also: BANKING SYSTEM, SOVIET; GOSBANK; SBERBANK.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Central Bank of Russia. (2003). Available from «www .cbr.ru». Johnson, Juliet. (2000). A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Knight, Malcolm; Arne Petersen; and Robert Price. (1999). Transforming Financial Systems in the Baltics, Russia, and Other Countries of the Former Soviet Union. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund. Tompson, William. (1998). “The Politics of Central Bank Independence in Russia.” Europe-Asia Studies 50(7): 1157-1182.
The Central Committee was one of the central institutions in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), along with the Politburo, Secretariat, party congress, Central Auditing Commission, and Party Control Committee. Given the political system’s centralist, monolithic aspirations, these central institutions bore heavy responsibilities. One of the Central Committee’s main functions was to elect all Party leaders, including members of the Politburo and Secretaries of the Central Committee. The Committee-whose members included powerful people in the Communist Party-met every six months in plenary session to approve decisions by the top levels of the party.
The Central Committee was also considered to be the highest organ of the party between congresses (the period known as the sozyv). According
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to the party rules (Ustav), the Central Committee was supposed to “direct all the activities of the party and the local party organs, carry out the recruitment and the assignment of leading cadres, direct the work of the central governmental and social organizations of the workers, create various organs, institutions, and enterprises of the party and supervise their activities, name the editorial staff of central newspapers and journals working under its auspices, disburse funds of the party budget and verify their accounting.”
However, the Central Committee was large; in 1989, for example, it consisted of more than three hundred members. In actuality then, there were two Central Committees. One of them was the body of elected representatives of the Communist Party. The other was the name used in documents produced for and by any number of smaller Central Committee bodies, from the Politburo to the temporary commissions. Thus, the decrees of the Central Committee were seldom prepared by that body. Instead, the Politburo often initiated, discussed, and finalized them. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; POLITBURO; SECRETARIAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hough, Jerry F., and Fainsod, Merle. (1979). How the Soviet Union Is Governed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McAuley, Mary. (1977). Politics and the Soviet Union. New York: Penguin Books. Schapiro, Leonard Bertram. (1960). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. New York: Random House.
were elected as its first members. There was also a network of subordinate local control commissions. During 1921-1922, the Commission was harshly criticized for its part in suppressing factions within the party. On Vladimir Lenin’s initiative, the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923 expanded the Commission and unified it with the corresponding state control agency Rabkrin (People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ And Peasants’ Inspection). V. V. Kuibyshev, a loyal supporter of General Secretary Josef Stalin, was appointed to head the new joint institution. Meeting in Joint Plenums with the Party’s Central Committee, the Commission henceforth played a major role in formulating policy both on internal party organization and general governmental affairs. In 1927 Grigory K. Ordzho- nikidze took over leadership of the unified control agency. The Commission proved a highly effective tool in Stalin’s consolidation of power, gathering information on support for rival leaders among the party’s membership and later conducting disciplinary proceedings and extensive purges to root out oppositionists. Together with Rabkrin, it also played a major role in initiating and supervising economic policy during industrialization. In November 1930, A. A. Andreyev succeeded as head of the party-state control agency. In October 1931 he was replaced by J. E. Rudzutak. Both agencies were dissolved by the Seventeenth Party Congress (January-February 1934), which created a new Commission of Party Control, subordinated to the Central Committee. See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; RABKRIN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rees, E. A. (1987). State Control in Soviet Russia. The Rise and Fall of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, 1920-1934. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
The Central Control Commission was the agency of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) responsible for supervising party administration and discipline between 1920 and 1934.
The Ninth Party Congress established the Commission in September 1920 to oversee the party’s organization and membership, in particular to act against the growth of bureaucratism. F. E. Dz-erzhinskii, E. A. Preobrazhinskii and M. K. Muralov
The Central Statistical Agency of the Soviet Union and now Russia has had many different names. The latest is Goskomstat Rossiiskovo Federatsii (State Statistical Committee of the Russian Federation). The origins of the institution date from July 25, 1918, when the Council of People’s Commissars decreed the creation of an integrated entity called the
CHAADAYEV, PETER YAKOVLEVICH
Central Statistical Agency (Tsentralnoe statistich-eskoe upravlenie [TsSU]) under its jurisdiction. The first director was Pavel Ilich Popov. Late in the 1920s TsSU operated as an independent people’s commissariat, but was abolished at the beginning of 1930. Its functions were transferred to the state planning agency (Gosplan), operating under the name TsUNKhU. Later, on August 10, 1948, TsSU was separated from Gosplan, once again becoming a fully independent organ, this time attached to the USSR Council of Ministers. The journal Vestnik sta-tistiki was inaugurated at this time, and TsSU began publishing its documents through Gossta-tizdat. Goskomstat RF’s Economic and Statistical Research Institute was created in 1963 under the name Research Institute for Computer Based Forecasting. The main computing center started soon thereafter in 1967. TsSU was transformed into the Gosudarstvennii Komitet SSSR po statistik (Goskom-stat SSSR) in 1987.
The quality and reliability of Goskomstat’s work has always been controversial among economists East and West. A consensus arose during the Cold War that the statistics were sufficiently accurate to support valid judgments about growth and international comparisons, but this appraisal later appeared misguided. Goskomstat’s data showed Soviet GDP and per capita consumption growth exceeding that of the United States through 1988, a claim inconsistent with the USSR’s internal collapse. See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; GOSPLAN; POPOV, PAVEL ILICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Becker, Abraham. (1969). Soviet National Income 1958- 1964. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bergson, Abram. (1953). “Reliability and Usability of Soviet Statistics: A Summary Appraisal.” American Statistician 7(5):13-16. Bergson, Abram. (1961). The Real National Income of Soviet Russia since 1928. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Central Intelligence Agency. (1982). USSR: Measures of Economic Growth and Development, 1950-80. Washington, DC: Joint Economic Committee of Congress. Goskomstat RF «www.gks.ru». Rosefielde, Steven. (2003). “The Riddle of Post-War Russian Economic Growth: Statistics Lied and Were Misconstrued.” Europe-Asia Studies 55(3):469-481.
