Russia. A History полностью

Constructing power—not only in Petrograd and Moscow, but in the interior and borderlands—was the primary concern. This process replicated the seizure of power itself, as so-called ‘military-revolutionary committees’ and garrison troops seized power in the name of the ‘soviet’. But Lenin sought to monopolize power, not just construct it—hence his fierce opposition to the idea of a coalition with other socialists. Although his first government was eventually forced to include some left SRs, the coalition lasted only a few brief months. Important too was Lenin’s decision to retain the ministerial bureaucracy and cabinet executive: rather than destroy these creatures of the tsarist regime (as recently envisioned in his State and Revolution), he simply relabelled ministries ‘commissariats’ and the cabinet ‘Council of People’s Commissars’. With this legerdemain he rebaptized these bodies as qualitatively different, purportedly because they were now part of a workers’ and peasants’ state and presumably staffed by proletarians.

That was a masterful illusion: few proletarians were prepared for such service. It created, however, a golden opportunity for the white-collar employees of the tsarist and provisional governments, not only the army of petty clerks and provincial officials, but also mid-level technical and administrative personnel in the capitals. They found the transition easy, for example, from local War Industries Committees and zemstvo economic organs into ‘proletarian’ institutions like the Supreme Council of the National Economy (Vesenkha) and its local ‘economic councils’ (Sovnarkhozy). War Communism spawned a fantastic profusion of economic bureaucracies, including vertical industry monopolies called ‘Main Committees’ (Glavki) that were direct heirs of the earlier administration. Thousands of employees and technical personnel, economists, statisticians, agronomists, and middle- and lower-ranking managers, specialists with higher education, university graduates, and sundry other professionals poured into these organizations. Typical was the case of doctors and lesser medical personnel, who quickly found a home in revolutionary projects for public health. Similarly scientists and engineers eager to remake the world after technocratic visions eagerly joined in ‘building socialism’. Hence the Bolshevik triumph was a triumph of the lower-middle strata providing the very infrastructure of the Soviet state. In this sense the white-collar engagement was as important as the workers’ and peasants’ movements lionized in official discourse and mythology.

But the most unique—and devastatingly efficient—innovation of these early years was the creation of the hybrid ‘party-state’. Membership in the party itself grew exponentially, from a mere 23,600 members in January 1917 to 750,000 four years later. The party gradually metamorphosed into a hierarchically organized bureaucracy, with the discipline mandated in Lenin’s ‘democratic centralism’. At the apex the Central Committee began to specialize in function and policy area to become a shadow cabinet exercising real power. At all levels this party-state system had overlapping competence, with party functionaries in a ‘Bolshevik faction’ making decisions and ensuring implementation. Local party secretaries were plenipotentiaries, directing state institutions and soviets. To control key management positions, the party created the famous nomenklatura system for assigning reliable party members to these posts. The Bolshevik organs gradually marginalized the ‘soviets’ in whose name the revolution had been made; they also eliminated any corporate bodies and social organizations that might temper ministerial power. Hence the key revolutionary institutions of 1917—soviets, factory committees, trade unions, co-operatives, professional associations, and the like—were gradually subsumed into the new bureaucracy or extinguished outright.

This party apparatus became Stalin’s institutional base in the struggle for power. When the Central Committee created the ‘Orgburo’ (Organizational Bureau) to manage this apparatus in 1919, it was under Stalin’s command. Hence, even before becoming General Secretary in 1922, Stalin controlled major appointments, including those of provincial party secretaries; he thereby shaped the composition of party conferences and congresses, a critical asset in the power struggles of the 1920s. Stalin also was the first head of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (Rabkrin), another organ of paramount influence.