NATIONAL POLICY MACHINERY IN THE SOVIET UNION Mr. -Ordered to be printed from the Committee on Government Operations, submitted the following REPORT I. INTRODUCTION This study is an attempt to reconstruct from a mass of fragmentary evidence the machinery for national policymaking in the U.S.S.R. The reader will quickly find that all Soviet policy of any importance is determined by the Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and that the execution of policy is supervised by the Presidium in considerable detail. Thus this study, while it deals with many different aspects of the Soviet regime, is focused ultimately on the Presidium. The centralization of power in this small group of menand ultimately in one man-is the distinguishing mark of the Soviet system. The Presidium deals with questions of national security as an integral part of its consideration of the entire range of national activity. Furthermore, its members are responsible as individuals for the execution of policy in every field, and for this purpose they have a control over national life limited only by their resources of manpower and materials and by certain deep-seated national prejudices. In their response to an international challenge, the members of the Presidium can bring the full weight of Soviet power to bear without consideration of past precedents or future elections. They do not have to balance the conflicting interests of forces they do not control, except perhaps in their relations with one another. These are strong men-men who fought their way up through the ranks of the Communist Party at a time when this was indeed a risky business. As a corporate body they present a solid front to the outside; within, as with any body of strong men, there are inevitably strains and disagreements. However, for a number of reasons not directly related to the organization and functioning of Soviet policy machinery, such strains normally do not greatly affect its operation. Each Presidium member, in his course to the top, has become an able administrator in several fields and widely knowledgeable over the whole range of national policy-he has lived national policy for many years. (Mikoyan, for instance, has been involved in policy formulation since the 1920's.) Furthermore, the Soviet leaders are all Communists. From their lifelong membership in an elite corps, from their single-minded submergence of self in what they regard as a crusade, they draw a strength and unity of purpose which overrides many of the usual problems of committee decision. A common ideology provides the Soviet leaders with a uniform set of basic objectives; there is no need to argue these out before turning to the methods to be used in attaining these goals; Presidium members all start from the same basic assumptions. They are all trained in dialectic materialism; both literally and figuratively they speak the same language. Finally, they and all the officials beneath them are accustomed to the discipline of democratic centralism: open discussion until a decision is made, then absolute obedience. These principles govern their relations not only with one another, but also with Khrushchev who-as the final arbiter-gives to Soviet policy the flavor of his own personality. It should be pointed out, however, that the same kinds of men and in many cases the same men-staffed the upper levels of the Soviet regime in Stalin's last years, when the U.S.S.R.'s policy was as rigid as it today is pragmatic. Furthermore, the formal organization of Khrushchev's central apparat differs very little from that of Stalin's. The manner in which Khrushchev uses the men and administrative machinery available to him is thus the central problem of this study. It attempts to show the Soviet apparatus in both a static and a dynamic sense to interweave what it is with how it works. Section II deals with the central organs of party and state-the structure immediately surrounding Khrushchev and the Presidium. Sections III to VI then take up the advisory and executive organs in the fields of foreign, economic, scientific, and military policy, respectively. They deal not only with the structure, but also with the functioning and, when feasible, with the participation of the Presidium in each of these fields. There is also an annex which describes the apparatus used by the Presidium to mobilize public opinion in support of its policies. |