provided they hired no more than ten or twenty workers. But the Bolsheviks retained in state hands most large- scale industry in the fuel and metallurgical sectors, mines, and military plans, along with all banking, railroads, and foreign trade. These were to constitute the “commanding heights,” which were supposed to control and guide the rest of the economy under Soviet power. They were provided subsidies from the budget to pay for wages and supplies. Many of the industrial enterprises were soon organized into trusts or syndicates under the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh) for operational supervision, though many rehired former managers and experts (“bourgeois specialists”) deemed to be loyal to the new regime. By 1922 more than 90 percent of industrial output still came from these nationalized plants, mines, and transportation facilities. By 1928 industrial output had recovered the levels achieved in 1913, but further expansion would depend on new net investments, for which the state budget would be the only significant source, for the “commanding heights” did not generate sufficient profits. See also: NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; WAR COMMUNISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nove, Alec. (1969). Economic History of the USSR. London: Allen Lane.
Soviet government official.
“Commissar” was the title given to the bureaucratic leaders of the Soviet Union, used from 1917 to 1946. The title and rank of commissar was also given to the military-political officers serving with the Red Army during World War II. Also known as People’s Commissars, they were the heads of the various people’s commissariats (of health, justice, education, internal affairs, and so forth), the central bureaucratic organizations that governed the Russian Republic and the Soviet Union. The commissars were also the members of the Soviet of People’s Commissars (Sovet narodnykh komissarov-Sovnarkom, or SNK), the central organ of state power that coordinated government decisions in the Soviet republics and among the commissariats when the USSR Supreme Soviet was not in session. In 1946, when the commissariats were renamed ministries, the commissars became ministers, and the SNK became the Council of Ministers.
OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMY
See also: COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, SOVIET; SUPREME SOVIET
Fainsod, Merle, and Hough, Jerry F. (1979). How the Soviet Union Is Governed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
August coup. By the end of 1991 all the republics had declared their complete independence and the COME and IEC were closed down. In the future, economic ties between the newly independent states would be conducted on a bilateral basis without any central coordinating agency such as COME. See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; GAIDAR, YEGOR TIMURO-VICH; YAVLINSKY, GRIGORY ALEXEYEVICH; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH
The Committee for Operational Management of the National Economy (COME) and a parallel body, the Interrepublican Economic Committee (IEC), were created in the wake of the failed coup of August 1991, in a vain bid to coordinate economic policy across the territory of the Soviet Union. They were trying to pick up the functions of the government of the USSR, which had disintegrated after the coup. COME was headed by Ivan Silaev, a former deputy prime minister in the Soviet government (1985-1990) who had been appointed by Boris Yeltsin in June 1990 as prime minister of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic. Silaev struggled to maintain food supplies and deal with Soviet debt obligations, while Yeltsin’s reform team, led by Yegor Gaidar, was preparing a radical reform program. Silaev resigned as Russian prime minister on September 27, 1991, after being accused of trying to empower the COME at the expense of the Russian Federation (for example, by taking control over energy supplies). Silaev then became acting prime minister of the Soviet Union-a country that had de facto ceased to exist. Together with Grigory Yavlinsky he worked on a treaty on economic cooperation between the republics, but encountered hostility from the Russian Federation Supreme Soviet and government. He tried to salvage some of the ministries of the Soviet government, whose forty thousand employees were still sitting in Moscow. The COME and IEC were founded on the assumption that some elements of the unified Soviet economic management system would be preserved, but this proved erroneous. Over the course of 1991 all republican governments had progressively ceased to cooperate with federal economic agencies, refusing to pay taxes and ignoring policy directives, and this trend accelerated after the failed
COMMITTEE OF SOLDIERS’ MOTHERS
The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia (CSMR) was organized in 1989 at a time when glas-nost and perestroika had led to greater information about the abuses within the Soviet military and its conscript system and created opportunities for the actions of nongovernmental organizations. In 1989 the mothers of 300 student- conscripts protested against their draft and lobbied successfully to change the conscription law to allow student deferments. Their successes include the granting of deferments and the early return of 180,000 students from the army to finish their studies. The Committee was also involved in seeking to end abuses in barracks life, especially the bullying of junior conscripts (dedovshchina), and in promoting the transition from a conscript system to a volunteer military. The CSMR has worked to expose human rights violations within the military, given legal and material assistance to the families of dead servicemen, consulted on legislation affecting military service, and published research on service-related deaths in the military. It operates hostels in Moscow for AWOL soldiers.
The CSMR actively protested the First Chechen War (1994-1996) and in March 1995 organized the “March for Compassion” from Moscow to Grozny. The March drew attention to the horrific violations of human rights by both sides and sought to draw support from Chechen mothers opposed to the war. Media attention to these efforts, as well as efforts to secure the release of Russian prisoners of war, won broad international praise for the CSMR. In 1995 the committee received the Sean MacBride Peace Prize from the International Peace Bureau and was nominated in the same year for the Nobel Peace Prize.
COMMITTEES OF THE VILLAGE POOR
Between 1996 and 1999, the CSMR continued to lobby the Russian parliament for legislation to protect the rights of servicemen, reform the military, rehabilitate veterans of regional conflicts, and provide support to the families of dead servicemen. It also supported the efforts of deserters to secure amnesty through the military prosecutor’s office.
The CSMR has continued its efforts to support the rights of soldiers and their families during the Second Chechen War (September 1999-) but with much more limited success and less public support. See also: CHECHNYA AND CHECHENS; CIVIL SOCIETY, DEVELOPMENT OF; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET
Lambroschini, Sophie. “Russia: Expressions Of Civil Society Gain Ground.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/1999/11/ F.RU.991130131712.html (Accessed November 12, 2002).
Committees of the Village Poor (komitety dereven-skoy bednoty or kombedy in Russian) were peasant organizations created by the Bolshevik government in 1918 to procure grain and create a revolutionary counterweight to the traditional peasant commune.
Bolshevik ideologists viewed peasant communities as divided between a small minority of rich kulaks and a majority of poor peasants. The kulaks controlled local soviets and traditional peasant communes, hoarded grain, and hired poor peasants to till their extensive lands. The kombedy, selected by poor peasants, would break this power, distributing food and consumer goods to the rural poor and assisting in expropriating grain from the kulaks for delivery to the city. With their knowledge of local conditions, they would be far more effective at finding hidden grain than food-supply detachments from the city.
In practice, the committees failed to fulfill the hopes communist leaders had for them. Peasants made no firm
