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State Control in Soviet Russia pp 12–38Cite as

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The Institutionalization of State Control (1919–22)

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Part of the book series: Studies in Russian and East European History and Society ((SREEHS))

Abstract

The Bolsheviks assumed power in Russia in 1917 with no experience of government and only the vaguest ideas about practical problems of state building. The theoretical problem of the state and the proletarian revolution had been extensively aired. After the October revolution the party faced the complex task of reconciling its ideological commitments with the practical problems of state administration and management. The issue was hotly debated, raising as it did the most basic questions concerning the meaning of socialism — in which the model of state socialism was counterposed to an alternative libertarian model. The debate on the organisation of state control was a vital part of this controversy. It culminated in the establishment in February 1920 of the new People’s Commissariat of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection (Rabkrin, NKRKI or RKI — pronounced er-ka-ee) as the most novel Bolshevik experiment in state building.1

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Notes and References

  1. A short history of the establishment of NKRKI is provided by Thomas Remington, ‘Institution Building in Bolshevik Russia: The Case of State Kontrol’, in SR, vol. 41, no. 1, Spring 1982, pp. 91–103.

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  2. T.H. Rigby, Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom 1917–1922 (Cambridge, 1979) ch. 4.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Keele, UK

    E. A. Rees

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  1. E. A. Rees
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© 1987 E.A. Rees

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Rees, E.A. (1987). The Institutionalization of State Control (1919–22). In: State Control in Soviet Russia. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09299-4_2

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