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Field Observations on Soviet Local Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

Robert C. Tucker
Robert C. Tucker*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

A Russian journey which the writer was privileged to take in the summer of 1958 as a member of the traveling party of Governor Adlai Stevenson afforded a rather unusual wealth of opportunities to meet and talk with local Soviet officials. While it was not a "field trip" in the research sense, it did yield a miscellany of observations on local governmental institutions, practices and personalities, some of which may be of interest to students of Soviet government and politics. The term "local" government is taken here to cover all levels up to and including the union-republic governments.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , December 1959 , pp. 526 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1959

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References

1 For an indication of the ratio of higher regional administrative personnel to production people, it may be of interest to mention that the Sverdlovsk sovnarkhoz was said to have jurisdiction over about five hundred enterprises and construction projects employing about 600,000 people in all, and that personnel of the enterprises and construction projects controlled by the Novosibirsk sovnarkhoz was said to total 100,000.

2 This statement is evidently in need of serious qualification. While the planning procedure does in theory go “from the ground up,” starting in the individual plant, it is predicated on control figures distributed from the top down. Thus the chairman of one of the regional economic councils visited explained that this institution receives control figures from the Gosplan of the R.S.F.S.R., and on the basis of these distributes output quotas among the various enterprises under its jurisdiction. While the enterprise plan may be subject to the approval of the enterprise director, it is drawn up in accordance with specifications sent down from above, and furthermore is subject to correction at higher levels after it is submitted,