for its implementation were supposed to be allocated by Gosplan. The percentage of state orders of total output was supposed to decline, giving way to a marketlike economy. See also: GOSPLAN; MARKET SOCIALISM; PERESTROIKA.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley.
PAUL R. GREGORY
by Muscovite princes, dating the beginning of this process as early as possible, in the early fourteenth century (e.g., Cherepnin, 1960). Since the 1950s, well into the 1980s, it was much debated who had been allies and enemies of Muscovite centralization, but “centralization” itself was still perceived as an absolute good.
In spite of its teleological and nationalistic implications, the state principle can be detected in post-Soviet Russian historiography as well. See also: HISTORIOGRAPHY; KIEVAN RUS; MUSCOVY; SOLOVREV, VLADIMIR SERGEYEVICH; TIME OF TROUBLES
MIKHAIL M. KROM
STATE PRINCIPLE
State principle is the leading principle of writing and explaining Russian history in nineteenth-century and, with some modifications, twentieth-century national historiography.
Professor Johann Philipp Georg Ewers (1781-1830) was the first to apply to the study of ancient Russian law the Hegelian theory of peoples’ evolution from family or kin phase to that of a state. This idea was adopted and further elaborated by the founders of the so-called state (or juridical) school in Russian historiography, Konstantin Kavelin (1818-1885) and Sergei Soloviev (1820-1879). According to Soloviev, the transition from kin relations as the dominant system to the strong state organization in Russia took about four hundred years, from the end of the twelfth century till the reign of Ivan IV. Only after that, having endured severe experience in the Time of Troubles, the young Russian state found its place among other European powers. Thus the whole course of Russian history was presented as a progressive and logically necessary movement toward the modern centralized and autocratic state.
Though Soviet scholars, unlike Soloviev, considered Kievan Rus to be a feudal state, and thus found state organization even in the ninth century, they remained loyal to the state principle in their own way. Thus, disunity of the Rus lands in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries was regarded as a negative phenomenon, and historians explicitly sympathized with the process of gathering Rus’
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The political police and other organs of state security have played a prominent role in Russian and Soviet history. For almost two hundred years they have served a variety of state interests, including among their functions the surveillance of the population; censorship; the quashing of political and intellectual dissent; foreign and domestic espionage; and the guarding of borders. At times they have shared duties or been subsumed within the Ministry (or Commissariat) of Internal Affairs, and at other times they have been self-standing organs, often operating in parallel with the regular police or militia.
Although the political police in the modern understanding of the term originated in Russia in the early nineteenth century, various forms of special security forces existed well before this. The first such organ to play a prominent role was Ivan IV’s (the Terrible) infamous oprichniki, who terrorized the Russian aristocracy in the late sixteenth century in order to root out Ivan’s real and imagined foes. In the mid-seventeenth century Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (r. 1645-1676) made use of a “Secret Department” (tainy
prikaz) to keep him informed of events in the capital and to confirm the accounts of his foreign embassies. Crimes of “word and deed,” that is, either speech or action deemed inimical to the tsar, were vigorously investigated.
Alexei’s successors continued to keep private security forces. Peter I (the Great) (r. 1682-1725) maintained the “Preobrazhensky Department” and later a “Secret Investigative Chancellery” staffed with
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close friends and trusted allies to maintain his personal power and to guard against insurrection. These institutions were preserved in various forms throughout the century, despite occasional gestures toward limiting their power; their agents became powerful instruments of the throne and were often feared and loathed among court circles. Despite reaffirming her ill-fated husband Peter III’s (r. 1761-1762) abolition of the Secret Chancellery, Catherine II (the Great, r. 1762-1796) made much use of an agency called the “Secret Expedition” to root out opposition. Its leader, Stepan Sheshkovsky, was particularly noted for his brutal methods of interrogation, especially in the latter years of Catherine’s reign, when the French Revolution prompted an intensification of repression.
These institutions (in general) had a narrower focus and scope than would the genuine political police that originated in the nineteenth century. This had its root not only in the ideals of the Enlightenment-era “well-ordered police state,” but also, ironically, in the French Revolution, which attempted to protect itself through institutions such as the Committee for Public Safety. Hence the organs of state security in Imperial Russia were concerned not only with the possibility of immediate rebellion within court circles, but with dissent in a more general sense.