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Features of the Industrial Development of Leningrad within the Soviet Command Economy (1944–1949)

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Abstract

The attitudes, intentions, and actions of the Leningrad Communist Party organization, aimed at preserving Leningrad’s economic exclusivity and raising the status of the city within the Soviet command economy of the second half of the 1940s, are analyzed. Some cases of conflicts of interest between the Leningrad Oblast Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (AUCP(B), VKPB) and the central government, all-Union departments, and other industrial regions of the Soviet Union are considered. The published material shows the presence of certain trends in the economic development of the Northwest that were gaining strength even under the command economy of the Soviet Union. The postwar development trend chosen (or perhaps simply understood) by the Leningrad Oblast Committee managed to withstand the political repressions of 1949, the numerous subsequent changes in the personal composition of the regional elites, the transformation of the political power system after 1953, and the economic reforms of the late 1950s. The events under description are an example of a little-studied phenomenon, Soviet regionalism. By the example of Leningrad, we see how the leaders of the Soviet industrial center formed a “pressure group” to uphold the economic exclusivity of their city within the all-Union planned economy. Further study of such phenomena in relation to both Leningrad and other industrial centers of the Soviet Union (the Urals, Donbass, central regions, Far East, etc.), comparing them with each other, and analyzing the conflicts of interest that accompanied them at various levels create some prospects for the study of the history of Soviet regional policy and the late Stalinist Soviet Union from new—territorial and economic—positions.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, Markevich, A.M., Was the Soviet economy planned? Planning in people’s commissariats in the 1930s, in Economic History: Yearbook 2003, Moscow, 2004, pp. 20–54; Decision-Making in the Stalinist Command Economy, London, 1997; Hunter, H. and Szyrmer, J.M., Faulty Foundations: Soviet Economic Policies, 1928–1940, Princeton, 1992; Bakunin, A.V. and Lebedev, V.E., Regional Science and Technology Policy: Problems of History, Sverdlovsk, 1991.

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  4. See Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and Regional Party Committees: 1945–1953, Moscow, 2004; Harris, J.R., The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System, Ithaca; London, 1999.

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  25. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund r-24, Inventory 2, File 5663, fol. 24.

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  29. State Archive of the Russian Federation (hereinafter, GARF), Fund 5446, Inventory 50а, File 2957, fol. 190.

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  32. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund r-24, Inventory 2, File 5663, fol. 40.

  33. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund r-24, Inventory 2, File 5663, fol. 75.

  34. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund r-24, Inventory 2, File 6519, fols. 4, 5; Inventory 49, File 342, fols. 150, 151.

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  39. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund 2071, Inventory 3, File 127, fol. 45.

  40. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund r-25, Inventory 2, File 6506, fol. 40.

  41. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund r-25, Inventory 2, File 6506, fol. 41.

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  49. When editing the transcript, Popkov crossed out all and wrote many in ink.

  50. When editing the transcript, Popkov crossed out For and wrote primarily at in ink, thus combining the two sentences into one.

  51. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund r-24, Inventory 2, File 6519, fol. 39.

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  54. GARF, f, 5446, Inventory 50а, d, 2957, fol. 264.

  55. When editing the transcript, Popkov entered determined at in ink.

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  57. TsGAIPD SPb, Fund r-24, Inventory 2, File 6519, fol. 32.

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  1. Institute of History and Archaeology, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg, Russia

    M. V. Mikheev

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Correspondence to M. V. Mikheev.

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Translated by B. Alekseev

Mikhail Viktorovich Mikheev, Cand. Sci. (Hist.), is a Researcher at the Center for Economic History of the Institute of History and Archaeology of the RAS Ural Branch.

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Mikheev, M.V. Features of the Industrial Development of Leningrad within the Soviet Command Economy (1944–1949). Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 92 (Suppl 10), S964–S972 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331622160079

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