Policing post-Stalin society

RésuméLe maintien de l’ordre dans la société poststalinienne : la milicija et l’ordre public sous Hruščev.Avec la perte de ses ressources et les purges de son personnel, la milicija du milieu des années 1950 fut l’une des principales victimes institutionnelles de la déstalinisation de Hruščev. Parallèlement, l’amnistie massive de 1953 et la levée des contraintes staliniennes occasionnèrent une forte augmentation du niveau des infractions à l’ordre public recensées. Parmi ces infractions, on peut dire que celles qui ont eu le plus d’impact politiquement sont les éruptions de violence collective qui, ironiquement, visaient la milicija, symbole le plus proche et le plus accessible de l’État, sur lequel les masses pouvaient décharger leur colère. L’article avance la thèse que les événements de Novotcherkaskde juin 1962, conjugués au mécontentement général envers la politique économique qui leur servait de toile de fond, forcèrent le pouvoir soviétique à développer une nouvelle conception, post-stalinienne, de l’« ordre public » dans laquelle la milicija jouerait un rôle de premier plan.AbstractWith its resources cut and its staff purged the militsiia of the mid-1950s was one of the main institutional victims of Khrushchev's destalinization. In a parallel development, the mass amnesty of 1953 and the general lifting of Stalinist constraints led to a steep rise in recorded levels of public order offenses. Arguably the most politically significant of these were the spontaneous outbreaks of mass violence which, in an ironic twist, targeted the militsiia as the most immediate and accessible symbol of the state against which angry crowds could vent their spleen. The article suggests that the events at Novocherkassk of June 1962 and the background of widespread dissatisfaction with economic policies against which they were played out compelled the Soviet leadership to develop a new post-Stalinist conception of “public order,” one in which the militsiia would play the preeminent frontline role

Governing the interior

AbstractThere has been a vogue over the last twenty years to study the Western peripheries of the Soviet Union during the Second World War. While these studies are valuable, the dynamics of political rule in the Western peripheries were often quite different from those of the Soviet heartland. This essay shifts the focus towards the activities of the regional party committees of the interior during the war. In the first part it looks at the relationship between these committees and the “extraordinary system of administration” that was introduced in the first months of the conflict. It suggests that, despite their powerful mandates, agents of the extraordinary system were often no match for regional first secretaries, who enjoyed strong local followings and extensive support systems. In the second part, the essay suggests that regional party committees were nonetheless often unable to fulfil the mandate placed on them by the 18th Party Conference of 1941 to direct the industrial economy. Lacking the expertise, skills or authority, to coordinate regional-level enterprises, the obkoms were often in effect “captured” by ministerial interests. It was in recognition of this that regional party committees were rechanneled towards “ideological” leadership as the war neared its end.RésuméDepuis vingt ans, il est de bon ton d’étudier les périphéries occidentales de l’Union soviétique pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Ces études sont certes très précieuses, mais les dynamiques du pouvoir politique dans les périphéries occidentales étaient souvent bien différentes de celles en pratique dans le cœur du pays. Cet essai se concentre sur les activités des comités régionaux du parti de l’intérieur du pays pendant la guerre. Dans la première partie, il observe la relation entre ces comités et le « système extraordinaire d’administration » qui fut mis en place au cours des premiers mois du conflit. Il suggère qu’en dépit de leurs puissants mandats, les agents de l’extraordinaire administration ne pouvaient souvent pas concurrencer les premiers secrétaires régionaux, qui avaient de nombreux partisans locaux et de larges réseaux de soutien. Dans la seconde partie, l’essai suggère que, néanmoins, les comités régionaux du parti étaient souvent incapables de remplir le mandat, qui leur avait été confié en 1941 par le XVIIIe Congrès du parti, de diriger l’industrie. Manquant de compétences, de savoir-faire et d’autorité pour coordonner les entreprises au niveau régional, les obkom étaient en fait souvent « pris en otage » par les intérêts ministériels. Ce fut compte tenu de cela que les comités régionaux du parti furent réorientés vers une gouvernance « idéologique » alors que la guerre tirait à sa fin

The Cold Peace: Russo-Western Relations as a Mimetic Cold War

In 1989–1991 the geo-ideological contestation between two blocs was swept away, together with the ideology of civil war and its concomitant Cold War played out on the larger stage. Paradoxically, while the domestic sources of Cold War confrontation have been transcended, its external manifestations remain in the form of a ‘legacy’ geopolitical contest between the dominant hegemonic power (the United States) and a number of potential rising great powers, of which Russia is one. The post-revolutionary era is thus one of a ‘cold peace’. A cold peace is a mimetic cold war. In other words, while a cold war accepts the logic of conflict in the international system and between certain protagonists in particular, a cold peace reproduces the behavioural patterns of a cold war but suppresses acceptance of the logic of behaviour. A cold peace is accompanied by a singular stress on notions of victimhood for some and undigested and bitter victory for others. The perceived victim status of one set of actors provides the seedbed for renewed conflict, while the ‘victory’ of the others cannot be consolidated in some sort of relatively unchallenged post-conflict order. The ‘universalism’ of the victors is now challenged by Russia's neo-revisionist policy, including not so much the defence of Westphalian notions of sovereignty but the espousal of an international system with room for multiple systems (the Schmittean pluriverse)

Allocation under dictatorship : research in Stalin’s archives

We survey recent research on the Soviet economy in the state, party, and military archives of the Stalin era. The archives have provided rich new evidence on the economic arrangements of a command system under a powerful dictator including Stalin’s role in the making of the economic system and economic policy, Stalin’s accumulation objectives and the constraints that limited his power to achieve them, the limits to administrative allocation, the information flows and incentives that governed the behavior of economic managers, the scope and significance of corruption and market-oriented behavior, and the prospects for economic reform