The 1930s were a time of great complexity and political upheaval in the Soviet Union. This project provides a thorough overview of how the composition and organization of the Soviet government and the Communist Party changed throughout the 1930s using interactive org charts. These charts include: the relationships between the different governmental bodies and party organizations, their formal and informal powers, their relative size, whether the positions were appointed or nominally elected, and an indication of impact of the Purge on that particular body. As many bodies have very similar-sounding names (e.g. the “Central Executive Committee” is easily confused with the “Central Committee” even though these are completely different bodies), these charts also attempt to clarify nomenclature by listing the English and Russian names of the given organizations, along with acronyms and standard transliterations.
Besides clarifying political organization, these charts also contextualize how the Soviet apparatus changed over a tumultuous and politically fraught decade. During the 1930s, the government and the Party simultaneously expanded and contracted. Infamously, the Soviet apparatus shrank through massive Purges: Soviet citizens and people at virtually every level of government could be subject to trials and sent to gulags, exiled, or killed at some point across the period. These Purges resulted in the loss of personnel, Party members and Soviet citizens. However, the 1930s were also a time of expansion and increasing institutional complexity: a plan of rapid industrialization brought new factories and collectivized farms along with new people to manage them, a new education system to educate cadres and bring loyal members into the Party, and an expanded criminal justice system to prosecute accused foreign spies and native saboteurs.
The overall structure of the government and the Communist Party was inherited from what Lenin and the Communist Party established in the 1920s. The Communist Party was led by the Central Committee, which had different subcommittees to deal with different political issues (i.e. the Politburo, the Orgburo, and the Secretariat).
After the fall of the Tsar and the end of the Russian Civil War, the Communist Party had power over Russia, and established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Soviet government. At least in theory, the Party was separate from the government: the government (which was supposed to be composed of the proletariat) led the USSR, while the Party was a centralized “vanguard” that would protect and support the proletariat, and teach them Socialist ideals.
This is not what happened in practice. The Soviet government had two main institutions: the Congress of Soviets and the Council of People’s Commissars. The Congress of Soviets, the large legislative body composed mostly of workers from around the Union, had “supreme authority” according to the government constitution, but in actuality made few important decisions. Power was really concentrated in the Council of People’s Commissars, a small executive body run by Lenin and high-level party members (A former post of mine goes over this confusing organization in simpler terms here).
In broad strokes, this overall structure was maintained in the 1930s. This is reflected in the 1936 Soviet government constitution, which looks quite similar in this regard to the Soviet government constitution from the 1920s. As such, this project is organized in three main sections for the Party, the Council of People’s Commissars, and the Supreme Soviet (the legislative body that replaced the Congress of Soviets).
While the basic overall structure continued to look similar, the ramifications of policy from the 1920s primed the whole Soviet apparatus for major political change. In 1928, the Soviet government launched the First Five-Year Plan, which drove rapid industrialization and forced peasants onto collectivized farms. While the Plan brought rapid industrial progress, there were significant costs: farm collectivization brought widespread famine and death, and resistance among workers and peasants intensified political instability. The consequences of the First Five-Year Plan contributed to political change, and set the scene for the changes to come in the decade.
In the early 1930s, the Soviet people suffered from the First Five-Year Plan, which in practice sacrificed the livelihood of ordinary people for industrial progress. However, as Soviet power and enforcement penetrated more deeply in the city and the country, more common people were brought into the political fold and participated or supported the Party.
The dynamics among high-level party officials have been the subject of much scholarly debate, especially in terms of how much authoritarian control Stalin exerted over the Politburo, the Central Committee and the government. At the beginning of the decade, Stalin’s power was fluid rather than solidified. High-level party officials still occasionally expressed their dissent from the main party line through the press, and even threatened to resign if they strongly disagreed. Stalin acted as an arbiter between groups on any given issue, but often made the final decision. It’s important to note that factions inside the Politburo or Central Committee were not always absolute, and Stalin was not necessarily on any given “side”. As leading historian Oleg Khlevniuk argues, “archival materials… show numerous conflicts at the highest echelons of power that rose out of competing interests of the various agencies of government in which the Politburo members were involved.”
The failed execution of the First Five-Year Plan contributed to firing, institutional churn, and political exile as Stalin consolidated power. Earlier in the decade, Stalin used the lighter tools like firing, demotion, and public apologies from officials who crossed him. For example, Smirnov was demoted from the Orgburo, but after an apology to the Central Committee was allowed to remain in the party. Bukharin was removed from the Party for several years, but was later reelected to the Central Committee.
In the early 1930s, Soviet citizens suffered from the First Five-Year Plan, which in practice sacrificed the livelihood of ordinary people for industrial progress. As Soviet power and enforcement penetrated more deeply into cities and the countryside, some ordinary citizens found covert or overt ways to resist. Others joined or supported the Party for pragmatic reasons or out of genuine conviction.
Out in the countryside (where at least 80% of the population lived), peasants were forced onto collectivized farms with the aim of increasing agricultural output. Forced grain procurement to subsidize growth in the cities, at the hands of the police and cadres, contributed to famine in the countryside across the USSR. While many peasants resisted forced grain procurement for their survival, some participated in a campaign called dekulakization ( раскулачивание). Kulaks, rich peasants accused of sabotaging collectivized farms, could be executed or sent to labor camps. The First Five-Year Plan resulted in approximately five million deaths due to famine, with 20-30 thousand deaths related to dekulakization, where class enemies were executed for sabotaging the Plan. Two million accused kulaks were relocated to labor camps with dire conditions. 1
A similar tension between the Party and the people occurred in the cities. Some factory workers viewed the harsh working conditions demanded by industrialization targets as a betrayal of what was promised: more freedom and better working conditions. In a secret police memo, there were 1,464 strikes across all industries, with a similar number the following year. Similarly as some peasants denounced kulaks, factory workers denounced “wreckers”, people who intentionally or unintentionally sabotaged factory work or industrial output. Strikes subsided in 1933, as working conditions improved.
The Council of People’s Commissars was the main
nodes_npc <- data.frame(id = c("fo", "f", "md", "l", "text", "tim", "ag", "fi", "t", "ia", "ss", "just", "pb", "bm", "sc"),
label = c("Commissariar of\nFood Industry", "Commissariar of\nFishing Industry", "Commissariar of\nMeat and Dairy Industry", "Commissariar of\nLight Industry", "Commissariar of\nTextile Industry", "Commissariar of\nTimber Industry", "Commissariar of\nAgriculture State Grain and Livestock", "Commissariar of\nFinance", "Commissariar of\nTrade", "Commissariar of\nInternal Affairs", "Commissariar of\nState Security", "Commissariar of\nJustice", "Commissariar of\nPublic Health", "Commissariar of\nBuild Materials Industry", "Commissariar of\nState Control"),
shape = "box",
color = "lightgrey")
visNetwork(nodes_npc, main = "Republican Commissars", width = "100%", nodeSpacing = 15) %>%
visNodes(font = list(size = 75), margin = 5) %>%
visPhysics(
solver = "barnesHut",
barnesHut = list(
springLength = 50,
avoidOverlap = 1
))footnote↩︎