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The CPSU Obkom First Secretary: A Profile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

The ‘average’ obkom first secretary is likely to be Russian or Ukrainian by nationality and will certainly have a higher education, with a reasonable chance that this has been acquired through, or supplemented by, the Party's own educational system. He34 will be (1966) about fifty years old, having joined the Party around the age of twenty-five in the period 1939 to 1945. First secretary status is likely to have come to him in 1961 or since 1963 and there is a 6:4 chance that he is a full or candidate member of the Central Committee (with the likelihood greatly enhanced if he is first secretary of a Russian obkom in the RSFSR).

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 XXIII S"ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza. 29 marta - 8 aprelya, 1966 g. Stenograficheskii otchet. (2 vols.) (Moscow: Politizdat, 1966), vol. I, p. 86. (Hereafter: XXIII S"ezd.)Google Scholar

2 XXIII S"ezd, vol. I, p. 283.

3 Moralev, B. N., Respublikanskye, kraevye, oblastnye, okruzhnye, gorodskye i raionnye organizatsii partii (Moscow: ‘Mysl’, 1967), p. 7.Google Scholar

4 Ustav Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza (Moscow: Politizdat, 1969).Google Scholar (Hereafter: Ustav KPSS.) See Section V, pp. 18–21.

5 Ustav KPSS, Article 47, p. 21.

6 Unless reference is specifically to a kraikom, the term obkom will be used throughout to denote both obkoms and kraikoms.

7 Fainsod, Merle, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (London: Macmillan, 1958);Google ScholarArmstrong, John A., The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite: A case study of the Ukrainian apparatus (London: Atlantic Books, 1959);Google ScholarStewart, Philip D., Political Power in the Soviet Union: A study of decision-making in Stalingrad. (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1968);Google ScholarHough, Jerry F., The Soviet Prefects: the local Party organs in industrial decision-making (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 XXIII S"ezd, vol. II, pp. 389–623.

9 Izvestiya, 15 June 1966.

10 G. F. Sizov was elected by the XXIIIrd Congress chairman of the CPSU Central Revisory Commission. Since this body is responsible for supervising all other Party organs, it meant that Sizov was ex officio precluded from holding executive office elsewhere in the Party structure. Consequently, he resigned asfirstsecretary of Kurgan obkom and was replaced by F. K. Knyazev. For purposes of analysis, it is the data relating to Knyazev, and not Sizov, which are included in this study.

11 Deputaty Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR. Sed'moi sozyv. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo ‘Izvestiya Sovetov deputatov trudyashchikhsya SSSR’, 1966).Google Scholar (Hereafter: Deputaty.)

12 Pravda, 11 April 1968.

13 Moralev, , Respublikanskie… organizatsii partii, p. 6.Google Scholar

14 See Itogi Vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya 1959 goda: Kazakhskaya SSR. (Moscow: Gosstatizdat, 1962), p. 162Google Scholar where the population figures for these nationalities are shown as:

15 In the Checheno-Ingush ASSR Russians in fact outnumber Chechens and Ingush together (see Checheno-Ingushskaya ASSR za 50 let: Statisticheskii sbornik (Groznii: ChechenoIngushskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1967), p. 21Google Scholar). However, the point is not invalidated since the same situation exists in other ASSRs, yet the first secretary is appointed from the nationality which gives its name to the obkom. For example, the first secretary of the Bashkir obkom is a Bashkir, notwithstanding the fact that Bashkirs are fewer in number than both Tatars and Russians (see Narodnoe khozyaistvo Bashkirskoi ASSR: Statisticheskii sbornik (Ufa: Izdatel'stvo ‘Statistika’, 1967), p. 14).Google Scholar

16 Pravda, 25 July 1970. The new first secretary is L. B. Shapiro.

17 The Soviet Candidate of Sciences degree is generally considered to be the equivalent of a British Ph.D.

18 Deputaty, p. 431.

19 Machine-Tractor Stations were abolished in 1958.

20 See Tabeev's, speech to the XXIIIrd Congress (XXIII S"ezd, pp. 505–12).Google Scholar

21 Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v 1967 g.: Statisticheskii ezhegodnik (Moscow: ‘Statistika’, 1968), p. 34.Google Scholar

22 Computed from data in: Strukov, V. I. (compiler), KPSS Naglyadnoe posobie po partiinomu stroitel'stvu (Moscow: Politizdat, 1969hereafter KPSS Naglyadnoe posobie), p. 7Google Scholar and Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v 1967 g., p. 7.

23 KPSS Naglyadnoe posobie, p. 15.

24 KPSS Naglyadnoe posobie, p. 15.

25 KPSS Naglyadnoe posobie, p. 95.

26 KPSS Naglyadnoe posobie, p. 99.

27 See Partiinaya Zhizn’, no. 5 (March) 1970, p. 80.

28 These figures have been compiled from data in Partiinaya Zhizn’, no. 19 (10), 1967, pp. 910.Google Scholar

29 It was intended initially to include social origin as a category in this profile, but reliable data were felt to be insufficient to justify doing so (less than 50 per cent of the group).

30 The CPSU Presidium became once more the Politburo as the result of a decision taken at the XXIIIrd Congress.

31 The defeat of the ‘Anti-Party Group’ is treated in a number of studies, but see especially Pethybridge, Roger, A Key to Soviet Politics: The Crisis of the Anti-Party Group (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1962)Google Scholar and Tatu, Michel, Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev's decline to collective leadership (London: Collins, 1969).Google Scholar

32 John Armstrong made this point nicely when he wrote: ‘The very fact that Khrushchev was able to defeat his rivals in June, 1957, by appealing to the Central Committee for support indicates, however, its crucial importance at the decisive moment. Today there seems little doubt that the Central Committee is consulted from time to time and that its views are carefully weighed. To this extent, at least, its members share in the exercise of power.’ (The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite, p. 2.)

33 Any attempt to rank-order obkoms is fraught with the difficulty of deciding which should be the criteria for such an exercise. I decided eventually that Party membership within the geographical area of competence of an obkom was as reliable a guide as any. The franchise for representation at the XXIIIrd Congress was known (see Kapitonov's, speech, XXIII S"ezd, vol. I, p. 280Google Scholar) and in conjunction with the appendices to the Congress minutes (XXIII S"ezd, vol. II, pp. 389–623) it was possible to deduce Party membership with reasonable accuracy. The ranking which emerged is broadly compatible with Central Committee membership (see Table 7), but further, detailed analysis is necessary before any firm conclusions can be reached.

34 The pronoun he has been used throughout, since none of the obkom first secretaries is a woman. Indeed, there has never been a woman obkom first secretary in the Party's entire history.

35 Partiinaya Zhizn’, no. 15 (08), 1970, p. 3.Google Scholar