An Introduction to Soviet Officialdom

Abstract

Amid the heroic projects of modernization and industrialization launched by the Soviet regime, state administration remained in many respects a distinctly un-revolutionary activity. Despite the Bolsheviks’ utopian rhetoric about the withering away of the state, and the ability of any washerwoman to manage public affairs, once in power Soviet leaders faced the same mundane tasks of governance common to all modern states: collecting taxes, policing the streets, and collecting and analyzing information on the country’s human, economic, and physical resources. Who would perform these functions? With no reservoir of professionally competent and politically reliable personnel to draw from, the Soviet leadership was forced to govern using the agents of state that they had inherited from the Old Regime. Some high-ranking officials emigrated or turned to armed resistance during the Civil War, but the majority of state employees continued to man their desks, albeit in a changed political and economic environment and in state organizations that had new names, new leadership, and new responsibilities.