I wish to thank the Master and Fellows of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, for the Research Fellowship which enabled me to pursue this study. The support of the British Academy, which organized two extended research visits to Moscow, is also greatly appreciated. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the Sixth SSRC Workshop on Soviet and Post-Soviet Domestic Politics in Toronto in June 1993 and at the Soviet Industrialization Project Seminar at the University of Birmingham in December 1993. I am very grateful to the participants and to Slavic Review's referees for their many valuable comments. In addition, I owe a special debt to John Barber and David Priestland for their thoughtful readings of an early draft of the paper.

1. Robert, Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972), 196 Google Scholar.

2. See Conquest's, Robert still valuable Power and Policy in the USSR (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 162–63, 182, 183Google Scholar; Barrington, Moore, Terror and Progress USSR (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), 5, 7, 37, 86–87 Google Scholar; John A., Armstrong, The Politics of Totalitarianism: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1934 to the Present (New York: Random House, 1961), 258–60Google Scholar; Harold, Swayze, Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946-1959 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962) ch. 3Google Scholar; Alec, Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1989), 296 Google Scholar; Deming, Brown, Soviet Russian Literature since Stalin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 3–4 Google Scholar; Yoram Gorlizki “De-Stalinization and the Politics of Russian Criminal Justice, 1953-1964” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oxford, 1992), ch. 2.

3. Tucker, op. cit., 187; Sheila, Fitzpatrick, “Postwar Soviet Society: The ‘Return to Normalcy, ’ 1945-1953” in The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union, ed. Linz, Susan J. (Totowa: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985), 151–52Google Scholar.

4. Moore, Barrington Jr., Soviet Politics—The Dilemma of Power: The Role of Ideas in Social Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950 Google Scholar.

5. Ibid., 118, 139, 151, 174, 234, 274, 276, 403. To cite another writer whose views were broadly similar to Moore's on this point: “ ‘Inner-Party Democracy’ in the Soviet system is largely a creature of dictatorial pleasure; its frail structure lacks any other basis of support” ( Merle, Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled, rev. ed. [Cambridge: Harvard Universtity Press, 1963], 211 Google Scholar; and more generally, 209-12).

6. William O., McCagg, Stalin Embattled, 1943-1948 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978), 28, 76, 87, 88, 98, 125 Google Scholar.

7. See the forthcoming book based on the excellent doctoral dissertation by David Priestland, “Ideological Conflict within the Bolshevik Party, 1917-1939: The Question of'Bureaucracy’ and ‘Democracy’ “ (Ph.D. diss., University of Oxford, 1991).

8. See “Delo Beriia,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no.l (1991): 155-56, 159; no.2 (1991): 153-55, 198; Nove, op. cit., 291 ff.; Fitzpatrick, op. cit., 146-49; Plenum TsK KPSS 15-19 dekabria 1958 goda. Stem, otchet (Moscow, 1958), 7, 98.

9. Il'ina, Irina, “Prignut', chtob drugim nepovadno bylo …,” Trudnye voprosy istorii (Moscow: Politizdat, 1991), 202–3Google Scholar.

10. “The sole hope,” declared one group of workers, “is to write to the Central Committee.” See Zubkova, E.Iu., Obshchestvo i reformy, 1945-1964 (Moscow: Rossiia molodaia, 1993), 94–95 Google Scholar.

11. Istoricheskii opyt i perestroika (Moscow: Mysl', 1989), 189-90. See also E. R., Frankel, “Literary Policy under Stalin in Retrospect: A Case Study, 1952-1953,” in Changes and Adaptation in Soviet and East European Politics, ed. Shapiro, J.P. and Potichnyj, P J. (New York: Praeger, 1976), 171 Google Scholar; and Vera, Dunham, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 150, 267 fn.12Google Scholar.

12. E.g. Pravda (16 July 1952): 2; (4 August 1952): 2; (7 August 1952): 2.

13. E.g. Pravda (9 August 1952): 2; (19 August 1952): 2.

14. E.g. Pravda (11 August 1952): 1.

15. Pravda (13 August 1952): 1.

16. Pravda (9 August 1952): 2.

17. Pravda (26 August 1952): 4; (27 August 1952): 2; (28 August 1952): 1.

18. Pravda (2 September 1952): 2.

19. Pravda (5 September 1952): 2.

20. Pravda (8 September 1952): 2.

21. Tsentral'noe khranenie sovremennoi dokumentatsii (henceforth TsKhSD) f.4 op.9 d.549 1.17.

22. Head of the information sector at the department of party, trade union and Komsomol agencies at the Central Committee.

23. Ibid., 1.18.

24. Ibid., 11. 19-20.

25. Ibid., 1. 25.

26. Khrushchev Remembers, trans, and ed. Strobe Talbott (London: Andre Deutch, 1971), 276-77; Pravda (26 August 1952): 2; (13 October 1952): 1-3.

27. Moskovskaia pravda (28 September 1952): 3.

28. Pravda (13 October 1952): 1-3. In the memoirs Khrushchev noted that on Beria's insistence the draft of Khrushchev's speech was abbreviated but that the “substance” had not suffered. The text was not vetted by Stalin. See Khrushchev Remembers, 277.

29. Pravda (20 August 1952): 3-4; and “Tezisy doklada tovarishcha Khrushcheva,” Pravda (26 August 1952): 2.

30. Pravda (13 October): 1-2; (14 October 1952): 1-2, esp. points 3, 27, 43, 44, 51, 52; also see Graham, Gill, The Rules of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 184–98Google Scholar.

31. Khrushchev Remembers, 278. Khrushchev's general veneration of Zhdanov has also been remarked upon by Zhdanov's son (Iu.A. Zhdanov, interviewed by author, Moscow, 23 October 1993).

32. Jonathan Harris, Cf., “The Origins of the Conflict between Malenkov and Zhdanov: 1939-1941,” Slavic Review 35, no. 2 (Summer 1976): 303.Google Scholar

33. The new party rules adopted in October had decreed the formation of secretariats at the republican and regional levels. In order to prevent the secretariat from usurping the role of the buro it had been stipulated that no more than three secretaries could be attached to any committee and that the secretaries be obliged to inform the buro of all measures taken. This compared with 4-5 secretaries in the 1939 rules. See Pravda (26 August 1952): 2, point 11; and Gill, op. cit., 175 (no. 45), 195 (no. 42).

34. Of 656 buro members, 287 were party secretaries and a further 78 heads of obkom departments. Party secretaries refer to secretaries of the regional, city or, in Moscow and Leningrad, district party committees. Heads of department include 35 party, trade union and Komsomol agencies, 11 propaganda and agitation, 7 agriculture, 5 heavy industry, 4 administrative agencies and 3 fishing production department chiefs. See TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.l 1.4; d.3 1.44; d.4 11.20, 91, 258-262, 282, 283; d.5 11.1-5, 7-15, 18; d.6 11.128-134, 199-201, 209, 210; d.7 11.216-218; d.8 1.214; d.9 1.117; d.ll 11. 283, 289; d.12, 11. 178, 179, 181, 219; d.14, 11.61, 62, 111, 137; d.15 11.139, 246; d.17 1.96; d.19 11.16, 18; d.24 11.84, 153; d.26 11.164; d.28 1.109; d.29 11.48, 49; d.30 11.215-217, 235.

35. TsKhSD f.9 op.9 d.549 11. 33, 39, 49, 45. In all, 35 ministries and state committees were attacked including numerous industrial ministries, the ministries of education and health, and gosplan (ibid., 11. 30-51).

36. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.549 1.24. Thus, in Tula obkom secretary Smirnov was reprimanded for an “office-bureaucratic style of leadership,” in Astrakhan obkom secretary Kudriavtsev was criticized for “coarseness and conceit” and in the Karelian-Finnish republic First Secretary Egorov was upbraided for maltreating his critics and for ceasing even to greet his subordinates (perestaet dazhe zdorovat'sia pri vstreche; ibid., 11.24-5).

37. Among others, 51 delegates voted against Kiselev in Rostov, 57 against Borkov in Saratov, 60 against Shatalin in Kalinin, 72 against Breivo in Penza, 85 against Filimonov in Smolensk, 93 against Kudriavtsev in Astrakhan and 113 against Smirnov in Tula. For a full list see ibid., 11. 27-28.

38. In Murmansk Central Committee branch departments were reproached for a lack of direct contact with a local industrial complex and in Briansk a team from the Central Committee was attacked for its overbearing demands and the superficiality of its work (ibid., 1.29).

39. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.549 11.16, 17.

40. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.549 1.15.

41. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.519 1.3.

42. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.4 1.223.

43. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.10 1.219. This list was extended after Stalin's death, on 11 April 1953. See ibid., d.43 11.99-100.

44. A broader discussion of the vigilance campaign is to be found in chap. 2 of my work in progress, “Soviet Politicians and Russian Justice, 1948-1964. “

45. Later to emerge as an ally of Khrushchev's, the author of the Pravda article, L.A. Slepov, had been moved to Pravda from the propaganda and agitation department at the Central Committee on 29 January 1953 (TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.20 1.171).

46. Nikolai Barsukov, XX s'ezd KPSS i ego istoricheskie real'nosti (Moscow : Politizdat, 1991), 14 Google Scholar; and Service, R. J., “The Road to the Twentieth Party Congress,” Soviet Studies 33, no.2 (April 1981): 236 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. “Delo Beriia” (2): 195; and see 196-98, 148.

48. Some, such as Molotov, Kaganovich and Mikhailov, persisted in talking of comrade Stalin's demands for criticism and self-criticism, of class enemies and of the relevance of the lessons of 1937 and of Stalin's teachings on wrecking ( “Delo Beriia,” [1]: 165, 166, 188, 190; ibid. [2]: 161).

49. Ibid. (1): 159-60.

50. E.g. Tucker, op. cit., 191.

51. Gorlizki, “De-Stalinization,” 133-42. Also see Iu.N. Klimov, Bor'ba KPSS za povyshenie urovniia partiino-organizatsionnoi raboty na osnove reshenii XIX s'ezda KPSS (diss, kand. nauk, Leningrad, 1955), 145-51; and A.S. Podgornykh Deiatel'nost’ Kirovskoi oblastnoi partiinoi organizatsii po ideino-organizatsionnomu ukrepleniiu svoikh riadov, 1952-1958 gg. (diss. kand. nauk, Kirov, 1966), 76-80.

52. We may note here Robert Conquest's remark that “when all is said we cannot exclude the possiblity that in his last years the dictator may have become especially capricious, and that in the last months of the Doctors’ Plot he had lost control in some quite unpredictable way. If this is even partially true it complicates our estimates with an unknown” (see Power and Policy, 172).

53. Whereas 11 volumes were sent to Stalin in 1945, 6 in 1946 and 4 each in 1947 and 1948, there were 3 in 1949 and only 1 each in 1950, 1951 and 1952, the last running to a mere 69 pages ( Mironenko, S.V. and Kozlov, V.A., eds. Katalog dokumentov ‘osobaia papka’ I.V. Stalina, vol. 1 [Moscow : GARF, 1994 Google Scholar]). I would like to thank Dina Nikolaevna Nokhotovich for this reference.

54. According to Stoliarov, Riumin was dismissed on 14 November 1952. See Stoliarov, op. cit., 6-7, 11, 22, 23, 29, 31, 41; Yakov, Etinger, “Delo Vrachei,” Novoe vremia, nos. 2-3 (1993): 47–49 Google Scholar; Khrushchev Remembers, 286-87; also see the secret speech, reproduced in ibid., 601. For references to scepticism at the time on the Presidium about the “Doctors’ Plot” and about the Georgian affair, see Bulganin's speech in “Delo Beriia” (1), 175. Although the Abakumov affair is now not thought to have been directed at Beria, the “Mingrelian affair” was, but this too was yielding little of value. For the apparent wealth of Beria's middle-level connections within the security police, even after the purge of November 1951, see Khrushchev Remembers, 312; Andrei, Malenkov, O moem otse Georgii Malenkove (Moscow: Fermer, 1992), 59 Google Scholar; “Delo Beriia” (2), 150.

55. Svetlana, Allilueva, Twenty Letters to a Friend (London: World Books, 1968), 216 Google Scholar.

56. Dmitrii, Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, trans. Shukman, Harold (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1991), 570 Google Scholar; Robert H., McNeal, Stalin: Man and Ruler (New York : New York University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 300-1; Amy, Knight, Beria Stalin's First Lieutenant (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 172 Google Scholar. According to Khrushchev, the dictator “had very little idea what he was doing at the Congress.” See Khrushchev Remembers, 280; and ibid., 279, 308.

57. Svetlana Allilueva, Twenty Letters, 214.

58. Iu.A. Zhdanov, op. cit.; and Ogonek (24 August 1952): 1. Also see the photograph of the leaders in which Stalin is standing in the second row behind Beria, Voroshilov, Malenkov, Molotov and Bulganin (Ogonek 27 January 1952): 2.

59. See Malenkov's speech in “Delo Beriia” (2), 196; and Konstantin Simonov, “Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia” Znamia, no.5 (1988): 98.

60. E.g. Leonard Schapiro, “The General Department of the CC of the CPSU,” Survey 21, no.3 (Summer 1975): 53, 58.

61. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.3 11.121-134.

62. Ibid., d.4 11.161-168, 190-191; d.5 11.189-198; d.6 1.64.

63. Ibid., d.22 1.116; and see d.8. 1.18; d.12 1.169; d.19 1.182; d.22 1.117.

64. The general department took over the work of the tekhsecretariat of the orgburo which had been abolished at the XIX Congress, and it was from that agency that it drew the majority of its new staff (see e.g. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.543 11.38-161, d.744 11.213-215). Like the tekhsecretariat, the general department acted as a universal sorting office for all materials handled by the Secretariat (N.F. Chistiakov, interviewed by the author, Moscow, 11 June 1991 and 17 April 1993. See also Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [henceforth GARF] f.9492 op.l d.707 11. 72, 74, 75, 76, 80, 84).

65. This included instructors from the department of party, trade union and Komsomol agencies, the department of propaganda and agitation and the department of schools (TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.3 11.128-133; d.4 1.168; d.6 1.64).

66. D.N. Sukhanov, interviewed by the author, Moscow, 1 April 1994. Also see GARF f.9492 op.l d.707 1.81, d.748 1.17.

67. See Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no.3 (1989): 169, note 48; Alilueva, op. cit., 216; Volkogonov, op. cit., 569. See also N. E., Rosenfeldt, Stalin's Special Departments: A Comparative Analysis of Key Sources (Copenhagen : Institute of Slavonic and European Studies, 1989)Google Scholar,

79. Poskrebyshev was replaced as head of the special sector by V.N. Chernukh (D.N. Sukhanov, op. cit.). For evidence of officials being transferred to the general department, see e.g. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.22 1.116.

68. Rosenfeldt, N. E., Knowledge and Power: the Role of Stalin's Secret Chancellery in the Soviet System of Government (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1978), 196 Google Scholar.

69. The special sector was once referred to as Stalin's “little gear box through which the massive machinery of Sovic’ rule over 900 million human beings on about one third of the world's surface was operated” (Tucker, op. cit., 182). Although they misjudged the timing of these developments, their importance has been noted by a number of scholars (e.g. Shchapiro, op. cit., 58; Rosenfeldt, Power and Knowledge, 197-98).

70. Cf. Fainsod, op. cit., 216, 323; Armstrong, op. cit., 229; also see point 34 of the new rules, Pravda (14 October 1952).

71. A.A. Startsev (chief aide to Ponomarenko), interviewed by the author, Moscow, 30 October 1993. Also see Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (henceforth RTsKMDNI) f.117 op.116 d.328 1.1; d.331 1.1; d.339 1.1.

72. D.N. Sukhanov, op. cit.; A.A. Startsev, op. cit.; D.N. Sukhanov, “Iz vospominanii Sukhanova D.N byvshego pomoshchnika Malenkova G.M” (unpublished manuscript) TsKhSD d.2 1.7; RTsKMDNI f.17 op.115 dd.728-730 1.1; dd.761-770 1.1; d.778 1.1; f.17 op.116 d.358 1.1; d.365 1.1; d.390 1.1; d.409 1.1.

73. D.N. Sukhanov, op. cit. [interview]; A.A. Startsev, op. cit.; GARF f.9492 op.9 d.124 11. 1, 5, 7, 13; TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.519 11.2, 5, 8, 19, 26; d.532 11.59, 78; d.533 11. 138, 156, 160.

74. For the agenda of the post-congress Secretariat meetings, see TsKhSD f.4 op.9. For the November meetings, see dd.3-5, for the December meetings, dd.6-12, for the January meetings, dd.13-21, and for the February meetings dd.22-30.

75. They joined Stalin, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Suslov and Ponomarenko.

76. Hahn, op. cit, 140, 141.

77. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.7 11. 219, 221; d.8 1.196. For Khrushchev's connections with these people, see Rigby, T.H. “Khrushchev and the Rules of the Soviet Political Game” in Khrushchev and the Communist World, eds. Miller, R.F. and Feher, F. (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 78 Google Scholar.

78. One indirect expression of this close link with the administrative arm of the Party was that the two territorial bums most strongly identified with Khrushchev, the Moscow obkom and gorkom, had a significantly higher ratio of party secretaries than any other committee in the RSFSR ratified by the Secretariat during winter 1952. The Moscow obkom, of which Khrushchev was first secretary, had six party secretaries among the nine members of the buro ratified by the Secretariat on 17 November 1952, and the same applied to the gorkom approved on 13 January 1953 (see TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.4 1.20; d.15 1.246).

79. For a partial exception to this, see Hahn, op. cit., 206-8.

80. See Pravda (26 September 1952): 2, point 10. Cf Rule 27 of the 1939 Party Rules, in Gill, op. cit., 171.

81. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.4 1.149.

82. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.4 1.224.

83. Ibid., 11. 225, 226, 229.

84. E.g. the structure and staff of the department of schools was ratified on 31 December, and of the department of party, trade union and Komsomol agencies on 31 January (see TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.12 11.288-9; d.21 1.146).

85. See, for example, Fainsod, op. cit., 200; Jerry, Hough and Merle, Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 411 Google Scholar; Hahn, op. cit., 109; Armstrong, op. cit., 203.

86. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.12 11.129-130. The text stated that the structure of the new enlarged department represented a departure from the “branch lines” which had prevailed earlier (ibid., 1.131).

87. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.15 1.1. The new industrial-transport department in Moscow was to have 4 sub-departments, 65 executives and 10 technical workers (see also ibid., d.3 1.158).

88. “Posledniaia ‘Otstavka’ Stalina” htochnik, no.l (1994): 106-11.

89. Ibid., 108, 110.

90. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.32 1.15, d.35 1.8.

91. The kantselariia presidiuma was set up with the “rights of a department” (na pravakh otdela) and included as its deputy head V.N. Chernukh who had taken over as head of the special sector from Poskrebyshev the previous autumn (TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.32 11.95, 97).

92. D.N. Sukhanov, op. cit. (interview).

93. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.32 11.95-97, d.36 1.144, d.42 1.77.

94. It appears from the Secretariat minutes that Shatalin took over control of the department for selection and placement of cadres while the department for party, trade union and Komsomol agencies came under Khrushchev's supervision.

95. This was also decided on 18 March (see TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.32 1.99).

96. See the Secretariat resolutions of 11 and 19 June 1953 on the agricultural situation in Novgorod and Pskov provinces (TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.62 11.2-10, d.64 1.2; and d.48 1.7). Also see “Delo Beriia” (1): 156.

97. D.N. Sukhanov, op. cit. (interview); D.N. Sukhanov “Iz vospominanii Sukhanova D.N.,” d. 2 1. 24.

98. See “Delo Beriia” (1): 161; (2): 165. Also see Armstrong, op. cit., 241; Fainsod, op. cit., 161.

99. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.57 1.1; d.61 1.1; d.66 1.1. Cf. d.43 1.1; d.44 1.1; d.46 1.1; d.48 l.l;d.51 1.1; d.52, 1.1; d.55 1.1.

100. I.e., the first, the fourth and the fifth sections (see TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.32 11.99-100).

101. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.33 11.165-7.

102. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.49 11.238, 259.

103. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.35 1.93.

104. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.41 1.27. The new “department of administrative and tradefinancial agencies” was indeed to be considerably larger than the “administration” and “planning, financial and trade” departments had been when founded in summer 1948. Despite an initial proposal on 15July 1948 that the administration department should have a staff of 105, the Secretariat eventually consented to a staff of 80 (59 executives and 21 technical workers) on 9 August 1948. The planning, financial and trade department was to have a smaller staff of 43 (33 executives and 10 technical workers). By contrast, on 22 April 1953 the Secretariat agreed on a staff of 158 (121 executives and 37 technical workers) for the new enlarged department (see RTsKh-IDNII f.17 op.118 d.96 11.92-100, f.17 op.116 d.365 11.40, 42 and TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.46 11.14-16).

105. Ibid., 1.28.

106. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.44 11.3-4; and chap. 3 of my work in progress “Soviet Politicians and Russian Justice, 1948-1964. “

107. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.41 1.15.

108. Cf. Amy Knight, Beria, Stalin's First Lieutenant, 184.

109. For a view of Beria as a buffer between Khrushchev and Malenkov—the real contenders for power—see Boris Starkov, “Sto dnei Lubianskogo Marshala,” Istochnik, no.4 (1993): 83, 90.

110. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.32 11.152-233.

111. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.33 1.121; d.60 1.112; d.65 1.25. Also see “Delo Beriia” (2): 157, 159-60.

112. Two specific causes of Beria's downfall were his attempts to unseat Ignat'ev as a member of the Central Committee and the sharp response to Beria's policies in East Germany (see Barsukov, op. cit., 16; and Knight, op. cit., 191 ff).

113. One of the most important examples was the replacement of the head of the secretariat of the special board on 25 July (TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.72 1.62; but also see f.4 op.9 d.68 11.117, 118, 120, 121; d.69 11.4, 5, 167; d.72 11.24-7, 60, 63; d.73 11.166, 167; d.75 11.233-5).

114. See also T.H.Rigby, “Khrushchev and the Resuscitation of the Central Committee” reprinted in T. H., Rigby, Political Elites in the USSR (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1990), 154–55Google Scholar.

115. GARF ﹛.8131 op.28 d.1378 1.138.

116. TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.59 1.20; d.71 1.169.

117. D.N. Sukhanov, “Iz vospominanii,” d.2 1.27.

118. Thus on 16 July 1953 the Presidium approved—and on 29 July 1953 the Secretariat distributed—much shortened basic and control nomenklatura designed to render more effective central party control over key cadre appointments; and on 31 August—ironically five years to the day since Zhdanov's death—a Secretariat resolution on “Ordering the working day within the Central Committee apparatus” ruled that, as of 1 September, the working day within the apparat would commence precisely at nine in the morning and end precisely at six in the evening with a break for lunch to last for no more than an hour (GARF f.9492 op.9 d.148 1.70; d.168 1.59; TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.72 11.229-230; d. 76 1.161; d. 741 11. 160-66).

119. On 19 September 1953 the sector of light industry and meat and food production within the industrial-transport department was redivided and it appears that, by the following year, the whole department was fully split into the constituent departments that had existed prior to the unification (TsKhSD f.4 op.9 d.79 1.150; and Hahn, op. cit., 207 note 37).

120. This, of course, was the traditional point made by Fainsod and Armstrong (see Fainsod, op. cit., 162, 164; Armstrong, op. cit., 261).

121. Fedor, Burlatsky, Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1991), 14 Google Scholar.