2. The Transformations in Soviet Political Structure under Khrushchev

2.3. Differentiation of roles

From the late 1950s on, and especially rapidly in the early 1960s, the number of roles increased significantly within both the elite and the regime sectors. The multiplication of roles in the elite sector resulted from (1) the co-optation of technical experts into the highest councils as political decision makers and (2) organizational reforms initiated by Khrushchev, such as the creation of high-level bureaus and special committees. The internal differentiation of the regime sector resulted from (1) the co-optation of technical experts into advisory roles in political decision making and (2) organizational reforms initiated by Khrushchev, such as the bifurcation of the Party into industrial and agricultural branches.

The systematic co-optation of technical experts into political decision-making occurred within elite and regime sectors alike. It was perhaps most noticeable with respect to issues of economic organization and resource allocation. The lines of debate regarding resource allocation were at the time primarily functional (e.g., the interests of the military and heavy industry bureaucracies vs. those of consumer goods and light industry bureaucracies); later, however, the geographic cleavages (e.g., Siberia vs. the European U.S.S.R.) became evident.[44] Experts in other policy areas were also co-opted into policy-setting roles in their respective fields.[45]

The influence of the technical intelligentsia qua occupants of elite roles was not limited to making policy decisions. Nor was their influence qua occupants of regime roles limited to advising the decision makers. Professional groups also had occasion to dissent, qua occupants of regime roles, by fighting against the implementation of policy after it had been formulated.[46] Their power in this regard has grown as the regime-sector predominance of Party-generalist ap-

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paratchiki, having no special area of technical competence (e.g., economic, engineering, or agricultural training), has declined.[47]

Organizational reforms under Khrushchev were many. Often simply designs by which he hoped to consolidate his control of the Party apparatus, they nevertheless produced a differentiation of roles in both the elite and regime sectors. With respect to the former, Khrushchev began by creating the Bureau of the Central Committee for the RFSFR in 1956 after the adjournment of the Twentieth Party Congress. A more significant reform, however, was his 1962 scheme for restructuring the central apparatus. This project “called for the creation of a rather complicated superstructure of special ‘boards’ and ‘commissions’ which would watch over the work of the various departments of the central apparatus.” Ostensibly only two such bureaus of the Central Committee were to be established (one for agriculture and one for industry, in correspondence with the generalized Party bifurcation), but in the end six such boards were created.[48] Of these only the Ideological Commission, headed by Il’ichev, and the Party-State Control Committee, headed by Shelepin, were given much publicity.[49]

Of Khrushchev’s major reforms that multiplied roles in the regime sector, two were organizational and one was related to recruitment. The two organizational reforms were the economic decentralization in 1957, which resulted in the creation of the sovnarkhoz system, and the bifurcation in 1962, which split the Party at many levels into agricultural and industrial sectors.[50] The recruitment reform was the policy of “renovation” (obnovlenie) of the elected bodies of the Party, initiated in 1961. Although the aim of this last reform was to get new blood into the apparatus, especially at the lower levels, one side effect was to multiply the number of positions, and that of persons holding them. Moreover, it seems that many lower-ranking Party secretaries escaped the operation of this rule, simply by finding new positions in different organizations,[51] such as Khrushchev’s new district-level Party commissions.[52]

The two issues of Soviet dissent catalyzed by the ensemble of these developments were developmental rationality and political democracy. Claims for developmental rationality—i.e., for the “rational” allocation of resources to promote economic development—turned into codes for the advocacy of particular resource allocation or economic reorganization issues.

By diminishing or removing the penalties for economic heterodoxy [starting in the mid-1950s], the party leadership invited opinion group activity. This activity has been slow in developing but, by the mid-1960s, economists generally felt free to participate in economic debates within poorly specified boundaries of ideological legitimacy.[53]

This relative freedom of debate also spread to other policy areas, including criminology, sociology, and foreign relations.[54]

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Claims for political democracy during this period were not identical with those of the democratic movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Under Khrushchev, such advocacy was limited to those segments of the elite and regime sectors in which policy specialists challenged the Party generalists’ monopoly on decision-making. Such claims nevertheless shared with the later democratic movement a protest against the monistic justification of unrestricted power in the hands of self-appointed agents.

Claims for political democracy during this period were not identical with those of the democratic movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Under Khrushchev, such advocacy was limited to those segments of the elite and regime sectors in which policy specialists challenged the Party generalists’ monopoly on decision-making. Such claims nevertheless shared with the later democratic movement a protest against the monistic justification of unrestricted power in the hands of self-appointed agents.

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[Note 44]. See, for instance, Leslie Dienes, “Issues in Soviet Energy Policy and Conflicts over Fuel Costs in Regional Development,” Soviet Studies, 23 (July 1971}, 26–58.

[Note 45]. For one early study, see Barry, “The Specialist in Soviet Policy-Making: The Adoption of a Law,” Soviet Studies, 16 (October 1964), 152–65. More recently and more generally, see Richard B. Remnek, ed. Social Scientists and Policy Making in the USSR (New York, 1977).

[Note 46]. See, inter alia, Joel J. Schwartz and William R. Keech, “Group Influence and the Policy Process in the Soviet Union,” American Political Science Review, 62 (September 1968), 840–51; and Stewart, “Soviet Interest Groups and the Policy Process,” World Politics, 22 (October 1969), 29–50.

[Note 47]. Robert E. Blackwell, Jr., “Elite Recruitment and Functional Change: An Analysis of the Soviet Obkom Elite, 1950-1968,” Journal of Politics, 34 (February 1972), 124–52; Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., “Toward A Reconceptualization of Political Change in the Soviet Union: The Political Leadership System,” Comparative Politics, 1 (January 1968), 228–44.

[Note 48]. Darrell P. Hammer, “Brezhnev and the Communist Party,” Soviet Union, 2, no. 1 (1975), 4.

[Note 49]. The latter is analyzed by Grey Hodnett, “Khrushchev and Party-State Control,” in Alexander Dallin and Alan F. Westin, eds. Politics in the Soviet Union (New York, 1966), pp. l13–64.

[Note 50]. See Armstrong, “Party Bifurcation and Elite Interest,” Soviet Studies, 17 (April 1966), 417–30.

[Note 51]. Hammer, 2–3.

[Note 52]. Discussed by Paul Cocks, “The Rationalization of Party Control,” in Chalmers Johnson, ed. Change in Communist Systems (Stanford, [Calif.], 1970), pp. 167–78, esp. pp. 170–72.

[Note 53]. Richard W. Judy, “The Economists,” in Skilling and Griffiths, Interest Groups in Soviet Politics, p. 249.

[Note 54]. On criminology, see Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy: Specialists in Policy-Making (New York, 1978), esp. chaps. 2–3; on sociology, George Fischer, “The New Sociology in the Soviet Union,” in Alex Simirenko, ed., Soviet Sociology: Historical Antecedents and Current Appraisals (Chicago, l966), pp. 275–92; on foreign relations, William Zimmerman, “International Relations in the Soviet Union: The Emergence of a Discipline,” Journal of Politics, 31 (February 1969), 52–70.