popular election.
Though this was not his intention, Gorbachev paved the way for Russia’s historical return as a nation-state and in the form of a democratic republic. His taking up of the cause of glasnost led to a renaissance of Russian intellectual and political life. Despite instability and a perilous transition from Soviet despotism to a fledgling republic, glas-nost continued to be the rule in the new Russia’s first decade, in the provisions of its new constitution, the existence of free public debate, and a series of orderly and reasonably fair parliamentary and presidential elections. Whether the spirit of glasnost prevails or wanes in the post-Yeltsin era was yet to be determined as the reborn Russia entered the twenty-first century. One thing was clear: glasnost would go down in the annals of Russian history as the potent word that brought down an empire. See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; LIGACHEV, YEGOR KUZMICH; PERE-STROIKA; SAKHAROV, ANDREI DMITRIEVICH; SAMIZ-DAT; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gorbachev, Mikhail S. (1995). Memoirs: Mikhail Gorbachev. New York: Doubleday. Gwertzman, B., and Kaufman, Michael T., eds. (1990, 1991). The Collapse of Communism. New York: Times Books.
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Kaiser, Robert G. (1991). Why Gorbachev Happened. New York: Simon and Shuster. Linden, Carl. (1997). “Gorbachev and the Fall of the Marxian Prince in Europe and Russia.” In Russia and China on the Eve of a New Millennium, eds. Carl Linden and Jan S. Prybyla. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Tarasulo, Isaac J., ed. (1989). Gorbachev and Glasnost: Viewpoints from the Soviet Press. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc. Walker, Rachael. (1993) Six Years that Shook the World: Perestroika, the Impossible Project. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Plural, short for glavnoye upravlenie, or chief administration.
Glavki are subordinate administrative units or departments of Soviet state planning and existed in economic, military, and cultural ministries, such as tourism. In the economy these subdivisions of central or local industrial ministries dealt with specific industrial branches in formulating and administering the annual and perspective plans.
These departments appeared originally as parts of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh or Vesenkha) controlling particular sectors, such as the match, soap, oil, and timber industries (Glavspichki, Tsentromylo, Glavneft, Glovles, and so forth). They replaced the corresponding People’s Commissariats by early 1918. During the civil war period, the glavki controlled distribution of scarce materials and ordered new production of items for war, subject to interference from the Party’s Politburo and without a national plan, wages, or bookkeeping. By 1921 this had become a bureaucratic chaos (called glavkism). Nevertheless, these units survived reorganizations during the New Economic Policy of the 1920s and thereafter, emerging once again in 1931. Now under the commissariats (called ministries after 1946) and Gosplan in the Stalinist planning period, they acquired direct power over their subordinate enterprises until Nikita Khrushchev’s reorganization in 1957.
As a result of subdivisions, some glavki became new ministries, whose number in the industrial and construction branches alone reached thirty-three in 1946 and 1947, but about a year later the number was again reduced by unification. For instance, the Ministry of Textiles sometimes reverted to a chief administration within the Ministry of Light Industry, or the reverse. These continual organizational changes had questionable practical effect. Some of these glavki-such as those for finance or labor-were responsible for functional administration, and some were specialized subdivisions, such as the glavki for woolens in the Ministry of Textiles. Enterprises received their plans from the chief administration, usually in Moscow, and submitted their requirements to it. So-called funded inputs, which were especially scarce, were allocated to enterprises by the glavki, which set up their own supply arrangements to make sure their firms met the planned targets. They set up workshops to produce spare parts on an inefficiently small scale, a practice that also led to duplication. The chiefs of these chief administrations, usually called Deputy Ministers, became nonpolitical technical specialists, like most of the ministers over them, subject only to occasional intervention from party officials in the Kremlin. Their incentives were linked informally to the success of the enterprises under them, but not necessarily their profit or productivity. Accordingly, they could be relied on to support enterprises’ requests for more investments and supplies and easier plans, even when they knew higher productivity would be possible. Sometimes they reallocated profits among their subordinated enterprises to allow all of them to meet their financial obligations. Even during the regional reorganization instituted by Khrushchev, the more important allocation decisions were made in the republican or sectoral glavki of the all-Union Gossnab (supply agency) in Moscow. This was necessary to prevent “localism,” a preference for enterprises within one’s region over the needs of enterprises elsewhere. See also: GOSPLAN; INDUSTRIALIZATION, SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bergson, Abram. (1964). The Economics of Soviet Planning. New Haven: Yale University Press. Carr, Edward Hallett, and Davies, R. W. (1969-[1978]). Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929. 3 vols. London: Macmillan. Nove, Alec. (1961). The Soviet Economy. New York: Praeger.
The Main Directorate for Literary and Publishing Affairs (Glavnoe Upravlenie po Delam Literatury i Izdatelstv), known as Glavlit, was the state agency responsible for the censorship of printed materials in the Soviet Union. Although print was its main focus, it sometimes supervised the censorship of other media, including radio, television, theater, and film. Glavlit was created in 1922 to replace a network of uncoordinated military and civilian censorship agencies set up after the Bolshevik seizure of power. Although freedom of the press nominally existed in the Soviet Union, the government reserved the right to prevent the publication of certain materials. Glavlit was charged with preventing the publication of economic or military information believed to pose a threat to Soviet security; this included subjects as diverse as grain harvests, inflation, incidence of disease, and the location of military industries. Party and military leaders compiled a list of facts and categories deemed secret.
Glavlit was also charged with suppressing any printed materials deemed hostile to the Soviet state or the Communist Party. This ran the gamut from pornography to religious texts to anything that could be construed as critical of the party or state, whether implicitly or explicitly. Individual censors had a fair amount of discretion in this area, and often showed considerable creativity and paranoia in their work. The severity of censorship varied with the political climate. Glavlit was particularly strict in its supervision of the private publishers allowed to operate between 1921 and 1929.
Although some state publishing houses were initially exempted from Glavlit’s supervision, by 1930 all printing and publishing in the Soviet Union was subject to pre-publication censorship. Everything from newspapers to books to ephemera, such as posters, note pads, and theater tickets, required the approval of a Glavlit official before it could be published; violation of this rule was a serious criminal offense.
Glavlit had several secondary functions, including the censorship of foreign literature imported to the Soviet Union. It also took part in purging materials associated with “enemies of the people” from libraries, bookstores, and museums.
Glavlit was part of the Russian Republic’s Commissariat of Enlightenment until 1946, when it was placed under the direct authority of the All-Union Council of Ministers. Its official name changed several times after this point, usually to a variant of Main Directorate for the Protection of Military and State Secrets. Despite these changes, the acronym Glavlit continued to be used in official and unofficial sources. Technically a state institution, Glavlit answered directly to the Communist Party’s Central Committee, which oversaw its work and appointed its leadership. Each Soviet Republic had its own Glavlit, with the Russian Republic’s Glavlit setting the overall tone for Soviet censorship.
While most Soviet writers and editors learned to practice a degree of self-censorship to avoid problems, Glavlit served as a deterrent for those willing to question orthodox views. Its standards were relaxed in late 1988 as part of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost campaign. Glavlit was dissolved by presidential decree in 1991, essentially
