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Decision Making in Soviet Cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

B. Michael Frolic*
Affiliation:
York University

Abstract

How are decisions made in Soviet cities? Who are the municipal decision makers? What kinds of decisions do they make? Is there a Soviet urban political system? This article attempts to answer these questions by focusing on four aspects of decision making in Soviet cities: budget formulation, the planning process, housing construction and allocation, and the staffing of key municipal posts.

Urban autonomy has increased in the past decade, but Soviet municipalities are very much restricted in their decision making. Superior Party and governmental authorities continue to dominate the decision-making process and any decision made by municipal authorities can be vetoed by superior Party and governmental organs.

Soviet municipal decision making is now being influenced by three tendencies: municipal administrators are acquiring more influence in municipal government and administration; the educational qualifications and professional expertise of city Party members are rising; ad hoc citizen and group interest articulation may be developing. Comparisons between Soviet and North American urban decision-making models are useful and valid, although they require an improved methodology and much more Soviet data.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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References

1 Fainsod, Merle, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

2 Stewart, Philip D., Political Power in the Soviet Union: A Study of Decision Making in Stalingrad (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968):Google Scholar Hough, Jerry F., The Soviet Prefects (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Frolic, B. Michael, “Soviet Urban Politics,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 1970 Google Scholar. See also Frolic, B. Michael, “The Soviet Study of Soviet Cities,” Journal of Politics, 32 (08, 1970), 675695 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Municipal Administrations, Departments, Commissions and Organizations,” Soviet Studies, 22 (01, 1971), 376393 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For example, in 1968, B. N. Gabrichidze, a Soviet political scientist, produced the first full-length study of Soviet municipal government. A year later, a major work on urban sociological research was published. See Gabrichidze, B. N., Gorodskiye Sovety deputatov trudyashchikhsya [City Soviets] (Moscow, Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1968)Google Scholar; and Institut konkretnykh sotsialnykh issledovanii AN SSSR, Sotsiologicheskiye issledovaniya goroda [Urban Sociological Research] (Moscow, 1969)Google Scholar. During two trips to the USSR, in 1965 and 1969, I interviewed 70 officials in ten Soviet cities (Baku, Bratsk, Donetsk, Irkutsk, Leningrad, Minsk, Moscow, Tallinn, Tashkent, and Thorez).

5 I am using as examples the cities of Tallinn (Estonia) and Donetsk (the Ukraine), two cities whose immediate governmental superior is the republic level. Smaller, less important cities normally come under the jurisdiction of provinces or districts, the lower links in the Soviet state hierarchy.

6 See Frolic, “Municipal Administrations, Departments, Commissions and Organizations,” for a fuller description of gorfo's structure and its other municipal duties.

7 Referred to, hereafter, as “municipal administrations.”

8 City districts are governmental-administrative subdivisions in large Soviet cities. In structure they are smaller replicas of their city parent. Moscow has 29 city districts, each with a population of 200,000–250,000 inhabitants.

9 Arseny G. Zverev was USSR Minister of Finance from 1938 to his retirement in 1960, except for a brief ten-month period in 1948, when Alexei Kosygin held the post. Zverev's 22-year tenure as head of the USSR Ministry of Finance was an extraordinary achievement.

10 When Mikhail Vasilevich Posokhin became head of Moscow's Administration of Architecture and Town Planning in 1961, he simultaneously joined the Party. All Moscow administration heads are Party members. In small cities, non-Party members head the less important municipal departments.

11 “Zadachi i rabota bakinskoy gorodskoy planovoy komissii” [Tasks and Work of the Baku City Planning Commission], Baku, 1965, p. 1. This seventeen-page document was specially prepared for me by the Baku planning commission.

12 This observation is based upon an analysis of the career patterns of members of Soviet municipal executive committees, 1957–1971, and from personal interviews.

13 One municipal official observed that “Certain city Party officials are apparently born with a telephone permanently attached to their body. They are always calling, always checking, always complaining.”

14 “From an interview with the first secretary of a city Party organization.

15 Current Soviet housing policy is based upon the July, 1957, resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, “On the Development of Housing Construction in the USSR.” This resolution established a number of important housing principles, such as “massive industrialization of housing construction” and “greater control over housing by municipal executive committees.”

16 The last three mayors of Moscow had long careers in housing construction and administration. N. I. Bobrovnikov, who was mayor from 1956–1961, spent most of his career as a Moscow housing expert; N. A. Dygai (1961–63) was USSR Minister of Construction prior to his appointment as mayor; V. F. Promyslov, the current Moscow mayor, was Minister of Construction for the Russian Republic.

17 V. F. Promyslov, the first head of Glavmosstroy, later became mayor of Moscow; A. A. Etmekdzhiyan, a deputy head of Glavmosstroy, became a top USSR State Construction Committee (Gosstroy) official; N. Pashchenko, Promyslov's successor as head of Glavmosstroy, now holds a high Russian Republic state post.

18 State housing is allocated on a space per capita basis, with 97 square feet representing the “norm.” Certain individuals and organizations have priority over others in the allocation of space. Writers and other professionals frequently can obtain an extra room; military organizations get preference over civilian organizations. These and other priorities are usually regulated by statute. See “Ob utverzhdenii polozheniya, ‘O poryadke raspredeleniya zhiloy ploshchadi v Moskve’ “ [On Affirming the Statute, “On How Housing Space Will Be Distributed in Moscow”], Decision of the Moscow city executive committee, May 4, 1965, Byulleten ispolnitelnovo komiteta moskovskovo gorodskovo Soveta deputatov trudyash-chikhsya (Bulletin of the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Soviet), 10, (1965), 2227 Google Scholar. This municipal statute is a duplicate of the republic housing statute.

19 For example, two weeks after the Party Central Committee passed its July, 1957, resolution “On the Development of Housing Construction in the USSR,” the Moscow city Party bureau met to implement this resolution in Moscow. The bureau “affirmed the July resolution” and promised “to emphasize these policies in Moscow.” It “approved the present work of the city Soviet's Main Administration of Construction” and instructed its members “to show municipal organizations how to carry out the July resolution.” See Nekotorye voprosy organizatsionno-partiinoy raboty v sovremennykh usloviyakh [Several Questions of Organizational-Party Work in the Present Time] (Moscow: Higher Party School and Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 1961)Google Scholar; and A. A. Levsky, “Deyatelnost moskovskoy organizatsii KPSS po vypolneniyu reshenii XX syezda partii v oblasti uluchsheniya zhilishchnykh uslovii trudya-shchikhsya” [The Work of the Moscow Party Organization in Fulfilling the Decisions of the 20th Party Congress Concerning the Improvement of Housing for Workers], dissertation for candidate degree in history, Moscow, AON pri TsK KPSS, kafedra of Party history, 1961.

20 The Statutes of the Communist Party of the Soviet Onion, 1961.

21 This section does not discuss the staffing of top city Party posts (Party secretaries, members of the Party bureau, Party department heads). These posts are normally staffed by higher Party organizations.

22 From an interview with a Glavmosstroy official.

23 See Popov, N. N., “Podbor, rasstanovka i vospitaniye kadrov” [The Selection, Placement and Training of Cadres], Voprosy partiinoyo stroitelstva [Questions of Party Construction], (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1962), p. 339 Google Scholar; and Ruben, Yu., “Rabota s kadrami—produmannuyu sistemu” [Working with Cadres—A Well Thought Out System], Kommunist, 1 (1966), 3637 Google Scholar.

24 Ruben, Yu., “Rabota s kadrami—produmannuyu sistemu,” p. 36 Google Scholar. Riga's nomenklatura is comparatively smaller than some other municipal staffing lists (In 19S8, for example, Moscow had a nomenklatura of 17,000). The Riga posts are probably those posts staffed by the central city Party organization and exclude a large number of lesser posts staffed by city district Party organizations.

25 Staffing Procedures and Problems in the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1963), p. 17 Google Scholar.

26 Barghoorn, Frederick C., Politics in the USSR (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966), pp. 290291 Google Scholar. See also Fainsod, Merle, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, revised edition, 1963), pp. 414417 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Karapetyan, L. and Razin, V., Sovety obshchena-rodnovo gosudarstva [The Soviets of the State of All the People] (Moscow: Politicheskava literatura, 1964), pp. 103104 Google Scholar. Fainsod observed that in Smolensk a large number of appointments were made by the Soviet, which had its own nomenklatura for “junior appointments” and “technical specialists.” “Leading workers,” on the other hand, were appointed by the Party (Smolensk Under Soviet Rule, p. 100).

28 To clarify the expanding rights and responsibilities of Soviet municipalities, the Central Committee of the Communist Party recently passed a major resolution which, “strengthened the material and financial base of city governments” by increasing the sources of municipal revenues. The resolution called for a major increase in municipal autonomy, “so that cities can deal effectively with current problems.” So far, however, it appears that the resolution has not led to any significant restructuring of municipal rights and duties. See, O merakh po dalneyshemu uluchsheniyu raboty rayonnykh i gorodskikh Sovetov deputatov trudyashchikhsya” [On Measures for the Further Improvement of the Work of the District and City Soviets], Pravda, 03 14, 1971 Google ScholarPubMed (Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, XXIII, 04, 13, 1971, 15 Google Scholar).

29 See Frolic, , “Some Soviet Elite Comparisons,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 12 (12, 1970)Google Scholar.

30 Fischer, George, The Soviet System and Modern Society (New York: Atherton, 1968), p. 14 Google Scholar.

31 From a sample of 44 heads of municipal administrations, departments, commissions, and organizations.

32 In Moscow and Leningrad between 1956–1965, the average tenure in office of heads of municipal administrations was approximately six years—twice as long as the average tenure of city Party committee members in both cities during that period. The comparison is not ideal, since city Party committee members perform other full-time jobs as well as holding city Party committee membership, but despite this reservation, municipal administrators clearly serve for much longer terms than most city Party officials.

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