Ministers.
Once output and input targets were set, the ministries organized the activities of their enterprises to achieve output targets and stay within input limits. Normally the ministries petitioned Gosplan to reconsider their output and input target figures if plan fulfillment was threatened. This practice was called corrections (korrektirovka). Normally aimed at decreasing planned outputs, it was a common practice, although widely condemned by Party officials. The Council of Ministers had the formal authority to decide on these petitions, but in most cases the actual decision was left to Gos-plan. The minister or his deputy and even heads of ministry main administrations (glavki) were members of the Council of Ministers and participated in its sessions. Most of the operational work of the ministries was done by the main administrations.
The industrial ministries were the fund holders (fondoderzhateli) of the economy. Gosplan and Gossnab (State Committee for Material Technical Supply) allocated the most important industrial raw materials, equipment, and semifabricates to the industrial ministries. Moreover, the ministries had their own supply departments that worked with Gossnab. Centrally allocated materials were called funded (fondiruyemie) commodities, which were allocated to the enterprises only by ministries. Enterprises were not legally allowed to exchange funded goods, although they did so.
The ministries existed at three levels. The most important were the All-Union ministries (Soyuznoe ministerstvo). Based in Moscow, All-Union ministries managed an entire branch of the economy, such as machine- building, coal, or electrical products. They concentrated enormous power and financial and material resources, and controlled the most important sectors of the economy. Ministries of the military-industrial complex were concentrated in Moscow. They obtained priority funds and limits allocated by Gosplan. Similarly, the significance of corresponding ministers was very high-they were the direct masters of the enterprises located in all republics that constituted the Soviet Union.
At the second level were the ministries of dual subordination-the Union-Republican Ministry (Soiuzno- respublikanskoe ministerstvo). As a rule, their headquarters were in Moscow. While the capitals of individual republics were the sites of republic-specific branches that conducted everyday activities, plan approval and resource allocation were subordinated to Moscow. Among the dual subordination ministries were the ministries of the coal industry, food industry, and construction. For example, Ukraine produced a bulk of Soviet coal and food output; therefore Union-ministry branches were located in its capital, Kiev.
The republican ministries occupied the lowest level. They were controlled by the republican Councils of Ministers and the Republican Central Committees of the Communist Party. They produced primarily local and regional products.
There were also committees under the Council of Ministers that enjoyed practically the same rights as the ministries: for example, the State Committee on Radio and Television, or the notorious KGB, which nominally was a committee but probably enjoyed a wide scope of powers.
A typical ministry was run by the minister and by deputy ministers who supervised corresponding glavki that, in their turn, controlled all work under their jurisdiction. A special glavk was responsible for logistical aspects of the industry’s performance; technical glavki were in charge of the planning of the industry’s plant operations.
The ministries had authorized territorial representatives in major administrative centers of the Soviet Union who directly supervised the plant’s operations. The ministry, however, was dependent on its subordinated enterprises for information. The enterprises possessed better local information and were reluctant to share this information with the ministry.
Ministries had their own scientific and research institutes and higher education establishments that trained professionals for the industry. The industrial ministries were expected to perform a wide vaMINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS riety of tasks: to plan production, manage material and technical supply, arrange transportation, develop scientific policy, and plan capital investment.
The ministers were responsible for the performance of their enterprises as a whole; at the same time, the employees were not motivated and did not have any incentives to work creatively and to their full potential. The bulk of ministerial decision making was devoted to implementing and monitoring the operational plan after the annual plan had been approved. Under constant pressure to meet plan targets, industrial ministries exercised opportunistic behavior: that is, they bargained for lower output targets, demanded extra inputs, and exploited horizontal and vertical integration strategies to achieve more independence from centralized supplies.
During the later period of the Soviet Union, many attempts were made to improve the work of industrial ministries to make them more effective and efficient. However, these attempts were inconsistent, and the number of bureaucrats was hardly reduced. The giant administrative superstructure of the ministries was a heavy burden on the economy and played an increasingly regressive role. It was partially responsible for the economic collapse of Soviet economy. The ministerial bureaucracy continued to play an important role after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Russia, for example, former ministerial officials gained control of significant chunks of industry during the privatization process. See also: COMMAND ADMINISTRATIVE ECONOMY; GOS-PLAN; INDUSTRIALIZATION, SOVIET of Ministers that was responsible for foreign trade in the Soviet economy.
It was a functional ministry in that its jurisdiction cut across the responsibilities of the various branch ministries that managed production and distribution of products. It reported directly to Gosplan and the Council of Ministers. The operating units of the Ministry of Foreign Trade were the Foreign Trade Organizations (FTOs), which controlled exports and imports of specific goods, such as automobiles, aircraft, books, and so forth.
Soviet enterprises generally had no authority or means to export or import to or from abroad. The relevant FTO responded to requests from enterprises under its jurisdiction and, if approved, conducted negotiations, financing, and all other arrangements necessary for the transaction. Imports and exports, and thus the FTOs and the Ministry of Foreign Trade, were subject to the overall annual and quarterly economic plans. In this way, foreign trade was utilized to complement rather than to compete with the plan. See also: COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, SOVIET; FOREIGN TRADE; GOSPLAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (1990). Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins. Hewett, Ed A. (1988). Reforming the Soviet Economy: Equality versus Efficiency. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley. Hewett, Edward A. (1988). Reforming the Soviet Economy: Equality Versus Efficiency. Washington, DC: Brook-ings Institution.
The Ministry of Foreign Trade was a functional ministry subordinate to Gosplan and the Council
The extent to which Russian regimes have depended upon the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD, Min-isterstvo vnutrennykh del) is symbolized by its surviving the fall of tsarism and the end of the Soviet Union intact and with almost the same name. The ministry’s ancestry runs as far back as the sixteenth century, when Ivan the Terrible established the Brigandage Office to combat banditry. However, a formal Ministry of Internal Affairs was not founded until 1802. From the first, its primary responsibility was to protect the interests of the state, and this was so even before it was made responsible for the Okhranka, or political police, in 1880. The close relationship between regular policing and
MIR
political control has been a central characteristic of the MVD throughout its existence.
The Bolsheviks came to power with utopian notions of policing by social consent and public voluntarism, but because of the new regime’s authoritarian tendencies and the exigencies of the Civil War (1918-1921), it became necessary, by 1918, to transform the “workers’ and peasants’ militia” into a full-time police force; one year later the militia was militarized. Originally envisaged as locally controlled forces loosely subordinated to the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the militia, in practice, were soon closely linked with the Cheka political police force and subject to central control. The NKVD was increasingly identified with political policing; in 1925, the
