Inside Lenin's Government - Ideo - Lara Douds

Inside Lenin’s Government
Inside Lenin’s Government

Ideology, Power and Practice
in the Early Soviet State
Lara Douds
Bloomsbury Academic
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Note on Dates and Transliteration vii
List of Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
1 State and Revolution and the Idea of Soviet Democracy 11
2 Sovnarkom as Cabinet, 1917–19 21
3 The Sovnarkom Administration Department and Reception:
The ‘Anti-Bureaucratic’ Apparatus 55
4 Sverdlov, the Soviets and the Secretariat 83
5 Collegiality in the Early Soviet Government 97
6 The Decline of Sovnarkom and Rise of the Politburo, 1919–23 125
7 The Politics of Illness: Lenin and the Deputies, 1921–4 149
Conclusion 169
Notes 175
Bibliography 213
Index 225
Acknowledgements
My chief debt of gratitude is to Professor David Saunders. Always generous with

his time and endless wisdom throughout the life of this project, he read and
criticized draft chapters and gave support and assistance at difficult moments,
both academic and personal. I should also like to thank Dr Matthew Rendle,
who helped with the planning of this project. I also owe thanks to Dr Marianna
Taymanova, who taught me Russian, inspired me and assisted with practicalities
in arranging my research visits to Russia.
I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding, and
also to the Royal Historical Society, British Association of Slavonic and East
European Studies, and Newcastle University School of Historical Studies, for
providing grants for additional research trips to Moscow. Thanks are due to
the staff of British Library, the Russian State Library, the Russian State Archive
of Social and Political History (RGASPI) and the State Archive of the Russian
Federation (GARF) where most of my research was conducted. I would also
like to thank my teachers and the staff of the International Office at the Russian
State University for the Humanities (RGGU) where I stayed in Moscow while
conducting the archival research.
As I developed the manuscript, advice and critique from James Harris were
invaluable. I am very grateful for his clarity of thought and infectious passion
for the subject. I am also grateful to the members of the Study Group on the
Russian Revolution and the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian
Studies who allowed me the opportunity to discuss my research and provided
useful feedback. Geoff Swain, Chris Read, Aaron Retish, Katy Turton, Alexis
Pogorelskin, Lars Lih and Tony Heywood all lent their wisdom on particular
questions. Also, thanks are due to my colleagues at the University of York, in
particular David Moon, and my fellow Newcastle ‘kruzhok’ members Charlotte
Alston, Robert Dale and again David Saunders; our weekly lunchtime assembly
kept me sane during the final stages of producing the manuscript.
I am enormously grateful to my parents for their support and encouragement
throughout my studies. Most of all, thanks to my husband Brian who tolerated
the prolonged presence of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in our home with patience
and humour and to our baby son Hugo whose early arrival helped focus the
mind and strengthen the determination to finish the book.
Note on Dates and Transliteration
This book employs the Library of Congress system of transliteration from the
Cyrillic into the Latin alphabet, with some simplifications. Some frequently used
proper names are spelled in their more usual English forms where appropriate
(Trotsky and Osinsky, but Krestinskii).
Dates before January 1918 (when the Soviet government modernized their
calendar) are given according to the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, which
ran thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar in the West.
newgenprepdf
List of Abbreviations
CHEKA (Chrezvychainaia komissiia po bor'be s kontrrevoliutsiei i

sabotazhem) The Emergency Commission for Combating
Counter-Revolution and Sabotage
GOSPLAN (Gosudarstvennaia obshcheplannovaia komissiia) State

General Planning Commission
MRC (Voenno-revoliutsionnyi komitet) The Military

Revolutionary Committee
NEP (Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika) New Economic Policy
ORGBURO (Organnizatsionnyi Biuro TsK RKPb) The Organizational

Bureau of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
POLITBURO (Politicheskii Biuro TsK RKPb) The Political Bureau of the

Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
RABKRIN (Raboche-krestianskaia inspektsiia) The Worker-Peasant

Inspectorate
SOVNARKOM (Sovet Narodnykh komissarov) The Council of People’s

Commissars
TsK RKP (b) (Tsentralnyi komitet rossiskoi kommunisticheskoi partii

[Bolshevik]) Central Committee of the Russian Communist
Party (Bolshevik)
VESENKHA (Vserossiiskii sovet narodnogo khoziaistva) The National

Economic Council
VTsIK Sovetov (Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nyi Ispolnitel’nyi Komitet) The All

Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets
Introduction
Russia began its tumultuous twentieth century as a decrepit autocratic empire

until the strains of the First World War finally brought the tsarist regime crash-
ing down. In 1917, two revolutions swept through Russia, ending three centuries
of Romanov rule. In February, growing civil unrest, coupled with chronic food
shortages, erupted into popular open revolt, forcing the abdication of Nicholas
II, the last Russian tsar.
A committee of the Duma, the quasi- parliamentary body created after
Russia’s failed 1905 Revolution, appointed a Provisional Government, but it
faced a rival in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies whose
2500 delegates were elected from factories and military units in and around
the capital. The Soviet soon proved that it had greater authority than the
Provisional Government, which sought to continue Russia’s participation in
the European war. On 1 March the Petrograd Soviet issued its famous Order
No. 1, which directed the military to obey only the orders of the Soviet and
not those of the Provisional Government. Between March and October the
Provisional Government was reorganized four times. The initially liberal gov-
ernment evolved in to a series of coalitions with moderate socialists. None,
however, proved able to cope adequately with the major problems afflicting the
country: peasant land seizures, economic dislocation, nationalist independence
movements in non-Russian areas and the collapse of army morale at the front.
But while the Provisional Government’s power waned as it was unable to halt
Russia’s slide into political, economic and military chaos, that of the Soviets
was increasing as more sprung up in cities and towns across the country and
in the army. By autumn the Bolsheviks’ radical program of ‘peace, bread and
land’ had won the party considerable support among the hungry urban workers
and the soldiers, who were already deserting from the ranks in large numbers.
Further, the Bolsheviks now held majorities in Soviets across Russia and dom-
inated in the Petrograd Soviet in the centre. Lenin made repeated attempts to
persuade his party to topple the Provisional Government and by mid-October
the Bolsheviks had established a Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) of
2 Inside Lenin’s Government
the Petrograd Soviet to carry out this action. On 24–25 October the Bolshevik
and Left Socialist Revolutionary MRC staged a nearly bloodless coup, occupying
government buildings, telegraph stations and other strategic locations, timed to
coincide with the opening of the Second Congress of Soviets, to pass power into
its hands. The Bolsheviks came to power, not because they were cynical oppor-
tunists, but because their policies, formulated by Lenin from April onwards and
shaped by the events of the following months, placed them at the head of a genu
inely popular movement.
The October Revolution delivered the birth of the world’s first workers’
and peasants’ socialist state, the Soviet Republic. In constructing their post-
revolutionary government, Lenin and his fellow Soviet leaders were inspired by
Marxist ideals of freeing the working masses from oppression and inequality and
aimed to introduce the ‘most democratic’ society in history. Instead, they inad-
vertently ushered in an authoritarian Communist party-state dictatorship which
was even more brutal than anything even the tsars had managed to impose. Yet,
as Smith has warned, ‘We shall never understand the Russian Revolution unless
we appreciate that the Bolsheviks were fundamentally driven by outrage against
the exploitation at the heart of capitalism and the aggressive nationalism that had
led Europe into the carnage of the First World War. The hideous inhumanities
that resulted from the revolution, culminating in Stalinism, should not obscure
that fact that millions welcomed the revolution as the harbinger of social justice
and freedom.’1
But the shadow cast by the party-state monolith, which occupied the Soviet
political landscape from the early 1920s until Gorbachev’s attempt to disentan-
gle it in the 1980s, obscured the fact that there was an initial delay in institu-
tionalizing the party’s monopolistic and overbearing ‘leading and directing role’
by which its organs became the actual machinery of government. This delay
poses an inconvenient problem for the elegant logic of the totalitarian paradigm
which presented this repressive party-state system as the direct and inevitable
development of pre-revolutionary Bolshevik ideology. In the earliest years after
the October Revolution, the government was conducted not through the party
machinery, but through the Soviet state institutions, with the Council of People’s
Commissars, or Sovet Narodnykh Kommissarov (abbreviated to Sovnarkom)
at the apex. In fact, the earliest years of Lenin’s government were a fluid period
of improvisation, experimentation and negotiation of the nature of power and
legitimacy during which the Soviet leaders believed that they were construct-
ing a novel and superior democratic system, but were unsure of the particu-
lar organizational and structural forms that this new government should take.
Introduction 3
Marx had taught them to be wary of the ‘bourgeois parliamentary democracy’

of late-nineteenth-century Europe, which amounted to nothing more than the
oppressed majority being ‘allowed once every few years to decide which particu
lar representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in
parliament!’2
Yet Soviet leaders had no concrete programme of what the post-revolutionary
government of the transitional phase of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’
should look like, save certain loosely defined values inherited from Marx. While
the Bolsheviks rejected ‘bourgeois parliamentary democracy’ and its ‘con’ of
separation of powers as repression of the proletariat by the capitalist class, this
did not mean that they immediately embraced repressive Communist party-
state dictatorship. For the post-October state builders an important element
of ‘genuine’ democracy was economic equality, but in politics too institutional
choices had to be made, at least until the state began to ‘wither away’ under
the future socialist society. There were competing visions among radical social-
ists who led the new regime of how this Soviet democracy was to be expressed
in practice, but government by Sovnarkom combining supreme executive and
legislative power, responsible to the hierarchy of Soviets from local to national
level, expressed at the centre in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
of Soviets (Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nyi Ispolnitel’nyi Komitet or VTsIK), was ini-
tially the institutional form it took. Other institutional innovations intended
to deliver a ‘proletarian’ democratic government included ‘collegiality’ within
Soviet government and administrative institutions. The new leaders found
meaning in how the staff of the government administered and took decisions,
initially rejecting hierarchical control and one-man management and seeing
something revolutionary in ‘internal self-discipline’. The social origins of those
working in government and bureaucracy were also felt to be a guarantee of
genuine democracy. Proletarian class and party background were considered
essential to healthy functioning of Soviet democracy, although in practice, there
was a lack of able cadres to staff the new government. It was impossible to find
enough literate, capable workers and peasants and so Lenin’s government was
forced to rely on the hold-over white collar staff and employ oversight instru-
ments such as the Worker’s and Peasant’s Inspectorate, or Rabkrin, to survey
their activity instead.3 Other features, rather than the ‘con’ of separation of pow-
ers and rule of law as defined by Marx, of the government institutions were con-
sidered essential in de-bureaucratizing the apparatus of power by linking the
masses to new regime. The ‘Receptions’ of Sovnarkom and the commissariats
were viewed as a useful means of bridging the gap between state and society
and making the Soviet government responsive to and interactive with the
masses. All of these innovative experiments in ‘Soviet’ democracy were, how-
ever, short-lived. Within a couple of years it became clear that these innova-
tive measures had failed to deliver the desired results. Instead they impeded the
effective functioning of government, with its pressing tasks of restoring eco-
nomic stability, and were side-lined. Instead of guaranteeing ‘proletarian democ-
racy’ Rabkrin’s observation led to surveillance and policing from above, and the
Reception became a form of personalized, manual control. Collegiality in the
administrative organs and collegial commissariats led to inefficiency in oper
ation of the government machinery and a failure to develop strong ministers to
populate the commissariats and cement them as a real locus of authority. Also,
from 1919 the expanding Communist Party machinery, in particular its apex,
the Politburo, began to encroach on Sovnarkom’s authority in matters of gov-
ernment during the Civil War. The shift in executive power from state to party
in this early period resulted in an abnormal situation where, as Leon Trotsky
commented in 1923, ‘leadership by the party gives way to administration by its
organs’.4 Thus, the history of the first years of Lenin’s government illustrates that
the monolithic, authoritarian party-state was not the immediate nor conscious
outcome of Bolshevik ideology and intentional policy, but instead the result of
ad hoc improvisation and incremental decisions shaped by both the complex,
fluid ideological inheritance and the practical exigencies on the ground.
The centenary of the birth of the Soviet regime in 1917 presents an ideal
opportunity to reassess the formative period of the first socialist workers’ and
peasants’ government and to return to the political questions which preoccu-
pied Western scholars of Soviet Russia during the height of East-West tensions
in the 1950s and 1960s. A century on, a monograph on the functioning of the
supreme central Soviet government apparatus in its first phase, utilizing the
archival materials available since the 1990s, does not exist in English. As one
expert noted a decade ago ‘Soviet political history has been under a cloud for the
past 20 or 30 years’.5 From the 1970s onwards the focus of historiography on the
Soviet Union turned to social and then to cultural approaches. This ‘turn’ away
from high politics and the early revolutionary period has meant that many key
issues of early Soviet political history have not yet received full, scholarly treat-
ment. Even the post-1991 archival turn in Soviet history refocused scholarship
towards provincial and social history, so that central state institutions remained
side-lined. Those few political historians working on Soviet Russia in recent
years have focused on the Stalin and post-Stalin era, leaving the revolutionary
period fallow. Further, Soviet political history has predominantly focused on
Introduction 5
the Communist Party and ignored ‘state’ institutions. The apparatus of ‘Soviets’,
or workers’ councils in whose name the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, has not
received the attention it deserves.
During the Cold War both defenders and detractors of the Soviet system were
united in their desire to discern the existence of an all-powerful Communist
Party from immediately after the October Revolution of 1917. They colluded
in imagining the existence, as early as that, of a party-state, a state in which the
Communist Party controlled and decided everything. In the USSR, Soviet his-
torians produced little more than rudimentary surveys of the structure of Soviet
institutions and their corresponding constitutional arrangements. From the
mid-1960s, scholars such as M.P. Iroshnikov, E.B. Genkina and E.N. Gorodetskii
were granted limited archival access and produced the first valuable works on the
central state apparatus.6 These works, however, were coloured by official hagiog-
raphy and demonology, avoiding important but controversial issues such as the
change in party-state relations in the early years of the Soviet regime. Iroshnikov
studied neither the operation nor the policies of the new government, but instead
the physical creation of the Sovnarkom and the People’s Commissariats in the
first six months of Soviet power. Genkina’s major works analyse Lenin’s state
activity as chairman of Sovnarkom only in the New Economic Policy (NEP)
period. She looked at what Sovnarkom did, rather than how it did it, and her
post-1921 chronology meant she too avoided addressing Sovnarkom’s change in
status over its first five years. Thus Soviet scholars avoided the controversial issue
of the creeping encroachment of the party’s Politburo on what was previously
the Sovnarkom’s jurisdiction.
The ‘totalitarian school’ of history dominant during the 1950s and 1960s in
Western scholarship also focused on Communist Party ideology, institutions
and personalities and wrote off the Soviet institutions as irrelevant. According
to this interpretation, as Stephen Cohen summarized, ‘In October 1917, the
Bolsheviks, a small, unrepresentative, and already or embryonically totalitar-
ian party, usurped power and thus betrayed the Russian Revolution. From that
moment on, as in 1917, Soviet history was determined by the totalitarian political
dynamics of the Communist party, as personified by its original leader, Lenin –
monopolistic politics, ruthless tactics, ideological orthodoxy, programmatic
dogmatism, disciplined leadership and centralized bureaucratic organization.
Having quickly monopolized the new Soviet government and created a rudi-
mentary party-state, the Communist won the Russian civil war of 1918–21 by
discipline, organization and ruthlessness.’7 Thus, as a result of undue emphasis
on the party’s activities in the initial years after the October Revolution, the
role and importance of Soviet institutions have been seriously underestimated.

Western scholars overlooked the Soviet state apparatus until the late 1970s. They
found access to relevant material difficult and were dazzled by the later suprem-
acy of the party machine. They regarded the ‘state’ apparatus as of minor import
ance and instead focused almost solely on the role of the Communist Party in
the political process, even in the earliest years of Soviet power. In the 1950s and
1960s, prominent Western scholars argued that the overbearing, institutional-
ized position of the Communist Party in the one-party dictatorship under Stalin
was the logical and inevitable development of the role Lenin sought for the party
before the revolution.8 They traced the monolithic party-state directly back to
Lenin’s pre-revolutionary writings on party organization. Leonard Schapiro, for
example, argued that Lenin developed a highly centralized, strictly disciplined
party and immediately after the Revolution ‘govern[ed] through the full Central
Committee’.9 The ‘totalitarian model’ developed by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew
Brzezinski posited that ‘democracy’ represented by the United States was the
exact polar opposite to ‘totalitarianism’ represented by the USSR.10 The United
States represented a ‘government by the will of the people’ and the USSR rep-
resented a ‘government against the will of the people’. In this context, it is not
surprising that the dominant view was that Bolshevism was inherently authori-
tarian, that the 1917 was a coup d’état and the new regime always lacked popular
legitimacy, that Leninism led inevitably to Stalinism, precluding any attempt to
understand nascent Soviet ‘democracy’ on its own, unique terms.11
Since the 1970s, there have been various challenges to the totalitarian canon,
all of which rejected this deterministic view of a dictatorial dogma shaping
post-revolutionary politics and state building. Some scholars recognized an
early democratic, idealistic impulse and asked how a revolution that promised
the liberation of working people ended up generating an extremely violent and
hyper-centralized dictatorship. Early ‘revisionists’ such as Robert Tucker and
Stephen Cohen argued that Leninism and Stalinism were two different political
phenomena, and that the one did not lead inevitably to the other.12 In the 1980s
a second wave of revisionists from among social historians variously attributed
the origins of Communist party-state dictatorship to Russian backwardness and
the impact of the Civil War.13 Studies of 1917 challenged the notion of a coup
d’état, and identified elements of popular support.14 Arch-revisionist Alexander
Rabinowitch directed his early research at discrediting the notion of the
Bolshevik Party as a hyper-centralized organizational weapon.15 Yet if the party
was, as he argued, ‘open, relatively democratic and decentralized’, the question of
how it grew so quickly into a highly authoritarian and bureaucratic organization
Introduction 7
which monopolized the functions of the Soviet government lay unresolved. His
book The Bolsheviks in Power then situated the emergence of a repressive, dic-
tatorial party-state among the various political, military and economic crises
of the immediate post-revolutionary period. He clearly demonstrated how cir-
cumstances, such as the crisis in food supply, industrial collapse, violent oppos
ition from various groups, mass unemployment and the dwindling of Bolshevik
personnel, shaped the agenda and decisions of the regime. Yet when he writes
that ‘neither revolutionary ideology nor an established pattern of dictatorial
behaviour are of much help to explain the fundamental changes in the character
and political role of the Bolshevik party or of the soviets in Petrograd, between
November 1917 and November 1918’, he throws the baby out with the bathwater,
so to speak.
Despite much fruitful revisionist scholarship, there has been little attention
paid to the actual Soviet apparatus itself. Even Oscar Anweiler, the foremost
Western scholar of the Soviets, is pessimistic about the fate of these bodies in
the immediate post-revolutionary period, writing that ‘the Bolshevik October
Revolution turned the Russian soviets from militant revolutionary organs into
pillars of the new state power’ but that ‘this fusion of new soviet power and the
Bolshevik insurrection proved disastrous for the soviets themselves; after this
they were merely servants of the party and a cover-up for Bolshevik dictator-
ship’.16 Anweiler concluded that while ‘the Bolshevik battle cry for the October
Revolution was “All Power to the Soviets” ’, the assumption of power was ‘desired
and executed by only some workers, soldiers and peasants soviets…Nevertheless,
Lenin and Trotsky by force and demagogy eliminated this opposition and laid
the groundwork for their party dictatorship behind the façade of the soviets.’17
In contrast, T.H. Rigby was the only historian to acknowledge the early vital
importance of the Soviet state apparatus in Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom
1917–1922. He challenged the accepted wisdom by highlighting the neglected
fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat did not at first mean government by
the party, but by the Sovnarkom.18 Rigby was the first Western scholar to dis-
cuss in detail how this supreme central state apparatus operated and claimed
that in the earliest period of Soviet power it was state rather than party bodies
which governed. Many scholars subsequently recognized that the party organs
did not achieve primacy until the Civil War years.19 But in his pioneering study
Rigby acknowledged that ‘the evidence available does not allow us to chronicle
the evolution of this dependence in detail’ and that while ‘the broad outlines
are clear enough…precise information on agendas is lacking’. This book is an
institutional history of the supreme central Soviet state apparatus which uses the
now-accessible archival evidence, including agendas, minutes and departmen-

tal papers, to compare the functioning of Sovnarkom first to the Party Central
Committee and then to the Politburo, sets out their respective roles in the first
years of Soviet power, and considers the shift from 1919 in the locus of author-
ity from state to party. While Soviet archives were closed, scholars could only
fantasize about what paradigm-altering discoveries were hidden there, leading
to a degree of fetishization of the archives when they finally opened to foreign-
ers after the fall of Communism. In fact, as has often been the case, in many
respects Rigby’s argument has stood the test of time well. Rather than radically
revising his thesis, this research adds detail and elucidates aspects of his argu-
ment on the shifting locus of power in the early Soviet government. Where the
archival records under consideration have shed light in an interesting new direc-
tion, however, is on the mentalities of those in power. The internal culture at
work in the state institutions and the values and mindsets of leaders, officials and
administrators can be observed more clearly. The historian can now ‘see like the
state’, so to speak. This new angle is worth investigating, not in order to accept,
uncritically, what the regime thought about itself and its mission, but to layout
its self-perception in greater depth without dismissing these views as disingenu
ous posturing.
Thus, this book also attempts to outline the institutional arrangements, prac-
tice and internal culture of the nascent Soviet system, which were inspired by
Marxist ideas, but ultimately failed spectacularly to create a the superior form
of democracy envisioned. Lenin suggested in his notes to State and Revolution,
‘The apparatus we need not and must not destroy. It must be arrested from sub-
jection to the capitalists…must be cut away…and it must be subjected to the pro-
letarian soviets, it must be broader, more all-embracing, more part of the whole
people.’20 While Rigby was correct to remark that ‘no effective general formula
for proletarianising and de-bureaucratising the field units of the Soviet state was
consistently implemented’,21 this does not mean that experimental methods to
achieve these outcomes were neglected altogether. The new leaders had to grap-
ple with the institutions inherited across the revolutionary divide:the Soviets
on one hand, and the tsarist ministerial bureaucracy inherited mostly intact
via the Provisional Government, on the other. They also faced circumstantial
challenges of military pressures and economic dislocation from the first weeks
of Soviet power. Reconciling all of these variables made for a colourful experi-
ment with ad hoc improvisation based on loosely defined ideological principles.
This book explores the overlooked but fascinating ways in which Soviet leaders
attempted to apply elements of Marxist and socialist thought to the institutions
Introduction 9
at their disposal to create a superior form of democracy, although the experi-

mental and innovative measures they trialled ultimately failed to deliver a freer
and fairer system and instead crystallized into a dysfunctional state apparatus
and a Communist Party dictatorship by the death of Lenin in 1924.
This work, then, does not refute the ‘circumstantialist’ case nor the significance
of the transformation of the party machinery itself, as it rapidly expanded and
‘militarized’ during the Civil War, but adds a further layer of explanation to the
rise of the party-state.22 It is necessary understand the processes at work inside
both sets of apparatus to fully explain the shift in authority from one to the other.
The book tries to avoid over-emphasis of the determinacy of ideology, seeing ide-
als as not imposed nor abandoned, but reshaped in response to practical experi-
ence; ideological predispositions were shaped in certain ways by the exigencies
of this tumultuous period and by the pre-existing political and organizational
cultures in society at large and inside the apparatus of Soviets and ministerial
bureaucracy inherited across the revolutionary divide. All in all, the emergence
of the repressive, party-state dictatorship seems to have been more a crime of
omission than commission. It was the Bolsheviks’ inability to achieve their goals,
their myopia rather than their grand vision that determined developments, in
part due to inadequate and even naive conceptions, and in part due to the chal-
lenging environment in which this nascent democracy struggled to take root.
While Chapter 1 explores the ideological heritage of the revolutionary govern-
ment, Chapter 2 analyses in detail the practical functioning of Sovnarkom vis-à-
vis that of the Bolshevik-Communist Party Central Committee and its Politburo
in the first year and a half of the period under consideration (October 1917–
March 1919). It examines Sovnarkom’s period as a Bolshevik–Left SR (Socialist
Revolutionaries) coalition government from December 1917 to May 1918. This
chapter reclaims the neglected dual-party phase. It explores the practical func-
tioning of this coalition, how well the Bolsheviks and Left SRs worked together,
how far the Left SRs were able to influence the government decision-making
process and the impact of the Left SR departure from government in spring 1918
on Sovnarkom as an institution. Chapters 6 and 7 continue this story, reviewing
the practical functioning of Sovnarkom vis-à-vis that of the Central Committee
and its Politburo in the last three years of the period under consideration, dem-
onstrating the encroachment of the latter upon the former and considering rea-
sons for the shift in the locus of government authority. The intervening chapters
identify the features introduced to the state apparatus, instead of separation of
powers, to attempt ‘de-bureaucratization’ and the creation of a genuinely ‘demo
cratic’ proletarian state. Chapter 3 looks at the administrative machinery of
Sovnarkom (its physical structure, personnel, and organizational culture) and

explains how it was crucial to the functioning of the revolutionary government.
In the first year or two after the October Revolution, Sovnarkom’s administrative
apparatus was certainly more developed than the equivalent party apparatus,
which only began to expand from spring 1919. This chapter also demonstrates
that the Administration Department of Sovnarkom exemplified the supposed
anti-bureaucratic, collegial apparatus which Lenin envisaged as the ‘revolution-
ary’ state, as well as exploring the Sovnarkom Reception, an institution which
offered an open door and point of contact between state and society and han-
dled citizen’s questions, demands and complaints. In the early Soviet govern-
ment, this practice was developed into a key feature of the revolutionary ‘living’
state, according to Lenin’s rhetoric, connected and responsive to the needs of the
people. Chapter 4 investigates party-state relations through the figure of Iakov
Sverdlov, arguing that he was a crucial intermediary between party and state in
the earliest years of Soviet power. Chapter 5 argues for the centrality of a collegial
modus operandi prevailing in the Soviet state apparatus at this time. It concludes
that this collegiality ultimately hampered authoritative, rapid decision-making
and so played a part in the domination of the state bodies by the Politburo. It
argues that the atmosphere of 1917 was a rejection of ‘bosses’ and deference and
that the collegia represented an expression of this revolutionary feeling inside
the state apparatus. In reality, however, these features failed to deliver a superior
form of democracy and instead either replicated traditional patriarchal practices
of the tsarist regime or hampered the efficient operation of the state machinery
by introducing dysfunction, ultimately encouraging the flow of executive power
to the party.
1
State and Revolution and the Idea

of Soviet Democracy
In explaining the development of Lenin’s government historians have tended

to pay too much attention to his pamphlet on conspiratorial, centralized, disci-
plined party organization of 1902, What Is to Be Done?, and not enough to his
major work, written during the revolutionary year of 1917, State and Revolution.
Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? has long been seen as the founding document
of a ‘party of a new type’ and the genetic code for the rise of the dictatorial,
anti-democratic party-state. For some, it provided a model of ‘vanguard party’
that was the essence of Bolshevism, for others it manifested Lenin’s elitist and
manipulating attitude towards the workers.1 Yet Harding debunked the standard
argument that Lenin’s battle against the trend of ‘economism’ among Russian
socialists at the turn of the last century and his efforts to create a centralized party
represent a turn towards an elitist, proto-totalitarian conception of the party as
one consisting of bourgeois intellectuals exercising tutelage over a working class
incapable of achieving socialist consciousness. As Harding notes, Lenin’s emphasis
on the need for professional revolutionaries reflected not an organizational prin-
ciple, but his desire to create a strong, more centralized national party that could
withstand tsarist repression.2 Lih also made a persuasive case that Lenin’s argu-
ment rests instead on an optimistic confidence in the workers’ revolutionary
inclinations and on his admiration of German Social Democratic practices in
particular.3 Thus, the status of this text as a foundational manifesto for the shape
of a post-revolutionary government, and a repressive, inevitably dictatorial and
monolithic one at that, has been convincingly quashed.
On the other hand, State and Revolution attempts a prescription for what a
real socialist revolution would have to achieve and a model of the institutions it
would construct. Yet scholars seeking to account for the origins and features of
the Soviet state, its development and the relation of Lenin and his ideas to that
process have been perplexed by the possible connection this book bore with
what subsequently occurred under his leadership and that of Stalin. The virtues
of libertarianism, spontaneity, proletarian creativity, self-emancipation, and the
aspirations for a truly free society based upon tolerance, equality and fraternity
all resound through the writing. Such is the contrast, at first sight, between the
argument of State and Revolution and the manner in which the Soviet regime
had actually developed by the early 1920s that the text appears to offer no help
in understanding what actually happened in practice. More recently, however,
James Ryan has resurrected the practical significance of State and Revolution,
arguing that it needs to be reconciled with the Lenin of the Red Terror and War
Communism, and proposing that an interpretive framework be created ‘that
does not in essence re-impose the traditional antagonistic duality between the
“good” and the “bad” Lenin. It is more accurate to understand this duality as
existing simultaneously in Lenin’s thought. In this way, Ryan argues, ‘State and
Revolution, ‘contains the seeds of the destruction of human life that was inflicted
on the Soviet populace from late 1917 through to the Civil War period’.4 While
Ryan has reclaimed the text’s heritage of violence as played out in practice in
the early years of Soviet power, this book similarly seeks to reconcile the demo
cratic impulses also expressed in the text with the experimentation in features
designed to deliver proletarian democracy in practice during this same period.
On closer inspection it can be observed that certain assumptions in State and
Revolution were incarnated in the regime’s practices, from both the democratic
and the potentially ‘authoritarian’ strands of the work. State and Revolution saw
Lenin struggling to work out what the post-revolutionary state would look like.
Lenin claimed that ‘democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the
rich –that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into
the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the supposedly
“petty”, details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women),
in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the
right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capit
alist organization of the daily press…we see restriction after restriction upon
democracy.’5 We can see in early Bolshevik state building that certain principles
highlighted in State and Revolution were to be avoided, such as the ‘con’ of sep-
aration of powers and the dangers of bureaucratic organization, and others to
be valued, including delegatory politics and an urge to blur the line between
state and society through the use of collegia, direct contact with the masses
through public reception facilities and proletarian composition. These features
of the central Soviet state apparatus in its early years, outlined in the following
chapters, can be seen to be inspired by notions pervading Lenin’s text. Yet these
State and Revolution and the Idea of Soviet Democracy 13
ideas inherited from Marx on what the transitional ‘dictatorship of the prole-
tariat’ would look like were underdeveloped, and Lenin’s attempts to expand
on them lacked depth and sophistication. Nevertheless, State and Revolution is
misunderstood if dismissed as an aberrant tract that is characteristic only of the
months before the October Revolution; its connections with the post-October
era were significant but complex.
For most historians State and Revolution stands apart from Lenin’s other
writings. His other major texts are all practical and timely: all originated
as a response to a specific political problem and are characterized by real-
ism, rejecting any impracticality, abstract morality or ethical motivations.
Interpretations of State and Revolution vary from suggestions that it was a
sincere ‘moment of madness’ inspired by the excitement of the revolutionary
year, but unconnected to anything that later transpired, to the discovery in it
of less sincere, more calculated and tactical motives and that the democratic
instincts it espouses are a mask for something more sinister. Nevertheless, for
most scholars the discrepancies between author, text and history are so pro-
found and obvious as to deprive the text of any genuine substance.6 But per-
haps it is possible to set State and Revolution in some concrete context. Writing
the book in summer 1917, Lenin was excited by the hope that anti-capitalist
revolutions were imminent throughout Europe. He desired to advise social-
ists on the ways to bring about a new political and social order and tried to
work out for himself what this might look like in practical terms. After 1914
the First World War proved to radical socialists the inability of parliaments
to control and subdue the tendencies that brought war. Lenin also witnessed
the Provisional Government as a ‘bourgeois’ cabinet serving the interests of
capitalist imperialists, particularly with the revelation of Miliukov’s telegram
of April 1917 pronouncing secret expansionist war aims. Everywhere Lenin
saw signs that the view of German social democrats Karl Kautsky and Eduard
Bernstein that socialism could be achieved peacefully through parliamentary
means and that the socialist state would possess a ‘sort of parliament’ and use
bureaucratic organizational forms for some administrative functions was fun-
damentally flawed. Until 1914 Lenin had not objected to this but now he repu-
diated it as ‘bourgeois parliamentarianism’. Lenin was not the first to do so.
Dutch socialist and leading Marxist theorist Anton Pannekoek had attacked
Kautsky’s lack of revolutionary zeal and Lenin agreed now that he was right to
criticize Kautsky for failing to recognize the dismantling of the bourgeois state
as essential to Marxism. Yet even Pannekoek was too vague about the institu-
tional framework which would take its place.
So what was Lenin’s solution? The basic premise of State and Revolution is
that all states are instruments for the oppression of one class, or set of classes, by
another. The state form constructed under the capitalist mode of production was
appropriate only for that social system. For a new class power, it was therefore
necessary that the old state machine be destroyed and a new one constructed.
This new state is termed the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. The ‘dictatorship of
the proletariat’ will, however, involve less need for a state machine than any pre-
vious regime because, first, the ruling class will for the first time be the majority
of the population and, second, the administrative tasks of the state had, accord-
ing to Lenin, been simplified by the development of the forms and forces of pro-
duction under capitalism. This state will, from its inception, be set on a course
of withering away, as the conflicts it exists to resolve are eliminated in the course
of development of the socialist economy. Nevertheless, initially a state of some
form will be needed to suppress the remnants of the old ruling classes, and to
regulate the distribution of economic resources and rewards during the transi-
tional period leading to a socialist economy.
According to Lenin, then, socialist forces could achieve power only in a vio-
lent break with the bourgeois state. State and Revolution was as much about the
necessity of a revolution, as the shape of the new state. The work condemned
‘parliamentarianism’ both as a means of achieving power and as a way of gov-
erning. He argued that the structure of parliaments establishes false barriers
between rulers and the ruled so the political system must become delegatory
rather than representative. For Lenin, parliaments elevated the principle of separ
ation powers, which reduces or eliminates the possibility of democratic control
over the functions of the state. Thus, all functions must be conferred on a single
institution; the new state would not recognize the division of powers established
by capitalist regimes. Distinctions between representative, legislative, executive,
administrative and judicial functions would be removed. The socialist state,
therefore, will not be of a parliamentary type, but of a Soviet type. The tasks
of running the state could be fulfilled by any member of society and to ensure
maximum participation in these tasks, and remove the possibility of the devel-
opment of a bureaucratic elite, the holding of office would be governed by prin-
ciples of rotation of office, instant recall for violation of mandate and payment of
average workingmen’s salaries to all officials and administrators.
Richard Sakwa explored this concept of ‘Commune democracy’, as expressed
by Lenin in State and Revolution, pointing out that it was the antonym of lib-
eral democracy: ‘Both have their roots in the patterns of Greek democracy, but
whereas the liberal democratic tradition of John Locke and J. S. Mill stresses
accountability and representation, commune democracy describes an approach

and understanding of politics which draws on the collective and participatory
elements of the Greek polis. In modern times commune democracy derives
some of its inspiration from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and in particular his con-
demnation of civil society and representative democracy in favour of direct
democracy.’7
Lenin’s critique contains a grain of truth, although his actual solutions are
lacking substance and sophistication. At the time of his writing in the first
decades of the twentieth century it is clear that in Europe’s emerging liberal par-
liamentary systems old elites retained their dominant position over the working
classes who were largely excluded from the franchise and power continued to
reside with landed interests. Some experts have found Lenin’s censure of par-
liamentary ‘bourgeois’ democracy to be justified, to some degree, in both the-
ory and practice. By their very nature they cannot transform government into a
purely transparent process. As Polan wrote, ‘The business of government is too
complex and the interests involved too diverse to make that possible. Certainly
any separation of powers results in opportunities for “undemocratic” activities
and domains to develop. In the grey areas where domains overlap, in the no-
man’s land where domains fail to connect, in all manner of corners, power may
be exercised without responsibility and corruption may flourish in subterranean
fashion. Apart from constant vigilance and a readiness to reform existing pro-
cedures and institutions to correct those abuses that come to light, there is no
answer to such problems.’8
Indeed Lenin’s condemnation of contemporary parliaments as ‘talking shops’
was not an isolated criticism at this time. ‘Parliamentarism’ was recognized by
other thinkers as compromised and ineffective. Max Weber made the same
criticism of ‘a merely speech-making parliament in Germany’ and argued for
a ‘working’ institution.9 The phrases are identical to Lenin’s, but his argument
is more sophisticated. Weber’s solution to underdevelopment was not aboli-
tion, like Lenin, but development. Parliament must be turned into a body which
could do its job through parliamentary selection and accountability of leaders
and parliamentary control of the administration in the sense of permanent sur-
veillance, a more considered solution than Lenin’s.
Some historians point to what they consider a lack of seriousness in Lenin’s
writing, stressing how little thought Lenin gave to the actual workings of Soviet
institutions, precisely how their administrative functions were to be fulfilled
and their democratic procedures ensured. John Keep attributes this largely to
the demands of a strategy for obtaining power: ‘The silence was in large part
tactical: Lenin realized that by entering into too much detail he would spoil the
bright image of the future that he was delineating.’10 Instead, however, it can
be argued that the text demonstrates Lenin’s desire to create a type of socialist
commune democracy, but his failure to grasp the complexity of the task and to
construct a viable alternative to liberal ‘parliamentarism’. There are gaps and mis-
conceptions in Lenin’s ‘masterpiece’, and the implications arising from his super-
ficial conceptions of bureaucracy and democratic control in State and Revolution
were disastrous in the long-run. But Lenin was not hiding anything: a genuine
democratic impulse existed, but in the end his concrete solutions proved naive,
impractical and ultimately inadequate.
Lenin believed that economic development resulted in a reduction in the tasks
and responsibilities of the state but this notion appears naive in view of the growth
of the administrative functions of twentieth-century states. Though he paid lit-
tle attention to the actual functions of the modern state apparatus in his text,
Lenin was aware of the tendency of administrative organs to establish their own
autonomy. Yet when he addressed this problem he did not extend nor improve
on the writings of Marx or Engels, relying on their analysis of the example of
the Paris Commune to advise measures against bureaucratism: ‘Against this
transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society
into masters of society –an inevitable transformation in all previous states –the
Commune used two infallible means. First, it filled all posts –administrative,
judicial and educational, by election and on the basis of universal suffrage of all
concerned subject to recall at any time by the electors. Second, it paid all officials,
high or low, only the wages received by other workers…In this way a dependable
barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding
mandates to delegates to representative bodies, which were added on besides.’11 In
discussing political forms to enable the expression of the will of the people, a sub-
stitute for the parliamentary form which fulfils that task in bourgeois democra-
cies, Lenin looked to 1871: ‘The Commune, wrote Marx, was to be a working, not
a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.’12 Thus, in State
and Revolution Lenin stumbled towards an alternative model: ‘The way out of
parliamentarism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and
the elective principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions from
talking shops into “working” bodies…A working, not a parliamentary body –this
is a blow straight from the shoulder at the present day parliamentarians and par-
liamentary lapdogs of Social Democracy! Take any parliamentary country from
America to Switzerland, from France to Britain, Norway and so forth –in these
countries the real business of state is performed behind the scenes and is carried
on by the departments, chancelleries and General Staffs. Parliament is given up to

talk for the special purpose of fooling the “common people”.’13 Lenin’s alternative,
to overcome these deceptions, was thus: ‘The commune substitutes for the venal
and rotten parliamentarism of bourgeois society institutions in which freedom of
opinion and discussion does not degenerate into deception, for the parliamentar-
ians themselves have to work, have to execute their own laws, have themselves to
test the results achieved in reality, and to account directly to their constituents.
Representative institutions themselves remain, but there is no parliamentarism
here as a special system, as the division of labour between the legislative and
executive, as a privileged position for the deputies.’14
This basic formula for successful democratic control of government machin-
ery, however, posed as many problems as it solved for Soviet democracy. If the
‘parliamentarians’ of the Soviet system have to ‘execute their own laws’ then he is
talking about the same people as in the discussion of administrators and bureau-
crats. There is no division in Lenin’s conception between the nature of the ‘rep-
resentative’ institutions and any other branch of the state apparatus: he conflates
politics and administration. As Polan explained, ‘The elected deputies are to be
civil servants, ministers and representatives of their constituents at one and the
same time. They have to make the laws, carry them out and criticize them. Here
Lenin fails to treat bureaucratization as a serious problem. If he is accepting that
there are dangerous potentialities in the roles of a representative, of a legislator,
of a civil servant, and of a minister, his answer to those dangers borders on the
absurd: combine all of these roles into one, embody them in a single individual.
No explanation is offered for demonstrating why the priorities of the represen-
tative would win out against the other functions allocated to the same person.’15
Another underlying implication of conflating politics and administration is
that there is no conceptual space for a parliamentary opposition. Delegates are
described as being representatives, legislators and executives. A delegate who is
only a representative, who wishes to bear no responsibility for legislation with
which he or his constituents disagree, but claims the right for his opposing and
critical arguments to be heard, who refuses both a legislative and executive role,
is not catered for within such a system. The principle that the people have a
unitary set of interests is implicit, and the possibility of political conflict, which
can result only from representatives becoming careerists, is to be avoided by the
tight bonds between representatives and electors. Here the possibility of parties
and of organizations expressing diverse views and value orientations is under-
mined long before any exigencies of the hostile circumstances persuaded the
Bolsheviks to get round to it in practice.
Thus, State and Revolution proposes the creation of a state of the commune
type without a standing army, police or bureaucracy. The process of administra-
tion, production and distribution had been so simplified that all could ‘take part
in the administration of the state’. That this was intended not just as a theoretical
project for the distant future is clear from Lenin’s other programmatic state-
ments, popular brochures and speeches of this period, such as ‘The Impending
Catastrophe and How to Combat It’ and ‘Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power’
which emphatically restates the theme that ‘the Soviets are a “state apparatus” of
the Paris Commune type that dissolves the state apparatus and merges it with
the armed people, made possible through the mechanisms created by monopoly
capitalism’.16 Here Lenin asserts that ‘we can at once set in motion a state appar
atus consisting of ten if not twenty million people’. This text brings together
Lenin’s theoretical analysis of finance capitalism, theory of the socialist state and
faith in the transformative potential of mass participation in socialist practice.17
Later, in ‘Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government’, Lenin continues to expli-
cate the themes of State and Revolution, while simultaneously insisting upon
the recruitment of bourgeois specialists, one-man management, salary differ-
entials and control of the press as a response to practical pressures of economic
dislocation. Lenin argued that ‘we cannot imagine democracy, even proletarian
democracy, without representative institutions’, but he insisted that ‘we can and
must imagine democracy without parliamentarianism’. As Sakwa summarized,
‘It was envisaged that through the soviets the whole proletariat not only could
but should take part in governing. The soviets provided the mechanism to over-
come the state as alienated social power. The society to whom power was to
be returned, however, was to be one thoroughly purged of the strife typical of
civil society.’18 As Sakwa indicated, however, there were weaknesses built into
this conception of the revolutionary ‘democratic’ government: ‘The participa-
tory mechanisms were insufficient on their own to establish a self-regulating
political apparatus. Lenin was unwarrantedly optimistic about the compatibility
of democratic mass participation from below and a centralized economy …The
other limiting factor for the development of a self-regulating system of com-
mune democracy was the dominant though at this early stage as yet unspecified
role of the Communist Party’,19 although, as Neil Harding has pointed out, only
in July 1919 did Lenin concede that the dictatorship of the proletariat meant, in
fact, dictatorship of the party.20
Ultimately, Lenin suggested that ‘the apparatus we need not and must not
destroy. It must be arrested from subjection to the capitalists…must be cut
away…and it must be subjected to the proletarian soviets, it must be broader,
more all-embracing, more part of the whole people.’21 The remainder of this
book explores the ways in which Soviet leaders attempted to do just this in
practice and argues that themes of State and Revolution can be observed in the
institutional arrangements of the early Soviet government. The first means of
blending state and society and ensuring a ‘proletarian’ form of democracy was
drawing the working classes into government and administration. Lenin’s vision
in State and Revolution stressed the active participation of the masses ‘not only
in voting and elections, but also in the everyday administration of the state…
Under socialism all will govern in turn and soon will become accustomed to
no one governing.’22 This tactic has received much attention from scholars and
so will not require a substantive chapter in this book. E.G. Gimpel’son, a lead-
ing Soviet scholar of state building in the early years of Soviet power, devoted
much time and energy to demonstrating the incorporation of the working class
into administration during the first few years of Lenin’s government. A founda-
tional principle of official Soviet interpretations of the October Revolution and
the meaning of Soviet power was that the revolution established the hegemony
of the working class and enabled social mobility and the widespread participa-
tion of blue-collar workers in the new institutions of the Soviet state. Gimpel’son
provided supporting statistics from a variety of key government institutions to
show that workers participated in these institutions. Many blue-collar work-
ers were co-opted into state service in the new Soviet and party apparatus, and
the entire range of state administrative, military, police and other institutions.
Gimpel’son provided figures for these institutions at all levels, from the villages
and volosts up to central government. He found that workers made up anywhere
from 10 to 60 per cent of the officials in the bureaucracy.23 In political institu-
tions, blue-collar workers represented 30 per cent to 40 per cent of congress del-
egates.24 Yet, as Daniel Orlovsky has highlighted, Gimpel’son was ‘so concerned
to uphold the cherished myth of proletarian revolution and hegemony that he
ignores the presence in the Soviet government of just as many or more employ-
ees who were not blue-collar workers. He does not deny their existence, since he
includes them in the statistics, but he uses shopworn arguments about working
class and party control of their activities while refusing to come to terms with
either their social or political significance.’25 Gimpel’son conceded that workers
were often not ready for administrative work and that the Soviet state relied
upon non-workers in many key capacities and recognized the existence of the
petit bourgeois mass or the ‘old bureaucrats’ (chinovnichestvo) in Soviet institu-
tions. He argued that they brought to the state apparatus ‘the psychology and
habits’ of the old bureaucracy. Government policy was to control them and to
lure more workers into administration but this process was long term, requiring
‘political education, cultural development, and practical experience’.26
One response to this problem of incomplete ‘proletarianization’ of the state
apparatus and the supposed ‘sabotage’ by ex-tsarist petty bourgeois bureaucrats,
which become an obsession of Lenin towards the end of his life, was the col-
onization of the state apparatus by party members. This ‘party-ization’ of the
state apparatus, as discussed in Chapter 3, the populating of government insti-
tutions with loyal Communists subject to party discipline, was intended to
increase the likelihood of the alien bureaucracy faithfully executing the deci-
sions of the Soviet government. This colonization, though, meant that ultimately
state organs lost their independence from the party. Yet, there were not enough
workers or even Communists to fulfil this brief and the limitations of coloniza-
tion meant that the Soviet government turned to oversight mechanisms, such as
Rabkrin and the party control commissions instead.27 Overall, the ‘proletarian-
ization’ of political and administrative organs through drawing in workers was,
first, impracticable in terms of the human material available. Second, the notion
that ‘proletarianization’ would actually deliver the required blending of state and
society and bring a more ‘democratic style of work’ to government and admin-
istrative bodies fell flat in practice. Finally, it led to the introduction of oversight
instruments which, inadvertently, resulted in more top-down control and sur-
veillance. By the end of the Civil War Lenin’s hopes of proletarian participation
in administration had been disappointed by practical experience. In October
1917 when the worker A.V. Shotman had dared to question whether ‘even a cook
or housekeeper’ could administer the state, as Lenin had claimed in State and
Revolution, Lenin responded angrily ‘Rubbish! Any worker will master any min-
istry within a few days; no special skill is required here and it isn’t necessary to
know the techniques of this work since this is the job of the bureaucrats whom
we’ll compel to work just as they make the worker-specialists work at present.
Yet by 1920 an exasperated Lenin exclaimed to the gathering of the Congress of
Mineworkers: ‘Does every worker really know how to run the state? Practical
people know that this is fairy story.’28
2
Sovnarkom as Cabinet, 1917–19
The Soviets first appeared during the St. Petersburg disorders of 1905, when
representatives of striking workers acting under socialist leadership formed the
Soviet of Workers’ Deputies to coordinate revolutionary activities. This body
was eventually suppressed by the government, but shortly before the abdica-
tion of Tsar Nicholas II and the creation of a Provisional Government in March
1917, socialist leaders re-established the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and
Soldiers Deputies, composed of one deputy for every 1000 workers and one for
each military company, around 2500 altogether. This Petrograd Soviet stood as
a ‘second government’ opposite the Provisional Government and challenged
the latter’s authority. Soviets sprang up in cities and towns across the Russian
Empire. Much of their authority and legitimacy, in the public opinion, came
from the Soviets’ role as accurate reflectors of popular will. Delegates had no
set terms of office, and frequent by-elections gave ample opportunity for quick
exertion of influence by the voters. In June 1917 the first All-Russian Congress of
Soviets, composed of delegations from local Soviets, convened in Petrograd with
a Socialist Revolutionary majority and elected a Central Executive Committee
to be in permanent session. Three months later, as the Provisional Government
continued to flounder as social, economic and military crises intensified, the
radical Bolshevik faction of the Petrograd Soviet, having gained a majority in
this body, engineered the overthrow of the Provisional Government by the Red
Guards and some supporting troops and timed this action to coincide with the
opening of Second Congress of Soviets.
As the revolution played out on the streets of the capital on 25 October, Lenin
gave a speech to the Petrograd Soviet assembled for an emergency meeting in
the Smolny Institute where he announced ‘Comrades! The workers’ and peas-
ants’ revolution, which the Bolsheviks have all this time been talking about the
need for, has been accomplished…the significance of this coup consists in the
fact that we’ll have a Soviet government as our own organ of power without any
participation whatever by the bourgeoisie. The oppressed masses themselves will

create their power. The old state apparatus will be destroyed at its root and a new
apparatus of administration will be created in the form of Soviet organizations.’1
As minor skirmishes were playing out across Petrograd, the Second Congress
of Soviets was getting underway in the great hall at the Smolny Institute. The
Bolsheviks had around 300 delegates, their Left SR allies approximately 80; this
gave them a small majority in the 670-delegate congress, but the meeting began
with a flurry of speeches from Mensheviks and moderate SRs, condemning the
Bolsheviks for seizing power illegally. This presumptive action, they said, would
incite a military counter-revolution that threatened the future of the revolution
and the Constituent Assembly. After some furious debate and attempts at rec-
onciliation, the Mensheviks and other moderates walked out of the congress in
protest at the insurrection and the Bolshevik refusal to compromise. The congress
carried on its business for several hours, occasionally interrupting proceedings to
receive good news, such as reports that the Winter Palace had been taken. Shortly
before dawn, the following resolution, written earlier by Lenin, was adopted
almost unanimously: ‘The Soviet government will propose an immediate demo
cratic peace to all the nations and an immediate armistice on all fronts. It will
secure the transfer of the land… to the peasant committees without compensa-
tion; it will protect the rights of the soldiers by introducing complete democracy
in the army; it will establish workers’ control over production; it will ensure the
convocation of the Constituent Assembly… it will see to it that bread is supplied
to the cities and prime necessities to the villages; it will guarantee all the nations
in Russia the genuine right to self determination. The congress decrees that all
power in the localities shall pass to the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies.’ The Second Congress of Soviets resumed the following evening, 26
October, with Lenin in attendance. He addressed those present, announcing
that they now ruled Russia on behalf of the working masses. The congress then
debated and passed the first Soviet decrees on peace and land and the creation of
the apparatus of a new Soviet democracy.
This new Soviet democracy took the institutional form of the Council
of People’s Commissars (Sovet Narodnykh Kommissarov, abbreviated to
Sovnarkom) as cabinet, with the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of
Soviets (Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nyi Ispolnitel’nyi Komitet or VTsIK) as a quasi-
legislature composed of delegates representing a number of Socialist Parties,
mostly Bolsheviks and Left SRs. During this early period it was the ‘state’ rather
than ‘party’ bodies which operated as both the ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto’ govern-
ment of the new regime. This set-up represented a compromise between Lenin’s
Sovnarkom as Cabinet, 1917–19 23
pre-revolutionary ideology which rejected separation of powers as bourgeois

parliamentarianism and the incorporation of the machinery of revolution-
ary democracy inherited across 1917, the Soviet hierarchy, which was already
composed of multiparty representative organs with the VTsIK and Congress of
Soviets at the apex. From December 1917 until March 1918, Sovnarkom and the
Central Executive Committee of Soviets functioned as a dual-party Bolshevik–
Left SR coalition government, until differences over the signing of peace with
Germany tore the alliance apart.
Sovnarkom was made up, initially, of Lenin as chairman, 11 departmental
heads or ‘commissars’, and a committee of three responsible for military and
naval affairs. In setting up Sovnarkom, the Bolsheviks were not as innova-
tive as one might expect. They employed a similar division of portfolios as the
Provisional Government, which they in turn had largely inherited from the tsar-
ist government), changing the title ‘minister’ to ‘commissar’ which had a more
‘revolutionary’ ring to it.2 The major difference, however, was that Sovnarkom
was envisaged as a collegial organ. As the ‘Decree of the All-Russian Congress
of Soviets to Form the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government’ of 27 October 1917
stated: ‘The management of individual branches of state activity is entrusted
to commissions…and shall work in close contact with mass organizations
of men and women workers, sailors, soldiers, peasants and office employees.
Governmental authority is vested in a collegium of the chairmen of these com-
missions, i.e. the Council of People’s Commissars.’3
According to the decree at the Second Congress of Soviets establishing
the new government, Sovnarkom was responsible to the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee.4 This body was made up of representatives or ‘deputies’
from Soviets all across the country and was initially envisioned as the regime’s
supreme legislative organ. The VTsIK would confirm the membership of
Sovnarkom and the decrees which it passed. During debates in the early weeks
of Soviet power, the VTsIK’s primacy over the Sovnarkom was consistently reaf-
firmed. Bolshevik moderates and Left SRs alike interpreted this to mean that the
VTsIK would be the primary legislative body and that Sovnarkom would be an
executive organ, despite Lenin’s theoretical hostility to separation as expressed
in State and Revolution.5 Sovnarkom was entrusted with the general direction
of the affairs of the state. It was empowered to ‘issue decrees, regulations and
instructions, and undertake all measures necessary for the proper and prompt
dispatch of state affairs’.6 All decrees having ‘general political significance’ were
supposed to pass to the VTsIK for confirmation, and Sovnarkom was to report
to the elected sovereign body on a weekly basis.
In practice, however, limitations on the independent power of Sovnarkom,

and the prerogatives of the VTsIK, were not strictly adhered to. From its earliest
days Sovnarkom promulgated decrees without prior consultation in the VTsIK,
initially as emergency measure to deal with the chaos following the October
Revolution. By November immediate threats to the survival of the regime had
died down and some VTsIK members began to object to Sovnarkom’s arbi-
trary behaviour. They called for further constitutional measures to more pre-
cisely define the legislative and executive powers of the VTsIK and Sovnarkom
respectively.7 This debate continued into 1919 and was a major issue at the Eighth
Party Congress, where many delegates called for a strengthening of the role of
the VTsIK but Civil War conditions militated against the healthy functioning of
the Soviet assembly.8 The VTsIK showed some degree of recovery after the Civil
War and began to function more regularly, but by then the party machinery had
already begun its ascent and the VTsIK declined into a decorative performance.9
From December 1917 to March 1918 Soviet power meant a dual-party coali-
tion composed of Bolsheviks, the self-declared party of the proletariat, and Left
SRs, the radical wing of the neo-populist party of the peasantry and increasingly
of poor urban workers. During its four-month existence the Bolshevik-Left SR
coalition government functioned more successfully than has previously been
acknowledged. It was not in a constant state of disabling conflict. Certainly there
were disagreements, particularly in areas where the Left SRs pursued their self-
appointed role in ‘restraining’ Bolshevik arbitrariness, but this did not mean that
joint work ground to a halt. In areas where the programmes and ideals of the
two parties overlapped, fruitful collaboration strengthened the Soviet govern-
ment’s functioning. The Bolsheviks valued the legitimacy and support afforded
by coalition with the Left SRs, particularly their commitment to Soviet power
especially at difficult moments like the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly
in January 1918. The influence and popular support for the Left SRs in Soviets
across Russia, their organizational and literary skills and their contribution
to administration at the central and local levels were also indispensable. The
Bolsheviks were willing to compromise to preserve the alliance. For Left SR
leaders who accepted the legitimacy of Soviet power and felt obliged to follow
the ‘spontaneity of the masses’, believing they were in favour of the revolution,
participation in the Soviet government offered them the opportunity to pursue
shared revolutionary aims and to moderate Bolshevik policy. The Left SR leader
Sergei Mstislavskii explained: ‘We agree with the Bolsheviks in our analysis of
the essence of the current revolution …and we stand firmly for Soviet power, but
we differ sharply from them in our view of the practical tasks to be accomplished
and of the tactics suited to the present moment. In these critical times we do not
consider ourselves entitled to separate ourselves from the mass movement…
Faced with the fact of Bolshevism…we shall exert all of our efforts to minimize
the harm it is doing to the revolutionary cause and to make use of it in the ser-
vice of that cause.’10
Before 1914, the neo-populist Socialist Revolutionary Party was already
divided into rightist and leftist factions, but the First World War sparked a wid-
ening schism between those who considered it necessary to defend the country
and those hardliners who stuck to a defeatist position. In early 1917, Left SRs
distanced themselves from their own central committee by openly allying with
other leftists, in particular the Bolsheviks.11 During the revolutionary year Left
SR and Bolshevik programmes had much in common. In summer and autumn
1917 the Bolshevik Party’s public political platform stood for democratic ‘people’s
power’ exercised through an exclusively Socialist, Soviet, multiparty govern-
ment. They also stood for more land to individual peasants, stronger worker
influence in factories, prompt improvement to the food supply and an end to
the war. The Left SR programme shared these objectives: immediate, organized
transfer of land to land committees, peace, an eight-hour day and the right to
unions and workers’ control. Crucially, they too adopted the slogan ‘All Power
to the Soviets’.12
At the opening of the Second Congress of Soviets on 26 October 1917, the
Bolsheviks approached the Left SRs about establishing a joint administra-
tion. The Left SRs did not walk out of the congress alongside the moderate
socialists who protested the ‘Bolshevik adventure’ in toppling the Provisional
Government, but also initially declined the invitation to formally join the gov-
ernment, suggesting instead that a broad socialist coalition be established com-
prising all parties represented in the newly elected VTsIK. Nevertheless, the Left
SRs accepted the revolution as a fait accompli and the faction doubled in size
as many SR delegates swung to the Left. Leading Left SRs Kolegaev, Kamkov
and Karelin supported the congress’s programmes of land and peace. Karelin
remarked on Lenin’s peace declaration, ‘we will vote for it because it is close to
our ideas’ and Kolegaev greeted Lenin’s draft on land as a ‘celebration of our
programme’.13 Both decrees were adopted by an overwhelming vote. But on the
question of Soviet power, the Left SRs demanded a government that would ‘unify
all democracy around it’ and threatened a boycott if the moderate socialists were
not involved. Nevertheless, Lenin’s decree on the exclusively Bolshevik govern-
ment passed without difficulty. After electing a new VTsIK of 62 Bolsheviks, 29
Left SRs, 6 United Social Democratic Internationalists, 3 Ukrainian Socialists
and 1 SR Maximalist, the congress agreed that this body could be expanded with
representatives of peasant Soviets (mostly likely SRs), army organizations, and
other groups that had walked out the day before.14
A month-long courtship brought the Left SRs formally into government in
early December 1917 after the intransigence of Mensheviks, SRs and Bolsheviks
exhausted attempts to build a broader coalition. Fundamentally, the moderate
socialists rejected the class-based nature of the Soviet Congress and argued that
legitimate sovereignty could come only from a Constituent Assembly elected
by all classes. The Left SRs, like the Bolsheviks, accepted the sovereignty of the
Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ deputies as the basis for a legit
imate revolutionary government, although they had preferred to include repre-
sentatives of the bourgeoisie in order to quell the social struggle this exclusion
would incur. This shared platform for the legitimacy of Soviet power as an
expression of popular will was the basis for collaboration of the two parties from
December 1917 and for their joint dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in
January 1918.
The convocation of a Constituent Assembly, a representative body, elected
on the basis of universal male suffrage was one of the earliest and most popular
demands to emerge from the February Revolution. The Provisional Government
postponed elections until 12 November by which time it had been overthrown.
The Soviet government permitted the elections to proceed. In the elections the
various factions of the SRs received approximately half of the 42 million votes
cast, the Bolsheviks polled about ten million (24 per cent) including roughly
half of the soldiers’ vote, the Kadets received two million (5 per cent), and the
remaining 8 million votes went to other non-Socialist Parties, the Mensheviks,
and parties representing national minorities. In a series of 19 ‘theses’ published
in Pravda on 13 December, Lenin made it quite clear that the Bolsheviks had no
intention of being bound by the results of the election. First, he argued, the ballot
was undemocratic because it had failed to distinguish between the Left SRs who
had supported the October Revolution and other factions of that party that had
opposed it. Second, he reaffirmed the primacy of class, arguing that the repub-
lic of Soviets, which was then in the process of formation, was a higher form
of democracy than the ‘bourgeois’ Constituent Assembly because, he insisted,
it represented the true interests of the working masses. Indeed, the decrees on
peace and land as well as other measures adopted by the Soviet government
made the Constituent Assembly less important in the eyes of many workers and
soldiers. Approximately 700 delegates to the Constituent Assembly met for a
single session on 5 January 1918 in the Tauride Palace. Having chosen the Right
SR leader Victor Chernov as president of the assembly, the delegates approved

the armistice with the Central Powers and issued a land law before being told to
adjourn by the soldiers and Red Guards surrounding the building. The assem-
bly planned to reconvene the next day, but was prevented from doing so by Red
Guards on orders from the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets.
As the decree on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly explained, the
Bolsheviks and Left SRs were not willing to sacrifice their ‘superior’ form of
proletarian Soviet democracy, as they perceived it, in favour of a form of ‘rotten’
bourgeois parliamentary democracy:
During the whole of the initial period of the Russian revolution the Soviets multi
plied in number, grew and gained strength and were taught by their own experi
ence to discard the illusions of compromise with the bourgeoisie and to realize
the deceptive nature of the forms of the bourgeois-democratic parliamentary
system; they arrived by practical experience at the conclusion that the eman-
cipation of the oppressed classes was impossible unless they broke with these
forms and with every kind of compromise. The break came with the October
Revolution, which transferred the entire power to the Soviets. The Constituent
Assembly, elected on the basis of electoral lists drawn up prior to the October
Revolution, was an expression of the old relation of political forces which existed
when power was held by the compromisers and the Kadets. When the people at
that time voted for the candidates of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, they were
not in a position to choose between the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, the sup-
porters of the bourgeoisie, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the supporters
of socialism.
…The working classes learned by experience that the old bourgeois parlia-
mentary system had outlived its purpose and was absolutely incompatible with
the aim of achieving socialism, and that not national institutions, but only class
institutions (such as the Soviets) were capable of overcoming the resistance
of the propertied classes and of laying the foundations of socialist society. To
relinquish the sovereign power of the Soviets, to relinquish the Soviet Republic
won by the people, for the sake of the bourgeois parliamentary system and the
Constituent Assembly, would now be a step backwards and would cause the col-
lapse of the October workers’ and peasants’ revolution.15
The main condition of the Left SR entry into government had been the prin-
ciple of peasant parity in the VTsIK. Instead of the Bolshevik ‘dictatorship of the
proletariat’ they advocated the ‘dictatorship of the democracy’, that is a class-
based dictatorship of the whole army of toilers, the exploited peasantry or ‘rural
proletariat’ alongside the urban workers.16 On 28 November the resolutions of
the First Left SR Party Congress confirmed this principle of the legitimate basis of
the revolutionary regime: ‘The dictatorship of the democracy, arising now in the
Russian Republic as the dictatorship of the overwhelming majority of the popu-
lation, does not stop short of the use of repression against encroachments on it
by enemies of the revolution, yet at the same time it is not necessary to pursue a
system of terror as this disorganizes the power of the revolutionary democracy.’17
A fortnight earlier, the Extraordinary Second Congress of Soviets of Peasants’
Deputies, which convened on 11 November 1917 in Petrograd, made coalition
government possible. This national gathering had a solid Left SR majority, sup-
ported the land decree of the revolutionary government and agreed to a merger
with the VTsIK of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. Lenin laid out the theoretical
groundwork for a Soviet system based on a coalition between the Bolsheviks and
the Left SRs at this congress on 18 November 1917. He envisaged Soviet power
not as the dictatorship of a vanguard party, but as ‘workers’ and peasants’ author-
ity’ expressed through the Soviets and conveyed at the apex of power through
an alliance between the Bolsheviks, the party of the proletariat, and the Left SRs,
the party representing and supported by the majority of labouring and exploited
peasants. His speech proposed that ‘the alliance of the peasants and workers was
a basis for an agreement between the Left SRs and the Bolsheviks. It was an hon-
est coalition… a close alliance between the workers and the exploited peasantry,
a firm, unwavering struggle for the power of the soviets, that would lead to social-
ism.’18 Lenin dwelt on the points that could closely unite the Bolsheviks and Left
SRs and envisaged compromise; while Bolsheviks were against the socialization
of the land (in favour of nationalization) this did not mean that they could not
come to an agreement with the Left SRs. Lenin explained how this comprom
ise would work in practice: ‘Today or tomorrow the Left SRs would nominate
their Minister of Agriculture, and the Bolsheviks would not vote against a law
on the socialization of the land if he proposed it: they would abstain from vot-
ing.’19 In an open letter to Pravda, Lenin reiterated that an ‘honest alliance’ was
viable ‘for there is no radical divergence of interest between the wage workers
and the working and exploited peasants. Socialism is fully able to meet the inter-
ests of both.’ The Bolsheviks would abstain from voting on questions which con-
cern purely Socialist Revolutionary points in the land programme approved by
the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Lenin explained that this did not
amount to a Bolshevik betrayal of principles: ‘By abstaining from voting on such
a point the Bolsheviks would not be changing their programme in the slightest.
For, given the victory of socialism…the workers would be obliged to agree to the
transitional measures proposed by the small working and exploited peasants,
provided such measures were not detrimental to the cause of socialism.’ Lenin
envisaged a bargaining system where ‘we Bolsheviks would be obliged to abstain
from voting when such a point was being decided in the Council of People’s
Commissars or in the Central Executive Committee, for if the Left SRs (as well
as the peasants who support them) agree to workers’ control, to the nationaliza-
tion of the banks, equal land tenure would be only one of the measures of tran-
sition to full socialism. For the proletariat to impose such transitional measures
would be absurd; it is obliged, in the interests of the victory of socialism, to
yield to the small working and exploited peasants in the choice of these tran-
sitional measures, for they could do no harm to the cause of socialism.’20 Thus,
Lenin showed willingness to make concessions to persuade the Left SRs to join
the Soviet government and to bring to the new regime the peasant sanction or
‘iarlykh’. He heeded Kamkov’s warning that the peasantry, ‘the “infantry of the
revolution” ’, would not follow the Bolsheviks and strove to widen the social base
of the revolutionary government.
The terms of the merger were confirmed by the congress and now made
Soviet power, in theory, representative of city and countryside. A total of 108
members of the existing workers’ Soviet VTsIK were joined by an equal number
of representatives from the peasant congress, with 100 representatives of soldier
and sailor committees and 50 trade union representatives to follow shortly. The
new peasant members formally joined in a spirit of celebration and ceremony
on 15 November 1917.21 On 9 December, having received their mandate from
the Congress of Peasant Soviets and held their First Congress as an independent
party in late November, the Left SRs formally accepted Bolshevik terms for entry
into the Sovnarkom proportionate to their representation in the newly merged
Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.
On 25 November 1917, the Left SR Andrei Kolegaev was appointed
Commissar of Agriculture (he had attended Sovnarkom sittings as early
as 19 November). On 9 December, six more Left SRs officially entered the
Sovnarkom: Kolegaev as People’s Commissar for Agriculture, Isaac Shteinberg
as People’s Commissar for Justice, Prosh Proshyan as People’s Commissar for
Post and Telegraphs, Vladimir Trutovskii as People’s Commissar for Local Self
Government, Aleksandra Izmailovich as People’s Commissar for Property of the
Republic (although in practice she did not take up the post, continuing her work
in the VTsIK instead), Vladimir Karelin as co-People’s Commissar for Military
and Naval Affairs (then additionally taking on Izmailovich’s post), and Vladimir
Algasov as People’s Commissar with deciding vote in Sovnarkom but without
portfolio, entering the collegium of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs.22 Then
A.N. Brilliantov occupied the final Left SR seat on the Sovnarkom with a decid-
ing vote, but without portfolio, and joined the collegia of the Commissariat of
Finance. Left SRs were named to the collegia of all other People’s Commissariats
and central government institutions.23 When Sovnarkom’s narrow ‘executive
committee’ was formed on 20 February 1918 it was composed of Lenin, Trotsky,
Stalin and two Left SRs Proshyan and Karelin. Thus, the Left SRs had been rep-
resented on Lenin’s inner ‘group of five’.
The Left SRs N.N. Alekseev, G.D. Zaks and A.A. Shreider became Deputy
People’s Commissars in the Commissariats of Agriculture, Enlightenment and
Justice respectively. The collegium of the Commissariat of Agriculture was par-
ticularly dominated by Left SRs, with L.L. Kostin, I.A. Maiorov, A.E. Feofilaktov
and N.I. Faleev appointed there. Other Left SR collegia members included L.E.
Kronik in the Commissariat of Post and Telegraphs and P.E. Lazimir in the
military.24 The Left SRs, from January 1918, had 122 delegates in the Central
Executive Committee and their charismatic leader Maria Spiridonova headed
its ‘peasant department’. In addition, eight Left SRs were elected to the Central
Executive Committee’s presidium. Left SR Boris Malkin was appointed co-editor
of the government newspaper Izvestiia.
As well as their Sovnarkom and collegia posts, the Left SRs also had their
man, People’s Commissar for Local Government Vladimir Trutovskii, as one
of three who made up the ‘Malyi’ or Little Sovnarkom, a committee which
dealt with second-order business, especially financial matters requiring top-
level resolution. Its decisions acquired legal force once signed by Lenin as
chairman of Sovnarkom, unless challenged by another member of the cab
inet. The need arose to devolve minor matters from Sovnarkom and the Little
Sovnarkom (Malyi Sovet Narodnykh Kommissarov or MSNK) emerged in
late 1917 to deal with routine business. Minutes of this body survive from 9
January 1918 on and demonstrate that in its early phase this body was made up
of three members –Bolsheviks Shliapnikov and Menzhinskii and the Left SR,
Trutovskii –with reporters and representatives attending to discuss particular
departmental issues.25 Like its parent body, MSNK showed early tendencies
towards formal institutionalization. In its first recorded sitting it prescribed
that items must be sent for inclusion in its agenda no later than 48 hours before
the sitting, and could be refused if the necessary ‘detailed reports…and all fac-
tual materials’ were not presented.26 The range of minor matters, ‘not raising
issues of principle’, considered by MSNK in its first months were wide ranging.
These included (most frequently) granting financial credit to state agencies, as
well as cultural, industrial, economic, medical and labour and administrative
questions.27 In solving these questions, the MSNK either made a decision there
and then and instructed the corresponding commissariat to implement it, or,
if a unanimous decision was not achieved or if they judged it to be an issue of
importance, transferred it to the full Sovnarkom. Lenin, as Sovnarkom chair-
man, read over the decisions of MSNK. If he agreed with the decisions, he
signed them off and they gained the force of law. If he disagreed, he could
send decisions back for MSNK to reconsider, or could add the issue to the
Sovnarkom agenda for solution. The MSNK was intended to sit ‘not less than
three times a week’.28 However, the practice did not live up to intentions and
the MSNK met just five times in the last three weeks of January, and only twice
in February 1918. By early March a regular pattern of sittings was developing,
with the MSNK meeting every other day in the first week of March. The work
of the MSNK was temporarily disrupted by the transfer of the government to
Moscow, but it was quickly re-established by a decree of the parent body on
26 March 1918.29 From this point, it sat regularly and considered a mass of
routine questions crucial to the functioning of the Soviet government. While
its prerogatives and formal status fluctuated over the course of Lenin’s govern-
ment, it remained a key instrument of day-to-day administration.30 Thus, the
appointment of Trutovskii ensured that the Left SRs maintained a supervisory
presence over the routine matters of government business.
The Left SRs also held important posts in regional Soviet government insti-
tutions such as the Moscow Oblast, Siberian and Turkestan Sovnarkoms, the
Supreme Collegia for Romanian Affairs, the Commissariat for Cossack Affairs
and Left SR E.P. Terletskii entered the government of Soviet Ukraine.31 The
depth and breadth of Left SR participation in the supreme central (as well as
regional and local) organs of government was considerable and does not suggest
their intentions nor those of the Bolsheviks were for a temporary or superficial
alliance. Radkey claimed that the influence of the Left SRs in the Sovnarkom
was negligible because ‘the cast had already hardened when the Left SRs entered
the government and they were unable to change it’.32 In fact the Left SRs made
a significant contribution to the work of the Sovnarkom and were able to have
a qualitative influence on the shape, scope and tempo of policy in the early
months of Soviet power.
Sovnarkom met 53 times between December 1917 and March 1918 as a
dual-party cabinet. All of the Left SRs appointed as People’s Commissars were
dedicated, regular Sovnarkom attenders. Often all seven Left SR commis-
sars attended the Sovnarkom meetings, but on average five Left SR Central
Committee (CC) members were in attendance.33 On 13 December the Left SR
commissars attended their first coalition government meeting. With Lenin

chairing, Kolegaev, Algasov, Shteinberg, Karelin and Trutovsky attended along-
side 17 Bolsheviks (not all of them full commissars with voting rights) including
Trotsky, Stalin and Sverdlov. The coalition got off to a good start. The first meet-
ing ran productively, with the Left SRs getting stuck into government business
immediately. They considered and voted on topics as diverse as allocation of
funds to various commissariats, the law on unemployment insurance, appoint-
ments to central and local government and the rate of pay for government
employees. Left SR Algasov hit the ground running, submitting a proposal on
the abolition of the State Council and State Chancellery which was accepted and
confirmed by Sovnarkom.34
The Left SR members not only attended sittings, debated and voted, but helped
to shape the cabinet’s agenda and the nature of the questions it considered. Often
the Left SRs raised points of principle over controversial issues such use of arbi-
trary terror, but they continued to present their work in their respective com-
missariats for confirmation in the cabinet. For example, more mundane agenda
items raised by Left SRs over the course of the coalition include those proposed
by Proshyan in his role as Commissar for Post and Telegraphs: the increase in
the telephone charges to 30 roubles per year and the setting of telegraph tariffs.35
As well as the Commissar for Justice Shteinberg’s complaints over terror, he too
continued to work productively through the Sovnarkom on projects he over-
saw such as the new Soviet Law Code, the rights of minors in the new Soviet
Republic, rules of Russian citizenship and the legal change of names.36
Left SRs also participated jointly in the many Sovnarkom commissions on
particular issues facing the government. One of the most important subcommis-
sions of Sovnarkom at this time was the Commission on Food Policy formed on
8 January composed of three Bolsheviks, (Stalin, Osinsky and Kozmin) and two
Left SRs (Karelin and Lazimir) to help guide the work of the Food Commissariat
in shaping the All-Russian Food Council of the Supreme Economic Council
to deal with the shortages the regime was facing.37 Other examples of joint
Sovnarkom commissions include that on the government newspaper Izvestiia
(Trutovskii, Uritskii and Petrovskii) the Socialist War Commission (Stalin,
Lunacharsky and Proshyan) and the State Control Commission (Proshyan,
Shteinberg and Sverdlov).38
Although the Left SRs were the minority partner in the coalition, they were
still able to influence government affairs in subtle ways. There were three ways in
which the Left SRs could make their influence felt. First, they could avoid going
through Sovnarkom altogether and pursue objectives through the commissariats
under their control. Second, decisions were made in Sovnarkom by majority

vote of whichever commissars were there with a deciding vote and there were 11
Bolsheviks to only 7 Left SRs in the government; the tactic was to raise an issue
at a meeting when fewer Bolshevik commissars were in attendance. Third, to
achieve greater influence than their numbers suggested, Left SRs could threaten
to leave the coalition. The Left SRs represented the peasant Soviets in the Central
Executive Committee which had recently merged with the Soviets of Workers
and Soldiers, and their departure might result in the pulling apart of this alliance
which was seen as essential to both the legitimacy and stability of the revolu-
tionary government. The Left SRs could ‘go nuclear’, blackmail the Bolsheviks
by threatening to make Sovnarkom disputes public and expose a breakdown in
the coalition at a time when projecting an image of government stability was
crucial.39
On a day-to-day basis Bolsheviks and Left SRs worked side-by-side in the
commissariats and in Sovnarkom to consider, create and implement policy
and legislation on a wide range of government business. Speaking at his party’s
Second Congress in April 1918 on the role played by the Left SR party in the
Soviet government, Proshyan made clear that the Bolsheviks and Left SRs had
‘worked well together’. He remarked that while at the start of their joint work
a ‘psychological abyss’ separated the partners, this soon ‘disappeared’, and Left
SRs became ‘connected with the Bolsheviks by strong, practical bonds’ through
which they were ‘soldered together’.40 Working together on a daily basis, accord-
ing to Proshyan, meant that the parties operated in a businesslike way, despite
their different programmes, and the ‘tactical element’ of their cooperation pre-
vailed, helping them ‘to understand each other and often to find the same solu-
tion to problems of the moment’.41 In spite of the dispute over Brest-Litovsk
(examined below), Proshyan gave a positive assessment of his party’s contribu-
tion to the early Sovnarkom. There had been, for example, unanimity on the fate
of the Constituent Assembly and initial agreement on the ‘no peace, no war’ pro-
posal. Moreover, he argued, the Bolsheviks had been forced ‘to retreat from their
programme’ and to accept the Left SR agenda on the socialization of the land.42
The Bolshevik chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
and party secretary, Sverdlov, agreed that the coalition partners had worked
well together and had had few serious disagreements before the end of March
1918; relations only declined after the Left SRs left Sovnarkom.43 This exit was
a controversial issue which divided party leaders and there was lively debate
over whether to withdraw. Finally, however, the decision to decamp (tempor
arily at least) was confirmed at the Second Congress of Left SRs, in April 1918.
The debates at the congress offer useful insights into how the minority coali-
tion partners evaluated their influence in the government. Shteinberg, the com-
missar who most frequently clashed with Bolshevik colleagues in his attempts
to curtail terror, demonstrated his frustration (and perhaps underestimated
his own practical influence) when he declared: ‘We did not possess real power
in Sovnarkom. We had only two commissars who had real power to represent
our special class, the labouring peasants. We were occupied up to the neck in
state work, but still did not take care of them.’44 He argued against immediately
rejoining Sovnarkom: ‘We can, in the future, build an “honest coalition” with the
healthy elements of the Bolsheviks, but the coalition must have a new ideological
hegemony.’45 Nevertheless, many other leading Left SRs disagreed and pressed
the importance of their contribution to the work of Sovnarkom. Proshyan,
Kolegaev, Spiridonova and Mark Natanson all emphasized the value of Left SR
participation in Sovnarkom and urged the party to reconsider the withdrawal.
Kolegaev, Commissar for Agriculture, stated that in his area of expertise ‘on the
fundamental question for us, the socialization of land, although in the minor-
ity, we held full power’. He highlighted how the Left SRs had resisted Bolshevik
amendments to their project and were ‘victorious’.46 He raised an interesting
point in relation to coalition politics on ‘the question of ‘power’ (vlast’) and the
question of ‘force’ (sil)’.47 While the Left SRs could not dominate in the sense of
holding ‘power’ they still exercised ‘force’ in shaping policy. Kolegaev also tried
to present a more positive picture of Shteinberg’s work, remarking, ‘I cannot
boast for the commissar of justice that we published a million instructions, but
we published some. I think that in this lies our merit.’48 He concluded with evi-
dence for the sway Left SRs had exercised by remaining within the highest gov-
ernment organs: ‘Before there was not a single Bolshevik in the central People’s
Commissariat of Agriculture’, but in the weeks since the Left SR withdrawal the
Bolsheviks were leading its work in a different direction.49 Spiridonova agreed
that withdrawing from the ‘power structures’ at a time when the Left SRs were
achieving their fundamental law on land socialization was ‘a most grievous
crime’.50 Ultimately, the motion adopted by the congress reflected the prevail-
ing mood of the party: it approved the withdrawal of the Left SR delegates from
Sovnarkom, but did not rule out future participation if the political situation
changed regarding peace with Germany; and it confirmed that Left SRs were to
remain in the collegia of the commissariats and other Soviet institutions.
Serious disagreement between the two parties, beyond the normal day-to-
day wrangling of coalition politics, broke out over the signing of a separate
peace with Germany. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty, which provoked the rupture
between the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs, also created a devastating internal
split within the Bolshevik Party. Since 1915, Lenin’s writings had highlighted
the opportunity to transform imperialist war into revolutionary war, but in
1917 the Bolsheviks won support in the Soviets largely through their promise
of peace, in effect, at any price. Thus, the party was thrown into turmoil as they
debated whether to accept Germany’s harsh, imperialist terms of annexations
and indemnities. Initially, Trotsky’s ‘no war, no peace’ won broad acceptance
among Bolsheviks and Left SRs when it was announced on 28 January 1918. But
when news reached Smolny on the night of 16 February that Germany’s armis
tice with Russia would expire and that a state of war would be re-established at
noon on 18 February, the debate over this issue raged virtually non-stop inside
and outside both parties for the next week. Like the Left Communists within the
Bolshevik Party, the Left SRs were unable to accept Lenin’s choice of a humiliat-
ing peace with the imperialists rather than a revolutionary war. The Left SRs as
a faction owed their origin to revulsion at the slaughter of peasants and workers
in the interests of world imperialism.51 Yet, the peace that the Left SRs had in
mind was one of ‘no annexations and indemnities’, which would be compatible
with the revolutionary conscience. Like many Bolsheviks, the Left SRs found the
devastating imperialist German conditions at Brest-Litovsk wholly unaccept-
able. After the final ratification of the treaty by the VTsIK, the Left SR People’s
Commissars withdrew from Sovnarkom on 18 March. They maintained a lim-
ited cooperation with the Bolsheviks, retaining their positions on the collegia of
commissariats as well as their membership in the VTsIK and the local Soviets.
It is clear that that there was only one reason for the Left SR party’s withdrawal
from the central Sovnarkom: the Fourth Congress of Soviets had adopted a reso
lution, the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, that the Left SRs were con-
vinced had undermined the October Revolution. The Left SRs, if they allowed
their representatives to participate in Sovnarkom, would be collaborating in pol-
icies they were sure would lead to the smothering of the revolution. This did
not mean that they were ready to abandon the Bolsheviks completely: ‘as far as
Sovnarkom brings to life the programme of the October Revolution, the party
promises its support and assistance’.52 Their resignation statement confirmed
that when the Bolshevik Party returned to the revolutionary path from which it
had strayed, the two parties would collaborate in government again.
Programmatic differences with the Bolsheviks quickly widened after the Left
SR departure from Sovnarkom and any moderating influence in regards to use of
terror or relations with the countryside quickly dissipated. To Leninist Bolsheviks
the solution to the continuing disintegration of economic and political life, and
to the threats posed by foreign and domestic enemies, increasingly lay in institu-
tional centralization, and the utilization of bourgeois specialists. To the Left SRs,
and moderate Bolsheviks such as the Left Communists, who were committed
to the ideal of worker and peasant empowerment exercised through democratic
Soviets, these policies were very distasteful, as Karelin made clear to the VTsIK
on 29 April when he challenged Lenin’s fundamental assumptions and policies.53
After the Left SR’s resignation from Sovnarkom, its policy towards the coun-
tryside also began to change direction, and the tendency towards the use of force
to solve the urgent urban hunger crisis grew. The increasing antagonism between
the two parties over policies towards the peasantry and grain procurement had
an adverse impact on the Central Executive Committee’s peasant section, a Left
SR bastion headed by Spiridonova. During the first months of 1918 this body
was Soviet Russia’s primary coordinating institution for organizing and prepar-
ing peasants for land reform, mobilizing them in support of Soviet power, estab-
lishing Soviets in outlying regions where they did not yet exist, and identifying,
articulating and defending peasant interests. The additional purpose of the
peasant section, as Spiridonova explained, was ‘to unite peasants and workers
into one integrated whole … to unite city and country’ under the Soviet banner.
In a report on the peasant section on 17 April 1918, Spiridonova stressed that
Bolshevik goodwill (and funding) to the section had ended in mid-March after
the Left SRs’ resignation from Sovnarkom. With the Left SR influence removed,
the now wholly Bolshevik cabinet began to move towards a more confronta-
tional position towards the countryside in its food procurement policy. On 9
May 1918, eight weeks after the Left SR resignations, the government passed
the decree ‘On the food dictatorship’, which involved the formation of food pro-
curement detachments to seize surplus grain from peasants by force. This anti-
peasant move was followed a month later by the ‘Decree on Committees of the
Village Poor’ (kombedy), a new institution to assist in gathering foodstuffs by
dividing the village into rich and poor and setting the latter against the former in
order to locate and confiscate surplus grain. Both decrees were anathema to the
Left SRs and seem to represent the Bolsheviks reverting to the ‘dictatorship of
the proletariat’ now that the party of the peasantry was not present to represent
their constituents’ interests in the cabinet.
The Bolsheviks’ strangulation of the peasant section and their increasingly
aggressive stance towards the peasantry prompted some Left SR members of
the Central Executive Committee to call for the convocation of a separate All-
Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies. To pull apart the peasant’s
Soviets from those of the workers would have signified a fundamental split in
the legitimate basis of the regime. Spiridonova and her Left SR central commit-
tee colleagues resisted, preferring to press for an early convocation of the All-
Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Their
aim was to force fundamental policy changes by subjecting the government’s
domestic and foreign policy to criticism in the broadest possible popular forum.
Naturally the Bolsheviks opposed a separate congress of peasants’ Soviets which
would have destroyed the de facto consolidation of national Soviet institutions.
The Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, Soldiers’ and
Cossacks’ Deputies was convened on 28 June 1918. The Bolshevik intra-party
conflict encouraged the Left SRs to think that the Left Communists might
side with them at the National Soviet Congress and that they might even win
a majority. Left SRs were confident that they would have at least 40 per cent of
the delegates to the forthcoming Fifth Congress of Soviets, a good platform on
which to advance a resolution ending the hated peace and, thus, allow them to
rejoin the government. As the opening of the congress on 4 July approached,
the scale of Bolshevik gerrymandering became clear. Official figures gave the
Bolsheviks 678 delegates and the Left SRs 269. Rabinowitch recalculated these
figures and suggested that if the 399 Bolsheviks challenged by the Left SRs are
taken out, and the 90 Left SRs denied admission by the Bolsheviks are included,
then the picture was Bolsheviks 378, Left SRs 379 with 30 SR Maximalists, who
were in the process of merging with the Left SRs, holding the balance of power.54
This was in line with contemporary press reports and Left SR expectations. As
Izmailovich, a member of the Left SR central committee, later wrote: ‘The Left
SRs failed to consider the Bolsheviks’ capacity to work miracles.’55 In frustra-
tion, Left SRs turned to terrorism to try to end the peace, remove the main issue
dividing the coalition, and reinvigorate their partnership.56 This tactic backfired
spectacularly and led to the final break in Bolshevik–Left SR relations.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had already acted as a catalyst for the formation of
anti-Bolshevik groups both inside and outside Russia, pushing them into action
against the new regime by early summer 1918. The Russian Civil War which
raged from summer 1918 until the start of 1921 now emerged from widespread
resistance to the Soviet order. A loose confederation of anti-Bolshevik forces
aligned against the Soviet government, including former landowners, con-
servatives, republicans, middle-class citizens, reactionaries, pro-monarchists,
liberals, army generals, non-Bolshevik socialists who still had grievances and
democratic reformists voluntarily united only in their opposition to Bolshevik
rule. The Bolsheviks faced ‘White Armies’, led by former officers of the tsar-
ist state, and also intervention by the forces of foreign countries. Three White
Army commanders posed a serious threat to the Bolshevik regime based around
Moscow: in 1919 Kolchak attacked from the East, Denikin from the South and
Yudenitch from the West. This movement, which had in total over 250,000
troops, was united by a hatred of the Bolsheviks and a desire to restart the war
against Germany. This latter objective won them the support of Russia’s former
allies, who invaded Russia themselves. Soldiers from Britain, France, the United
States and Japan were sent to Russia along with arms, funding and munitions
to support the White Armies. These combined in the East and attacked along
the Trans Siberian Railway. Britain and France took control of Murmansk and
Archangel in the North, while the Americans attacked from the Far East, helping
Japan to take control of Vladivostok. At one stage, the Bolsheviks had lost con-
trol of almost three-quarters of Russia with the Whites having advanced as far
as Perm. In 1919 the forces of General Kolchak were defeated by the Red Army
and most foreign troops were withdrawn from the Russian Civil War, though
funding continued. Trotsky’s Red Army then advanced north, taking Archangel
and to the south it defeated opponents in the Caucasus.
The crisis of Civil War pushed the Bolsheviks towards a drastic economic pol-
icy, later referred to as ‘War Communism’ which included the rapid nationaliza-
tion of all industry and the requisitioning of all surplus grain from the peasants.
While this succeeded in meeting the immediate needs of the state, it created
deep resentment in both the proletariat and the peasantry which eventually
escalated into outright rebellion. ‘War communism’ involved abolition of pri-
vate trade, labour discipline, nationalization of all large-scale industry, and at
its height in 1920, replacement of the money system with a universal system of
state rationing. The grain monopoly was introduced in May 1918 in response to
the urban food crisis. Millions fled the hungry cities and travelled to the coun-
tryside to barter with the peasants or live closer to the sources of food. The great
industrial cities of the north, the power-base of the Bolsheviks, lost half their
population between 1918 and 1920. Under the grain monopoly all the peasants’
harvest surplus became state property. Armed brigades were sent into the vil-
lages to requisition grain by force. Where they found none, it was assumed that
it was being hidden by ‘kulaks’ and a violent struggle began. In January 1919 the
grain monopoly was replaced with a general Food Levy (prodrazverstka) which
extended the monopoly to all foodstuffs and took away the powers of the local
food organs to set the levies in accordance with the harvest estimates: henceforth
Moscow would take what it needed from the peasantry without any calculation
as to whether it was taking its last stocks and food and seed. By the end of 1920,
armed opponents of the Bolsheviks had been defeated, but the Russian Civil
War produced confusion, division, attack and retaliation, intense propaganda,

war crimes and human suffering on catastrophic levels. The war caused disease
and starvation which killed millions of people and shattered Russia’s already frail
economy, with industrial production at the end of the war just a seventh of 1913
production levels.
As the Civil War intensified, the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defence
(Sovet Rabochei i Krest’ianskoi Oborony) was established by a decree of VTsIK
in November 1918. The Defence Council was established to organize the econ-
omy for the Civil War, rather than for the conduct of military operations.57 It was
composed of Lenin as chairman, Stalin as representative of VTsIK, Trotsky as
chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, V.I. Nevskii as Commissar for
Transport, Briukhanov as Deputy Commissar for Foodstuffs, and L.B. Krasin as
chairman of the Extraordinary Supplies Commission. Like Sovnarkom, though,
attendance was not restricted to official members, and many full members had
deputies to serve in their place. The Defence Council had common membership
and shared administrative support and premises with Sovnarkom. This encour-
aged the Defence Council to quickly adopt similar procedures and norms of
operation to Sovnarkom in relation to pre-sittings paperwork and prepara-
tions, and internal sitting practices and regulations. While the decisions of
MSNK required the approval of the parent body, thus making it subordinate to
Sovnarkom, the decisions of the Defence Council had the immediate force of
law, making it coordinate with Sovnarkom.58 These three bodies, Sovnarkom,
Little Sovnarkom and the Defence Council formed the central decision-making
system of the Soviet state in its earliest years.
From November 1917 to March 1919 the main duties of the Sovnarkom were
directing the activities of the commissariats and discussing reports on their
work, resolving differences among commissariats, appointing commissars and
other staff of state bodies, discussing and implementing general administrative
measures, reviewing departmental budgets and allocation of finance, drafting
and issuing decrees, preparing other decrees for confirmation by the VTsIK, and
examining and confirming treaties and agreements with foreign states.59 Until
the onset of his illness in 1921, Lenin chaired almost every sitting of Sovnarkom,
a heavy task which required all of his energy, at the expense of party work,
where he never held a formal administrative role.60 From mid-November 1917
Sovnarkom met almost daily, sometimes even twice a day. During its first three
months of operation Sovnarkom had sittings on 72 out of a possible 91 days.61
Its first couple of weeks in operation were understandably its most hectic with
14 sittings in 15 days. After this the pattern of sittings became less frequent with
an average of 22 sittings per month, or around five per week, between January
and August.62 By late 1918 Sovnarkom’s sitting pattern had regularized at an
average of three days per week, on a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.63 Thus,
by January 1919 there were an average of 12 sittings of Sovnarkom per month.
The body was sitting around half as frequently as in the first post-revolutionary
months, but in a more systematic pattern.64 From its creation in December 1918
the Defence Council’s sittings were held in a regular pattern, sitting twice a week,
usually on a Wednesday and a Sunday,65 although it became more ad hoc in
1919 as the Civil War escalated.66 Despite the almost daily sittings during the
early months, the workload of Sovnarkom tended to be heavy. In the hectic
weeks of late November 1917 agenda items averaged 14, sometimes exceeding
20.67 The length of agenda decreased over the following couple of months, with
December 1917 averaging 11 items per sitting, January 1918, 9 and February
1918, 8.68 This decline does not indicate any wane in the functioning or author-
ity of Sovnarkom. In fact it indicates the opposite; the accumulated experience
of handling business accelerated work, and the increasingly formal regulations
introduced over this time streamlined Sovnarkom’s work. From Sovnarkom’s first
months Lenin worked to bring about full and proper preparation of items sub-
mitted to the Sovnarkom (and later the Defence Council) agenda. Shortly after
the move to Moscow on 20 April 1918, Lenin reissued his instructions requiring
Sovnarkom members to submit agenda items in advance, with a brief outline of
the relevant facts and a draft decision.69 In order to avoid unnecessary conflict
at Sovnarkom meetings, particular emphasis was placed on giving all interested
departments the opportunity to consider draft decisions in advance and obtain-
ing their agreement wherever possible. This responsibility was placed on the
initiating department, which also had to secure the approval of the Finance and
State Control Commissariats if the measure required non-budgeted financial
allocations. Heads of interested departments were expected to supply written
comments on projected measures for inclusion in the agenda papers, though
they might simply minute the draft decision ‘no objection’ or ‘agreed’ if they did
not wish to oppose or amend it.70 In a further step to ensure full preparation for
sittings, in August 1918, acceptance of agenda items the day before the meeting
was banned. This rule was intended to ensure that Sovnarkom members had
time to acquaint themselves with the papers in advance.71 There was a way of
getting around the rule which forbade the introduction of agenda items on the
day of Sovnarkom meetings. Members could move the inclusion of an item in
the sitting itself as a matter of urgency. Lenin invariably opened meetings with a
call for removing or adding items.
The Sovnarkom Secretariat had considerable influence over the content of

the sittings of Sovnarkom and the Council of Labour and Defense (Sovet Truda
i Oborony or STO). Secretariat staff refused to include items into the Sovnarkom
agenda unless there was evidence that the necessary interdepartmental con-
sultations and approvals had been completed. It was up to the Sovnarkom
Administration Department to ensure that they received proper documentation
from the commissariat in question, and then circulated it among the other rele-
vant commissariats, before questions were admitted to the agenda.72 This could
be a lengthy progress, and, as stamps on documents reveal, it often took three
days for the papers to be sent between the state institutions and be processed by
their respective chancelleries.73 As a result the Secretariat struggled against the
commissariats which tried to get additional items on to the agenda at the last
minute.74 Decisions on items that had made it on to the agenda but were found
to be lacking all the necessary paperwork were often adjourned until the next
sitting, when all interested commissariats had given their views.75
From early in its existence, this pre-prepared paperwork was attached to each
Sovnarkom sitting, a practice which many saw as an inheritance from the hold-
over tsarist bureaucrats who populated the new commissariats. At its second sit-
ting, on 15 November 1917, there were 20 pages of paperwork relating to items
on the agenda. By 30 November the number of pages of ‘additional’ paperwork
to the Sovnarkom agenda had risen to 35 pages. This practice of pre-prepared
paperwork for Sovnarkom members to read before the sitting increased over
time; in April 1918 the average number of pages of pre-prepared documenta-
tion for the Sovnarkom agenda was 51 (the sitting of 30 April had 214 pages of
notes), and in May 1918 the average was 59. By early 1919 the average number
of pages of pre-prepared paperwork for Sovnarkom sittings had stabilized at 47,
but on occasion the figure reached as many as 173 sheets.76 The same pre-sittings
paperwork preparation can also be seen in the STO records. For its first sitting
on 1 December 1918, members had 46 pages of paperwork to read before the
sitting.77 The number remained high with an average of 42 over that month.78
Between January and March 1919 the STO pre-sitting paperwork had an average
of 49 pages.79
Attendance figures at Sovnarkom sittings over the course of the regime’s first
year and a half ranged between 26 and 34 persons, usually around 30 were pre-
sent, including actual commissars or their deputies, and reporters or specialists
invited to address specific issues.80 During the first four months of Soviet power,
the average number of official People’s Commissars attending Sovnarkom sit-
tings was high: 11 of a possible 14.81 In the chaotic months of the move to
Moscow and the Left SR debacle in March and April 1918, this figure fell to
7,82 but by January 1919 it had risen again to 10, although only around half of
commissars even at this stage were members of the Party Central Committee.83
The major personalities of Sovnarkom in its early months, and its most regu-
lar attenders, included a diverse array of colourful characters, many of whom
despite working shoulder-to-shoulder in cabinet meetings, would go on to have
contradicting opinions in many areas of government policy and populate the
various branches of opposition during and after the Civil War. Among the elder
statesmen of Sovnarkom were 48-year-old Lenin and Aleksandr Tsiurupa who
was only few months his junior. With his splendid white beard and candid eyes,
Ukrainian Tsiurupa was the son of a minor civil servant who had trained as an
agronomist and worked as a statistician before his underground revolutionary
activity led to multiple arrests.84 He belonged to a group of Social Democrats
in Ufa who agitated among local railwaymen and factory workers where he
first worked alongside Lenin and Krupskaia.85 He was valued in the Bolshevik
Party as ‘a modest person, not an orator, not a writer, but a wonderful organ
iser, a practical worker who knew the villages well’.86 In 1917 Tsiurupa was a
member of the local RSDRP Committee and working as a food supply official
in Ufa.87 He arrived in Petrograd in November 1917 as a delegate to the All-
Russian Foodstuffs Congress, was soon appointed Deputy People’s Commissar
for Foodstuffs and from February 1918 he assumed the role of a full People’s
Commissar.88 Tsiurupa built a strong apparatus which was later described by
Lenin as ‘one of our best People’s Commissariats’.89 He was one of the major fig-
ures in Sovnarkom, one of the institutions ‘big names’ and a constant presence
in its meetings, debates and commissions.90 Tsiurupa even chaired some sittings
of Sovnarkom after Lenin was shot in August 1918.91 Despite the strict rules on
speaking in Sovnarkom debates, his opinion was often sought by Lenin, even
on matters in which he was not directly involved with Tsiurupa insisting ‘But
I did not ask for the floor!’ and Lenin responding ‘We ask you!’92 Unfortunately
Tsiurupa ‘was nearly always ill’ with a heart condition and when he attended
meetings he had to sit ‘in a semi-reclining position, his feet stretched out on a
near-by chair’.93 On one occasion Tsiurupa fainted in a Sovnarkom sitting and
sometimes felt so ill that he had to go into the Sovnarkom telephone booth to
lie down on the sofa inside.94 Tsiurupa’s weak heart was the main reason Lenin
insisted on a lift being installed in the Kremlin.95
Just a few years younger was Georgii Chicherin, also rather unwell and over-
weight by the revolution, but perhaps most qualified of all the Soviet leaders
for his role in government. Born into an old noble family, his father, Vasily
N. Chicherin, was a diplomat in the service of the Russian Empire. He spoke

all major European languages and a number of Asian ones and after graduating
from St. Petersburg University with a degree in history and languages, Chicherin
worked in the archival section of the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs from
1897 to 1903. In 1904 Chicherin inherited the Tambov estate of his celebrated
uncle, Boris Chicherin, the liberal jurist, political philosopher and historian, and
became very wealthy. He used his newfound fortune to support revolutionary
activities in the run-up to the Russian Revolution of 1905 and was forced to flee
abroad to avoid arrest, spending the next 13 years in Western Europe, mostly
London, Paris and Berlin, where he joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian
Social Democratic Labour Party and was active in émigré politics. With the
outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Chicherin adopted an anti-war pos
ition, which brought him closer to Lenin’s Bolsheviks. In 1917, he was arrested
by the British government for his anti-war writings and spent a few months in
Brixton Prison. Trotsky secured Chicherin’s release and safe passage to Russia in
exchange for British subjects held in Russia at the time, upon his return to Russia
in early 1918, Chicherin formally joined the Bolsheviks and was appointed
Trotsky’s deputy during the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
After the treaty was signed in late February 1918, Trotsky, who had advocated a
different policy, resigned his position and Chicherin became the acting head of
the commissariat and was appointed Commissar for Foreign Affairs on 30 May.
The brilliant and arrogant Leon Trotsky, who was 38 years old in 1917, was
nine years Lenin’s junior. He was a successful journalist, a vigorous opponent
of the Bolsheviks in pre-revolutionary polemics about Marxist theory, and the
charismatic hero of the 1905 revolution and the October Revolution of 1917.
Described by those close to him as self-assertive, explosive and ‘difficult’ in per-
sonal relations, he was a regular fixture at Sovnarkom sittings until his duties in
the Red Army largely took him away from its it work from August 1918 onwards.
His near contemporary, Joseph Stalin, a cobbler’s son from the Georgian prov-
inces with an unfinished seminary education, was one of the ‘committee men’ for
whom conspiracy, prison and exile were formative experiences. As Commissar
for Nationalities, Stalin proved a reliable workhorse for Sovnarkom, attending
meetings regularly and participating in various commissions of the body, even
alongside his later rival, Trotsky.
Iakov Sverdlov, 32 years old at the time of the revolution, dark-complexioned
with his trademark pince-nez, outwardly phlegmatic, confident, popular and
jovial, attended Sovnarkom in his capacity as formal head of state, chairman of
the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in order to ensure tie-up between
Sovnarkom and this assembly. He brought his skills as an experienced party

organizer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of party members, as contemporar-
ies remarked, Sverdlov could judge people with extraordinary accuracy and
finesse. Sverdlov, born in Nizhny Novgorod into the family of a poor Jewish
engraver who forged documents for the radical underground, was admitted to
school at the age of 11, but was expelled for protesting school regulations after
finishing only five grades. He worked as a pharmacist’s apprentice near a lum-
beryard where he came into contact with workers who shared stories about the
hardships of their everyday life and was inspired to join the revolutionary move-
ment. After involvement in the 1905 Revolution in the Urals, from 1906 to 1917
Sverdlov spent most of his time in a tsarist jail, labour camp or in Siberian exile
where for some time he was forced to share a room with Stalin; the conflict-
ing natures of the two men soon led to strained relations. Meanwhile, though,
Lenin and Sverdlov’s relationship was becoming stronger as Sverdlov’s hardline
dedication impressed the Bolshevik leader and he was an obvious choice as the
party’s safe pair of hands for leadership of the Central Executive Committee;
however he died of influenza in January 1919.
Presiding over the cultural ferment of the revolutionary era was People’s
Commissar for Enlightenment Anatolii Lunacharsky, the son of a civil servant
and nearly life-long revolutionary. A man of many enthusiasms, Lunacharsky
combined his life-long passions for socialism and the arts and literature in many
aesthetic and political manifestos, as well an outpouring of his own plodding
dramatic works. A mild Bolshevik as far Bolsheviks went, Lunacharsky was
known for his moderation and toleration, described as modest, genial, tactful,
with an erudite manner which was no doubt an asset among the strong person-
alities in the early Sovnarkom. Although his Sovnarkom career was almost cut
short after he tearfully threatened to resign over false reports that historic build-
ings on Red Square had been damaged during revolutionary fighting in October
1917, he proved to be one of the longest serving commissars, holding his post
until his resignation in 1929.
Alexandra Kollontai, the only woman in the Soviet cabinet, had been an
important figure in the Russian socialist movement from the turn of the century.
Born the daughter of a general, into a wealthy family of Russian and Finnish
background, Kollontai was raised in both Russia and Finland, and acquired an
early fluency in languages, which later led to a career in the Soviet diplomatic
service. She played a major role in forcing the Russian socialist movement to pay
special attention to organizing working class and peasant women. Kollontai had
been neutral in the Bolshevik-Menshevik split and in 1905 joined with Trotsky
in pressing for a more positive attitude towards the newly emerged Soviets and
for unity of the party factions. In exile from 1908 for her involvement in revolu
tionary politics, she was active as a speaker and writer in Europe and the United
States. On her return to Russia in 1917 at the time of the February revolution,
she opposed cooperation with the Provisional Government and was elected
a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. In April she
was the only speaker other than Lenin to support the demand for ‘All Power
to the Soviets’. In October Kollontai participated in the decision to launch an
armed uprising against the government and in the revolt itself and was elected
Commissar of Social Welfare in the new Soviet government. In 1918 she lead a
delegation to Sweden, England and France to raise support for the new govern-
ment. Upon her return, she argued against ratification of the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk and resigned from the government. The closest to a true proletarian
government member was Kollontai’s one time partner, 33-year-old Alexander
Shliapnikov, a former metal-worker and an Old Bolshevik from 1903 who was
from a poor Russian Old Believer family. Arrested and imprisoned at various
times for his radical political activities, including his involvement in the 1905
revolution, Shliapnikov spent much of the previous decade in Western Europe,
where he worked in factories and was a trade union organizer. Shliapnikov
returned to Russia in 1916 and was one of the senior Bolsheviks in Petrograd at
the time of the February Revolution in 1917. He was a member of the Executive
Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and was
also was elected to chairmanship of the Petrograd Metalworkers’ Union and
later of the All-Russian Metalworkers’ Union. In this role he led negotiations of
a wage agreement between Petrograd metalworkers and factory owners in 1917
and following the October Revolution, Shliapnikov was appointed Commissar
of Labour, but left for supply work during the Civil War, before establishing the
Workers’ Opposition alongside Kollontai in 1920. Valerian Osinsky-Obolensky,
another persistent critic of Leninist policy throughout his government career,
was a mainstay of Sovnarkom in its early years, first as head of the Supreme
Economic Council, and later as acting Commissar for Agriculture. Osinsky, an
old Bolshevik from a minor landowning family of civil servants, not the princely
family as some assumed, was well-educated, erudite and fluent in several lan-
guages, and in his early thirties when he joined the Soviet government, coming
to the position as a trained economist.96
The youngest of the Sovnarkom stalwarts in its early months was the
28-year-old Vladimir Karelin, viewed by the Left SRs as their most tact-
ful member; if they wanted to raise a potentially controversial question in
a conciliatory way, then he was the man for the job. Already a member of
the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in December
1917 he became People’s Commissar for State Properties and was also a mem-
ber of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Justice, as well as part of
the Soviet delegation at the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk. According to
Shteinberg, Karelin ‘knew how to present delicate issues in calm and winning
ways’.97 Prosh Proshyan, People’s Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs, on the
other hand, was a 34-year-old Left SR firebrand, son of an Armenian poet, and
seen by the Bolsheviks as the most radical and sympathetic to their principles
from among the Left SR camp, sometimes even going against his own party
members when debating issues in the meetings.98 The withdrawal of the Left
SRs and the resignation of the Left Communist Commissars in response to the
signing of the peace with Germany neutered, to some extent, the lively range
of opinion in the cabinet, although some later returned to their work in the
state apparatus.
Sovnarkom at work, 1917–19
The leaders of the Soviet government dealt with the range of challenges that
faced them and developed and implemented their revolutionary programme
through Sovnarkom. Government administration took up a significant portion
of Sovnarkom’s energies, 48 per cent between November and February, although
this subsided slightly over the course of these first few months, once the new
government had taken shape.99 The major issues that were discussed were hiring
and firing,100 interdepartmental relations and resolving of conflicts,101 direction
of finance and budgets,102 practicalities such as government supplies of paper,
ink and premises,103 and finally, conducting relations with local government
bodies, Soviets, and initially the Constituent Assembly, Dumas and zemstva.104
The second largest category of business dealt with by Sovnarkom was economic
policy. Economic questions were crucial in the Bolshevik ‘re-making’ of Russia
on socialist principles and the leaders of the new regime conducted the social-
ization of the economy through Sovnarkom. These included confiscations or
requisitions of enterprises and property of the bourgeoisie and capitalists, and
nationalization of factories and plants.105 Sovnarkom presided over the regula-
tion of internal trade and the nationalization of the banks.106
Sovnarkom also faced the fundamental economic problems which were tear-
ing the country apart, the ‘bread and land’ part of the Bolsheviks 1917 slogan. It
directed the new regime’s response to the foodstuffs and land questions,107 and
led the massive agricultural and industrial changes that the revolution spelt.108
A similar proportion of Sovnarkom’s energies were spent on domestic questions.
Obviously the maintenance and improvement of the country’s basic infrastruc-
ture of transport and communications was a major issue.109
The new government also developed and implemented its radical social pol
icies through Sovnarkom. These programmes included its social welfare schemes
(workers’ pensions and insurance, healthcare, education)110 and religious pol
icies such as the separation of the church and state.111 It also handled issues of art
and culture.112 Sovnarkom managed the government’s relations with the indus-
trial working class,113 a crucial issue for a so-called dictatorship of the proletariat.
Legal and juridical matters also populated Sovnarkom’s agenda, where the set-
ting up of the new ‘revolutionary tribunals’ was worked out.114 Sovnarkom also
handled the introduction of the new socialist civil laws, such as the reform of
marriage and divorce legislation.115 At this early stage, Sovnarkom was in charge
of the key areas of foreign and military affairs. It dealt with questions of for-
eign trade, international relations and diplomacy.116 Also crucial was Russia’s
nationalities issue, and Sovnarkom dealt with relations with the minorities of the
republic, including the Cossacks.117 Finally, Sovnarkom handled some military
issues, including the logistics of building the new Red Army.118
One issue which Sovnarkom prioritized early on it its existence was the mat-
ter of salaries of officials and administrators. Soviet leaders saw that one way of
creating an anti-bureaucratic state apparatus was to equalize pay across govern-
ment and governed. Lenin quoted directly from Engels in State and Revolution
when he wrote: “Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the
state from servants of society into masters of society…the Commune used two
infallible means… it paid all officials, high or low, only the wages received by
other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000
francs. In this way a dependable barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set
up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bod-
ies, which were added besides. Engels here approached the interesting boundary
line at which consistent democracy, on the one hand, is transformed into social-
ism and, on the other, demands socialism. For, in order to abolish the state, it
is necessary to convert the functions of the civil service into the simple opera-
tions of control and accounting that are within the scope and ability of the vast
majority of the population, and, subsequently, of every single individual. And if
careerism is to be abolished completely, it must be made impossible for “honour-
able” though profitless posts in the Civil Service to be used as a springboard to
highly lucrative posts in banks or joint-stock companies, as constantly happens

in all the freest capitalist countries.’119
In its early months, Lenin’s government attempted to implement this pre-
scription in practice. The Bolsheviks wanted to equalize pay across all levels
of officials and workers and soon began to develop wage scales for their gov-
ernment institutions.120 As early as 16 November, the second formal sitting of
Sovnarkom, the issue of wage equalization for government officials and employ-
ees was discussed.121 In the next sitting, two days later on 18 November, the
example was set from the top, and Sovnarkom decided to fix the monthly wage
for the People’s Commissars at 500 roubles, with an allowance of 100 roubles
for each member of the family unable to work, comparable to the earnings of
a skilled worker, in the decree ‘On the Remuneration of People’s Commissars,
Senior Government Employees and Officials’.122 This legislation on salaries
declared thus: ‘Recognising the need for energetic measures to reduce the sal
aries of high-ranking office employees and officials in all state, public and pri-
vate institutions and enterprises, the Council of People’s Commissars decrees: 1)
that the salary limit for People’s Commissars be fixed at 500 roubles a month
where there are no children, and 100 roubles extra for each child; housing to be
at the rate of not more than one room for each member of the family; 2) that all
local Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies be asked to prepare
and carry out revolutionary measures to impose special taxes on high-ranking
employees; 3) that the Ministry for Finance be instructed to draft a general law
concerning this reduction; 4) that the Ministry for Finance and all the respective
commissars be instructed to immediately study the estimates of the ministers
and cut all excessively high salaries and pensions.’ When a decision was taken
in May 1918 to increase the wages of People’s Commissars, including that of
Lenin, from 500 to 800 roubles, the Sovnarkom chairman wrote a severe letter
to Bonch-Bruevich, the head of the Sovnarkom Administration Department,
in which he protested against ‘the obvious illegality of this increase’, which was
‘in direct infringement of the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of
November 18, 1917’, and inflicted ‘a severe reprimand’ on those responsible.123
Victor Serge’s account confirms this equalization of pay, complaining: ‘In spite of
my special rations as a Government official, I would have died of hunger with-
out the sordid manipulations of the black market, where we traded the petty
possessions we had brought in from France. Our salaries were limited to the
“Communist maximum”, equal to the average wage of a skilled worker.’124
Continuing economic dislocation meant that the Soviet State was forced to
roll back this measure from spring 1918 onwards in relying upon ‘bourgeois
specialists’ who expected higher pay. The ‘specialists’ to whom the new regime
felt compelled to make concessions were paid a wage 50 per cent higher than that
received by the members of the government.125 Lenin admitted in ‘Immediate
Tasks of the Soviet Government’ that ‘naturally, in a developed socialist soci-
ety it would appear quite unfair and incorrect for members of the bourgeois
intelligentsia to receive considerably higher pay than that received by the best
sections of the working class… Under the conditions of practical reality, how-
ever… we must solve this pressing problem by means of this (unfair) remu-
neration for bourgeois specialists at much higher rates.’126 In May 1919, when
the Soviet Republic was on the verge of collapse, further urgent measures were
taken. Lenin’s government had to make concessions to the engineers and techni-
cians with material incentives to bring their skills to bear to restore the Soviet
economy. The draft decision on ‘Salaries for Specialists’ was proposed by the
Sovnarkom on 23 May 1919 and the decision was grudgingly taken to allow,
under a very tight reign, specialist salaries of 3000 roubles: ‘On June 15 only
those whose salaries have been endorsed by the Council of People’s Commissars
shall receive the rate of 3,000 roubles and more.’127 This concession constituted a
specialist wage of six to one, given that the average skilled wage at this time was
500 roubles. This differential was exceptional and could be paid only after it was
endorsed by the government itself.
By early 1919 the breakdown of types of business considered by Sovnarkom
was little changed. Administering the state institutions still took up the majority
of Sovnarkom’s attention, claiming 49 per cent of agenda space. Issues of person-
nel and appointments to state posts were still mainly dealt with by Sovnarkom
in January 1919, including the appointments of Liubovich as Deputy People’s
Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs, Vasiliev and Antonov as members of the
collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and Elizarov as a
member of the collegium of the Commissariat of Trade and Industry.128 The
basic budgetary estimates and financial allocations which were so frequent in
the Sovnarkom agendas of the early months of the Soviet regime were now
replaced with straightforward confirmation of decisions of the ‘Maly’ or ‘Little’
Sovnarkom (MSNK) which now resolved these matters. Confirmations of the
minutes of MSNK occur repeatedly on almost every Sovnarkom agenda from
mid-1918.129 In early 1919, economic issues, such as procurement of food-
stuffs,130 agricultural or agronomical matters,131 and questions of industry,132
transport and communications,133remained the second most common items at
28 per cent. These are followed by domestic questions at 15 per cent, ranging
from the struggle with typhus, to social welfare projects, to library affairs.134
However, foreign affairs were conspicuously absent from the 1919 Sovnarkom
agendas. Discussion of military issues was now more rare, due partly to the cre-
ation of the Council of Defence in late 1918.
Commissions of Sovnarkom members were often created to consider issues
needing further attention. Commission members were nominated in the
Sovnarkom meeting and were instructed to draft a project proposal to present
to Sovnarkom for confirmation within an appointed period (usually a week or
two). Commissions with a longer life-span were instructed to give a weekly sum-
mary of their work. Although not unheard of earlier, the regular use of com-
missions by Sovnarkom increased from April 1918. In this month, Sovnarkom
appointed at least seven different commissions, including the ‘Commission on
Finland’ of 2 April.135 From early 1919 the use of commissions accelerated fur-
ther and the Sovnarkom bodies spawned a constant stream, of which several
dozen were normally in existence at any given time.
Thus, while one tenet of the totalitarian school was that the Party Central
Committee operated as the supreme decision-making body of the early Soviet
government from the birth of the regime, archival records confirm that in no
way could the Party Central Committee be viewed as the effective government
of the nascent Soviet regime. Instead, it is clear that Sovnarkom occupied this
position. In fact, during the first months after the revolution, the Party Central
Committee continued instead to manage internal party affairs. Once Sovnarkom
had become operational, the Bolshevik Party Central Committee concentrated
on party work, including Bolshevik publications, party representation in various
types of assemblies and the arranging of party conferences and congresses.136
Its limited forays into non-party affairs, most tackled before Sovnarkom was
properly up and running, were concerned with facing the extremely urgent food
supply problem, the pressing nationalities question, and some appointments of
party members to state posts.137
The peace issue dominated proceedings in the Central Committee until late
Spring 1918. The highly controversial issue of peace dominated party discussions
and tested Bolshevik ideology to the limit. While, of course, the peace issue had
huge practical and military significance, it was in a sense a fundamental ‘polit
ical’ question. The debates in the Central Committee dealt not with the practical
ities of the treaty, but with the rights and wrongs of Marxists negotiating peace
with a capitalist, imperialist government when they should have been foment-
ing Europe-wide revolutionary war. Peace-making demanded reinterpretation of
deeply held ideological tenets. The sittings of the CC of 21 January and 17, 18, 22,
23 and 24 February were wholly devoted to discussion of this topic.138
After the conclusion of peace, the Central Committee met sporadically

between March 1918 and March 1919. It sat three times per month in March,
April and May 1918. There was then a four-month break until its next sitting on
16 September 1918. The Central Committee sat three times in October, twice in
December, once in January 1919 and once in February 1919. The preparations
for the Eighth Party Congress in March 1919 brought a flurry of five sittings
that month.139 These meetings had between five and ten attenders, usually six
or seven, with a core membership of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, with Sverdlov
chairing the sessions.
The Central Committee focused on discussion of current affairs, and was
overwhelmingly concerned with party business. It rarely touched upon state
matters.140 These records, scribbled barely legibly, in abbreviated form, into
notebooks, in various handwriting, display a sense of haste and disorder. Indeed
the Central Committee did not acquire a stenographer and typed minutes and
addenda until October 1918 and so the party records lacked the formal, institu-
tionalized culture present in the Sovnarkom records of this time.
Agendas were not very long, with between four and eight points to discuss.141
The agendas were filled with ‘cleanly’ party business: the ‘work of the Central
Committee’,142 the calling of conferences,143 Lenin’s theses and general party pol-
icy,144 party slogans145 and issues of party discipline.146 Issues surrounding party
publications also frequently appear in the agendas, including the appointment of
the editorial boards of Pravda and other party newspapers,147 and also the evacu-
ation of Pravda from Petrograd.148 One interesting agenda item of this period is
that of 3 May 1918 on the ‘strengthening of the party organisation’.149 The party
organization was struggling to fulfil its own role, and thus not in any position
to extend its jurisdiction and dominate state affairs. This question would cul-
minate in the reforms of the Eighth Party Congress of March 1919: the cre-
ation of the Politburo-Orgburo system which would later enable the party to
dominate the state hierarchy. Beyond these purely party matters, the Central
Committee discussed some issues which were particularly controversial in rela-
tion to Bolshevik ideology. The two crucial issues for Bolshevik ideologists in the
first year of Soviet power were the peace treaty and the international situation.
In late spring 1918, the Central Committee was still feeling the reverberations
of the Brest-Litovsk treaty. The Central Committee discussed military organiza-
tion150 and the sending of party members to Berlin to iron out formalities with
the Germans.151 The Bolshevik fall-out with their former government colleagues
the Left SRs over the peace treaty was a recurring theme,152 and the Bolsheviks
also discussed declarations of the ‘Lefts’ in their own party who opposed the
peace.153 On 2 October 1918 the ‘international position’ was considered and

Lenin was entrusted with the task of writing an address on this topic to read
at the VTsIK.154 The Ukraine and the relations of the Soviet government with
the Rada also cropped up in Central Committee sittings repeatedly throughout
1918.155
The most common ‘government’ affair considered at Central Committee sit-
tings was the ‘allocation of forces’, or appointment of party members to gov-
ernment posts. On 4 April 1918 the staffing of Vesenkha was discussed and
Rykov was appointed as chairman. On 3 May discussion proceeded on the staff-
ing of the Commissariat of Agriculture. Other ‘state’ bodies to which the Party
Central Committee appointed staff during this time include the Commissariat
of Labour, the Cheka, the Military Revolutionary Soviet of the Southern Fleet,
Vesenkha, and the Extraordinary Commission on supplies.156 These discussions
arose, in part, from the walk out of the Left SRs from their government posi-
tions in protest to the Brest-Litovsk treaty. The Central Committee became grad
ually more involved in government appointments, though unsystematically in
this early period. It dealt with only a fraction of the actual hiring and firing
of state officials, which Sovnarkom largely managed itself. In 1921 systematic
party control over state appointments became the norm. This was a result of the
expansion and rationalization of the Central Committee Secretariat during the
period when Stalin (as General Secretary) was taking the party apparatus into
his own hands and beginning to use it to consolidate his authority.157 Besides the
personnel question there were relatively few attempts by the Central Committee
to interfere in state business. It showed little sign at this time of trying to take
on the responsibility of governing, which was, for the time being, firmly in the
hands of Sovnarkom.
The debates at the Eighth Party Congress in March 1919 confirm the picture
of party-state relations outlined above. Delegates asserted that in 1918 and early
1919 the Central Committee had ‘worked poorly’, and ‘did not exist as a colle-
gial decision-making organ’, or even ‘did not exist at all’.158 Conversely, it was
remarked that, in the same period, Sovnarkom had functioned as the ‘real gov-
ernment’ and ‘decided all fundamental issues of policy’.159 Yet the first signs that
the Civil War was having a negative effect on the functioning of Sovnarkom also
emerged. Certain delegates pointed out that recently the Civil War had taken
several Central Committee members away from their duties in Sovnarkom. The
collegial nature of Sovnarkom and the state apparatus meant that their deputies
and members of their commissariat collegium were able to step in for them but
this had a negative effect, argued some delegates, because Sovnarkom began
to be filled by ‘departmental people’ who only ‘fight for the interests of their
own department’ and ‘do not understand or are not interested in wider gen-
eral policy’.160 Proposals were made that ‘a majority of members of the Central
Committee enter Sovnarkom…a significant quantity of CC members must enter
the government’ in order to ensure its ‘real government’ status.161 One state
activist, Osinsky-Obolensky, even suggested that Sovnarkom be made into a
‘Politburo’ consisting of 12 Central Committee members.162
The Eighth Party Congress resolutions confirmed as the correct basis of gov-
ernment the Soviet apparatus, emphasizing that ‘the Party must implement its
decisions through the Soviet bodies, within the framework of the Soviet constitu-
tion. The Party strives to direct the activities of the Soviets, not to replace them.’163
Yet concrete measures proposed to strengthen the position of Sovnarkom were
not followed through in the congress resolutions. In the wake of the death of Iakov
Sverdlov, head of the Party Secretariat who had up to this point been respon
sible for record keeping and organization, the congress resolutions focused upon
developing the party apparatus which was perceived to have gone into decline
since the revolution as the energy of members had been diverted into Soviet
work. Developments were put into motion which inadvertently allowed the cen-
tral party machine to gain the expanded apparatus necessary for its eclipse of
Sovnarkom as de facto cabinet. The Politburo was created as a permanent organ
of the Central Committee composed of five members of the Central Committee
to ‘take decisions on questions that cannot wait’, but to answer to the assembly
of the Central Committee.164 The resolutions also provided for the creation of an
organizational bureau and an expanded Party Secretariat. On 25 March 1919,
at the next plenum of the Central Committee, five Central Committee mem-
bers were elected as members of the Politburo: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Krestinskii
and Kamenev, as well as Zinoviev, Bukharin and Kalinin as candidate members.
The Politburo began to meet from mid-April 1919. From its first months, unlike
the Central Committee before it, this smaller, more dynamic party body began
to meet more frequently and gradually widened its jurisdiction to encompass
important areas of government business, as Chapter 6 will explore.
3
The Sovnarkom Administration

Department and Reception:
The ‘Anti-Bureaucratic’ Apparatus
The administrative machinery of Sovnarkom was crucial to the functioning

of the new revolutionary government. The rapid regularization of the work of
Sovnarkom, described in Chapter 1, was made possible by the development
of Sovnarkom’s Administration Department (upravlenie delami) which pre-
pared the formal Sovnarkom agenda, managed interdepartmental consult
ation, arranged and recorded periodic sittings and checked the execution of
Sovnarkom’s decisions. In the first year or two after the October Revolution,
Sovnarkom’s administrative apparatus was certainly more developed than the
equivalent party apparatus, which began to expand only after the Eight Party
Congress in spring 1919.
Lidiia Fotieva, who was the Sovnarkom secretary during the Lenin period,
remarked in her memoir, ‘In other institutions quite often the old apparatus was
preserved. Despite many insufficiencies, all staff had the necessary skills…The
apparatus of Sovnarkom…was absolutely new. It did not possess any experience
nor traditions, nor knowledge of office work…In this lay an advantage: the appar
atus of Sovnarkom was sufficiently distinguished from others by the absence
of bureaucratism.’1 In the eyes of the Bolsheviks themselves the Administration
Department of Sovnarkom exemplified the new, anti-bureaucratic, collegial
apparatus which Lenin envisaged as the ‘revolutionary’ state. It differed from the
rest of the Soviet state apparatus, the commissariats, in that it was not directly
based on an antecedent government institution composed of hold-over staff.
The necessity to blend with the pre-existing ministerial apparatus meant that the
Sovnarkom framework had to conform to the rationale of that machinery. Thus
certain structural and operational characteristics endured between Sovnarkom’s
administrative apparatus and that of the pre-revolutionary Council of Ministers,
but these features were not directly ‘inherited’ in the same way as in the commis-
sariats. In State and Revolution, Lenin made no distinction between government
officials in the political sense and bureaucrats in the administrative sense. He
seems to have believed that having administrative staff serving the government
imbued with a sense of proletarian, revolutionary democracy would deliver
some kind of authentic democratic quality to the government itself. This anti-
bureaucratic measure proved rather naive and ineffective in practice, however,
and the ‘revolutionary’ nature of Sovnarkom’s administrative practices did not
deliver any significant democratic quality to the Soviet government.
In the 1960s, as a result of the limited archival access granted to Soviet schol-
ars, Iroshnikov, Genkina, Klopov, Orlov and Liubysheva published the first
studies of Lenin’s activity as chairman of Sovnarkom with some discussion
of the body’s administrative apparatus; however no account covers the whole
Lenin period. T.H. Rigby was the only anglophone historian to touch upon
Sovnarkom’s administrative machinery, but his brief discussion is based almost
solely on Iroshnikov’s 1960s research.2 There is disagreement in the existing his-
toriography concerning the basic details of the size and structure of Sovnarkom’s
Administration Department and no scholar has yet attempted to go beyond
the physical structure and personal composition of the apparatus to exam-
ine the ethos and culture inside this, or any other, Soviet state institution. This
chapter examines the size, personal composition and internal structure of the
Sovnarkom Administration Department from 1917 to 1921 and then turns to its
internal culture. The chapter considers the Sovnarkom staff ‘collective’ to tease
out the operational norms and the gradual ‘party-ization’ of the state apparatus
over the course of the first few years of the Soviet regime. The chapter high-
lights the distinguishing features of the revolutionary, anti-bureaucratic state
administration which members strove to create in the Sovnarkom apparatus.
The Sovnarkom Administration Department exemplified this concept inspired
by values outlines in State and Revolution and was intended to act as a model to
diffuse these practices throughout the rest of the state apparatus.
The Sovnarkom administrative apparatus was distinct from that of the com-
missariats largely inherited from the old regime, in that it was built from scratch.
A few weeks after the establishment of the Soviet government most People’s
Commissariats moved to occupy the premises of the former imperial minis-
tries. Over half of the central commissariat officials, and around 90 per cent
of upper echelon officials, had worked in some administrative position before
October 1917.3 Thus, hold-over white collar staff predominated in the People’s
Commissariats. In the Sovnarkom administrative apparatus this was not the
The Sovnarkom Administration Department and Reception 57
case. As prominent staff members recalled, in Sovnarkom’s Administration

Department ‘nobody had any previous experience of clerical work’4 and ‘there
was not one person who, before entering Sovnarkom, knew anything of office
work’.5 As a result the Sovnarkom apparatus lacked not only inherited specialist
knowledge and administrative techniques, but also the operational culture of
behavioural patterns passed down to most post-revolutionary state institutions.
Immediately following the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on 25–26
October 1917, which proclaimed Soviet power and the new Provisional Workers’
and Peasants’ Government, the Bolsheviks gathered in the premises of their
Congress of Soviets party fraction, in room 38 on the second floor of the Smolny
Institute (where all the party fractions in the Soviet were housed), to discuss the
practicalities of setting up the new government apparatus. The 44 year-old his-
torian and old Bolshevik organizer Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich was
appointed as the head of the Administration Department of Sovnarkom and
entrusted with the practicalities of arranging the premises and administrative
staff of the command centre of the new government.6 Effectively, he functioned
as Lenin’s Chief of Staff during the first year of Soviet power.
Over the next two days Bonch-Bruevich found suitable premises, one floor up
from the Bolshevik Party fraction room. On the third floor of the right wing of
the Smolny Institute, Bonch-Bruevich set up an office for the Sovnarkom chair-
man in room 67. At this early stage Sovnarkom sittings were held in the same
room. This room had previously served as the HQ of the SR Maximalist Fraction
of the Congress of Soviets and there were quarrels when Bonch-Bruevich relo-
cated them to room 24 to make way for the new government.7 In mid-November
1917 the Sovnarkom Administration Department was transferred to more
suitable premises, on the third floor of Smolny’s left wing and remained there
until the government was transferred to Moscow in March 1918. A small cor-
ner room with three windows became Lenin’s office as Sovnarkom chairman.
Behind a hastily built partition, a switchboard was installed. An orderly was sit-
uated nearby who doubled as Lenin’s personal guard. The Sovnarkom Secretariat
occupied a large room adjacent to Lenin’s office. Its furniture consisted of some
office desks, two cupboards and two small tables with typewriters until further
chairs, benches, tables, and materials to construct partitions could be obtained
over the following weeks.8
The first member of staff Bonch-Bruevich recruited to work in the Sovnarkom
Administration Department was Nikolai Petrovich Gorbunov. Gorbunov was
a 25-year-old doctoral chemistry student and Bolshevik Party member since
June 1917. Gorbunov came to the attention of Bonch-Bruevich while working
in Smolny in mid-1917, in his capacity leading the Information Bureau of the

Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. Bonch-Bruevich recommended
Gorbunov as Sovnarkom secretary and the nervous young man arrived at room
67 to meet the Sovnarkom chairman on 29 October. Lenin summarily informed
him that he had been appointed as secretary of the supreme organ of the new
government.9 Gorbunov was already working in the Sovnarkom apparatus by
30 October 1917.10 Due to the lack of a stenographer at this early stage, he had
the task of typing out all of the official paperwork of Sovnarkom, ‘tapping them
out on two fingers’ due to his inexperience with a typewriter.11 In a few days
Gorbunov was joined by Anna Petrovna Kizas ‘who multitasked as clerk and
secretary at this early stage, as well as dealing with the heaps of telegrams arriv-
ing at Smolny all night through’.12
Over the next couple of weeks, with the help of the Military Revolutionary
Committee, Bonch-Bruevich managed to assemble a staff of 21, including E.K.
Koksharova and M.N. Skrypnik from the Rozhdestvenskii Regional Committee
of the Bolshevik Party to serve in the Sovnarkom Reception (they later became
Senior Secretaries),13 typists N.N. Gorlova, P.A. Shakhunova and V.P. Stender;
the accountant A.D. Pogruzov and his assistant S.D. Grudskii; Head of Premises
N.G. Kosiora and her two assistants A. Akimov and P. Nikiforov; four orderlies
P. Dmitriev, E. Vorontsev, P. Polovinkin, and S. Zhelyshev; the courier Vasilev;
and five cleaners A. Boltrukevich, E. Vilenson, S. Simak, E. Khikanen, and
B. Boltrukevich.14 Over the next few months the number of staff grew steadily.
Scholars disagree regarding the precise size of the Sovnarkom Administration
Department staff by the end of 1917. According to Klopov this figure was 48,15
Orlov claimed 65,16 but Iroshnikov argues that there were only 32 permanent
employees at this time.17 E.K. Koksharova (Sovnarkom secretary at this time)
claimed there were 23 employees by the end of December 1917.18 Iroshnikov’s
figure is supported by an archival document which lists 34 Sovnarkom staff and
their wage payments. This list details, in ascending pay order, helpers (malchiki),
guards, couriers, telegraphists, cleaners, canteen staff, employees of the Cuttings
Buro, drivers, reception secretary, forwarding clerks, chief clerks, an assistant
to the senior reception secretary, a ‘table manager’, an assistant to the secretary
of the Soviet, cashiers, an assistant accountant, a senior reception secretary, a
second secretary of the Soviet, a senior accountant, a secretary of the Soviet and
the Head Administration Department.19 There were 58 members of staff by 31
January and 65 by the end of March 1918.20 According to internal documents,
the figure for 1 June 1918 was 98 staff members21 which fell to 93 by the end
of that year,22 and in 1919–22 the size of the Sovnarkom staff remained fairly
stable.23
The core secretarial and administrative staff, with minor exceptions (such
as Maria Skrypnik who apparently wanted to join the government in Moscow,
but was refused by Bonch-Bruevich), were transferred with the government in
March 1918. There was stability and continuity in the staffing of the Sovnarkom
Administration Department despite the evacuation of the government to
Moscow. Head of the Administration Department Bonch-Bruevich, head sec-
retaries Gorbunov and Fotieva, secretaries Agranov, Koksharova, Shakhunova,
Sergeeva, Utevskii, Glotov, Korotkov, Fedorov, clerks Ozerevskaia, Belenkaia,
Fediushin, and accountants Alekseev, Markelov, and Mikhailova were all trans-
ferred, along with technical staff such as the telegraphists Kizas, Shkvarina,
Sobolev and Liuter.24 The Latvian Rifle Unit that had been responsible for
Sovnarkom’s security in Petrograd also accompanied it to the Kremlin to con-
tinue their duty in Moscow.25
Nevertheless some restaffing was necessary. Prominent new recruits at
this time included M.I. Gliasser, M.I. Volodicheva, N.S. Allilueva, and N.S.
Lepeshinskaia. In May 1919 Sofia Brichkina, previously secretary to the Moscow
Military Revolutionary Committee, joined the Sovnarkom staff.26 As noted
above, however, once the Sovnarkom administrative staff reached the 100 mark
in summer of 1918, there was no further expansion and low turn-over of staff
which made for a consistent and settled contingent. The department prided itself
on being ‘quite small in comparison with the swollen, unwieldy apparatus of the
commissariats’27 and the staff numbers remained stable for the rest of the Lenin
period.
After the transfer of the government from Petrograd to Moscow, the new
premises of Sovnarkom in the Kremlin consisted of a row of six rooms. After
refurbishments were complete, the premises of Sovnarkom moved to another
wing of the building which was connected to Lenin’s apartment by a long corri-
dor.28 The Administration Department remained here throughout the rest of the
Lenin period. Lenin’s Kremlin office as Sovnarkom chairman had three doors,
one of which opened into the hall of Sovnarkom sittings. Initially the meeting
hall was a modest size room with two windows, named the ‘Red Hall’. In 1921
this hall was expanded by joining it with a neighbouring one, so the meeting hall
now accommodated four windows. In the Lenin period the Secretariat worked
in the Red Hall due to both a shortage of suitable premises, and the necessity to
be close to Lenin’s office in order ‘to fulfil his instructions without delay’.29
The internal structure of the Sovnarkom Administration Department has

not yet been accurately mapped by historians.30 According to Gorodetskii, the
administrative apparatus of Sovnarkom ‘was divided simply. The Administration
Department, the Secretariat, the Finance Section and the Section of Press –
such were the basic sections of the apparatus of Sovnarkom.’31 Iroshnikov was
the first historian to recognize further internal subsections of the Sovnarkom
apparatus, but did not compose a comprehensive outline.32 Archival docu-
ments reveal a more developed Sovnarkom apparatus than has previously
been acknowledged. By May 1919 the Sovnarkom Administration Department
based in the Kremlin included facilities such as the Garage, Ambulance Base,
Pharmacy, Accountancy, Hospital, Telegram Bureau, Household Management,
Dentist, Information Bureau, Office of the Chairman (room 38), Office of
Administration Department (room 41), Chancellery (room 42), Reception 1,
Reception 2, Sanitary Administration of the Kremlin, Secretariat (room 41),
Sovnarkom Telegraph (room 20).33 Besides these facilities, the core internal sec-
tions of the Administration Department were the Secretariat, the Chancellery,
the Accountancy, the Communications Bureau, the Canteen, the Press and
Information Bureau and the Sovnarkom Reception.
The Secretariat was responsible for servicing Sovnarkom sittings: it prepared
the agendas, gathered the addenda, and took the minutes. It was also responsible
for promulgating Sovnarkom’s decisions and checking on their execution by the
corresponding commissariat. In its first few months the Secretariat staff included
Gorbunov, M.N. Skrypnik, A.P. Kizas, Iu.P. Sergeeva, N.N. Gorlova, V.P. Stepner,
P.A. Shakhunov as well as clerks L.Ia. Ozerevskaia and S.G. Mar’ianovskii, ship-
ping clerks B.Ia. Belenkaia and G.R. Fediushin, typists B.G. Maksimenko and
S.M. Livshishch and others.34 The Secretariat had a staff of eight by 1920: the
secretary, five assistants and two typists. Lidiia Fotieva, Lenin’s personal secre-
tary, was head of the Secretariat. She was 35 years old at the time of her appoint-
ment to the staff of the government, had been a Bolshevik since 1904 and was an
experienced party organizer. In the run-up to the October Revolution she had
worked in the Vyborg Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
and on the editorial staff of Pravda. Fotieva, together with three assistants M.I.
Gliasser, M.A. Volodicheva and the 18-year-old Nadezhda Sergeivich Allulieva,
a Bolshevik activist who would marry Stalin in 1919, took the minutes of sittings
and managed the execution of decisions made. They also carried out the clerical
work for Lenin’s correspondence. Volodicheva stenographed the minutes of the
sittings. Another of Fotieva’s assistant secretaries, N.G. Krasina, prepared the
materials for Sovnarkom and STO sittings. N.S. Lepeshinskaia was in charge of
the Information Bureau and sent decrees and decisions for publication in print.
N.S. Allilueva was responsible for Lenin’s Sovnarkom archive: she sorted, sys-
tematized and preserved its documents.35 From 1917 until mid-1918, Fotieva,
Gorbunov and Skrypnik shared the task of taking Sovnarkom minutes.36 In 1919
and early 1920, Fotieva shared this role with Gliasser and Brichkina, sometimes
alternating, sometimes jointly signing the minutes.37 However, from spring 1920
it seems that the role of the Sovnarkom secretary became a more stable one,
largely reserved by Fotieva herself.38
The lack of experience of Sovnarkom’s early secretaries is clear from their
own recollections. Gorbunov wrote of his experience as secretary at the first
sitting of Sovnarkom in November 1917: ‘I was summoned to the sitting by
Vladimir Ilich. Not having a notion of how to take minutes, I attempted to write
down the contents of a report, but of course, did not have time because a stenog-
rapher I was not!39 Fotieva also recalled that ‘(in sittings) Lenin dictated minuted
decisions of Sovnarkom. Usually he spoke his formulation very quickly and hav-
ing finished, he asked “Written it down?” or “Managed to get it?”, and at once
requested the materials for the next question. It was difficult to write it all down,
there was no stenographer. Attention and memory were strained to the utmost
degree, but I did not tell Vladimir Ilich that he wore me out. Usually I managed
to write down only the first letters of each word of Vladimir Ilich’s rapid speech.
The deciphering of these notes was postponed until the end of the sitting.’40
The next stage for the Secretariat was the processing of the minutes after the
sittings, to be presented to Lenin, the Sovnarkom chairman, the next morning at
10 am.41 After Lenin’s checking and redacting of the previous night’s Sovnarkom
minutes, they were sent back to the Secretariat to be copied and distributed
among the commissariats. Initially only certain decisions corresponding to the
relevant commissariats were copied and sent out but on 15 May 1918, following
to the proposal of People’s Commissar of Justice, Stuchka, a decision was taken
to print the entire minutes to distribute them to all People’s Commissariats.
Fotieva noted that this decision systematized and simplified the communication
of government decisions to the rest of the state apparatus: ‘This relieved us of the
issue of endless information letters to People’s Commissars on decisions taken
by Sovnarkom.’42
The Secretariat acquired considerable influence over priorities in deal-
ing with government business, over which bodies matters were channelled to
(Sovnarkom, STO or Maly Sovnarkom) and the form in which they came up
for decision. Staff were instructed to refuse to include items on the Sovnarkom
agenda unless there was evidence that interdepartmental consultations and
approvals had been completed. It was up to the Secretariat to ensure proper

documentation was received and circulated among the relevant commissariats
before questions were admitted to the agenda.43 As a result, the Secretariat waged
a continuous battle against the commissariat representatives, who often tried to
get additional items and ‘urgent business’ on to the agenda at the last minute.44
Besides preparing and servicing sittings, checking the implementation of
Sovnarkom and STO decisions was the Secretariat’s other main duty. Lenin fre-
quently instructed the Secretariat staff to check on the performance of particular
agencies, both with respect to routine procedures and specific decisions. A deci-
sion of Sovnarkom of November 1921 formalized this power and the Secretariat’s
authority. It empowered the Secretariat to bring charges against senior officials
who failed to provide information requested by the Secretariat within three days,
or 24 hours if urgent.45 The assistant head of the Administration Department
had to produce a written summary, ‘in telegraph style’, every fortnight on the
checking of the execution of Sovnarkom decisions.46
The Secretariat was also responsible for reprimanding state officials for late-
ness or absence at Sovnarkom sittings or commissions.47 For example, on 1
November 1920 Fotieva sent a telegram to A.M. Lezharva, L.P. Serebriakov and
A.Z. Gol’tsman on behalf of Lenin demanding an explanation for their non-
attendance at the sitting of the Sovnarkom commission on the elimination of
non-uniformity in Soviet institutions.48 Similar requests for explanation regard-
ing officials’ absence at Sovnarkom sittings were sent to the members of the
Council of Internal Trade on 27 January 1921 and to Aleksandr Shliapnikov on
25 July 1921.49
The Sovnarkom Chancellery (kantselariia), headed by Sofiia Brichkina from
May 1919, was responsible for the incoming and outgoing mail of Sovnarkom.
She registered all arriving and departing letters, telegrams and parcels, and
promptly forwarded them to the necessary persons or departments. Urgent
Sovnarkom papers were sent directly by motorcycle courier. The documents
were given to a registrar and sent via a shipping clerk. This meant saving time
and a full guarantee that the letter was delivered to the addressee, and not left
lying around in the Chancellery. Delays in urgent government post were seen as
bureaucratic red tape by the Sovnarkom chairman and led to harsh reprimands
to those responsible.50 As well as ordinary and urgent post, Brichkina was also
responsible for the handling of secret packets, which, from October 1922 had to
be registered in ‘Book No. 1’.51
As well as tight control and swift dispatch and processing of post, Lenin also
issued the following instruction: ‘In the Administration Department special
registration of letter-complaints must be conducted.’ He entrusted the head of

the Chancellery of the Administration Department with the task of ‘careful sur-
veillance over the execution of my resolutions on these complaints’.52 Until 1921,
the Sovnarkom Chancellery handled letters sent to the government by Soviet
citizens which formed part of the work of the Sovnarkom Reception (this will be
discussed in greater detail in the following chapter).
Finally, the Sovnarkom Chancellery was also responsible for receiving and
compiling information reports from other government institutions for use in
Sovnarkom sittings. From late December 1917 the Commissariat of Internal
Affairs produced a thrice weekly information summary of the local political
and economic situation across the main cities and regions of Russia (including
Petrozavodsk, Kostroma Guberniia, Poltava, Mogiliev Guberniia, Archangelsk,
Vyatka Guberniia, Pskov Guberniia, Perm, Nizhnyi Novgorod Guberniia,
Kursk). The activities and condition of the local Soviets were the major focus of
these reports.53 The Sovnarkom registrar stamps show that the reports usually
took three days, from the day of compilation by the Commissariat of Internal
Affairs, to be processed by the Secretariat, although sometimes it took as much
as a week.54
In Sovnarkom’s early days, its Accountancy was led by A.D. Pogruzov and
S.D. Grudskii, and from 20 December 1917 by the accountant M.E. Alekseev
and his assistant accountant A.F. Markelov.55 Gorbunov was sent by Lenin to
collect the funds for the government from the State Bank in November 1917.
After some initial problems with the bank officials refusing to release funds to
the new government, he brought five million roubles as the basis of the first state
budget of the Soviet regime in a suitcase to Smolny. This money was kept in a
wardrobe, surrounded by chairs, with a guard.56 A Finance Section was added
to the Accountancy in its first weeks. Its structure and functions were further
delineated in a decree of 21 November 1917, which set up a storeroom and a
cash desk. The Accountancy and its Finance Section were responsible for the
wages and expenses of the Administration Department itself. It also handled the
transfer of funds granted by Sovnarkom to the commissariats, central and local
institutions and organizations.57
The Communications Bureau of Sovnarkom consisted of telephone and tele-
graph connections across Russia and abroad. One of the first acts of the setting
up of the Sovnarkom premises was ‘to supply a switchboard for telephone con-
nections through the Central Telephone Station of Petrograd’.58 In the Kremlin
period, the budka or ‘booth’ was set up to provide this facility: ‘a door of the
office of Vladimir Ilich led to the so-called booth, the location of the supreme
switchboard of the Kremlin…a telephone connection was set up in the booth

with all the offices and apartments of the People’s Commissars, with the Central
Committee of the Russian Communist Party, with the HQ of the Red Army, with
Petrograd, Kharkov and other cities.’59 In 1918 almost the whole corridor of the
Administration Department was occupied by the telegraph which functioned
around the clock, sending and receiving telegrams and conversations by direct
wire. As Fotieva recalled, ‘All urgent and secret talks were conducted through
this telegraph; here the telegraph workers were proven persons who could be
relied on…Here was the nerve centre of the country. Information flowed here
from all fronts, and from here orders were sent.’60
At a time of great shortages and little time to spare, the canteen was an
important part of the Sovnarkom Administration Department. During one
early Sovnarkom sitting the People’s Commissar of Foodstuffs, Tsiurupa
fainted from hunger. Soon after Lenin instructed Fotieva to organize a can-
teen initially for around 30 people, including ‘the most thin and hungry’.61
A room serving as a canteen for staff was established on the premises of the
Sovnarkom Administration Department. In these early months each person
was allowed no more than two sandwiches prepared on black bread. Every
evening members of Sovnarkom, including the chairman, arrived to eat sand-
wiches and discuss the important events of the day over tea.62 This facility was
re-established in the Kremlin after the move to Moscow and the Sovnarkom
canteen grew to be an informal space where Sovnarkom members could con-
gregate outside of official meetings to discuss government business and broker
interdepartmental deals.
The Press Bureau was established in November 1917 to supply the native and
foreign press with political information, primarily official reports on the activ-
ity of the Soviet government. In creating its own Press Bureau, Sovnarkom fol-
lowed the precedent of the imperial government. The St. Petersburg Telegraph
Agency (SPTA), the first official news agency of Russia and the predecessor
of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), began to operate on 1
September 1904. The creation of the agency was initiated by the Nicholas II’s
Finance, Interior and Foreign Ministries. On 4 July 1904, a meeting of represen-
tatives of the ministries empowered ‘to consider issues concerning the project
of a government telegraph agency’ adopted the basic documents for the cre
ation and operation of SPTA. The agency reported within the empire and abroad
on political, financial, economic, trade and other data of public interest. Three
directors, one from each of the Finance, Interior and Foreign Ministries, com-
prised the panel that managed the agency. On 31 December 1909 the agency was
subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers, changing its name in August

1914 to the Petrograd Telegraph Agency (PTA).63
During the October Revolution, the Petrograd Telegraph Agency building
in Pochtampt Street had been seized by revolutionary Baltic Fleet seamen. In
the first months after the revolution the Sovnarkom Press Bureau was housed
in rooms 48 and 49 of Smolny, together with the Editorial Office of the newspa-
pers Izvestiia and Rabochii i soldat.64 On 18 November 1917 Sovnarkom decreed
that Petrograd Telegraph Agency become the central government information
agency. In December 1917 the government appointed a correspondent from the
Press Bureau to attend all sittings of Sovnarkom and to write accounts of all the
sittings for publication. The head of the Press Bureau, T.L. Aksel’rod, was nom-
inated to take on this role and be present at all sittings of Sovnarkom (except
those which involved ‘special’ decisions).65 Before publication, however, the
reports on the Sovnarkom sittings were checked over by the Sovnarkom chair-
man. In December 1917, a Bureau of Press Cuttings (Vyrezok) was attached,
after it was deemed necessary to follow the activity of the ‘bourgeois newspa-
pers’ for ‘insinuations and slander’.66 In the 1920s, this Bureau expanded into the
‘Section of Press and Information of Sovnarkom and STO’ and gained responsi-
bility for producing and publishing a yearly summary of the work of the entire
government.67
In early 1918 the Sovnarkom Press Bureau moved to its own room a short
walk away from Smolny, at no. 8, Tavricheskii Palace (the building which had
formerly housed the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet during
1917) and employed a number of writers, editors, typists and couriers. The Press
Bureau sent its information around central and local newspapers and local party,
Soviet and revolutionary organizations. Then in March 1918 both the Press
Bureau and the Petrograd Telegraph Agency also moved to Moscow with the gov-
ernment where their merger was complete by June 1918. On 7 September 1918
the government renamed the Petrograd Telegraph Agency and the Sovnarkom
Press Bureau as the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). ROSTA then became
the central information agency of the whole Russian Socialist Federative Soviet
Republic.
The ‘anti-bureaucratic’ apparatus
Various individuals who worked in the Sovnarkom Administration

Department attested that due to its novelty, this machinery had not inherited
the ‘bureaucratic’ culture that seeped into the commissariat apparatus. Instead,
inside the Sovnarkom apparatus a new, ‘revolutionary’ political culture was fos-
tered.68 After the October Revolution Lenin developed the idea, first expressed
in State and Revolution, of what the anti-bureaucratic organizational culture
of the state apparatus should entail and his conception was embraced and
internalized by the staff of the Sovnarkom Administration Department. This
organizational culture displayed a few key elements, which attempted to work
against what Lenin saw as the ‘bureaucratic’, ‘empty’, ‘formal’, ‘dead’ manner of
work of the imperial state apparatus. First, interpersonal relations among the
staff should not be strongly hierarchical, with those of superior rank acting
dictatorially over those below. This pattern of behaviour started from the very
top, with Gorbunov remarking, ‘Speaking with Vladimir Ilich one felt him
not a ‘boss’ (nachal’nik), but simply as an older comrade.’69 Fotieva also testi-
fied to this collegial atmosphere. She recalled, ‘In his activity as leader of the
Soviet state Lenin strictly observed the principle of “collegiality”.’70 ‘He encour-
aged initiative in every worker and did not press his authority. Flattery, grov-
elling and servility were unthinkable…He considered it especially vile…to be
rude and impolite to those standing lower in position and therefore unable to
reply.’71
Related to this anti-hierarchical atmosphere was the concept of internal self-
discipline.72 Lenin conceived of the revolutionary state as staffed by workers
who were not just pen-pushing bureaucrats or ‘time-servers’ who simply obeyed
orders from above without care. The staff had to be ‘self-disciplined’, show initia-
tive and have an independent attitude towards their individual tasks. According
to Lenin, this mindset was opposite to the ‘formal, soul-less’ (bezdushnyi) atti-
tude of imperial bureaucrats. Fotieva confirmed that Lenin was continuously
concerned ‘to improve the work of the soviet apparatus, to overcome bureau-
cratism and Red Tape in Soviet organs, by…encouraging the cultivation in
Soviet employees of an irreconcilable attitude towards all displays of a… formal,
soulless attitude towards affairs’.73
As well as the collegial, self-disciplined working atmosphere, the polit-
ical culture of the Sovnarkom apparatus encompassed further ideals of work
which were, according to Lenin, contrary to the ‘bureaucratic’ work mode of
the imperial state. These ideals were personal attention to detail, the check-
ing of execution of decisions, and brevity and efficiency in paperwork. Fotieva
explained that Lenin was convinced that ‘attention to detail makes the soviet
apparatus genuinely democratic, not formally democratic, but democratic in
the proletarian sense’.74 Checking of execution was another major weapon in
Lenin’s war on bureaucratism in state institutions. Indeed, in a letter of 1921

to People’s Commissar for Foodstuffs Tsiurupa, Lenin stated explicitly that due
to ‘the most basic insufficiencies of Sovnarkom and STO –absence of check-
ing of the execution of decisions…we are dragged down the foul bureaucratic
mine of writing papers, talking about decrees, writing decrees and in this sea of
paperwork living (zhivaia) work drowns.’75 Lenin also encouraged brevity and
efficiency in the work of the Sovnarkom apparatus. Fotieva remarked that the
hold-over bureaucrats and specialists in the commissariat staff did not possess
the notion of the ‘revolutionary pace of work’ and carried over their old, bureau-
cratic habits. She complained that they wrote voluminous reports, consider-
ing the longer the report, the higher the merit and that these reports went to
Sovnarkom under the signature of the commissars as material for the agenda of
the sittings.76 For example, for the Sovnarkom sitting of 14 May 1918 there were
five agenda points, but 120 pages of addenda reports.77 Fighting this abundance
of paperwork, Lenin strove for brevity in expression by the administrative staff
and government officials, and often repeated that ‘of course, nobody reads long
reports.’78 ‘Write briefly in telegraph style!’ he implored in a letter of September
1921.79
Uncollegial behaviour: The Bonch-

Bruevich scandal, summer 1918
The Sovnarkom archive provides some interesting documents which throw light
on the internal culture of the Administration Department, the interpersonal
relations and expectations of behaviour prevailing there.80 Staff correspond
ence reveals a troubled situation developing inside the department in summer
1918 which ‘for the majority of employees there are absolutely impossible and
intolerable conditions of work and many are compelled to consider leaving for
alternative jobs’. Problems had arisen because the conduct of the head of the
Administration Department, Bonch-Bruevich, had abused its collegial norms.
Gorbunov, head of the Sovnarkom Secretariat, wrote to Lenin: ‘In Petrograd we
appointed almost all responsible employees…by agreement of all comrades. We
carefully thought over each candidature and almost always requested a written
recommendation from well-known “non controversial” comrade-party workers.
In such a way the Administration Department was composed and work went
well. All of us knew each other well, vouched for each other and worked agree-
ably (soglasovanno) and all together (druzhno), as one living organism…’
Gorbunov contrasted these collegial norms with the dictatorial, ‘bureau-

cratic’ behaviour of Bonch-Bruevich: ‘when he suddenly interfered in affairs of
administration and rained down usually in extraordinarily crude form on my
comrade-colleagues it was put up with as a necessary evil. Work was a success,
but this behaviour violated the equilibrium.’
Gorbunov reported that since the move to Moscow the situation had
taken a turn for the worse; Bonch-Bruevich began to issue even more ‘severe
commands, by which he thought to establish formal, bureaucratic (kazen-
nyi) discipline, as he obviously understands it.’ But, according to Gorbunov,
the Administration Department staff had ‘assiduously cultivated among our-
selves comradely, internal self-discipline’ demonstrated when they voluntarily
worked through the night without a break to support the needs of Sovnarkom,
not for material incentives nor due to discipline imposed by superiors, which
he descrived as ‘bureaucratic, dead (mertvyi)’ discipline, giving birth only to
servility (nizkopoklonstvo).’
Two main issues brought tensions between Bonch- Bruevich and the
Administration Department staff to boiling point. As Gorbunov explained, ‘We
would have been prepared to wipe all of this from the slate, to endure it all, for
the sake of affairs to be reconciled, if not for the last two cases.’ The first uncol-
legial error was the refusal to re-employ Maria Skrypnik, ‘although she wishes
it, and we need her very much’. Skrypnik was very popular among her former
colleagues and was, as Gorbunov describes, ‘a comrade who has sufficiently rec-
ommended herself by her exceptionally (samostverzhennoi) strong work in the
Administration Department in the first months of the revolution’. The second
breach of the collegial norms outlined in the letter was Bonch-Bruevich’s uni-
lateral employment of a certain Ruslanov as chief clerk, who, ‘from the first day,
inspired in all of us suspicion with his grovelling, toadying (podkhalimstvo) and
obsequiousness’. Gorbunov relates that the staff approached Bonch-Bruevich a
few times with the question of whether he really knew Ruslanov and if he trusted
him and received the reassuring replies. Ruslanov was given access to all papers of
the Administration Department, including secret ones. According to Gorbunov,
‘he took copies for himself, took the files home and was eternally stuck to the
telephone, on which he talked in hushed tones’. Finally, he disappeared, and
was missing for two weeks. Gorbunov explains that the staff informed Bonch-
Bruevich regarding this poor conduct and ‘I personally discussed our suspi-
cions with him.’ But the head of the Administration Department refused to act
on the complaints of his staff and no disciplinary measures were taken against
Ruslanov. Gorbunov explained that Ruslanov took leave to Petrograd, telling the
staff that he had a dying sister, but then his family called us to ask where they
had sent him. Comrades reported that Ruslanov was ‘a suspicious man, known
in artistic circles as a petty thief, but Vladimir Dmitrievich informed us that he is
a member of a fine family, membership of which is sufficient to absolutely trust
a person’.
Gorbunov then presented the terms suggested by the staff to solve the
problems: ‘to immediately reinstate the collective (its members can be party-
colleagues of the Administration Dept. or colleagues who, although have not
joined the party, are proven to unconditionally sympathize with its conduct in
the October days). To return to the Administration Dept. immediately those
comrades planning to leave…the re-employment of M.N. Skrypnik.’ He also
advised the transfer of the Ruslanov affair to Dzerzhinsky’s Cheka to investi-
gate. The staff felt that if it was necessary to keep Vladimir Dmitrievich in the
position of head of Sovnarkom’s Administration Department, then it should
only be for the sake of representation and he should not be involved in the
work of the Secretariat. Instead they proposed to make the Secretariat directly
responsible before Sovnarkom, to make it independent from the Administration
Department and the hiring of employees for the Secretariat and ‘Chancellery’
should be handled in agreement with their staff collective.
The response of the Administration Department staff to Bonch-Bruevich’s dic-
tatorial, uncollegial conduct in appointing new employees to the Administration
Department, who in their opinion were unsuitable, was to form a collective. The
collective began to insist that staff were appointed exclusively with its approval,
but Bonch-Bruevich ‘did not wish the collective to decide, and began to slight
us in an insulting manner and announced that the function of the collective was
only to work’. They were concerned ultimately that in their revolutionary appar
atus ‘administration began to be carried out by persons alien to Soviet power’.81
Thus, Gorbunov’s letter demonstrates both the collegial norms within the
Sovnarkom apparatus and the importance of personal composition in combat-
ing the bureaucratism which inhibited the ‘democratic spirit’ of the government.
What was Lenin’s response as chairman of Sovnarkom? Bonch-Bruevich
was an old personal friend of Lenin. He had acted as Lenin’s right-hand man
in October 1917 and played a vital organizational role in the pre-revolutionary
Bolshevik Party and in creating the Sovnarkom apparatus. Although he was not
sacked immediately as a result of this conflict, Bonch-Bruevich soon ‘retired’
to ‘devote himself to scholarly duties’. Rigby remarked that ‘the circumstances
of his resigning his vital work in the Sovnarkom apparatus remain unex-
plained’.82 According to Nikolai Valentinov, ‘he fell into disfavour with Lenin
over some misdemeanours’.83 It seems likely that Lenin’s confidence in him had
been shaken by his improper, uncollegial conduct as head of the Administration
Department.84 In November 1920 the CC decided ‘for reasons of business-like
expediency, to free Bonch-Bruevich from his post as head of the Sovnarkom
Administration Department, and to leave the rest in their places’.85 Gorbunov
had sent the letter on the occasion of his leaving Sovnarkom to take up an import
ant post in his area of specialism. A scientist by training, Gorbunov had, since
the revolution, been involved in the development of the Academy of Sciences, of
which he was a former student. Gorbunov’s efforts resulted in the establishment
of the Science-Technology Section of the Supreme Economic Council. He was
appointed by Lenin as its manager in August 1918. The Sovnarkom staff collect
ive did not take kindly to the reassignment of their preferred head administra-
tor. The collective wrote to Lenin remonstrating for Gorbunov to remain in his
current position as he was ‘an irreplaceable comrade and worker-organizer, with
whom we have worked from the start of the October Revolution. It will be very
difficult to lose such a comrade as Gorbunov.’86 After Bonch-Bruevich’s retire-
ment, Lenin personally intervened to bring Gorbunov back to the Sovnarkom
Administration Department to take over as its head,87 no doubt a popular choice
with the staff collective, which by this time had developed into a Communist
Party fraction.
‘Party-ization’ of the Sovnarkom Administration Department
The ‘party-ization’ of the Sovnarkom Administration Department began in

early 1919. The collective, as detailed above, had been formed in mid-1918
as a ‘bottom- up’ response to Bonch- Bruevich’s dictatorial management of
the Sovnarkom Administration Department. From February 1919 the ‘RCP
Fraction of employees of Sovnarkom’ emerged, although in some letters this
group still referred to itself for a while as ‘the Collective’. By late 1919 the use of
the term ‘RCP cell’ had become the accepted terminology. Despite the changes
in its title, the core membership of this group remained fairly stable, if somewhat
expanded. The group that signed Gorbunov’s letter to Lenin as the ‘collective’
appear listed among the members of the cell, initially with one strange addition,
their ‘dictatorial’ nemesis Bonch-Bruevich.
In October 1919 the Sovnarkom RCP cell sent a list of its 23 members, their
ticket numbers and their payment of 30 roubles for membership of the Kremlin
Regional Committee.88 The size of the entire staff of the Sovnarkom apparatus
remained stable at around 100 people in these years, so the party cell was not the
majority of the staff. Indeed, only around a quarter were involved. The party cell
members ranged from top secretaries and administrative staff to cleaners and
canteen assistants.
Bonch-Bruevich’s membership of the cell seems to have been, however, only a
token gesture. By the time the group had become ‘party-ized’, it would have seemed
unusual for such a prominent party member not to join the Sovnarkom cell. But
Bonch-Bruevich did not participate in the cell’s general activities. From 1919
the cell met regularly. The meetings were a formal affair: a chair, secretary and a
bureau of the cell were elected, attenders listed, an agenda prepared and minutes
and records of decisions kept in a very similar way to the system employed by
Sovnarkom itself. The cell’s activities involved party duties: arrangement of mili
tary training, subbotniki duties and selection of delegates to represent the cell
at larger party regional committees. The Kremlin Regional Party Committee,
to which the Sovnarkom Administration Department Cell belonged, arranged
meetings and lectures on political matters which all members were expected
to attend. For example, the Sovnarkom party cell received notes in September
1919 requesting their presence at a lecture by Olminskii on ‘The Revolutionary
Movement in Russia at 7pm on 19 September’,89 and a meeting for a report on
and discussion of ‘The Role of the Trade Unions on Saturday at 8pm.’90
Besides its ‘party’ activity, the major preoccupation of the party cell, like the
collective in 1918, was appointment to the staff of the Sovnarkom Administration
Department. The staff of the state institutions were feeling a desperate shortage
of capable, reliable workers. They seem not to have set up personnel bureaus,
HR departments, and bureaucratic ways of screening resumes but instead
driven by their experience in the revolutionary underground they reached out
to the party to send ‘good’ people. The minutes of a sitting of the party cell on
10 October 1919 revealed a discussion of ‘the dismissal from the “Chancellery”
of ill-disposed elements’. The party cell ruled that it was ‘necessary to carefully
profile all staff employees of Sovnarkom’ and recommended the removal of four
named staff members.91 The collective relied on party connections to provide it
with worthy comrades to replace those they found unsuitable. A note of mid-
1919 to the Moscow Party Committee reads: ‘Dear Comrades! The Bureau of
the Collective addresses you with the request to accelerate your sending to the
Bureau of the Collective… some good comrades, well-known to the Moscow
Party Committee, to replace non-party employees of the Chancellery.’92
This ‘party-ization’ of the Sovnarkom collective, and increasingly its wider
staff, developed gradually from 1919. By late 1919 the Sovnarkom Administration
Department party cell was bringing in party comrades to replace non-party

employees. Furthermore, those individuals involved in the staff collective who
until now had remained outside the party, but sympathetic to its aims, now felt
the need to join it officially. Two such individuals were Fediushin and Shkvarina.
Sovnarkom telegraphist Zinoviia Iakovlevna Shkvarina wrote on 14 October
1919 to request ‘to be included as a member of the Workers’ Communist Party.
I sympathized up to now, but was not officially included. I have worked with
Sovnarkom since October 1917.’93
Sovnarkom was not the only state institution to develop a party cell but was
part of a wider push to create these from around the time of the Eighth Party
Congress in March 1919. For example, the VTsIK apparatus had a party cell
which sometimes held joint sittings with that of Sovnarkom.94 The Rabkrin also
had a party cell much larger than that of Sovnarkom, but with similar activities
and ambitions. In 1923 this Rabkrin cell, for example, sprung to the defence
of the Deputy People’s Commissar Avanesov when rumours abounded that
he would be refused an important state post due to ‘bureaucratism’. The 105
members of the cell intervened to announce that ‘the plenum of the Russian
Communist party cell of the People’s Commissariat of Worker’s and Peasant’s
Inspection have heard a report on the rumours spreading, both within the walls
of the People’s Commissariat and outside it, on the rejection of the candidature of
Comrade Avanesov to the Central Control Commission as a result of the accus
ation of bureaucratism. We consider it necessary to refute this and announce that
Comrade Avanesov, the de-facto leader of the People’s Commissariat of Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspection for many years, has always displayed a lively and atten-
tive attitude to affairs, lacking all bureaucratism and formalism. His work and
personal life was always an example of selfless (bezzavetnyi) devotion to all his
party duties.’95 All in all, the increasing ‘party-ization’ of the state apparatus via
party cells from 1919 gradually undermined the vibrancy and collegiality of the
early years, replacing it with hierarchical direction from higher party organs.
All in all, the apparatus of the Sovnarkom Administration Department exem-
plified the type of revolutionary state machinery envisaged by Lenin as neces-
sary for proletarian democracy. In its internal structure, personal composition
and organizational culture, Soviet leaders and state activists strove to create a
revolutionary, anti-bureaucratic, responsive apparatus directly connected to
the masses. In this it differed from much of the state machinery inherited by
the commissariats from the imperial government. The Sovnarkom apparatus
was established very quickly after the revolution. Its internal sections includ-
ing the Secretariat, Chancellery, Accountancy and Communications, Press and
Information Bureaus all carried out crucially important functions in the run-
ning of the early Soviet government and were geared towards Lenin’s revolution-
ary manner of administration. The development of Sovnarkom’s administrative
apparatus facilitated the regularization of Sovnarkom’s work, particularly in
interdepartmental consultation, preparation of agenda and checking of execu-
tion of government decisions.
Around six months after its creation, the staff size of the Administration
Department stabilized at around 100, and remained relatively small in compari
son to the swelled, overstaffed commissariat apparatus. A strong organizational
culture of collegiality and non-hierarchical, internal self-discipline prevailed
among those staffing the Sovnarkom Administration Department. Not only the
small quantity of staff, but also the ‘quality’ of those working in it was import
ant. From mid-1918 the staff collective was at work purveying a strong sense
that fellow comrades had the right to choose who worked alongside them as
personal material was key to making the state ‘revolutionary’ instead of ‘bureau-
cratic’. This bottom-up staff activism was, from 1919, ‘party-ized’ as the collect
ive became the party cell. This fusing of party and state was initiated, it seems,
not by party leaders, but by the staff of the state institutions themselves in their
struggle to gather suitably ‘revolutionary’ colleagues.
The Sovnarkom Reception

In 1918 the Left-wing American journalist and Soviet sympathizer Albert
Rhys Williams visited the headquarters of the Sovnarkom. He was struck by
the importance placed by Lenin on its ‘priemnaia’ (reception) as a direct link
between the Soviet government and the working masses and remarked that the
Sovnarkom Reception was the ‘greatest in the world’.96 This practice was a key
feature of the revolutionary, anti-bureaucratic, ‘living’ state, according to Lenin’s
rhetoric, connected and responsive to the needs of the proletariat.
The Sovnarkom Reception received visits from the public as well as cor
respondence and handled citizen’s questions, demands and complaints.
Although Soviet leaders developed the reception on an ideological basis as a
feature of anti-bureaucratic Soviet ‘democracy’, they also unconsciously repli-
cated practices of the imperial regime, which received petitions from the peas-
antry and used complaints offices for the public including the rekettmeysterskaia
kontora, the Muscovite Chelobitnyi prikaz97 and the prisutstvennye mesta.98
Popular denunciation, the practice of reporting wrongdoings to the author
ities by the public, often to government offices, had occurred throughout the
tsarist period.99 The traditional under-government at the local level under the
Romanov regime which encouraged the tsar-batiushka myth, patrimonialism
and practice of petitions directly to the ruler (as the ‘scourge of the boyars’) was
exacerbated further in the chaos of revolution and decentralized Soviet power.
As Perrie and Field demonstrated, ‘naive’ or ‘popular monarchism’ was a deeply
ingrained element of Russian political culture.100 As Figes and Kolonitskii have
highlighted in their study of language and symbols of 1917, peasants and even
soldiers and workers, found it difficult to distinguish between the person of the
tsar (gosudar’) and the abstract institutions of the state (gosudarstva). Popular
conceptions of the new post-revolutionary order were often couched in similarly
personalized terms and so the practice of personal petitions was carried over to
the Soviet government.101 Yet no historical analysis of this important institution
exists. Iroshnikov mentioned peasant visits to the Sovnarkom Reception in his
work on the early months of the Soviet government, but noted that ‘an abun-
dance of materials on these meetings of the Sovnarkom Chairman V.I. Lenin
with the workers of Russia could serve as a basis for so far unrealized, special-
ist research’.102 Genkina also looked briefly at the Sovnarkom Reception in her
period (1921–3), but noted that ‘There is, unfortunately not yet a precise account
of Lenin’s reception during the years of his state activity (1917–21).’103
The Sovnarkom Reception was established in Smolny soon after the revo
lution. The staff of the reception in these early months were its head Maria
Skrypnik, the senior reception secretary, E.Z. Utevskii, three reception secretar-
ies and three assistant secretaries.104 From the first days of the Soviet government
a system was established where every visitor who received a pass to Smolny
could come freely to the Sovnarkom premises to announce their requests or
complaints. Thus, the Sovnarkom Reception was attended daily by delegations
of workers, soldiers and peasants during the early months after the revolution.
Bonch-Bruevich, head of the Sovnarkom Administration Department set about
arranging suitable premises to receive these visitors, explaining how he obtained
tables, chairs, benches, made partitions separating the hall into parts where the
secretarial staff worked and where they built the reception rooms.105 The initial
Sovnarkom Reception was a large inter-joining room with a low, wooden barrier
to split it into two parts, separating a large area of the room where visitors arrived
with a table for registration of visitors, from a smaller area which was a reception
proper. The desk of the duty secretary of the reception stood at the barrier and a
Red Guard was posted there to maintain security.106 Bonch-Bruevich, who was
heavily involved in the work of the reception, explained its appeal from the start.
The Sovnarkom Reception received, he recalled, a numerous letters, petitions
and requests, as well as visits from delegations, deputations and peasant envoys
because ‘power was still very poorly organized in the localities and it was diffi-
cult to survive…People were drawn to the centre, to the central power, wishing
to gain answers to hundreds of essential questions. And the peasants, of course,
had most questions of all…power was often interpreted very differently than in
the centre.’107
Much of Lenin’s day, as Sovnarkom chairman, was taken up in receiving visi-
tors to the government. After his visit to the reception in 1918, Albert Rhys
Williams attested to the volume and diversity of visitors, from diplomats, mili
tary men, former bourgeoisie, correspondents, but also many workers and
peasants. During his visit, he was kept waiting for a long time, a highly unusual
phenomenon because according to Williams, Lenin always received visitors at
the appointed time. He assumed that the Sovnarkom chairman was held up by
some highly urgent state matter or some exceptionally important person. He
recalled, ‘Half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half, we sat waiting in the recep-
tion. The even voice of the visitor carried from the office…Finally the door of
the office opened, and to general surprise out stepped not a diplomat nor some
other highly-positioned person, but a bearded muzhik in a long sheepskin coat
and bast shoes, a typical poor peasant.’ Lenin apologized to Williams for the
delay, explaining, ‘This peasant came from Tambov. I wanted to find out what he
thought about electrification, cooperation and economic policy. He talked about
such interesting things that I completely lost track of time.’108
The Sovnarkom Reception proved popular among urban workers, but among
peasants in particular, fitting with their traditional culture of petitioning. From
all over Russia, peasants, nominated by their local community, and travelling on
mir-assembled money, came to meet with the ‘head Bolshevik’, to discuss peas-
ant affairs. Lenin received the visitor peasants, workers and soldiers delegations
either in his office or behind a round table in the Sovnarkom Secretariat if the
party was too large. The peasants brought with them instructions worked out by
the farm assemblies. These instructions included questions requiring solution in
the capital. These questions were diverse: ‘How and on what basis to distribute
horses, cattle and equipment confiscated from landlords?… How must Volost
Land Committees act if Uezd Land Committees resist the bringing to life of the
Decree on Land? According to Koksharova, Lenin listened, asked questions and
gave the visitors instructions.’109
The ritualized behaviour of the peasant envoys is clear from the testimony
of Sovnarkom Reception staff: ‘Despite all persuasion peasant delegates did
not want to return to the localities without having seen Lenin. Some, after
visiting the reception, asked the secretary to give them a note. In this note they
demanded to write that so and so had really been received by Lenin. Very often
we had to issue such papers. The peasant envoys took these documents and like a
sacred object carefully placed it to their bosom, having wrapped it in a clean rag.
Peasant envoys, having seen Lenin and heard his advice were then considered
the ‘first’ person in the village.’110
In 1918 the Sovnarkom Reception was open daily from 12 noon. Bonch-
Bruevich and the reception secretaries listen to the requests and complaints of all
the peasant and proletarian visitors and noted them down.111 Peasants appeared
in the Sovnarkom Reception in groups demanding resolution of land needs,
solution of land disputes, petitions on taxes, obligations and requisitioning of
farm produce.112 After the day’s work the reception staff reported to Lenin on all
‘interesting and socially important visits’. He read the written reports prepared
by reception staff, gave resolutions and directions on tasks arising and demanded
the tracing of their implementation.113 The reception secretary also passed notes
to Lenin every morning and reported to him on who asked for receptions with
him personally, and what they wanted to discuss.114 Lenin appointed a special
day, Friday, to personally receive guests in his capacity as Sovnarkom chairman.
The Sovnarkom Reception in the Administration Department was open on
Tuesdays and Thursdays in the first year after the move to the Kremlin, where
visitors could see the secretaries and deliver petitions.115
The volume of visitors to the reception continued to be considerable even as
the revolutionary tumult died down. Bonch-Bruevich claimed, ‘In the course
of close to six months we received more than 6000 people, each of whom was
a representative of a large group of the population.’116 Gorbunov also testified
‘thousands and thousands of people. Who did not come!’ to the Sovnarkom
Reception.117
The number of visitors was so large that a year after the move to Moscow
an ‘external reception’ was created. Bonch-Bruevich was responsible for the
practical setting up of Sovnarkom’s External Reception during his time as head
of Sovnarkom’s Administration Department in early 1919. He recommended
that because the number of peasant visitors was increasing, it was necessary to
relocate the reception to outside the walls of the Kremlin, where it would be eas-
ily accessible to all wishing to visit. He lamented that many peasant visitors did
not manage to arrive because ‘they are not allowed to enter as they cannot explain
why they have come and our Commandant is very concerned by the many
strange persons entering the government building’.118 Thus, a new Sovnarkom
Reception was set up close to the Kremlin, on Mokhovaia Street. It occupied a
number of large rooms where visitors could sit calmly, relax and drink tea, where
they could write their announcements and where illiterates were given ‘all the
help they wished for’. Bonch-Bruevich appointed some ‘very sensible, thought-
ful workers and Red Army men who willingly took on this important business’,
including the Duty Guard at the reception and the sailor M.D. Tsygankov.119
After Bonch-Bruevich’s departure from his job as head of the Administration
Department in December 1920, the external Sovnarkom Reception was re-
established under his successor Nikolai Gorbunov, this time at Vozdvizhenka, 4.120
In March 1921 the external Sovnarkom Reception was united with that of
the VTsIK under the control of its chairman and Soviet Head of State Mikhail
Kalinin.121 Kalinin was viewed as an expert on peasant matters. He was propa-
gandized by the Bolshevik press as ‘the All-Russian Village Headman’, in photo-
graphs such as ‘Kalinin, back on his farm during harvest’, which reinforced the
notion of a personal link between the reception and the peasant masses.122 As
head of state and chairman of the VTsIK, Kalinin ran a very popular reception
and was one of the biggest recipients of letters from citizens. He was said to have
received more than one and a half million written and oral petitions during the
1923–35 period.123
As well as meeting visitors in person, the Sovnarkom Reception also oper-
ated a ‘letter reception’. The secretary of the Sovnarkom Reception was obliged
to process citizen’s letters to the Soviet government and to report once every
fortnight to Lenin on the general sum. From January 1921, reception staff were
encouraged to use the newspaper Izvestiia VTsIK as a post box in which to reply
to correspondence, complaints and inquiries, to place articles in the newspapers,
especially notices to questions most frequently addressed to Sovnarkom and the
VTsIK by workers and peasants. Lenin also demanded a personal response to
all citizens’ letters to report to their authors that the affair had been directed
somewhere.124
Lenin also pressed for ‘careful surveillance over the execution of my resolu-
tions on these complaints’.125 Until 1921, the Sovnarkom Chancellery handled
letters sent to the government by Soviet citizens. One section of the govern-
ment archive contains a multitude of letters from Soviet citizens to Lenin. Most
expressed opinions, good wishes or complaints on the activity of the new gov-
ernment and many were requests for advice or assistance.126 But not all of these
letters were positive or constructive in tone. Files covering 1917–22 also contain
‘anonymous slanderous letters addressed to Lenin and Sovnarkom’ but remain,
at present, inaccessible to researchers.127 One secretary, Koksharova, confirmed
that the Sovnarkom Chancellery received many letters ‘to remind us that the
bourgeoisie continued a bitter struggle against the Workers’ and Peasants’

Government’.128
In the fortnight beginning 23 November 1917, the Sovnarkom Administration
Department received more than 1740 different pieces of correspondence.129 This
figure remained high in the ensuing few years. In the ten months from 1 January
to 1 November 1921, Sovnarkom received more than 9000 complaints and peti-
tions, almost 1000 per month. Of these, most were varied requests (1529), com-
plaints on the activity of local power (977), applications for help (927), queries
on the taking of allotted property and food tax (296), questions regarding land
(235).130
Secretariat staff read all letter-requests and complaints sent to the govern-
ment. In a special instruction to the Administration Department of Sovnarkom
of 18 January 1919, Lenin instructed the secretaries to report to him on all com-
plaints arriving in written form within 24 hours and on oral complaints in 48
hours. Further, he demanded careful checking of the execution of his resolu-
tions on these citizen’s complaints.131 Any failure on the part of Brichkina to deal
with such a complaint resulted in a reprimand from Lenin. In January 1920 the
peasant V. Iushin from the village Osht in Olonets Guberniia sent a telegram to
Sovnarkom, in which he complained that local powers had taken, as part of ras-
verstka, one of his three cows. Iushin reported that his family consisted of nine
members of which one son was a Red Army soldier. Brichkina sent a copy of this
telegram to the People’s Commissariat of Foodstuffs, to Tsiurupa, but she did not
trace the reply sent to Iushin outlining which measures were to be taken on his
behalf. In connection with this Lenin sent her the following note: ‘To Brichkina,
this is impossible. It is not enough to send it to Tsiurupa. It is necessary to check
and to note what answer was sent, and when.’132
The Sovnarkom Reception served two main purposes. First, it served as a
means of gathering information on the situation ‘on the ground’ throughout the
country and hearing the views of the masses: the ‘authentic voice of the land’,
as Lenin described it.133 Lenin’s colleagues noted that Lenin drew useful infor-
mation from thousands of peasants and workers who came to see him, and
through these meetings he claimed to ‘perceive the pulse of life’ across the Soviet
Republic.134
Second, according to the leaders of the new Soviet government, the
Sovnarkom Reception served as a ‘living connection’ to the labouring masses.
According to Lenin, this ‘living connection’135 was vital to a revolutionary
proletarian-democratic government. The reception system was useful in that it
enabled the regime to be open and responsive to the needs and complaints of
the masses. In a letter of 3 December 1921 to state officials who dealt with the
statements and complaints from petitioners to the Sovnarkom Reception Lenin
wrote: ‘From the work of the Sovnarkom Reception in handling complaints and
statements, it is clear that especially serious and urgent cases have demonstrated
the usefulness of the Reception as a “living connection”.’136
A letter from the Sovnarkom chairman to the Commissariat of Foodstuffs in
1922 on one peasant’s petition demonstrates how Lenin hoped to build a close
link between state and people via the Sovnarkom Reception. Lenin wrote: ‘I ask
you to show assistance to the peasant Sergei Frolov, in buying and receiving of
bread for his village Alakaevka, Samara Guberniia…Because I was personally
acquainted with this village, I consider that it would be politically useful if the
peasant does not leave without any help for sure. I ask you to try to help and to
report to me on what is achieved.’137 As a young man, in the summer of 1889,
Lenin moved with his family to Samara from Simbirsk and bought a small farm
near the village of Alakaevka. The Ul’ianovs spent their summers at the farm,
which was also called Alakaevka, until the autumn of 1893 when V. I. Lenin
moved to St. Petersburg, the rest of the Ul’ianovs moved to Moscow, and the
farm was sold. Lenin’s action seemed to have the desired effect. Having received
bread, the peasants replied: ‘We, those authorised, returning home to Samara
Guberniia, attest that the centre really does offer special care to overcome great
hunger and calamity and that our great leader Lenin took close to his heart all
the needs of the suffering peasantry.’138 The formulaic nature of this response
transcends regime change and demonstrates that the masses responded to this
particular feature of the Soviet government because they were familiar with it.
It, unintentionally, replicated paternal aspects of the political culture of tsarist
autocracy –and the practice of petitioning and receptions, as immortalized in
Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’.
The Sovnarkom Reception proved popular among the masses, and among the
peasants in particular, because they knew how to play the game. The reception
system appealed to a personalized comprehension of power and a patrimonial
culture. Peasants understood that they could go in person and appeal to the
‘Head Bolshevik’, as they had done to the tsar, for help with their needs. Thus the
‘living connection’ which the Soviet leadership felt they were creating as part of
their new anti-bureaucratic, revolutionary state inadvertently reinforced trad
itional customs and ‘manual control’ from the top-down rather constructing
representative democracy.
Lenin was so convinced of the usefulness and necessity of receiving rep-
resentatives of the masses that he extended this system of reception beyond
Sovnarkom, to the commissariats. In the ‘Draft of Regulations of Soviet State’ he

instructed that in every Soviet institution ‘reception rooms for the public must
be arranged, not only inside the building but also outside, so that they are open
to all without any admission cards or rules on days and times. The premises
must be established so that they are unconditionally free from any passes. In
every Soviet institution there must be appointed a book for notes in the shortest
form, names of visitors, the essence of their statement and the direction of the
affair. On Sundays and holidays reception hours must be appointed. Officials
from “state control” are granted the right to be present at all receptions, and
must carry out the duty of visiting receptions from time to time to check the
book of notes and to write up minutes of the visit for inspection.’139 Reception
hours were established in the People’s Commissariats and in the even the Cheka
HQ during the first years of Soviet power.140 The Commissariat of Justice, for
example, located a short walk from the Kremlin, at 21 Ilinka St, held its recep-
tions on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The People’s Commissar Stuchka
was available for visits between 12 noon and 1 pm on all these days, and two
further members of the collegium received people: Kurskii on Mondays and
Wednesdays (between 12 noon and 2 pm) and Kozlovskii on Wednesdays and
Fridays (between 1:30 and 2:30 pm).141 A.F. Ilyin-Zhenevskii, secretary of the
People’s Commissariat of Military Affairs from December 1917 left a colourful
account of his time working in the reception of this commissariat from as early
as Smolny days.142
Lenin demanded prompt fulfilment of the requests and complaints of those
visiting the Sovnarkom Reception and reprimanded state officials dragging their
feet in these tasks. This extra workload was not appreciated by all commissariat
officials. Bonch-Bruevich recalled that there were repeated complaints to Lenin
that the Administration Department overloaded the commissariats with vari-
ous petitions and tasks. Lenin, though, was convinced of the importance of this
work to de-bureaucratize Soviet democracy, remarking acerbically: ‘Our own
bureaucrats are already bureaucratized to such a degree that they are dissatisfied
that the population, by whom they govern, try, on behalf of their needs, to lodge
complaints and requests…We created the state apparatus, really, for this.’143
When in December 1921 Lenin discovered that complaints and statements
of workers sent by the Sovnarkom Reception to commissariats for solution had
remained unanswered, he reprimanded the leaders of these institutions: ‘Once
and for all it is necessary to put an end to the outrage of Red Tape and “kant-
seliarshchina” in your institutions. Important and urgent tasks sent to you by
the Sovnarkom Reception in solving numerous complaints…remain completely
unanswered and unfulfilled. I propose to pull together the machine of Soviet

administration immediately, to work accurately, precisely and quickly. From its
slackness not only do the interests of individual people suffer, but the whole
business of administration takes on a sham, illusory character.’144
Nicholas II, Lenin and later Stalin were all obsessed with this kind of commu-
nion with the people.145 Rather than striving to find representative institutional
solutions, these leaders attempted to connect state and society through recep-
tions and audiences, and through making sure things got done for those individ-
uals who contacted the government directly. Thus, Lenin’s naiveté in State and
Revolution fell flat and the ‘living link’ became a form of control. When these
methods are extended and developed, they cease to appear democratic and start
to look totalitarian.146 Yet, Soviet citizens embraced this system of ‘Receptions’
and also became great writers of complaints, petitions, denunciations and other
letters to the authorities. They wrote, generally individually, and the authorities
often responded. Under Stalin, as Fitzpatrick has explained, ‘it was one of the
best functioning channels of communication between citizens and the state,
offering ordinary people without official connections one of the few available
ways of redressing a wrong or provoking official action on the writer’s behalf.’147
Soviet official spokespeople claimed that receptions and accepting petitions
demonstrated the strength of Soviet democracy and the uniquely direct nature
of the link between citizens and the regime. Writing letters to the authorities
was a way in which Soviet citizens participated in the ‘struggle with bureaucrat-
ism’ and the ‘struggle for socialist legality’, wrote one Soviet commentator in
the mid-1930s. ‘Bourgeois democracies had no equivalent form of direct citizen
action’, he claimed, and ‘feeling themselves masters of the country, workers and
kolkhozniks cannot pass by violations of the general interests of their state.’148
Many Soviet citizens evidently shared the authorities’ belief that letter-writing
was a democratic practice that brought citizens closer to their government.
Osokina argued, ‘Although they criticize and sometimes abuse the existing ways
of doing things, all the same they appeal to the regime as their own people’s
[power],…The authors are convinced that the government not only can but
must help p eople.’149 The recognition of the regime as legitimate, ‘their’s’, deter-
mines the form of appeal to the leaders. It could also be argued that leaders felt
more ‘legitimate’ as a result of the letters they received and responded to, playing
the role of ‘benevolent father’ and corrector of injustices that many of the letters
required.
4
Sverdlov, the Soviets and the Secretariat
Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was a crucial figure in the early Soviet government.
In November 1917 he added the post of chairman of the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee of Soviets to his pre-existing role leading the Bolshevik
Party Secretariat. The apex of both party and state machinery were united in
a single individual and Sverdlov had crucial influence in mediating their rela-
tions in the first year and a half after the October Revolution. His personality
and ideas shaped the functioning of the government and informed party-state
relations in the earliest years of Soviet power. Sverdlov did not, nor intend to,
subjugate the Soviets to an expanding party apparatus. In fact, his presence in
the party-state system, as a bridge between the two apparatus, actually protected
the operation of the Soviet organs.
Sverdlov’s early demise meant that he became the subject of politicised myth-
making. His image emerged as an example of a Bolshevik ‘saintly life’1 and the
loaded panegyric surrounding Sverdlov, handed down from memoir and Soviet
accounts, was reiterated by scholars in their general histories. Stalin set the tone
for Sverdlov’s role in a 1924 article for Proletarskaia Revoliutsia, praising him
as a great ‘organization man’ and strong leader who promoted the expansion of
the party machine.2 In reality no love was lost between these two men who had
a long history of clashes dating back to their time in exile in Siberia together.
An editorial footnote to Stalin’s article complained that there was insufficient
attention given to Sverdlov and encouraged those who knew him to write down
their memories of his activities so that ‘the party will have a full image of one
of its best leaders, whose entire life was the party’.3 Two years later a collection
of memoirs on Sverdlov by leading Bolsheviks was published, and the contribu-
tors all emphasized Sverdlov’s key role in the development of the Communist
Party.4 By the late 1920s Stalin’s supporters began to equate Sverdlov with Stalin
as the party’s great ‘organization men’.5 Western historians largely followed the
pattern set by their Soviet counterparts and inherited the Sverdlov myth intact.
This image of Sverdlov as a devoted party organizer who deployed his skills to
expand the party machinery and faithfully execute Lenin’s orders complemented
the reigning totalitarian paradigm.
In the first significant attempt to revise this accepted wisdom, William Odom
echoed the line that Sverdlov was first and foremost a party man who worked to
subjugate the Soviets to the party, and the party to Lenin’s wishes.6 Odom, how-
ever, noting the lack of development of the party machine under Sverdlov’s ten-
ure, questioned Sverdlov’s organizational ability. Odom claimed that ‘the general
trend of his management policies at this time casts grave doubt on Bolshevik
claims that he was a gifted organiser’.7 But Odom dispensed with the wrong pil-
lar of the ‘Sverdlov myth’. It was not the case that Sverdlov was not a talented
organizer, but instead that Sverdlov prioritized the Soviet apparatus over that
of the party in his post-October career. The lack of expansion and development
of the party machine under Sverdlov was not due to lack of practical ability, but
lack of will to do so. That he believed the new regime should govern through
the Soviet apparatus, not the party machine, is clear in both the way he devoted
his time and energies on a daily basis and also from his writings and speeches
of the time.
Sverdlov and the party
Charles Duval claimed that under Sverdlov ‘the process of party centralization
began in mid-1917…and had become firmly established before 25 October 1917’8
and that ‘long before Stalin’s accomplishments, the director of the Secretariat
became de facto head of government’.9 It seems, however, that while Sverdlov
came to work for the party in the capital after the April Conference, he was not
appointed to the Secretariat until August 1917. Before this date Elena Stasova
was the leading figure in the Secretariat, running it alongside a handful of female
comrades.10 Throughout August and September 1917 Sverdlov did devote his
considerable energies and talents to work in the Secretariat. He focused on build-
ing links with local party organizations and attempting to gather information on
the size and shape of the Bolshevik Party across Russia.11 From October 1917,
however, Sverdlov was busy with work in the Military Revolutionary Committee
and in the Central Committee, planning and executing the October Revolution.
Again, much de facto responsibility for the work of the Secretariat fell to Stasova.12
Instead of moving the Secretariat to Smolny where Sverdlov was based, Stasova
continued to lead the Secretariat’s activities at Furshtatskaia Street.13
Sverdlov, the Soviets and the Secretariat 85
In the immediate post-revolution months, Sverdlov’s participation in the

work of the Secretariat declined further as he took up his post as chairman of
the VTsIK. Stasova remained the practical mainstay of the Secretariat. Sverdlov
was its figurehead and kept an eye on its activity, but his work in the Secretariat
took a back seat, meaning that ‘after the establishment of Soviet power, Sverdlov
barely wrote any (Secretariat) letters’.14 Secretariat records demonstrate that
Stasova handled Secretariat correspondence, sometimes checking import
ant issues with Sverdlov before replying. The phrase ‘not answered you up to
now because wanted to discuss it with Comrade Sverdlov’ appeared in much
Secretariat correspondence of this time. The Secretariat records also contain
many letters jointly signed by Sverdlov and Stasova. It seems that Stasova was
the initial author of the letters to party organizations, but got her formal superior
to co-sign them for official purposes.15
Sverdlov gave less and less attention to party work in the Secretariat and his
visits to the Secretariat office dropped to once or twice a week.16 Trotsky remarked
that from the revolution until spring 1918 at least ‘Sverdlov had been more con-
cerned with his government duties than his secretaryship of the party’.17 He went
so far as to say that ‘the Central Committee had a secretary under Sverdlov, but
no secretariat’.18 The 100 or so pages of Secretariat documents from the Sverdlov
period mostly include account books, receipts and cheques signed by Stasova
granting funds to local party organizations, records of meetings on party busi-
ness, reports and correspondence with local party committees and fractions.
Only around 10 per cent bear Sverdlov’s signature.19
Significant expansion and specialization of the central party apparatus did not
progress on Sverdlov’s watch. The idea of political and organizational bureaus
had been informally proposed previously, but neither were put on a firm footing
while Sverdlov remained formally in charge of the Secretariat.20 The size of the
Secretariat staff remained small until after Sverdlov’s death, but expanded dra-
matically between 1919 and 1921 from 30 to 602 people, increasingly divided
into specialized internal sections.21 Nine internal departments of the Secretariat
were planned after the Eighth Party Congress in March 1919. The most import
ant three of these, the Records and Assignment Department, the Organization-
Instruction Department and the Agitation-Propaganda Department, took shape
over the following few years.22
In fact, both in the centre and in the localities Bolshevik Party organiza-
tion went into precipitate decline soon after the winning of power due to the
demands placed upon party personnel to staff soviet organs and to meet the
demands for personnel at the front created by the Civil War. In many areas the
party membership drained into the Soviets either because of acceptance of the
‘All power to the Soviets’ slogan or because these institutions were seen as need-
ing to be captured by the party.23 In one report Sverdlov even remarked, ‘It is no
secret to anyone that in the centre and in the localities party organization was
in disarray’24 and that party organizations in the localities ‘consider it their duty
not only to impede the work from the centre, but even not to fulfil the directions
of central party organs’.25
Sverdlov’s performance at the Seventh Party Congress in late March 1918
confirms that since the revolution the Soviet rather than the party apparatus
had been his priority. Here he explained that ‘from the October months there
emerged before the soviets absolutely new tasks…Our party put its whole soul
into the soviets. Through the soviets and in the soviets it conducted its main
work.’26 He defended this practice, arguing, ‘Up to now the greatest attention
has been turned to Soviet organizations. The achievements of the October
Revolution had to be strengthened by Soviet work. At the present time, the tasks
of strengthening these gains, and deepening them, remain before us and we,
with our whole soul, pour all our main forces up now into Soviet work. It is
entirely impossible to reproach either individual workers or the whole party, for
this. It flows from the situation.’27
In another speech to the Seventh Party Congress, Sverdlov made a general call
for party unity and improvement of party organization, but failed even to pre-
sent the official organizational report which he, as party secretary, was obliged
to deliver. He announced: ‘Allow me, comrades, to propose the removal of the
organizational question from the agenda…it is extremely difficult to reckon up,
to give an exact account of what has been done by the party in the organizational
respect for the whole period since the last Congress. Besides this, it is neces-
sary to finish the Congress as soon as possible, I would say today. On 12th, in
Moscow, will be held the Congress of Soviets. Huge preparatory work is neces-
sary for the convocation of this congress…many of us, working on the congress,
are burdened by practical soviet work.’28
In his final address to the Seventh Party Congress, Sverdlov suggested that
the party now take over some tasks from the Soviets, namely agitation against
Germany and military construction, ‘because the soviets, which are “the state”,
are bound to Germany by the treaty, whereas the party is independent of
this and so free to agitate’.29 He explained that ‘now our political position has
changed sharply in connection with ratification (of the peace). Up to now we
undertook all work through the soviets, and so the party organization withered.
Now we cannot do this and consequently the time comes when a part of the
active workers migrate from the soviets to the party.’ He proposed: ‘Now again
our party work must be central’ because the ‘soviets cannot conduct these tasks
as the government, sharply and openly’, and so it was necessary to ‘conduct it
through the party… in this area of work, which the soviets cannot conduct now.
It is true that our party organization carries responsibility for all activity of the
present government, but only morally, not legally. The government cannot bear
responsibility for all steps of the party.’
In the last few months of his career, Sverdlov had begun to initiate some
steps towards developing closer links and hierarchical discipline in the party
organization.30 He ordered that the local party organizations establish secretar-
iats to enable a more systematic compilation of information through personal
and organizational questionnaires. In late 1918 the Secretariat instructed local
branches to establish registration files so that the party would have a better idea
of its numbers.31 Yet party centralization did not progress very far by the end
of 1918. In fact it was Sverdlov’s removal from the scene which brought about
the expansion of the party apparatus, rather than his presence. By the time of
Sverdlov’s death the Party Secretariat still lacked a formal internal organizational
structure and its staff were few in number. The challenge posed by Sverdlov’s
death was met by efforts to institutionalize the Secretariat’s structure and place its
operations on a more regular, formal footing after the Eighth Party Congress of
March 1919.32 The Secretariat apparatus had expanded dramatically by the mid-
1920s into a very different animal than had existed during Sverdlov’s tenure.33
Sverdlov and the Soviets
In early November 1917 Lenin offered Sverdlov the chairmanship of the All-
Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets, effectively becoming head
of state of the Soviet government.34 He replaced L.B. Kamenev in this role –
Kamenev was increasingly seen as a political liability by the Central Committee
at this time. In the preceding weeks, Kamenev’s relationship with the Central
Committee majority had become increasingly strained. He firmly opposed the
Bolshevik seizure of power and in mid-October tried to prevent it by leaking
Lenin’s plans to the press. After his election as chairman of the Second Congress
of Soviets he conducted talks with Vikzhel on the highly contentious issue of
the composition of the new government; he disagreed with the Leninists that
it should be solely Soviet power. Kamenev believed, contrary to the main party
line, that the new government should contain representatives of parties not
represented in the Soviets. Kamenev went so far as to negotiate a conciliatory

settlement for the new government which disqualified Lenin and Trotsky from
holding office. At the sitting of the VTsIK on 2 November, Kamenev proposed
a resolution regarding the creation of a government which included representa-
tives from non-Soviet organizations, including the ‘bourgeois’ Petrograd Duma.
The Left SRs expressed ‘full satisfaction’ with this and the resolution was passed.
The Bolshevik fraction in the VTsIK had entered a ‘bloc’ with the Left SRs,
and counter-posed the VTsIK to Lenin’s Sovnarkom.35 Sverdlov was chosen to
replace Kamenev to represent the Central Committee majority line at this dan-
gerous moment as a safe pair of hands whose views were closer to the Leninist
Central Committee majority. Sverdlov did not, as previous scholars have sug-
gested, immediately set about emasculating the authority of the body of which
he had been granted leadership.
While Duval argued that Sverdlov’s dual role made the Soviet Central
Executive Committee a ‘handmaiden’ of the Bolshevik Party,36 there is much evi-
dence to suggest that Sverdlov defended the prerogatives of the VTSIK against
encroachments by Sovnarkom and that he was a relatively fair chairman who
allowed open discussion including full participation of delegates from oppos
ition parties.
On occasions where the Left SR delegates criticized Sovnarkom’s failure to
observe the role of the VTsIK in confirming its important decisions in the early
months of Soviet power, Sverdlov upheld the appeals. At the VTsIK sitting of
10 November 1917, for example, members complained that Sovnarkom showed
a tendency to curtail the rights of the VTsIK by taking too many policy deci-
sions without proper discussion with the VTsIK assembly. A Bolshevik mem-
ber of the VTsIK, Volodarskii, called for the chairman to stop the introduction
of resolutions obstructing Sovnarkom’s work. The Left SR member replied that
they would do this every time this behaviour occurred to show that Sovnarkom
was the only executive organ. Sverdlov came down on the side of the Left SRs,
defending their right to do so, stating that ‘each fraction and individual mem-
ber has the right to table this or any other matter for inclusion in the agenda’.37
The climax of government discussions on making peace with Germany in late
February 1918 also demonstrates Sverdlov’s commitment to defend the role of
the VTSIK in confirming Sovnarkom’s executive decisions. Sverdlov, despite
his personal support for making peace, publically protested the premature dis-
patch of the Lenin-Trotsky telegram to Berlin accepting the peace terms with-
out the VTsIK’s endorsement of this major, controversial decision.38 Sverdlov
then exacted a commitment from Lenin that Sovnarkom would take peace
negotiations no further without consulting the VTsIK in advance, irrespective

of the German advance.39
Even the Menshevik delegates spoke positively about his fair approach to the
chairing of the VTsIK. A contemporary Menshevik, George Denicke, recalled,
‘To their own surprise the Mensheviks were allowed to speak freely, to criti-
cise the government in the sharpest way.’ He described Sverdlov as chairman
of the VTsIK as ‘an unimpeachably correct parliamentarian’. Sverdlov worked
to allow contentious debate, but also to keep order in the often stormy VTsIK
sessions where arguments and insults were a common occurrence in this fledg-
ing assembly. Once Sverdlov ordered Menshevik leader Iulii Martov to leave the
hall on 25 April 1918, as he had disregarded several calls to order –Sverdlov did
what any chairman of a democratic parliament would have done. Another time,
when members in the hall made disparaging remarks to Martov, he replied, ‘I
am being threatened with lynching and I request that the scoundrel be stopped’,
Sverdlov did not censure him, but tried to calm the situation and restore nor-
mal procedure.40 He rarely silenced opposition hecklers, whom he could have
excluded from the sitting according to the rules of the VTsIK. On many occa-
sions Sverdlov warned that he would take measures against delegates disrupt-
ing proceedings if they did not come to order, but did not follow through with
exclusion. Kramarov and Sukhanov were two particularly rowdy members
whose frustrations led them to disturb the sittings on numerous occasions.41 On
one particularly heated occasion in December 1917 Kramarov lost his temper
with the Bolsheviks, shouting ‘I am not speaking in order to convince you, for
one can only talk to you with sticks.’42 A number of Bolshevik deputies called
for Kramarov to be excluded for one session, but a Left SR suggested a ver-
bal reprimand would be sufficient and Sverdlov agreed. In the following sitting,
this heated struggle continued with Stroiev of the United SDs causing uproar
among Bolshevik and Left SR deputies by comparing them to black hundreds.
Sverdlov calmly called on Stroiev to refrain from such comparisons.43 At this
same sitting Kramarov also hurled abuse at the Left SR Commissar Karelin
as he took the stand, shouting ‘Bolshevik lackey!’ Sverdlov demanded that
Kramarov retract the statement, but he refused. Sverdlov suggested his exclu-
sion, but Kramarov was this time saved by Karelin’s dignified proposal to not
exclude Kramarov in order to preserve comradely relations in the VTsIK.44
Thus, Sverdlov defended the right of opposition parties in the VTsIK to voice
their views and bring forward resolutions to the vote. He also spoke out against
the partisan use of Izvestiia, the organ of the VTsIK, in ‘favour of the Bolsheviks,
and confirmed that it should represent all parties in the Soviet assembly’.45 This
tolerant environment created by Sverdlov led the Menshevik delegate Denicke

to remark, ‘For several months the Mensheviks were able to use the VTsIK as a
tribune for their anti-government views.’46
Duval gave a negative interpretation of Sverdlov’s techniques for passing
Bolshevik policy in the VTsIK arguing that Sverdlov ‘manipulated’ floor rules
in the VTsIK to get Bolshevik policies through.47 This is a problematic phrase.
Sverdlov certainly was particularly skilled at directing debate from the chair and
capitalized on the rules of the VTsIK to his party’s advantage, but if ‘manipulate’
implies abuse beyond the formal rules then this is perhaps unfair. For example,
Sverdlov used his right as chairman to postpone unscheduled matters brought
up by opposition members to later sittings. This practice was within his rights as
chairman of the VTsIK and is little more than occurs in parliamentary systems.
Inter-party relations in the VTsIK worsened from June 1918. The VTsIK lead-
ership began to feel pressure from local Bolsheviks to expel the Menshevik and
Right SR delegates from the VTsIK due to their counter-revolutionary activ-
ities. Denicke recalls: ‘It is not known what steps the Saratov Bolsheviks took
in Moscow, but on 14 June the VTsIK finally gave in, apparently after a tele-
phone conference…Sverdlov proposed adding to the agenda the issue of anti-
soviet activities by parties represented in the soviets.’48 At this sitting, a Bolshevik
delegate, Sosnovskii, offered a resolution to expel them and was seconded by
Pokrovskii, Steklov and Latsis. The resolution was passed by a majority and
Sverdlov requested ‘the members of the counter revolutionary parties expelled
from the soviets to leave the VTsIK’.49 A month later, after their murder of the
German ambassador Mirbach in an attempt to destroy the Brest-Litovsk Peace,
Left SRs were also excluded from the VTsIK. This move was not a straightfor-
ward attempt by Sverdlov to ‘get rid of any political opposition in the VTsIK’
as Duval claimed. Sverdlov could have used this as the perfect excuse to make
the VTsIK a one-party body, but instead worked to ensure that those Left SRs
who did not approve of this action by their party Central Committee remain as
members of the VTsIK or be brought in to replace those involved in the Mirbach
escapade.50
Thus, although historians commonly refer to the period from spring 1918
as a ‘one-party state’ in which ‘all non-Bolshevik parties had been suppressed’51
technically this was not the case. Certainly the Bolsheviks suppressed all non-
Socialist Parties and also the Right SRs, but their relationships with the Left SRs,
Mensheviks and other minor socialist parties represented in the soviets were
more complicated. The commonly held view is that after the resignation of the
Left SRs from their state posts, the Bolsheviks were the only party to hold office,
but other parties, albeit in a very small minority, did continue to participate in
the work of the VTsIK.
At the Second Left SR party Congress Spiridonova was confident that they
would have at least 40 per cent of the delegates to the forthcoming Fifth Congress
of Soviets, a good platform on which to advance a resolution ending the ‘breath-
ing space’. If the resolutions were adopted, the Left SRs planned to rejoin the
government. As the opening of the congress on 4 July approached, the scale of
Bolshevik gerrymandering became clear. As Aleksandra Izmailovich, a member
of the Left SR Central Committee, later wrote: ‘the Left SRs failed to consider the
Bolsheviks’ capacity to work miracles’.52 The election of the VTsIK at the Fifth
Congress of Soviets in July 1918 was the point at which the Bolshevik majority
became overwhelming. This Soviet assembly now contained 157 Bolsheviks, 11
Left SRs, 4 SR Maximalists and 26 others.53
A few months later, in October 1918, the Menshevik Central Committee
repudiated their ‘political collaboration with classes hostile to soviet power’ and
in view of these declarations the VTsIK declared as void its resolution of 14 June
excluding them. A similar process occurred in February 1919 with regard to a
section of the SRs where the VTsIK again declared void its ban on their entering
the assembly.54 The fractions of the minority parties participated in debates in
the VTsIK until at least spring 1919 but the Bolshevik majority was so large that
if its fraction all voted in tune, there was no danger that they could be outvoted.
Scholars have commonly assumed that the VTsIK was redundant from mid-
1918. Gill, for example, argues: ‘It’s (the VTsIK’s) decreasing importance is
reflected in the diminishing frequency with which it met…between July 1918
and February 1920 it appears not to have met at all.’55 Yet the stenographic rec-
ord of the fifth convocation of the VTsIK, beginning in July, show that up to the
Sixth Congress of Soviets in November 1918 the VTsIK met nine times around
once a fortnight. The sittings on 15 and 29 July, on 2, 16, 30 September, on 4, 22,
30 October and on 4 November, usually held in the early evening, lasted around
three hours with Sverdlov in the chair.56
There is some uncertainty as to how early the sixth convocation of the VTsIK
(November 1918 to December 1919) stopped convening. There is evidence that
the VTsIK had a joint sitting with the Moscow Soviet and Second Trade Union
Congress on 17 January 1919.57 Sverdlov’s speeches also reveals three further sit-
tings of the VTsIK on 30 November 1918, 23 December 1918 and 10 February
1919.58 It appears that the VTsIK continued to meet at three weekly intervals
until mid-February 1919. From then on the practical exigencies of the Civil War
disrupted the routine operation of the Soviet assembly. At the Seventh Congress
of Soviets in December 1919, Martov remarked that the VTsIK had not met
over the past year. This was not denied by the Bolsheviks, with Trotsky simply
interjecting ‘They were at the front!’59 The Civil War meant that large numbers
of VTsIK members were sent out of the capital to the fronts to fight, hampering
the VTsIK’s functioning. This was part of the reason for the wider decline of the
Soviets across Russia as Civil War conditions revealed their inadequacies for
effecting the decisive, flexible and disciplined executive action rightly deemed as
essential by the Moscow leadership.60
Sverdlov as ‘Chief Whip’: The Bolshevik

Party fraction in the VTsIK
Sverdlov’s major contribution to the Bolshevik Party from November 1917 was
his skilled representation of their interests in the VTsIK. This was a crucial role
if the Bolshevik-led Sovnarkom was to get their policies passed as law in the
VTsIK as their initially small majority there meant they were not guaranteed
compliance.
Managing the VTsIK was not an easy task during its Second Convocation
(October 1917–January 1918) in particular, where two fifths of the members
were composed of Mensheviks, Left SRs and United SDs. The number of Left
SRs and Mensheviks reached half in some sittings because Bolshevik members
of the VTsIK had left to organize Soviet power in the localities or were busy with
other activities.61 Also, it was by no means certain that partisan voting would
take place. On some occasions, Bolshevik members of the VTsIK voted with the
SRs and Mensheviks against their own party.62
Again, the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty was a highly contentious decision which
required very careful handling by the Soviet leaders to ensure a favourable out-
come in the VTsIK. The climax of this process of gaining acceptance of the treaty
in the Soviet assembly began with a joint meeting of the Bolshevik-Left SR frac-
tions of the VTsIK at 11 pm on 23 February 1918.63 The German ultimatum
expired at 7 am the following morning. Sverdlov announced that as time was
short each fraction was allowed only two speeches: one in favour of peace and
one against. No discussion was permitted. For the Bolsheviks, Lenin spoke in
favour of accepting the German ultimatum, and Radek spoke against it. The Left
SRs refused to nominate a speaker favouring peace because Kamkov insisted
that there was unanimity in his fraction against accepting Germany’s terms.
As a result, the only Left SR to speak was Shteinberg, a vehement proponent
of revolutionary war. No vote was taken at the end of this joint meeting, since
the Left SR fraction had already decided against accepting the terms and the
Bolshevik fraction had not yet discussed the matter independently.
Immediately after the joint meeting Sverdlov held a meeting of the Bolshevik
fraction of the VTsIK in which he proposed that the assembled Bolsheviks
should dispense with further discussion of whether to accept the German
peace terms and immediately vote on the issue. One participant of this meet-
ing, L. Stupochenko, recorded the happenings of this night in memoirs. He
recalled: ‘But can’t we at least ask questions? one fraction member inquired. “By
all means”, replied Sverdlov. Opponents of peace bombarded Lenin with ques-
tions each more venomous than the last.’64 When a vote was finally taken, Lenin’s
position to accept the terms received 72 votes as against 25 for the anti-peace
Left Communists.65
Finally Sverdlov was able to convene the VTsIK plenum at 3 am, only four
hours before the German ultimatum expired. Sverdlov, on behalf of the VTsIK
presidium, proposed that after hearing the German peace terms and listening
to a 15-minute report from a Sovnarkom representative, one speaker from each
party fraction express their faction’s view on whether to accept or reject the peace
terms. A vote on the issue would then be taken.66 This proposal was accepted,
eliminating the possibility that the Left Communist view would even be articu-
lated. Three proposals on the peace issue emerged at the meeting: the Bolshevik
majority’s, expressed by Lenin and Zinoviev; the Left SRs’, voiced by Kamkov;
and the views of the Menshevik Internationalists, the SRs, and the United Social
Democratic Internationalists, represented, respectively, by Martov, Mikhail
Likhach, and Gavril Lindov. Lenin and Zinoviev argued for the acceptance of
the peace terms while the other speakers were strongly against.67
The absence of a number of VTsIK members, many of them Left Communists,
meant that the Bolsheviks did not have a straightforward majority among 230
participants at this meeting. Even if all the Left Communists present maintained
party discipline of the Bolshevik fraction and voted to accept Germany’s peace
terms, Lenin still needed help from another quarter to assure their acceptance.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Left SR opponents of the Brest peace worked to
try to attract Left Communist Bolsheviks to vote with them.
A preliminary vote was registered by a show of cards, followed immediately
by a roll-call. First Sverdlov called for the ‘yes’ votes –112. The outcome was
too close to call. Then the ‘no’ votes and abstentions were counted –86 and 22
respectively. At the sight of some Bolshevik soldiers applauding this outcome,
Left SR and Commissar for Justice Shteinberg screamed in rage and pounded
his fists on the railing of the government box where he sat.68 At 4:30 am, two
and a half hours before the German ultimatum was due to expire, the roll-call
balloting began. The moderate socialists and Left SRs applauded early in this
process when the golden boy of the Bolshevik Party Nikolai Bukharin voted
against accepting the peace terms.69 The results of the roll-call were only slightly
different from those of the preliminary vote: 116 in favour; 85 opposed; and 26
abstentions, of which 22 were Left SR proponents of peace. Submitting to party
discipline and voting for acceptance of German peace terms were several ardent
Left Communists including Bokii, Volodarskii, Kossior, and Ravich. Riazanov
and Piatnitskii joined Bukharin in breaking ranks and voting against accepting
the treaty. Kollontai, Dzerzhinsky, Krestinskii, Ioffe, Bubnov and Uritskii were
among prominent Left Communist non-attenders.70 Finally Lenin’s Sovnarkom
had its mandate and was authorized to formally accept Germany’s peace terms.
Rabinowitch acknowledges that conflict over this issue in the VTsIK ‘could have
resulted in the breakup of the Bolshevik-Left SR coalition, and, indeed, the pos-
sibility cannot be excluded that they might have brought down Lenin’s govern-
ment’. He cites the VTsIK chairman, the ‘tactically astute’ Sverdlov, as responsible
for dodging this potentially lethal bullet.71
Sverdlov had been laying the groundwork for successful management of
the Bolshevik fraction of the VTsIK since the day of his appointment as chair-
man. After the meeting in early November 1917 where Lenin offered him the
role of VTsIK chairman, Sverdlov immediately got to work organizing the
party fraction. Sverdlov instructed Bonch-Bruevich, head of the Sovnarkom
Administration Department, to send word out to all the Bolshevik members
of the VTsIK, search for them ‘in the Petrograd Soviet and other places where
there may be members of the VTsIK, and inform all those who came to the
Administration Department of Sovnarkom, or to visit Lenin, that ‘absolutely
everybody, at the direct request of the chairman of Sovnarkom, go to the sitting
of our fraction of the VTsIK’ which he set for 7 pm that very evening. Bonch-
Bruevich recalled: ‘At 7pm our faction was so full as never before…Discipline
was most firm. Tickets were examined and were registered in the list. To all
those present it was announced that it was necessary to attend without fail’ with
punishment by the party authorities for those breaking this rule. According to
Bonch-Bruevich Sverdlov brought ‘something new, some strong hand, perman
ent, persistent…as had never occurred in the VTsIK’. Sverdlov gave a ‘brief but
imposing speech’ that members of the party fraction were ‘particularly obliged at
such a serious moment when some highly responsible cadres had deserted their
posts’ and proposed a meeting to hear a report on important issues. After this
sitting of the Bolshevik fraction, which took around two hours, the non-party
assembly was due to open. Sverdlov warned the assembled Bolshevik fraction
that although ‘in such a moment it is natural to go home and drink tea’, it was
essential, by order of party discipline, to be present at the full VTsIK assembly.
He proposed a named vote on his proposal, then turned to the secretary and
asked him to read the list of members of the faction, who voted for and who
against. Sverdlov discovered that of those present, half had left before the end of
the assembly and reprimanded ‘some comrades cannot sit down until the end of
such an important moment’, warning that this behaviour constituted the break-
ing of party discipline and ‘to let this go is impossible’.72
Another technique which Sverdlov employed to strengthen party discipline
was careful selection of candidates to the Bolshevik VTsIK fraction. He used
his vast knowledge of party activists, amassed during his years in the revolu-
tionary underground, and consulted other state activists and members of local
delegations for nomination of suitable candidates to represent the party line. His
1918 chairman’s notebook demonstrates that he personally drew up preliminary
lists of suitable candidates to be presented at the congresses of Soviets.73 The
Bolshevik fraction became so well organized that by mid-1918 it had acquired
its own secretary, E. Tsirlina.74
One of Sverdlov’s final sessions chairing the VTsIK sitting was on 17 January
1919. By this time the process of managing the Bolshevik fraction ran like clock-
work to ensure a favourable vote through of Sovnarkom’s policy. The sitting
opened at 6 pm in the Bolshoi Theatre. Despite the cold due to lack of heating
and the central chandelier burning half descended, delegates were in good s pirits
and the hall resounded with cheerful voices, jokes and revolutionary songs. The
appearance of the presidium on the stage, including Lenin, aroused a stormy
ovation. Sverdlov opened the sitting of the fraction by declaring a moment of
silence in mourning for Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, murdered two
days earlier, and then passed the floor to Lenin for a report on the foodstuffs
question. Lenin delivered a report on the foodstuffs issue and proposed a reso
lution. There was no debate in the fraction, and the resolution was passed unani
mously. Then, after a short break, the non-party representatives entered the hall
and at 7:40 pm the joint sitting opened. Lenin gave another speech on the ter-
rible situation in the country in conditions of foreign intervention and famine,
explained the foodstuffs policy of Soviet power and set out to describe in detail
each point of the resolution of the Communist Party fraction. The Commissars
for Foodstuffs and Labour then spoke in support of the resolution. Next the
maximalist Svetlov spoke against the resolution and instead spoke for free
procurement of foodstuffs by workers organizations and cooperatives. But at the

vote Lenin’s resolution was accepted almost unanimously.75
The role Sverdlov played in the VTsIK resembled that of a Chief Whip in a
parliamentary system: a party member whose task is to ensure that members
of the party attend and vote in the legislative assembly as the party leadership
desires. The task of the Chief Whip is to ensure the outcome of the vote. The
situation is crucial for a Whip whose party holds the majority in the legislative
assembly because, if the members obey the Whip, they can always win. This was
the situation in the VTsIK under Sverdlov’s chairmanship. Duval regarded this
activity as manipulation of the VTsIK rules. However, there is no evidence to
suggest that Sverdlov used as strong measures as are employed in British parlia-
mentary politics such as blackmail of exclusion from government positions or
party membership. Although the presence of a Whip may appear superficially
dictatorial, the Whip can also act as a communicator between backbenchers or
wider party members and the party leadership. Ultimately these members could
threaten to revolt if unhappy with the leadership’s position and force the lead-
ership to compromise. The records suggest that Sverdlov put much time and
energy into this task; he always held a meeting of the party fraction directly
before the full VTsIK sitting and discussed the policies proposed by the party
leadership. He attended Sovnarkom sittings on a regular basis to represent the
VTsIK in this body. Sverdlov’s work undoubtedly enabled the Bolshevik-led
Sovnarkom to get their policies passed as law without formally emasculating
the authority of the VTsIK. During this early phase of the Soviet government,
Sverdlov managed party-state relations so that the integrity of the central Soviet
apparatus was not destroyed and the party apparatus did not yet overly encroach
on its jurisdiction. On 16 March 1919, at the age of just 33, Sverdlov succumbed
to Spanish Influenza while on an official visit to Oryol. Sverdlov’s death left a
significant void in the system and was keenly felt by his colleagues at a time of
escalating Civil War. His sudden departure paved the way for significant expan-
sion of the party machine and left the VTsIK without its leading light –both of
which contributed to a gradual shift in party-state relations in the early Soviet
government.
5
Collegiality in the Early Soviet Government
In the first year or so after the October Revolution, the Soviet leadership experi-
mented with a new, ‘revolutionary’ form of collegial government. During the
radical experiment of the collegium system, the sole authority of a single min-
ister leading a department found in the imperial and Provisional Government
was replaced by a collegial body responsible collectively for policy-making
and general administration. Communist historian L. Kritsman described col-
legial administration as ‘the specific distinctive mark of the proletariat, dis-
tinguishing it from all other social classes…the most democratic principle of
organization’.1 The significance of these collegial bodies was twofold. First, the
Bolsheviks, in these earliest years of Soviet power, felt that there was something
anti-bureaucratic about removing dictatorial ministers and replacing them
with a group of equally empowered individuals. Second, the collegia allowed
the Soviet leadership to bring specialists and representatives of the broader
population, albeit to a limited extent, into government administration, a key
feature of pre-revolutionary Bolshevik ideology on the state and an attempt to
implement concrete measures based on the principles expressed in Lenin’s State
and Revolution. In fact, however, the experiment in collegiality proved short-
lived and instead of contributing to the development of superior form of anti-
bureaucratic ‘proletarian’ form of democratic government as intended, instead
militated against the construction of a strong, dynamic government cabinet
with authoritative ministers possessing a sense of responsibility for general
policy and leadership. In a similar way to the Petrine colleges created 200 years
earlier, collegiality in the early Soviet government prevented the Soviet state
apparatus from being populated by strong, dynamic, authoritative figures
and, unintentionally in the Soviet case, undermined the efficient functioning
of departmental decision-making. Whereas the Petrine colleges strengthened
the tsar’s personal autocracy by removing any possibility of the emergence of
powerful figures who might accrue significant influence in the bureaucracy
and challenge his position, in Lenin’s government the Communist Party and
its Politburo were able to step into the breach to offer resolute and authoritative
action via manual control from above.
The collegia system emerged from November 1917 onwards and was stron-
ger and longer lasting in commissariats with less ‘urgent’ jurisdictions, such
as Social Welfare, Education, Nationalities and Labour. In the Transport and
Military Commissariats, on the other hand, the collegial principle was eroded
much more quickly. Although not clearly defined in early Soviet legislation, in
practice collegiality moulded day-to-day activity of Sovnarkom and many com-
missariats, with frequent appeals to higher authorities when collegium members
felt a commissar had acted in an uncollegial manner. Nevertheless, even in those
commissariats where collegiality had been strong from the earliest days after
the October Revolution, it gradually came to be viewed by some as a hindrance
to clear, firm decision-making and implementation. By late 1920, the collegial
principle in state administration had fallen foul of the same urges to centralize,
improve efficiency and impose hierarchical authority that had earlier destroyed
the post-revolutionary democratic, collective ethos which had existed in the fac-
tories and military.
In 1979 Rigby wrote, ‘The early history of the commissariat boards still awaits
systematic study.’2 Beyond recent work by James Heinzen, there has been little
Russian or Western scholarship on this subject in the subsequent three decades
to address the gap.3 Even among specialist scholarship on the early Soviet state,
the functioning and significance of the commissariat collegia has been over-
looked.4 Most historians whose work has touched on the operation of the colle-
gia in Vladimir Lenin’s government have dismissed them as merely consultative
bodies.5 Many of the scholars who have studied the early Soviet state take a view
of continuity over change.6 Even Rigby, who conceded that a different model of
government emerged in the shape of commissions, did not recognize the critical
import of the collegia.7
The collegia system was an important method in attempting de-
bureaucratization and proletarianization of the Soviet state. While Fitzpatrick’s
study of the Commissariat of Enlightenment emphasizes that the work of this
institution was led not simply by Commissar A.V. Lunacharsky, but by the col-
lective effort of the whole collegium, in more recent scholarship only the work
of Alexander Rabinowitch has acknowledged the use of the collegial method in
the early Soviet state apparatus.8 The only scholars to directly examine collective
decision-making as a feature of the commissariat collegia in detail, however,
were Soviet jurist I.L. Davitnidze9 and historian M. Gribanov.10 Gribanov’s work
Collegiality in the Early Soviet Government 99
was concerned more with the theory rather than the practice of collegiality in
the early Soviet government. His article is steeped in Stalinist rhetoric and relies
far too heavily on ‘evidence’ drawn only from the uncritical repetition of the
speeches and writings of Lenin and Stalin. Davitnidze’s 1972 work was primar-
ily concerned with collegiality versus one-man management in contemporary
Soviet government institutions, but he did provide a chapter on the creation and
early history of the collegia of the People’s Commissariats. In this chapter he rec-
ognized that in the first years of Soviet power the collegia represented an attempt
to create a decision-making system of collective bodies infused with ‘revolu-
tionary spirit’.11 To draw an accurate picture of the collegia is not an easy task
if one relies, like Davitnidze, solely on official legislation. Davitnidze himself
acknowledged that legislative acts of this time did not define sufficiently clearly
the respective legal positions of the People’s Commissar and the collegium.
Certainly, from formal government decrees and the 1918 RSFSR Constitution,
it is not immediately obvious that there had been a move away from ministerial
government. However, from other evidence, including internal state papers of
Sovnarkom and the commissariats and memoirs, a clearer picture of the com-
missariat collegia emerges.
It seems that the idea of the collegia originated even before the October
Revolution. While there is little surviving evidence of pre-revolutionary prac-
tical plans for the establishment of the Soviet government institutions beyond
Lenin’s State and Revolution, it is clear that on the eve of October the Bolsheviks
were leaning towards collective decision-making bodies. Lenin’s fragmentary
‘Sheet of Jottings’ from 24 October 1917 outlined a plan for the revolutionary
government which featured ‘Commissions of People’s Commissars’.12
By 26 October 1917 in the ‘crazy whirlpool’ of Smolny, the revolutionaries
busily replaced and reorganized the old network of administration. Lev Trotsky
described how the Bolshevik Central Committee ‘was deciding the problems of
the new government in Russia here…the evening session was to create a cab-
inet of ministers. Ministers? What a sadly compromised word! It stunk of the
high bureaucratic career, the crowning of some parliamentary ambition. It was
decided to call the new government the Soviet of People’s Commissars: that at
least had a fresher ring to it.’13 Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich, head
of the Sovnarkom Chancellery, concurred with Trotsky’s account, writing in
his memoirs that it was ‘necessary to set up commissions for the administra-
tion of the country…the commissariats. The chairmen of these we will name
People’s Commissars. The collegium of chairmen will be the Council of People’s
Commissars.’14
According to Nadezhda Krupskaia, Lenin had envisaged a new type of minister

from observing her work in the revolutionary underground before October: An
image was drawn before Vladimir Ilich’s eyes of the People’s Commissar, a new
type of minister, organizer and leader of this or that branch of state work, closely
connected to the masses, a type being forged in the fire of revolution. Vladimir
Ilich contemplated intensely about new forms of administration. He thought
about how to organize a type of apparatus which would be alien to the spirit
of bureaucratism, which would rely on the masses, to organize them to help its
work, to be able to create in its work a new type of worker.15
Krupskaia described how, during the pre-revolutionary weeks when Lenin
was in hiding, she discussed her work in the Vyborg region with her husband.
She worked to promote education in factories, to help self-organized schools of
workers and recalled that ‘Ilich said that here was the type of work which would
take shape in our state apparatus, our future ministries: commissions of workers,
standing in the thick of it, well acquainted with daily life.’16
The collegia emerged in haphazard fashion soon after the formation of the
Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, from November to December 1917, as
the nuclei of the commissariats. Initially they varied in size, composition,
mode of operation and effective powers. No uniform legislation was enacted
during the Lenin era, and it seems that the political and administrative role of
individual collegium members continued to vary, largely as a result of their
individual capacities and attitudes, and their relationship to top government
leaders.
Nevertheless, by spring 1918 the collegia of the 17 commissariats had been
firmly established. They were settled in their new premises in Moscow and
frequent, regular sittings of the collegia had begun.17 The collegium of Naval
Affairs, for example, was a comparatively small body with only four collegium
members: Trotsky as People’s Commissar, and F.F. Raskolnikov, I.I. Bakhramev
and S.E. Saks as collegium members. Although Trotsky’s work address at this
time was on Nizhny Pereulok, the rest of the collegium lived and worked
together at the Hotel Red Fleet on Tverskaia Ulitsa. The collegium sat here daily,
in room 9, at 11 am.18 The collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Posts and
Telegraphs was larger, with eight members including the People’s Commissar
V.N. Podbelskii; Deputy Commissar V.N. Zalezhskii and A.A. Semenov, L.E.
Kronik, V.L. Verderskii, Iu.A. Volskii, I.V. Rabchinskii and M.M. Klemer. All
worked together in the commissariat building at 15a Bol’shaia Dmitrovka from
11 am to 2 pm daily and then attended the daily sitting of the collegium from 2
to 4 pm.19
The collegia included elected representatives from mass organizations rele

vant to the collegium’s jurisdiction. The collegium of the Commissariat of
Labour, for example, included representatives of the Trade Union movement.20
The collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment was composed of
representatives of various artistic, literary and educational, as well as Soviet and
city organizations.21 The collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Transport
was made up of candidates nominated by the Railway Men’s Union.22 The
People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs pioneered the scheme of bringing in
representatives from the localities to serve in its collegium.23
While Davitnidze argued that the collegia were staffed solely by Bolsheviks
and (until July 1918) Left Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), it was not necessary
to be a Bolshevik or Left SR to be a collegium member at this time. The People’s
Commissariat of Finance, for example, had a collegium of eight in spring 1918.
It was chaired by People’s Commissar I.Ia. Zhilin’ with D.P. Bogolepov as dep-
uty commissar, and six other members including Aleksandr Pavlovich Makarov
who was ‘not a member of the Party’, but had been ‘employed in a bank for a long
time’ and was qualified in this way.24 Thus, the collegia enabled the Soviet leaders
to include not just party members, but both specialists and representatives of the
masses in state administration. Bolshevik leaders cited three related purposes for
including representatives of the labouring masses in state administration. First,
ordinary workers and peasants would eventually replace the imperial holdover
specialists and administrators who continued to dominate numerically in the
Soviet state apparatus. This goal was consistent with Lenin’s view, expressed in
State and Revolution, that any cook could become an official.25 Second, Lenin
also believed that increasing ordinary people’s representation in, and supervi-
sion of, the state apparatus would reduce the evils of ‘bureaucratism’ in the gov-
ernment. Third, involvement of representatives of the masses, both workers and
peasants, would also help to establish a connection between government and
people and demonstrate to the masses that their interests were being met at the
highest level of government.
One good example of these purposes was the composition of the collegium
of the Commissariat of Labour. By March 1918 the fusion between Soviet and
trade union organs and functions had progressed far. Most of the officials of
the People’s Commissariat of Labour (i.e. collegium members), as well as the
regional and local representatives (Commissars for Labour), were nominated by
the trade unions.26 In fact, V.V. Shmidt, the Commissar for Labour, who owed
his appointment to the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, revealed
that the whole collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Labour was composed
of representatives from this body.27 He recognized the fusion between Soviet and
trade union institutions, stating that:
The role of the Commissariat…must be to give obligatory effect to the recom-

mendations and plans worked out in the trade unions. Moreover, not only must
the commissariat not interfere with the rights of the unions, but even the organs
of the commissariat should as far as possible be formed by the unions them-
selves. Here at the centre we act consistently on this principle.28
The All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions asserted without hesitation

that the work of the People’s Commissariat of Labour was ‘one and the same’ as
that of the trade unions: ‘It [the commissariat] works on the basis of what the
trade unions proclaim in their daily work and what they lay down in the regular
decisions and resolutions adopted at congresses. These decisions are accepted
by the Commissariat of Labour, which, as the organ of state power, carries
them into effect.’29 This merging of mass organizations with the state apparatus
through the collegia was intended to help connect state and society, and thus
increase stability.
This election of representatives of mass organizations into the collegia of the
commissariats is indicated in the RSFSR Constitution of July 1918. As article 44
stated, Sovnarkom only ‘confirmed’ the proposed collegium members. Chapter 8
of the constitution is the only official text to deal generally with the relationships
between Sovnarkom, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) and
the commissariats, and also within the commissariats, the People’s Commissar
and the collegium. Articles 42 to 44 declared that 18 People’s Commissariats were
formed; that ‘members of the Council of People’s Commissars head the People’s
Commissariats’; and that ‘under the chairmanship of every People’s Commissar a
collegium is constituted whose members are confirmed by the Council of People’s
Commissars’. Article 45 outlined that the People’s Commissar had ‘the personal
right to take decisions on all matters that come within the competence of his
Commissariat’. However, in the event of a disagreement with a decision of the
People’s Commissar the collegium could, ‘without suspending the implementa-
tion of the decision, appeal against it to the Council of People’s Commissars or
the Presidium of the VTsIK’. The same right of appeal also belonged to individual
members of the collegium. Finally, Article 47 indicated that both the People’s
Commissar and all collegium members were ‘fully responsible’ before Sovnarkom
and the VTsIK for the commissariat’s decisions.30
At first glance the constitution shows that the commissar was the ‘boss’ in the
commissariat and that the collegium had no real authority; the commissar had
the right to take decisions personally on all questions in the jurisdiction of the
commissariat, and the collegium could only appeal to Sovnarkom or the VTsIK
if they disagreed. Closer analysis of the relevant articles of the constitution, how-
ever, reveals that the image of the dominant commissar may not be so straight-
forward. Article 44 stated that the People’s Commissar was the ‘chairman’ of the
collegium, rather than the ‘leader’ or ‘head’. Thus, he was not necessarily granted
greater rights than other members in decision-making, but simply had respon-
sibility for running sittings. Article 47 stated that collegium members, as well as
the People’s Commissar, were fully responsible for the activity of the commissar-
iat. This passage demonstrates that the collegium members were not just back-
stage advisers, but could appeal against decisions they did not agree with. They
must have been involved in decision-making if they were to be held accountable
for the commissariat’s activity.
Rather than the commissar acting as ‘boss’ of the collegium, as in ministerial
government, he was instead the representative of the collegium at Sovnarkom
meetings. It was necessary to keep this post stable for the sake of consistency and
continuity of government.31 He also acted as chairman of the collegium sittings
to ensure that they ran effectively. He had the right to make decisions personally
in order to prevent the work of the commissariat grinding to a halt on contro-
versial issues, if the situation called for it. He was, however, not expected to do
so as normal procedure. The right of appeal of the collegium members was set
up in law as a guarantee of collegiality in decision-making. There are further
indications in other early Soviet legislation that collegiality, rather than one-man
management, was the intended form of relations in the commissariats.
One of the first acts of Soviet power, the ‘Decree of the All-Russian Congress
of Soviets to Form the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government’ of 27 October 1917
supports this view. It stated: ‘The management of individual branches of state
activity is entrusted to commissions whose members shall ensure the fulfilment
of the programme announced by the Congress, and shall work in close contact
with mass organisations of men and women workers, sailors, soldiers, peasants
and office employees. Governmental authority is vested in a collegium of the
chairmen of these commissions, the Council of People’s Commissars.’32
At this early stage, the new titles of ‘People’s Commissar’ and ‘Commissariats’
with their ‘collegia’ were not yet settled. However, the initial idea of collective
authority and responsibility, in this case by ‘commissions’ and whose ‘chairman’
would represent them in the Sovnarkom, itself a collegial organ, is made plain.
The legislation does not indicate when and why the title of these bodies changed
from commissions to collegia, but both terms express the same idea of collective
decision-making. According to the memoirs of a contemporary state activist,

the terms were synonymous.33 Perhaps the use of the term ‘commission’ (with its
connotation of transience) was a result of the Bolshevik notion that the neces-
sity for state institutions would be short-lived. Soon after they seized power, the
Bolsheviks realized that this was unrealistic, and it is possible that the commis-
sions were renamed as collegia to reflect this more long-term status.
A further hint of the ‘equality’ of the People’s Commissar and collegium
members is revealed by the decrees on pay of those working in state institutions.
According to these decrees the commissar and collegium members received the
same salary –800 roubles per month in June 1918, which was increased to 1200
roubles per month in September 1918.34 If pay can be taken to be an indication
of status at this time, then the commissar was not a superior to his fellow colle-
gium members.35
Due to particularly dire practicalities, however, it was necessary to limit colle-
giality and increase the authority of the commissar in certain departments. The
decree of 23 March 1918 ‘on the centralisation of management and protection of
routes and raising their transport capacity’, often known as the ‘railroad decree’,
reinstated ‘ministerial’ government in the Transport Commissariat. The decree
opened with a statement of the difficult circumstances of dislocation and hun-
ger which had made its promulgation necessary. The decree then explained that
‘many local oblast and central organisations, trying to improve the situation, each
interfere in the technical administration of the railway apparatus and by this
completely ruin it’.36 The decree then set out amended rules for the running of the
Transport Commissariat to deal with these problems. The collegium members
retained the right to appeal against decisions of the commissar to Sovnarkom and
the Central Executive Committee, but commissar was granted more power: ‘The
collegium…of the Commissariat of Transport does not interfere directly in the
orders of the Commissar of Transport who is supplied with unlimited author-
ity in the area of transport.’37 This clause gave the Commissar of Transport the
authority to make unilateral decisions and the collegium was demoted. The rail-
road decree also contained a provision for the appointment of special commissars
with unlimited ‘dictatorial’ authority on the main railroad lines.
These commissars were to be empowered to undertake at their discretion any
measures they deemed necessary to restore order, including execution.38
The decree caused uproar among many Bolsheviks and Left SRs, as well as
among Mensheviks and SRs. Both Iulii Martov and Nikolai Bukharin flatly
rejected it, holding it to be a violation of the principles of democracy and Soviet
power. Lenin denied that there was any ‘contradiction in principle between
soviet, that is, socialist-democracy, and the application of dictatorial power

by single individuals’.39 This legislation was linked to serious conflicts which
paralysed the Transport Commissariat and its relationship with the railway
union. In January 1918, Lenin managed to disband the All-Russian Executive
Committee of the Union of Railway Workers (Vikzhel), the Menshevik-SR led
railroad workers’ union, and replaced it with a Bolshevik-controlled union,
known as Vikzhedor, although the Mensheviks retained some influence in this
new union.40 The Mensheviks and SRs refused to comply with the commissariat,
and as a result the workers and engineers who supported them were removed
from the collegia of the railways.
The Mensheviks suspected that the dictatorial approach expressed in the
decree of March 1918 was designed to prevent them regaining leadership of
the railroad union and having significant influence in the Commissariat of
Transport. One Menshevik, summing up the key changes in the Soviet regime
since October, wrote that ‘where there is dictatorship of the class, there can be
no dictatorship of a single individual; in other words, the dictatorship of single
individuals dooms the dictatorship of the class’.41
Thus, in certain commissariats, those directly involved in the administra-
tion of urgent affairs, the ideological ‘luxury’ of the collegial system was short-
lived. There is concrete evidence that this was the case in the above example of
the Transport Commissariat, and it seems likely that this pattern was repeated
elsewhere in Army, Navy, and Food Procurement Commissariats. Nevertheless,
beyond the picture created by official legislation there is considerable evidence
from other sources to suggest that collegiality was a crucial principle in many
parts of the early Soviet state apparatus. Memoir material illustrates the pre-
vailing ‘collegial’ spirit in many commissariats at this time. In his memoirs,
A.G. Shliapnikov clearly indicated that the practice of collegiality and collect
ive decision-making was established as the intended form of administration at
the Second Congress of Soviets, the day after the Bolshevik seizure of power.
Shliapnikov recalls, ‘It was highlighted in the reasoning on the direction of the
departments that the method must be collegial. The People’s Commissar would
only be a chairman of the commission.’42
Stanislav Pestkovskii, a member of the collegium of the Commissariat of
Nationalities (of which Joseph Stalin was People’s Commissar), clearly illustrates
the collegium’s lack of subordination to the commissar who chaired it:
All members of the collegium on the National Question were in opposition to

Stalin, frequently leaving their People’s Commissar in the minority… At times
he would lose patience, but he never made it evident during the sessions. On
these occasions, when in consequence of our endless discussions his patience
was exhausted, he would suddenly disappear, doing it with extraordinary
skill: ‘just for a moment’ he would disappear from the room and hide in one of
the recesses of the Smolny, and later the Kremlin. It was impossible to find him.
In the beginning we used to wait for him. But finally we would adjourn. I would
remain alone in our common office, patiently awaiting his return, but to no
avail… I would go for a long walk through the endless corridors of the Smolny
and the Kremlin in search of Stalin. I would find him in the most unexpected
places. A couple of times I found him in the apartment of the sailor, Comrade
Vorontsov, in the kitchen, where Stalin was lying on a divan smoking a pipe and
thinking over his thesis.43
Trotsky commented that ‘the collegium of the Commissariat of Nationalities…

indulged in the practice of marshalling arguments to counter Stalin’s conten-
tions and of putting questions to him to which he could not find answers. He
had power. But that power was utterly insufficient for compulsion; he had to
convince or persuade. Stalin could not cope with that situation.’44
Archival evidence further corroborates this picture of the commissariat
collegia. The minutes and addenda of Sovnarkom demonstrate that Stalin
was not the only People’s Commissar to be held prisoner by a collegium. In
January 1918, M. Elizarov appealed to Sovnarkom to allow him to relinquish
the authority and post of People’s Commissar of Transport due to serious
conflict in the collegium, which left him helpless: ‘To Sovnarkom, in view of
the current situation, in which my joint work with the majority of the col-
legium (Bubnov, Neimant, Nevskii) has become impossible, and learning of
the circumstance that this majority of the collegium is in close contact with
the Bolshevik fraction of the railway congress and therefore it has the advan-
tage over my leadership of the railway commissariat, I relinquish the duty of
People’s Commissar of Transport and ask the Sovnarkom to free me from the
position entrusted to me.’45 The language of the correspondence of the People’s
Commissariats also demonstrates the prevalence of this collegial ethos. The
interdepartmental papers from this early period almost without fail refer to
decisions ‘of the collegium’, not ‘of the commissar’. For example, the Deputy
People’s Commissar for the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate wrote in a
telegram to a local section of the commissariat that special sections were to be
created in this institution ‘in accordance with the decision of the collegium.’46
In correspondences between the People’s Commissariats and Sovnarkom, the
usual wording to propose legislation was ‘the collegium…presents its decree
for confirmation by Sovnarkom’ (i.e. not just the commissar).47 Finally, fur-
ther evidence of the necessity for collective decision-making comes from
September 1918, when a reprimand was sent to the People’s Commissariats of
Finance and State Control because a decision had been made as a ‘conclusion
of certain employees of the commissariat, instead of conclusion by the whole
collegium.’48
A key indication of the strength of the collegium vis-à-vis the commissar
was the frequency of appeals against unilateral decisions, and the serious-
ness with which appeals were dealt. In the constitution this right of appeal
may seem like a small nod to collegiality which may not have held much
weight. In practice, however, this right of appeal was not an empty threat. It
was frequently wielded by collegium members. These appeals were taken ser
iously by Sovnarkom, dealt with urgently, and decisions often went in favour
of the collegium. For example, on 15 November 1917, the case of ‘frictions in
the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs between
People’s Commissar Avilov and the collegium’ was put before Sovnarkom.
A commission of three Sovnarkom members was appointed to resolve it. They
made an impartial report to Sovnarkom the following day and instructed
the collegium on how to ‘liquidate the conflict’.49 In January 1918 conflict
broke out in the collegium of the Commissariat of Justice, where the Left
SR I.N. Shteinberg was People’s Commissar, and the Bolshevik P.I. Stuchka
was deputy commissar. Stuchka announced a protest at the Sovnarkom sit-
ting against the ‘Decree on Law’, which had been passed the previous day.
Shteinberg had ‘presented the project decree to Sovnarkom as if it had been
accepted unanimously by the Justice collegium, but in reality agreement had
not been reached’. In response, Sovnarkom proposed to Stuchka and ‘others
having principal objections to the decree On Law’ to bring statements to
the following day’s Sovnarkom sitting where they subjected the decree to
reconsideration.50
Similar conflicts broke out in spring 1918 in other commissariats. Trotsky
reported on ‘the difficulties and frictions in the Commissariat of Foodstuffs
in February 1918 in connection with the petition of comrades Manuilsky
and Maliutin’,51 which led to the resignation of the People’s Commissar for
Foodstuffs.52 Another major conflict over policy broke out between the mem-
bers of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of State Control on 25
March 1918. Sovnarkom instructed that the ‘members of the collegium sit-
uated in conflict must send, urgently, all materials for consideration of the
question to Sovnarkom’.53 It is clear that the collegia frequently exercised
their right, as detailed in the constitution, to appeal against decisions of the

commissar if they felt that the decision had not been taken in an appropri-
ately collegial manner. It must have proved a big incentive, if the commissar
needed it, to engage fully in collegial decision-making with the other colle-
gium members.
In the first year or so of Soviet power the collegial form of administration
was dominant in the work of many of the People’s Commissariats, as well as its
better-documented expression in workers’ control of industrial administration
and democratic military organization.54
From spring 1918, however, Lenin began to challenge the continued use of
collegiality, although, at this early stage, only in economic administration. In
speeches and writings in March and April 1918, Lenin argued for the crucial
importance of collegiality in destroying the old and creating the new apparatus
in the early months of Soviet power, but now proposed moves towards limited
use of one-man management. In his polemics with the defenders of collegial-
ity, the Left Communists, who opposed the turn away from the norms of revo-
lutionary democracy in the direction of a hierarchy of ‘dictatorial’ individuals,
Lenin now argued that ‘conditions had ripened for the establishment of strict
discipline and responsibility, for orders by sole-authority leaders in organs of
soviet power’.55
Scholars have convincingly demonstrated how, despite the best efforts of
the Left Communists, Left SRs and Mensheviks, collegiality in industrial and
military administration eroded over the course of 1918.56 The introduction of
the principle of one-man management into the administration of the People’s
Commissariats, however, did not progress quite as quickly. In December 1918,
in his ‘Draft Regulation on the Administration of Soviet Institutions’, Lenin still
highlighted the importance of collegial administration in government decision-
making, although he qualified this with a call for more precise responsibility for
individuals in implementation of decisions.57 Lenin repeated this sentiment in his
speech to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of the National Economy
on 25 December 1918, where he stated: ‘The military situation bestows on us
special responsibilities and difficult tasks. Collegial administration is essential
with the participation of the trade unions. The collegia are essential, but col-
legia must not turn into a hindrance in practical business.’58 Over the course of
1919, however, the erosion of the principle of collegiality finally spread from
industrial and military administration to the commissariat collegia, as will be
discussed below.
Collegiality in the Commissariat of Labour, September 1918

Somebody among us has rendered a crime against Soviet power, either the colle-
gium or the commissar. (A.M. Stopani, collegium member of the Commissariat
of Labour, 30 August 1918)
The examples of conflict within the commissariat collegia outlined above

are instructive as it is difficult to judge whether a body is collegial or not when
all the members agree on the issues at hand. The best opportunity to observe
where authority lies in practice is when agreement breaks down. One such case
will now be examined in detail to demonstrate that the collegium was much
more than simply an advisory body under the commissar. In September 1918
a conflict erupted between the People’s Commissar for Labour and the other
members of the commissariat’s collegium. This conflict forced Soviet leaders to
consider more precisely the nature of the relationship between commissar and
collegium, which was ill-defined in legislation. The Commissariat of Labour
was among those named in the initial decree on the formation of the Workers’
and Peasants’ Government. It had not existed in the imperial bureaucracy, but
was formed as a Ministry by the Provisional Government in 1917. Aleksandr
Shliapnikov was appointed People’s Commissar for Labour. He was a natural
choice for this role from his previous experience in the labour movement, a for-
mer steel worker and long-time Bolshevik Party member.59 Shliapnikov initially
faced problems in taking control of the old Ministry of Labour, where carry-over
officials obstructed his efforts.60 However, the commissariat’s internal records,
and the testimony of its commissar, show that despite the bureaucratic sabotage
it was among the first to be successfully up and running.61
The minutes of the sittings of the commissariat collegium show that initially
it was a healthy, collegial body. By no means did Shliapnikov simply make a deci-
sion and report it to the collegium. Here intense, and at times, fiery debate was
conducted by the collegium members on all major policy issues. Decisions were
then made on majority vote. The commissar found himself outvoted on a num-
ber of occasions. One example was the June 1918 discussion of the establishment
of the amount of leave for workers. Two sides emerged in the debate, one led by
Shliapnikov and A.N. Paderin, and the other by V.P. Nogin, M.P. Tomskii and
V.V. Shmidt. Shliapnikov’s side argued that two weeks of leave per year for all
workers would suffice. The other side argued that this was not enough, and that
workers in more physically demanding and dangerous jobs should be granted
extra leave. Eventually Nogin’s side won the debate, the minutes recording that
Shliapnikov ‘hotly protests against separate agreements; only the enemies of

the working class gain through this. They are provocational tactics!’62 However,
Shliapnikov proved such a competent organizer and statesman that he became
one of the major figures in the Soviet government in its first year. Sovnarkom
entrusted him with a wide variety of other jobs during this period, including
organization of other state organs and participation in various government com-
missions. In late May 1918 the Party Central Committee gave him the crucial
task of food procurement. Lenin wrote to him: ‘It is essential that you be tempor
arily employed on food supply (while retaining the rank of People’s Commissar
for Labour)…I think you ought to go to the Kuban to help pump grain out from
there.’63 Shliapnikov agreed to do his duty. The records of the commissariat show
that he participated in his last collegium sitting on 1 June 1918 and would not
attend again until 29 August. Further letters to Shliapnikov confirm that he had
left Moscow and was in Tsaritsyn by 11 June.64
Deputy People’s Commissar Nogin and collegium member Shmidt were
left to take over Shliapnikov’s duties in Sovnarkom. In the commissar’s three-
month absence, the collegium continued to run affairs and formulate policy
smoothly. Nogin was also a prominent old Bolshevik.65 He had initially been
made People’s Commissar for Commerce and Industry, but had been among
those party left-wingers who resigned over the failure to build a wider coalition
government. Despite this, Nogin remained an important state activist and was
nominated to the Commissariat of Labour collegium by Shliapnikov himself,
and confirmed by Sovnarkom on 8 April 1918.66 After Shliapnikov’s departure,
the collegium continued its regular sittings, approximately two evenings a week
(generally lasting from around 4 pm until 7 pm), sometimes more often, to dis-
cuss all major policy decisions. Nogin was named as chairman of the collegium
and signed the minutes as such. There were 12 collegium members (V.P. Nogin,
A.M. Anikst, M.P. Tomskii, V.V. Shmidt, A.N. Paderin, I.I. Khodorovskii, V.A.
Radus-Zenkovich, E. Bumazhnyi, Ia.I. Gindin, A.M. Stopani, D. Puzanov and
B. Kushner) but sometimes the number of persons present rose to as many as
20 when experts or representatives were invited to give reports and advice on
topical issues.67
One important piece of legislation drafted by the Labour collegium at this
time and sent to Sovnarkom for confirmation was the decree of 27 July 1918
prohibiting relatives of officials and employees from working in the same state
departments.68 This was intended to address nepotism and corruption in state
institutions and increase efficiency. It was the activity surrounding the imple-
mentation of this decree within the Commissariat of Labour itself which
would eventually lead to the fierce battle between the collegium members and
Shliapnikov. On 2 August 1918 the collegium turned to the implementation of
this decree, which it had been responsible for producing, in relation to its own
staff. Eleven collegium members were present, but Nogin was noticeably absent.
Instead Kushner acted as the chairman. The collegium considered the question-
naires filled out by commissariat staff concerning family ties within the insti-
tution. The minutes reveal that ‘in principle it was recognised that employees
related by blood or marriage to colleagues and responsible workers of the insti-
tution, not serving as irreplaceable specialists in the Commissariat of Labour,
are subject to dismissal, in accordance with the decree of Sovnarkom’.69
The collegium decided to dismiss ‘responsible’ workers with two weeks’
notice, and technical workers with one month’s notice and a pay advance. They
listed ‘employees subject to dismissal from the Commissariat of Labour: within
two weeks without a pay advance: a) Head of the Housekeeping department,
Comrade Kovalenko, related to the People’s Commissar for Labour, A. G.
Shliapnikov by marriage (not an irreplaceable specialist) b) Comrade Tiutereva,
bookkeeper of the People’s Commissariat of Labour, related to the People’s
Commissar of Labour by blood (also not an irreplaceable specialist). With a
pay advance of one month: Employee of the accountancy department Kuznetsov
(father), as a relative of an official of the same department, Kuznetsov (son)…
Comrade Radus-Zenkovich, although related by marriage to Deputy People’s
Commissar of Labour V. P. Nogin, is not subject to dismissal as he is an irreplace-
able specialist.’70 The collegium also instructed the Labour Market Department
of the commissariat to present its completed questionnaires and dismiss those
relatives, in accordance with the decree, in a three-day period. The remaining
dismissals were worked out the following week in the sitting of 13 August when
the collegium decided, ‘concerning staff of the Statistical Department, of the
brother and sister Shishkins, to dismiss A. A. Shishkina, a machinist, and keep
V. N. Shishkin who was recognised, as a statistician, as irreplaceable and there-
fore must remain in employment’.71
This appeared to be the end of the matter. However, when Shliapnikov
returned from his food procurement duties to rejoin the collegium of the
People’s Commissariat of Labour two weeks later the issue of the dismissal of his
relatives came to a head. The explosive sitting of 29 August 1918, Shliapnikov’s
first after his return to Moscow, saw the beginning of the revolt of the colle-
gium against Shliapnikov’s overriding of their decision. The meeting opened
with Shliapnikov announcing the agenda. However, affairs were immediately
hijacked by Radus-Zenkovich (the brother-in-law of Nogin who had kept his
job as an ‘irreplaceable specialist’) who requested the floor to make the follow-
ing announcement: ‘apparently the decree on relatives has been abolished in
the Commissariat of Labour, as Comrades Kovalenko and Tiutereva, dismissed
according to this decree, are again employed in the commissariat without the
consent (vedoma) of the Collegium. Today a meeting was held of “department
heads” at which it was decided that there cannot be joint work if the decisions
of the collegium are evaded so. The legal decision of the collegium was abol-
ished by the commissar.’72 Nogin waded in with support. He stated bluntly that
‘the collegium has the right to appeal in the plenum. The Commissar does not
possess the right to rescind decisions of the Deputy Commissar.’73 Shliapnikov,
initially irritated, replied that: ‘the Heads of Departments must be only Heads
of Departments, and not interfere in the conduct of the collegium. I possess
the right to cancel a decision of the collegium and that includes decisions of
my Deputy. This I cancel with the authority (vedoma) of the Presidium of the
Central Executive Committee. If you are not satisfied with my actions, you can
appeal.’74
At this point tensions escalated. The surviving minutes are edited. At least
one page is missing. When we return to the action, Shliapnikov is still on the
offensive, arguing that ‘Comrade Kovalenko was invited by the collegium of the
Commissariat of Labour, but I do not see members confirmed by Sovnarkom
here.’75 This infuriated the collegium further. Nogin protested that ‘all these
members were confirmed by Sovnarkom in your absence’.76 Stopani joined the
quarrel. He remonstrated that
this was said not only by department heads, but by members of the collegium.
Bumazhny, Puzanov, R-Zenkovich, Deputy Comrade Khodorovskii, comrades
Anikst and Nogin are members. The decision concerning the decree on relatives
was carried by a legal composition of the collegium. The collegium wished to
bring to execution the decree, as we are the initiators of the decree and must
firmly defend the reputation of Soviet power. The decision of the collegium is
fully legal.77
Shliapnikov, finding himself isolated in the collegium, could only repeat his
claim that ‘I did this with the authority of the Presidium of the Central Executive
Committee. If you like you can make an appeal. Make a written statement,
bring it here and I will pass it to Sovnarkom along with the minutes of the col-
legium.’78 Nogin, however, would not accept this solution and pushed for a vote
to continue the debate. Another collegium member, Gindin, supported him.79
Shliapnikov again attempted to stifle further debate and carry on with normal
government business. He stated firmly, ‘Further debate I cannot permit’, but the
collegium would not accept this. Instead Nogin proposed ‘to interrupt the sitting
of the collegium in advance of elucidation by Sovnarkom. In such a situation it
is impossible to work together’. His proposal was put to the vote and carried by
a majority of six for and one (only Shliapnikov) against. Eleven were recorded as
present and hence four collegium members must have abstained. The sitting of
the collegium, by a majority of votes, was broken off.80
The following day a collegium sitting was held in which Shliapnikov re-
attempted to compel the collegium to continue business as usual. However, the
question of ‘whether the work of the collegium can take place under normal
conditions’ arose immediately.81 Shliapnikov stated that ‘the appointment of a
special commission for clearing up what occurred in the sitting of the collegium
on 29 August will be decided in the VTsIK’.82 Nogin and the collegium were
still spoiling for a fight, having made a formal complaint to Sovnarkom and the
VTsIK Presidium the previous evening. He talked with Sverdlov and learnt that
Sovnarkom had not made any final decisions on the matter.83 Some collegium
members were more inclined to calm the situation and try to carry out commis-
sariat business. A.M. Anikst proposed ‘to consider the present meeting of the
collegium as legal and normal in order to decide questions together with the
representative from the Trade Unions and to elucidate the future work of the
collegium’.84 Nogin, however, continued to obstruct normal working relations
in the collegium. He tried to drag the Trade Unions into the fray to support his
case, proposing ‘to the representative of the Trade Unions to give his opinion
regarding the current situation’.85 Trade Union representative Shmidt remained
diplomatic. He argued that as the issue of the conflict had not been sent to the
presidium of the Trade Unions, he could not definitively give his opinion as rep-
resentative of the Trade Unions. Instead, he proposed ‘either to discuss the point
on the agenda and carry a certain decision, or completely not discuss it until the
clearing up of the question of the normal work of the collegium’.86 It seemed that
the majority of collegium members were not willing to carry out work as nor-
mal. Most preferred to wait for Sovnarkom’s decision. Nogin proposed to hold
a collegium sitting the following morning, Saturday, 31 August 1918. ‘This is
plenty of time to clear it up’, he added.87
This proposal was supported by the other infuriated members of the colle-
gium. Radus-Zenkovich remarked: ‘We have many urgent questions to decide.
This confirms the impossibility of work in the current conditions.’88 Nogin again
tried to bring the authority of the Trade Unions into the conflict: ‘In view of the
fact that the Trade Union does not yet have an opinion, and we want to work
together with the Trade Unions, I propose to Comrade Shmidt to explain the
question in the presidium of the Trade Unions on who has the right to cancel
the decisions of the collegium.When there is an answer we will decide all ques-
tions jointly.’ The sitting closed with Stopani’s ominous statement: ‘Somebody
among us has rendered a crime against Soviet power, either the collegium or the
commissar.’89
The planned sitting opened at 1.30 pm on Saturday, 31 August, despite the
attempt on Lenin’s life the previous evening. Although all members unanimously
decided ‘to send to Nadezhda Konstantinova, to Lenin, deep condolences and
wishes for a quick recovery’, even this shock was not enough to bring the colle-
gium members and Shliapnikov together. The initial disruption in Sovnarkom’s
work due to Lenin’s shooting meant that the question of the conflict in the
Labour collegium had not yet been dealt with. The arguments dragged out for a
further sitting despite Shliapnikov’s attempts to eschew the conflict and continue
normal work. Shmidt returned to this sitting with the formal decision of the
Trade Unions on the conflict. It was not favourable to either side. He announced
that ‘the All-Russian Trade Union carried a resolution concerning the conflict
in the People’s Commissariat of Labour. This resolution says that this is a small
practical disagreement and it is impossible to create such disorganisation due to
such a small question. It recommends the appointment of a commission from
the VTsIK to sort out the question of the relationship of the commissar to the
members of the collegium. The Trade Union proposes to consider the conflict
exhausted and that it believes that it is necessary to begin considering agenda
items without further delay.’90
Tomskii then waded into the debate to urge the continuation of the work of
the commissariat. He acknowledged that this was ‘a serious moment and also
very annoying’ but that the question of tariff policy was urgent as it involved
the issue of millions of roubles by the state treasury. He added, ‘The question of
relatives can be cleared up by the investigative commission of the presidium of
the VTsIK and State Control.’91 However, the more militant members of the col-
legium were still not satisfied to let the issue lie. Radus-Zenkovich again stated
that ‘the collegium cannot work in general…In such conditions the possibil-
ity of work is absolutely excluded…the question of decisions by the collegium
is not provided for in the Soviet Constitution: whether the commissar decides
all, or that the collegium must be able to work collegially.’92 Tomskii appealed
to the poorly defined formal legislation on this issue: ‘But we wrote the Soviet
Constitution! In point 45 this question was decided. This point says that in
the case of divergence of the collegium it is not possible to cancel the position
of the commissar. We are not lawyers, but in our understanding it breaks the
Soviet Constitution. On the question of the dismissal of relatives there should
not emerge such a conflict, but the whole course of events shows that there is
still serious disagreement… In my personal opinion it is necessary to consider
the question exhausted, for Kovalenko to tender his resignation, and the ques-
tion will be exhausted.’93 Point 45 of the constitution was then read aloud and
the debate escalated further, despite Shliapnikov’s repeated attempts to stop it.
Nogin, speaking on behalf of the hardliners of the collegium, refused to continue
working and reiterated the need ‘to pass the conflict of the Commissariat of
Labour onto the VTsIK and Sovnarkom for consideration’.94
Tomskii still occupied the middle ground. He implored that despite the
difficult issue ‘it is impossible to suspend the work of the collegium’.95 Nogin,
convinced of the correctness of his own position, refused to compromise and
allow the collegium to continue functioning until a decision had been passed
by higher authorities: ‘I talked to Lenin regarding Shliapnikov’s interpretation,
that he acted with the consent of the presidium of the VTsIK. He said to me that
if the VTsIK cancelled the decision, this was incorrect: this is clearly unlaw-
ful action.’96 Shliapnikov again attempted to defend his actions to reinstate dis-
missed staff members, but he was drowned out by further recriminations from
Bumazhnyi, Gulan, Tomskii and Stopani. Nogin and the hardliners got their
way and the collegium did not meet again until 5 September, after the matter of
the conflict had been considered in Sovnarkom. Nogin attended the Sovnarkom
sitting on 4 September in person to make the case for the collegium. Shliapnikov
was not afforded this same opportunity.97 Nogin’s ‘Deposition’ to Sovnarkom
on this affair explained his version of events and his perception of the rights of
the collegium versus the commissar. He stated that Shliapnikov’s suspension of
his order was ‘a breach of my rights as Deputy People’s Commissar’ and added
that when he raised this point with the commissar: ‘My remark to Comrade
Shliapnikov concerning the incorrectness of his behaviour remained without
an answer.’98 Nogin explained that when he again complained about the return
of the dismissed persons at the collegium sitting, Shliapnikov claimed ‘that this
was done in accordance with an order of the presidium of the VTsIK’. Nogin,
unsatisfied with this explanation, chased the issue through the channels of
state authority to V.A. Avanesov, a member of the VTsIK Presidium. Avanesov
stated that although a written order had not been composed by Ia.M. Sverdlov,
chairman of the VTsIK, he had allowed Comrade Shliapnikov, in advance of
the reconsideration of the decree, to take back into employment those staff
dismissed by the collegium. However, when challenged on the issue, Sverdlov
himself announced that he had given no such order on the return of the dis-
missed persons, but that Shliapnikov told him that in his opinion the collegium
itself would allow the dismissed persons to return to employment.99 Besides his
annoyance at Shliapnikov’s illegal cancellation of the collegium’s decision, Nogin
also felt that the commissar had acted in an insulting and inappropriate manner
towards the collegium members by expressing doubt that before him sat the col-
legium. Nogin indicated to Comrade Shliapnikov that ‘…the collegium had been
confirmed by Sovnarkom and therefore is legally authorized [pravomochno]’.
In answer to this Comrade Shliapnikov asked the Secretary to present to him
the named list of the collegium. ‘When I said to him, “Aleksandr Gavrilovich,
how can you speak so shamelessly?”, he, pointing me to the door, said “Victor
Pavlovich, please.” Nogin closed his statement by pointing out that ‘thanks to
the activities of Comrade Shliapnikov, at the present time such conditions have
taken shape in the Commissariat that planned and quiet work is unthinkable’.
As a result, ‘almost all responsible staff will leave the commissariat if Comrade
Shliapnikov remains as People’s Commissar of Labour’.100
Nogin’s anger was abated after his performance in Sovnarkom. As mentioned
above, the collegium met the following day, 5 September, and considered work-
ers’ tariffs and other pressing issues. The minutes of this sitting, unusually, did
not record any person as chairman. The next collegium sitting was two weeks
later. The sittings then continued at regular intervals until early October with
debate and discussion proceeding as normal. Shliapnikov did chair the remain-
der of these sittings, but it was Nogin’s proposals which were mainly accepted by
the collegium.101
Behind the scenes, the higher authorities were considering this complicated
matter and working towards a solution. Where and how this solution was worked
out, and its final outcome, are indicative of the locus of power in the Soviet
government at this time. Both Nogin and Shliapnikov, in their remonstrances
to higher authorities, made reference to the state institutions Sovnarkom and
the VTsIK as the legitimate bodies to solve the conflict. However, after Nogin’s
deposition in Sovnarkom, the crux of the matter seems to have been actually
worked out in the Party Central Committee. On 16 September 1918 the sitting
of the Central Committee (unusually, with Nogin present) ‘decided to appoint
Comrade Shmidt as People’s Commissar for Labour’.102 This decision was not
enacted immediately, however, and the matter lay for another fortnight before
formal changes were executed. In the Central Committee sitting of 2 October
the conflict in the Commissariat of Labour was discussed further: ‘It was
decided that neither Shliapnikov, nor Nogin can remain in the Commissariat of
Labour.’103 Sverdlov’s proposal, which indicated that ‘Shliapnikov was not right
in his relations towards the collegium and to the responsible workers of the com-
missariat, but that on the other hand also the collegium itself acted incorrectly’,
was accepted.104 Next, ‘distribution of cadres’ was discussed, and ‘it was decided
to send Comrade Shliapnikov to the disposal of Trotsky on the Southern Front.’105
These decisions of the Central Committee on the departure of Shliapnikov and
Nogin from the Commissariat of Labour, and the appointment of Shmidt as the
new People’s Commissar, were confirmed six days later at the Sovnarkom sitting
on 8 October 1918. Again, Nogin was present at this sitting, but Shliapnikov,
now clearly out of favour, was not.106
Shmidt seamlessly took over the duties of the Commissar for Labour and the
collegium continued its work without disruption. In his first sitting as the com-
missar on 12 October 1918 Shmidt was named as chairman, but in all the subse-
quent minutes no person was singled out in this role.107 This implies that collegial
spirit was triumphant and that Shmidt, having previously been one of the colle-
gium members, avoided any pretension of supremacy over the others. This argu-
ment is supported by the reconfirmation of the collegium by Sovnarkom in early
November, which listed Shmidt’s name not separately, but alongside those of his
counterparts in the collegium.108 As for the fate of the two major protagonists
in this conflict, it seems Nogin fared better than Shliapnikov. Nogin secured
a prestigious job in the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (VSNKh or
Vesenkha) and continued to participate regularly in Sovnarkom sittings and
activities the following year.109 Shliapnikov, on the other hand, although not offi-
cially condemned, was sent to almost political exile organizing supplies in the
far-flung reaches of the country. A letter from Lenin reveals he was working
in Astrakhan in December 1918.110 Naturally, this complex series of events was
affected by individual personalities, personal relationships and the particular
circumstances of the time. However, it is possible to consider some interesting
conclusions. This case study suggests that an internal political culture of colle-
giality existed in at least part of the Soviet state apparatus in 1918. Although not
precisely defined by the law, the relations, in practice, between the commissar
and collegium were characterized by equality and collective decision-making.
In this particular dispute, the sympathy of the higher authorities lay with the
collegium. The leadership felt that the commissar had acted inappropriately in
his relations with the collegium by overturning its decision, and in the manner
in which he did this. The conflict came to be about more than just the issue of
employment of relatives. It grew into a significant consideration of the correct
relationship between commissar and collegium.
By the start of 1919, as the Civil War intensified, the attention of the more prac
tical minded Soviet leaders turned from centralizing industrial and military admin-
istration, to work on simplifying and improving the efficiency of the state apparatus.
A reduction in the size of the commissariat collegia was carried out. For example, the
collegium of the Commissariat of Nationalities up to February 1918 had consisted
of eight people, rising to 16 people in July 1918. However, in September that year the
number of collegium members was reduced to ten persons by Sovnarkom. Just over
a year later, in December 1919, a further simplification of the state apparatus was
carried out and the collegium was reduced to just four people.111
Even at this stage of the Civil War, however, the collegial principle remained
strong in the party. In 1919, in opposition to bureaucratic excesses of the party
leadership, the Democratic Centralist faction emerged (including N. Osinsky,
T.V. Sapronov and V.M. Smirnov). The role of opposition to the introduction of
one-man management now fell to this minority of extreme idealists, who held
to the anti-authoritarian principles enunciated in the spring of 1918. These Left-
wing diehards set themselves determinedly against the bureaucratic and dicta-
torial expedients which the Civil War impelled most of the leadership to adopt.
The Democratic Centralists kept alive a tradition of struggle for the democratic
aspect of the 1917 programme, but their objective of administrative democracy
in government and economy ultimately proved chimerical in the face of prac
tical pressures for centralization.
While in December 1919, the Seventh Congress of Soviets passed a resolution
endorsing collegial management, Lenin, supported by Trotsky, was preparing a
firmer stance.112 They began to develop the argument that collegiality had been
important and necessary in the destruction of the old regime and the drawing
of the masses into construction of the new, but no longer suited current condi-
tions which required efficiency above all. In January 1920 Lenin defended the
introduction of one-man management as necessary for the next phase of Soviet
building, stating that ‘the transition to practical work is connected with indi-
vidual authority’.113 Lenin argued that the current debate on collegiality versus
one-man management was being conducted on too abstract a basis and ignored
the urgent practical tasks of the present time: ‘Collegiality…gives huge waste of
forces and does not allow speed and accountability in work demanded by the
conditions of centralized, large-scale industry. If you take the defenders of colle-
giality, you see in their resolutions unmeasured, abstract formulations that each
member of a collegium must have sole responsibility for execution of tasks…
But each of you who has practical experience knows that in reality this only
applies to one of every hundred cases!’114
Not all of the Bolsheviks were willing so quickly to sacrifice revolutionary

principle for practical efficiency. The Communist Fraction of the All-Russian
Central Council of Trade Unions considered the idea of one-man manage-
ment as a breach of the basis of workers’ democracy. At the Third All-Russian
Congress of Economic Work Councils in January 1920, V.P. Miliutin stood as a
supporter of collegiality, arguing that it guaranteed the participation of workers
in state administration. Lenin’s arguments did not persuade the majority of this
congress, which took a resolution confirming, as a rule, the collegial form of
administration.115
Throughout early 1920 the discussion developed further, drawing in a wide
circle of party, trade union and economic workers. V.V. Osinsky, T.V. Sapronov,
V.N. Maksimovskii, V.M. Smirnov, A.I. Rykov. M.P. Tomskii, A.S. Bubnov and
others all came out in defence of the principle of collegiality. Discussions in
Moscow spread south, mainly to Ukraine, where supporters of collegiality found
fruitful ground for successful agitation against one-man management. At the
Guberniia Party Conference, the Kharkov Party Organisation took a resolution
against one-man management which was accepted by an overwhelming major-
ity of votes.116 This pro-collegiality trend was replicated by a significant number
of delegates at the All-Ukrainian Party Conference in 1920. Discussions on this
topic unfolded at the conference in the debates surrounding Stalin’s report ‘On
the Next Tasks of Economic Construction’. Here T.V. Sapronov, V. Ia. Chubar’
and others stood against one-man management and voting was split down the
middle.117 Meanwhile, back in Moscow, supporters of collegiality relied on the
Moscow Guberniia Committee RKP(b) which was composed of I.I. Min’kov,
V.G. Sorin, S.I. Polidorov and others, and on the Fraction of the Presidium of
the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions.118 Before the Ninth Party
Congress of April 1920, Lenin launched an offensive on the principle of col-
legiality, first at the Third All-Russian Congress of Workers of Water Transport
and then at the sitting of the Communist Fraction of the All-Russian Central
Council of Trade Unions of 15 March 1920, where disagreement reached its
height of intensity.119 In both cases, Lenin’s theses were defeated. The Democratic
Centralists were rallying and on 28 March 1920 the thesis ‘On Collegiality and
One Man Management’ by Osinsky, Sapronov and Maksimovskii was published
in Ekonomicheskaia Zhizn’.120
The Democratic Centralists held to the original anti-bureaucratic line. They
were dedicated to the observance of revolutionary principle in opposition to the
expedience promoted by Lenin and Trotsky. They spoke out on many occasions
to protest the trend towards centralization and hierarchical authority in the
party, the army, and industry, and by early 1920, the state apparatus. Their ide-
als were local autonomy and administration of every sort of activity by elected
collegia.
At the Ninth Party Congress in April 1920 Trotsky presented his scheme of
militarization. By now it was clear that the Bolsheviks were going to win the
Civil War, but the economy was in ruins, famine was looming, peasant rebellion
stirring as a real threat and the working class has melted away. War Communism
had been a disaster in terms of the productive capacity of the economy and
party leaders began to explore alternatives to restore stability and prosperity.
The alternative path eventually taken, the New Economic Policy, would split
the party as it was viewed by many as an ideological retreat. But pragmatism,
rather than ideals, were now the order of the day, and Trotsky’s militarization of
labour reflected this new ethos of practicality. Osinsky criticized this militariza-
tion scheme as a violation of basic revolutionary principles of democracy and
collective decision-making:
There is no doubt that the collegium is an essential higher-level school of admin-

istration…The collegium is the proper means to prepare workers for the most
responsible work and for completely taking over the state apparatus… Comrade
Lenin reproaches us here on the grounds that we approach the question of indi-
vidual authority vs. the collegial principle not in a practical way but purely ‘in
principle’…In the developed socialist system, when the division of labour and
skill has been abolished, the collegial principle will be essential for people to
be able to replace each other continuously in the organs of administration…
We must not put the question of the collegial principle vs. individual author-
ity on a purely technical plain and seek the absolute technical advantages of
one form or another of administration…We must approach the matter from the
social-political side. Then we can reach concrete conclusions, including some
less favourable to individual authority…if you reduce the collegial principle to
nothing in our institutions, bear in mind that this signifies the downfall of the
whole system of democratic centralism…we will conduct an unyielding struggle
against the principle of individual authority…The ultimate tendency leads to
setting up one-man rule in every link of the Soviet apparatus… This means that
once we take this path and go far enough on it, we will collapse under the weight
of bureaucracy…121
Osinsky described how the revolutionary principle of collegiality made for

a revolutionary, socialist form of administration. The collegial system enabled,
as Osinsky pointed out, the realization of the crucial principle of participation
of the masses in administration, as set out by Lenin in State and Revolution.
At the Ninth Party Congress in April 1920, however, supporters of collegiality

proved to be in the minority. The theses of the Democratic Centralists were
subjected to harsh criticism by Lenin, who labelled them ‘a complete theoretical
distortion’ and argued that the collegial principle was ‘utopian, impractical and
injurious’122 Trotsky backed Lenin’s contention that the collegial principle rep-
resented an outgrown phase of the revolution: ‘Collegial management…is an
entirely natural reaction of a young, revolutionary, recently oppressed class,
which rejects the individual command of yesterday’s masters, bosses, com-
manders… But this is not the last word in building the state economy of the
working class.’123
Thus, the Ninth Party Congress was the beginning of the end of collegiality in
state institutions, as well as the death knell for collective economic administra-
tion. Despite the theses of the Democratic Centralists (Osinsky, Sapronov and
Maksimovskii) ‘On the Collegial Principle and One Man Management’, which
argued that the collegial principle was the strongest weapon against the growth
of departmentalism and bureaucratic ‘deadening’ of the Soviet apparatus, the
thesis in favour of one-man management was accepted as the resolution.124 The
opposition made one last attempt to defend the principle of collegiality with their
proposed corrections to this resolution in favour of ‘reduced collegiality’ written
by Rykov, and signed by Tomskii, Osinsky, Miliutin and others. However, they
were defeated when a majority of 314 delegates against 124 with 8 abstainers
voted it down.125 Following the defeat of the principle of collegiality at the Ninth
Party Congress in April 1920, Sovnarkom established a commission to work
on ‘simplifying’ the state apparatus and thus reducing the role and authority of
the commissariat collegia ‘in order to improve their work’.126 For many of those
working towards improved efficiency in the state apparatus, the blame for prob-
lems in the work of the commissariats lay in the fact that ‘there were no prop-
erly defined limits to each worker’s responsibility’.127 Krupskaia bemoaned the
fact that ‘the question of collegiality and one-man management arose because
of the lack of delineation of the functions of the Commissar from the functions
of the collegium, the lack of delineation of the responsibility of the collegium of
the responsibility of the Commissar’.128 She was included in the commission to
reduce collegiality and increase efficiency in the commissariats and recalled that
‘when the question was raised of the necessity to increase the responsibility of
People’s Commissars…having previously lain responsibility with the collegia…
the question of one-man management emerged. Ilich immediately included me
as a member of the commission which was set up to consider the question of the
introduction of one-man management into the commissariats, and said: “It is
necessary to be vigilant, in order that one-man management…does not weaken

the connection with the masses”.’129
There was some disagreement among commission members over how to put
these ideas into practice. Krupskaia explained: ‘When the question of collegiality
and one-man management was considered in Sovnarkom, one, amongst others,
completely monstrous project was presented. It proposed to abolish not only the
collegium, but also the heads of departments, and keep only the commissar and
the technical staff, to whom the commissar would have to give out direct tasks.’130
Krupskaia herself took a softer line, arguing that it was ‘necessary to cre-
ate careful division of labour in the commissariat…with all staff collectively
involved in order to improve work’.131 Ultimately, of course, the changes intro-
duced undermined the collective authority of the collegia. The commissariat
collegia reverted to the status of advisory councils under the control of the com-
missar. By the time of the first USSR constitution in January 1924, the move
away from the collegial principle in the supreme central state organs was clear.
The constitution allowed for collegiality in the process of consideration, but
emphasized one-man management in taking and executing decisions in the
People’s Commissariats. A key change detailed in the new constitution was the
process of composing the collegia. Members were no longer elected from below
and ‘confirmed by Sovnarkom’, as in the 1918 RSFSR Constitution. Instead, now
Sovnarkom ‘appointed’ all collegium members from above.132 Effectively, by the
end of 1920, the pre-revolutionary ministerial set-up was reintroduced, as ideol-
ogy was sacrificed for efficiency.
In the earliest months of Soviet power, there was a genuine attempt to reject
the past and to open a new era of administration marked by the collegial prin-
ciple at the highest levels of the state bureaucracy. The purpose of collegia was
to revolutionize and de-bureaucratize the state. It corresponded with the project
to create a new type of state, a state in the process of withering away, with mass
involvement in administration based on the principles of direct, participatory
democracy. As outlined above, it involved drawing in elected representatives of
mass organizations as well as various experts into the collegia.
The period of the dominance of the collegia, however, was very brief. It was
already being questioned, in theory, by mid-1918 and had been dismantled, in
practice, by late 1920. The problems of efficient management of the state appar
atus and economy which beset the regime under the exigencies of Civil War
contributed to the decline of collegiality, although it is doubtful whether even in
more favourable circumstances the system would have proved workable as the
system suffered inherent problems.
It seems that the collegia system did not allow for decisive, clear decision-
making that corresponded to the wider interests of the state. The internal weak-
nesses inside the collegia were an obstacle to the efficient working of government
as a whole, and in the demarcation of spheres of responsibility. The collegia sys-
tem influenced the relationship of the higher bodies (Sovnarkom, VTsIK) and
the commissariats, with factional disputes inside the collegia being carried into
Sovnarkom for arbitration or resolution. Finally, the divisions within the collegia
provided the basis for other interests to advance their case, including divergent
interests within the commissariat itself or interests outside the commissariat.
The collegial system assumed that all participants would objectively address
the question of the ‘general good’, but in reality it showed that individual, group
and sectional interests came to the fore very quickly. Thus, it might be argued
that the collegial model of administration was flawed from the outset. It revealed
a naive understanding of the way decision-making is conducted in any organ
ization and the inexperience of most of those involved in administration. The
attempt to implement collegiality in the state bureaucracy reflected certain ideo-
logical assumptions about how administration would be different under social-
ism, and a perhaps utopian belief that democratic principles could and should
be applied wherever possible.
Indeed, most scholars who have examined collegial leadership have been
inclined to stress its limitations, and even its ‘obsolescence as a mode of govern
ance in complex modern societies’.133 Max Weber, for example, concluded that
collegiality is fundamentally at odds with the principles of rational bureaucratic
organization, arguing that it ‘unavoidably diminishes the promptness of deci-
sion, the unity of leadership, the clear responsibility of the individual, and the
absolute disregard of external influence and the maintenance of internal dis-
cipline’.134 Therefore, according to Weber, while collegiality in purely advisory
bodies may be expected to persist indefinitely, ‘the collegial sharing of decisional
authority is anachronistic and must give way to the technical superiority of
monocratic organisation’.135
Nevertheless, some scholars have argued in defence of collegial systems.
Bernard Silberman, working from the Japanese case, has shown that ‘the col-
legial approach to power management is useful when powerful bureaucratic or
patriarchal elites confront unprecedented problems’.136 Thomas Baylis has also
provided a positive interpretation of collegial government, while acknowledging
that they tend to take more time to reach decisions. He refuted Weber’s assertion
that collegial decision-making is obsolete in modern government, arguing instead
that ‘collegial leadership remains fully consistent with modern bureaucracy in a
number of settings…where bureaucracies are strong, favour a technocratic style

and are intimately associated with interest groups in decision-making through
neo-corporatist arrangements’.137 He also points to some positive effects of col-
lective decision-making: ‘a greater range of information and a larger number of
options are apt to be considered in the group’s deliberations, and the decisions
reached may be more widely accepted and efficiently executed.’138 Yet, as Weber
puts it: ‘Collegiality is a means of limiting monocratic authority rather than pro-
moting efficiency.’139 This certainly seems to have been the case in theory and in
practice in the early commissariat collegia. The revolutionary, ‘utopian’ desire
to move away from the ministerial system of centralized, hierarchical control
by single individuals ultimately proved too inefficient in the prevailing urgent
conditions. The collegiality observed here in the commissariat collegia should
be viewed in conjunction with those other democratic, anti-bureaucratic ven-
tures of the early post-Revolutionary period (democratic administration in the
military and workers’ control in industry) which were gradually sacrificed by
the Bolshevik leadership in the face of the pressure of practical realities. While
Lenin cloaked his changing views on collegiality in the ideological rhetoric of
the ‘phases of socialist building’, it seems that the pragmatic necessity to improve
government efficiency and performance was the real driving force behind the
Bolshevik leadership’s move away from the early anti-bureaucratic, democratic
spirit of the revolution and one of its defining principles: collegiality.
6
The Decline of Sovnarkom

and Rise of the Politburo, 1919–23
Sovnarkom had functioned as the highest decision-making body in the Soviet

government in the regime’s first year and a half, but the more formal and col-
legial decision-making culture of the state organs did not suit urgent Civil War
conditions which necessitated rapid, authoritative resolution of questions. From
mid-1919 the Politburo began to emerge as a rival executive in a form more
suited to the exigencies. It took over certain areas of state business, initially mili-
tary and foreign affairs. At the end of the Civil War, instead of the Politburo giv-
ing up its state functions, it maintained and expanded these into domestic and
economic questions. A situation emerged where, as Trotsky put it, ‘leadership by
the Party gives way to administration by its executive organs’.1
The nascent system of Soviet democracy continued to develop in the most
challenging of environments. Fighting the Civil War and the resultant economic
measures of opening quote ‘War Communism’ to support the Red Army brought
the country to its knees. In the countryside, around six million peasants died of
starvation. In the towns, riots broke out in Petrograd and Moscow, where popu-
lations had fallen by 70 per cent and 50 per cent respectively by the end of the
conflict. As the Civil War began to wind down and Bolshevik victory was on
the horizon, further threatening episodes of opposition from inside and outside
the party rocked Lenin’s government. The Tenth Party Congress assembled in
Moscow in March 1921 under a dark shadow. The recent peasant rebellion in
Tambov frightened Soviet leaders, but it was the Kronstadt naval revolt in March
1921 that gave the regime its greatest scare. Kronstadt, a naval base on an island
off the coast of Petrograd, had initially been ‘the pride and joy of the revolution’,
training the guns of the battleship Aurora on the Winter Palace and crushing
opposition to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly the following year.
Yet by 1921 16,000 soldiers and workers there had signed a petition calling for
‘Soviets without Bolsheviks’: freely elected Soviets, and freedoms of speech, press
and association. Lenin’s government reacted brutally, dissolving the Kronstadt

Soviet, executing several hundred ringleaders and expelling over 15,000 sailors
from the fleet. Though the rebellions were mercilessly crushed, Lenin now com-
pared the Communist state to a man ‘beaten to within an inch of his life’ and
described Kronstadt as ‘the flash which lit up reality better than anything else’.
Order, economic restoration and conciliation were the new priorities. The head-
line resolution of the congress was the replacement of food requisitioning by a
tax in kind, abandoning the central plank of ‘War Communism’ and laying the
foundations of the New Economic Policy by allowing the peasants to sell their
surplus on the free market once the tax was paid. Fearful that the delegates would
denounce the tax as a restoration of capitalism, Lenin insisted that it was needed
to tackle famine, quell the peasant uprisings and build a new alliance with the
peasantry.
As well as revolts and rebellions from workers, peasants, soldiers and sail-
ors, opposition also arose within the party itself during this time. The Workers’
Opposition, led by Shliapnikov and Kollontai, opposed the reduction in the
power of the Trade Unions and the Workers’ Councils and wanted workers
to have more control over economic decisions. The Democratic Centralists
resented the ‘dictatorship of party officialdom’ and called for more involvement
in collegial decision-making by rank-and-file Communists and the curtail-
ing of the Politburo’s authority. The various strands of opposition within the
Bolshevik Party clung to a purer idea of commune democracy. They were all
focused, in different ways, on establishing a genuine self-regulating system of
proletarian democracy. Nikolai Bukharin and the Left Communists in 1918
argued for greater worker self-management and more democracy for rank-and-
file Communists. The Democratic Centralists in 1919 called for a more dynamic
system of Soviets freed from over-zealous party supervision where the rights
of the localities were respected. During the party and trade union debates of
1920–1, the Workers’ Opposition summed up the experience of the intra-party
oppositions in calling for greater worker power over all the structures of the
Soviet state. These attempts to promote a barely defined concept of commune
democracy were brought to a halt by the other significant resolution of the Tenth
Party Congress, the ‘ban on factions’ and the tightening of party discipline.
To support Sovnarkom in its tasks, a sister organ, the Defence Council had
been created in November 1918 to organize the economy for Civil War, renamed
the ‘Council of Labour and Defence’ (STO) at the Ninth Party Congress in April
1920. The tasks assigned to STO were ‘to establish a unified economic plan for the
RSFSR, direct the work of the economic people’s commissariats in conformity
The Decline of Sovnarkom and Rise of the Politburo, 1919–23 127
with this plan, supervise its fulfilment’.2 In the next few months STO became
increasingly involved in resolving economic issues raised by the commissari-
ats and mediating between them on economic matters. STO was granted the
right to issue decrees and directives, and to take steps for their correct and rapid
fulfilment. These measures could be overruled only if commissariats protested
to Sovnarkom or VTsIK. As the Civil War wound down and it refocused on
wider economic functions, its official membership increased to nine: Lenin as
chairman, the Commissars of Military Affairs, Labour, Transport, Agriculture,
Food Supplies and Rabkrin, the Vesenkha chairman, a representative of the
All-Russian Union of Trade Unions (with the director of Central Statistical
Administration attending as tenth a non-voting member). As in Sovnarkom,
however, attendance at meetings was not restricted to official members. The offi-
cial members had deputies who often served in their place. From the establish-
ment of STO there was a lack of clarity about its constitutional position and
remit vis-à-vis Sovnarkom. The common membership and shared administra-
tive and secretarial support apparatus encouraged this confusion. These shared
features also encouraged STO to adopt similar procedures and norms of oper
ation to Sovnarkom which, by the same token, hampered its development into
an authoritative war cabinet.
The patterns of the sittings of the Politburo, vis-à-vis those of Sovnarkom and
the Defence Council suggest that the Politburo was a more flexible, responsive
body, able to adapt to urgent demands more easily than the state organs. By
mid-1920, Sovnarkom met once a week, usually on a Tuesday.3 STO held sittings
twice weekly, one administrative on Wednesdays and one plenary on Fridays.4
While Sovnarkom and STO held regular sittings at even intervals, the
Politburo worked on a less uniform basis. In its first three months, the Politburo
met spasmodically, between three and six times a month.5 Its average number of
meetings per month increased over the course of the year, but due to demand,
not an institutionalized pattern. The first attempt to ‘regulate’ the Politburo sit-
tings was suggested by the Head of the Party Secretariat N.N. Krestinskii on 26
October 1919. He proposed to arrange on Thursdays, ‘regularly, once a week, a
sitting of the Politburo’, but this regulation had little impact in practice.6 It was
not until February 1922, two and a half years later, that attempts were again
made to regulate the Politburo sittings. Members decided to hold a sitting once
a week to consider ‘non-urgent questions of a predominantly economic char-
acter’.7 In March 1922 this was developed further into a decision to ‘appoint on
Mondays and Thursdays obligatory Politburo sittings at 11am’.8 Meanwhile, the
Politburo continued to work flexibly. In January 1920, it met ten times. Four
meetings were held in a row on 17, 18, 19, 20 January.9 In contrast, during the
next month, February 1920, it held only three meetings, spread throughout the
month, on 6, 17 and 28 February.10
At the end of 1920 the Politburo began to meet more frequently, and also
developed the practice of carrying out telephone surveys to consider questions
even more quickly.11 From September 1921 to March 1922 it presided on an
average of 21 days per month.12 In April–December 1922, following the Eleventh
Party Congress, the average number of meetings and telephone surveys fell to 12
per month, but it was now meeting regularly enough to function as an effective
cabinet.
This regular versus spasmodic pattern of sittings of state and party organs is
linked to the contrasting methods of preparation for the sittings. For Sovnarkom
sittings there were detailed, formal practices of prior distribution of paperwork.
Preparation of reports which required lengthy interdepartmental consultation
before presenting items to the Sovnarkom Secretariat for admittance to the
agenda. Further regulation of the preparation of Sovnarkom agenda was adopted
in April 1922 but no such stringent rules were yet in place for adding items to the
Politburo agenda in this period.13 It was a more simple process to present items
to the Party Secretariat for inclusion in the Politburo agenda. It was not until
mid-1922 that the party secretary, Stalin, complained about ‘some institutions
sending materials for the Politburo sittings late’. The Politburo decided ‘to bring
to the attention of all institutions that those which do not present their material
to the CC Secretariat by four o-clock on the day before the sitting, cannot count
on solution of their questions by the Politburo’.14
Once a state official managed to get an item on to the Sovnarkom or STO
agenda, there were further strict rules for taking it up for discussion in the sit-
tings. In April 1919 a set of standing orders was formally adopted, which prob-
ably codified conventions and practices that had emerged earlier. These allowed
reporters a maximum of ten minutes to introduce each agenda item. On dis-
puted matters, ten minutes were then allowed for a counter-report. Members
could speak no more than twice to each agenda item, five minutes the first time,
and three the second. They were to be given the floor in strict order of their indi-
cating their wish to speak. Lenin took down the names of those who signalled
an interest in participating in the debate in a list in his notebook. He meticu-
lously included his own name in the list when he wished to join the debate. All
Sovnarkom members had the right, at any time, to propose to close the discus-
sion on any item. Such motions were decided by simple majority vote. Points of
order could be put forward at any time, the mover being allowed one minute
to state his point, and one person disagreeing could also speak for a minute.15
Lenin policed these rules strictly, keeping a constant eye on his watch, and stop-
ping speakers when their time was up.16 Discussions in the Politburo appear to
have been much more free-flowing and less formal than in Sovnarkom.17
The work of Sovnarkom and STO was also hampered by their reliance
on commissions which were prone to delay and confusion. For example, the
commission on national labour conscription appointed by Sovnarkom on 28
December 1919 had still not confirmed its members nor held a meeting by 20
January, almost a month later.18 Thus Sovnarkom and STO began to appoint
chairmen of their commissions who were named as personally responsible for
arranging meetings. They also specified, in many cases, that the members named
for participation could not be changed for other representatives of their institu-
tion.19 From 1919 the state organs spawned a constant stream of commissions,
of which several dozen were normally in existence at any time. In almost every
Sovnarkom and STO sitting, one or two new commissions were set up to deal
with state affairs. The commissions covered the whole range of state business,
from administrative, domestic, economic to military.20 A number of these were
standing bodies, and a few, notably the State Planning Commission (Gosplan),
the Supreme Arbitration Commission and the Commission on Domestic Trade
evolved in due course into government departments in their own right. The
vast majority, however, were ad hoc groups of commissars and lesser officials
charged with either putting decisions approved into final form or with reconsid-
ering unresolved matters and agreeing new proposals for submission to a later
meeting. By 1921 this practice was deeply ingrained. In the first four months of
1921, STO set up 73 commissions, including the Transport Commission which
ran from January to May.21 Sovnarkom and Little Sovnarkom set up a further
74 between them, including the ‘Commission on Bonuses-in-Kind’ and the
‘Moscow Premises Commission’ in January 1921,22 and the ‘Fuel Commission’
in February.23 Of the 147 commissions set up in January–April 1921, 47 com-
pleted their tasks within two weeks and went out of existence, and almost two-
thirds were dissolved within the four-month period.24 As these figures indicate,
however, many commissions persisted for prolonged periods, either because of
delays in resolving the matters referred to them or because they took on new
issues.
Commissions suffered problems with attendance, the tendency to prolifer-
ate and the difficulty of keeping track of them. Members often missed meet-
ings or demanded to swap their duties with colleagues, causing much confusion.
In March 1920 Sovnarkom created a commission, led by Varlam Avanesov, to
work out punitive measures ‘in relation to members of committees and com-
missions attending sittings irregularly’.25 In June 1920 a regulation was adopted
laying down rules on the creation and operation of commissions and interde-
partment committees, but was unsuccessful in reducing their numbers and
controlling their operation.26 By early 1921 the number of commissions created
by Sovnarkom and STO had increased further. At the Sovnarkom sitting of 1
February 1921, seven agenda points were taken up with the hearing of reports
of different commissions, including those on the ‘Reform of High Schools’,
‘Measures against Incorrect and Illegal ration Distribution’, ‘Concessions in
Siberia’ and, ironically, ‘the Simplification of the Soviet Apparatus’.27
Lenin recognized this chaotic situation in his Eleventh Party Congress
Speech in March 1922 and recommended that the number of commissions of
Sovnarkom and STO be reduced. He complained that Sovnarkom and STO
must ‘know and settle their own affairs and not split up into an infinite number
of commissions’. A recent overhaul of live commissions discovered 120 active
commissions, of which only 16 were actually required. Lenin recognized that
the proliferation of commissions was symptomatic of a deeper malaise in the
state apparatus: a lack of confidence and sense of authority in decision-making,
remarking, ‘Instead of accepting responsibility for their work, preparing a deci-
sion for Sovnarkom and knowing that they bear responsibility for this decision,
there is a tendency to take shelter behind commissions.’28 Despite Lenin’s recom-
mendations, commissions continued to complicate and slow the functioning of
Sovnarkom and STO.29
In terms of the types of business under Sovnarkom’s remit, in the earlier
period, general organizational questions predominated. These made up 20.5 per
cent of items considered in Sovnarkom sittings. Next were financial questions
at 13.7 per cent, followed by economic questions (such as supply of food, raw
materials and fuel) at 10.5 per cent. Of the questions, 8.3 per cent concerned
labour and labour duty. Questions of industry, transport and construction made
up 6.1 per cent, and 5.8 per cent were questions regarding education, health
care, social security and national building, while questions of agriculture, tax in
kind. International relations were 5 per cent, and questions of trade and goods-
exchange, legal issues, and points on accounting and ‘kontrol’ all making up
between 3 and 4 Per cent. The least discussed area was military affairs, which
saw a significant fall to just 0.5 per cent.30 The main focus of STO’s activity was
economic questions: 23.8 per cent were on supply of food, raw materials and
fuel, and 19.6 per cent on industry, transport and construction. The next most
frequent questions on STO’s agenda were labour and labour duty at 12.3 per
cent, and 7.5 per cent of its business was of a general organizational nature.
Questions of trade, finances, education, health and social security, international
relations and military questions each made up 2–4 per cent of issues under STO
consideration.31
While these statistics of the type of business on the Sovnarkom and STO
agenda are not very revealing on the trend of authority away from the state
bodies, the same figures for the party organs of the same period illuminate
the wider interference of the Politburo in state affairs. In the first months after
its creation in April 1919, the Politburo mainly discussed party organiza-
tional and military questions. Party business made up a steady proportion of
Politburo agenda items until 1921, but then fell significantly in 1922. Items in
this category included discussion of party congress and conferences, relations
between central and local party organs, party publications, questions of admit-
ting members and ‘cleansing’ of the party. Unsurprisingly, the discussion of
military affairs dominated the Politburo’s remit during the Civil War, but from
1921 other topics crept on to its agenda.32 Government administration was one
area in which the Central Committee had earlier been involved along with, to
a limited extent, in state affairs. The Politburo greatly expanded this party role
in appointments to government posts and restructuring of state bodies. The
Politburo also carved out a major role in handling foreign affairs. It took over
this domain from Sovnarkom relatively quickly, which dealt with them less
frequently from 1919. From 1920, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs
virtually withdrew from work in Sovnarkom and directed the majority of his
commissariat’s business directly to the Politburo. Domestic affairs were a small
proportion of issues considered by the Politburo in 1919 and 1920, but rose dra-
matically in 1921, and further in 1922. The domestic affairs considered by the
Politburo from 1921 were predominantly economic, including consideration
of the introduction of NEP, food supply issues and taxes,33 but also included
discussion of schools, transport, religious issues, workers cooperatives and pay
tariffs.34 As the Politburo’s initial focus of military issues during the Civil War
receded, instead of returning to focus on party organization and questions of
ideological principle, it widened its jurisdiction over those domestic matters
which had previously been the preserve of Sovnarkom and STO. The Civil
War fostered the Politburo’s inadvertent take-over of Sovnarkom functions by
necessitating rapid, flexible and authoritative decision-making that did not suit
the formal, lengthy, collegial practices which had developed in the state organs.
It was by no means certain, however, that the supreme party organ would main-
tain and expand the position it had acquired.
As de facto control over government decision-making began to shift from

Sovnarkom to the Politburo during the Civil War, a number of Soviet leaders,
including Lenin himself, publically criticized this trend and attempted to reverse
it. The most important critic of changing party-state relations between 1919
and 1923 was Sovnarkom stalwart and seasoned party oppositionist Valerian
(Nikolai) Osinsky-Obolensky. He eventually went so far as to propose the highly
controversial introduction of separation of powers for the Soviet government
which could almost be considered ‘constitutionalist’. Although the campaign he
led against ‘incorrect’ party-state relations in these years ultimately failed, this
high profile debate undermines the notion that the monolithic party-state was a
natural, inevitable product of Bolshevik ideology and was in place immediately
after the October Revolution.
By 1921 many other leading Bolsheviks agreed that the party-state situation
was flawed, but focused not on reforming through delineation of party and state
or separation of powers, but instead through improvement of the class com-
position and methods of administration. As David Priestland has highlighted,
in 1918–21 ‘some on the left seriously explored the possibility of undermining
the role of the party centre and delineating its functions, but were unwilling to
open themselves up to the charge that they were questioning the principle of the
leading role of the party’.35 He concluded that ‘the left effectively failed to chal-
lenge the increasing authoritarianism and arbitrariness of the regime as it was
unwilling to propose the creation of checks and balances to prevent abuses and
was wary of any real division of power’. Certainly Priestland’s view applies up
to 1921, but after this date it seems that Osinsky did just that. In 1919 Osinsky
still publically objected to ‘bourgeois democracy’ and disagreed with those who
defended separation of powers, arguing in Pravda in January 1922 that there was
no need to fear that ‘the union of powers gives rise to arbitrariness (the common
refrain of bourgeois democrats)’. From 1922 to 1923, however, at the Eleventh
and Twelfth Party Congresses Osinsky took his radical line on party-state rela-
tions further and pursued the controversial path of formal delineation of party
and state. He wanted to see the end of Politburo control over Sovnarkom and
proposed the division of legislative and executive power between the All-Russian
Central Executive Committee of Soviets and Sovnarkom to achieve this aim.
Most other leading Bolsheviks, however, were not able to escape the shack-
les of Marx’s critique of separation powers as expressed in Lenin’s State and
Revolution and so desperately looked elsewhere for solutions to this acknowl-
edged problem in government. By spring 1922 even Lenin recognized that the
Politburo had begun to encroach on the day-to-day government business that
was Sovnarkom’s jurisdiction. He condemned this development in his speech on

the emergence of incorrect party-state relations at the Eleventh Party Congress.
On the subject of Soviet institutions, Lenin lamented that ‘the relations between
party and state are not what they ought to be. On this point we are quite unani
mous.’ He added that it was ‘extremely difficult to get out of this situation by
formal means, for there is only one governing party in our country; and a mem-
ber of our party cannot be prohibited from lodging complaints. That is why
everything that comes up on the Sovnarkom is dragged before the Politburo.’36
He blamed his absence from government due to illness for causing these prob-
lems ‘for to a large extent contact between the Sovnarkom and the Politburo was
maintained through me. When I was obliged to retire from work it was found
that the two wheels were not working in unison.’ Lenin’s solution was that ‘The
People’s Commissars must be responsible for their work and should not bring
these matters up first to the Sovnarkom and then to the Politburo. Formally we
cannot abolish the right to lodge complaints with the Central Committee, for
our party is the only governing party in the country. But we must put a stop to
the habit of bringing every petty matter before the Central Committee.’37
Osinsky, a veteran government official and an Old Bolshevik notorious party
critic, was well-placed to observe the problems in the party-state relations first-
hand. A candidate member of the Central Committee in 1921–2, he had held a
series of important government posts since the revolution, including as chair-
man of Vesenkha in 1917–18 and head of the VTsIK Department of Soviet
Propaganda in 1918–19. During the Civil War, Osinsky served as a VTsIK and
CC plenipotentiary in Tula, Viatka and Penza, and became chairman of the
Executive Committee of the Tula Guberniia Soviet. In 1920 he returned to the
capital and became a member of the collegium of the Foodstuffs Commissariat
and in 1921 he was appointed Deputy People’s Commissar for Agriculture, act-
ing as de facto commissar in the absence of the appointment of an official one
between December 1920 and January 1923. Osinsky was a Left Communist in
1918–20, and then a leader of the Democratic Centralist opposition group.
At the Eleventh Party Congress, Osinsky claimed that he listened with great
interest to the Lenin’s speech outlining the necessity of changes in the system of
central government, remarking wryly that ‘I must remind you that I personally
pointed out the necessity of these very changes at the Eighth Party Congress –
very long ago –and at the Tenth Party Congress, exactly a year ago, all these pro-
posals made by Lenin now…were put forward. If they had been brought to life
then, when they were necessary with the transfer to NEP, then we would have
gained a colossal amount and throughout this year the muddle which dominates
in all high levels of authority would not have occurred.’ Osinsky disagreed, how-
ever, with Lenin’s analysis of the cause of these problems in the state appar
atus: ‘Lenin reduced the defects in its work to this, that the personal connection
in the person of Lenin made this problem vanish. In his absence the wheels of
the Politburo and Sovnarkom began to spin in different directions, and from this
the difficulties arose? Nothing of the kind! The same thing was going on when
Lenin was in the Politburo.’38
Osinsky complained that the Politburo’s inappropriate interference in routine
state affairs had resulted in their conceding their proper role of general polit-
ical direction. He gave the example of his failed attempts to get the Politburo
to take a principled line on the agronomy question after the transfer to NEP.39
Osinsky put this inappropriate situation down to ‘Not communist conceit…but
an unsuitable system of government’ and his analysis had a certain constitu-
tional slant: ‘We have Sovnarkom as a legislative institution, issuing decrees. In
essence, we inherited this tradition from the Provisional Government, which
had no parliament and began to legislate themselves. We absorbed this habit at
the revolutionary moment. It was necessary to legislate extraordinarily quickly.’
Osinsky’s solution was to return to the early principles of Soviet democracy, ‘to
take away Sovnarkom’s legislative functions and to concentrate them exclusively
in VTsIK. Sovnarkom must be the executive organ of VTsIK.’40
Osinsky claimed that Sovnarkom suffered from a lack of official commissars
attending its sittings: ‘The People’s Commissars do not attend Sovnarkom, but
only their deputies, those actually working, but not officially the responsible
persons, deputies who are not obliged to look into general policies. So, what
happens? The Politburo appears as the deciding level of authority. If there is
a Politburo directive to decide the question a certain way, this stops the state
machine and the commissars fall silent. If it is necessary to reconsider the issue,
and you try to reconsider, our commissars escape because there is a special direct
ive. Such a situation is impossible: an institution composed of sixteen people
with little or no responsibility, just representing their departments, cannot write
and decide laws! This created an astounding flow of vermicelli, departmental
decay and disintegration of the central organ of authority.’41 Again, his solution
was radical: ‘we must have a cabinet of commissars. Only if this cabinet was
formed, with its chairman responsible to the VTsIK…will the necessary cohe-
sion occur… If we do not accept this with full clarity and seriousness, and do
not implement it on our class basis, within our soviet system…we will have an
unsuitable, obsolete system of government unable to deal with the complex tasks
of class society.’42
Lenin responded sharply to Osinsky’s proposal to ‘transfer to a cabinet sys-

tem’, remarking: ‘This person is absolutely done for.’43 Lenin proposed that
Osinsky’s ‘huge strength’ be used more constructively: ‘if Comrade Osinsky…
does not heed the advice which he is frequently given in the CC then he will
inevitably collapse into a swamp, as was the case today’.44 For Lenin, Osinsky’s
solution was ideologically flawed and over-simple.45 Instead, the Eleventh Party
Congress adopted Lenin’s proposals on correcting party-state relations: ‘To
relieve the party of questions of a cleanly soviet character, which it had to take
on in the preceding period.’ The Politburo would now conduct ‘more general
leadership and direction of all policies of the Soviet state’ and the party ‘must
install a far more distinct demarcation between its current work and the work of
the soviet organs, between its apparatus and the soviet apparatus’. It must, from
now on, ‘concentrate on the fundamental party work of general leadership…
and organization of the working masses. In the aim of relieving the supreme
party organs of questions of a “cleanly soviet” character it is necessary to raise
and strengthen the activity of Sovnarkom as an organ of systematic leadership
and coordination of the work of all organs of state administration.’ The Congress
entrusted the Central Committee to work out in detail the practical conclu-
sions resulting from these decisions and present them to the next sitting of the
VTsIK.46 The minutes of the Central Committee, however, reveal no discussion
of these changes.47 The Communist Fraction at the Tenth Congress of Soviets
in December 1922 again called on the Central Committee to devise concrete
measures to mend central party-state relations, but the latter did not discuss the
matter and the prescribed reshaping was not implemented in practice.48 By the
Twelfth Party Congress a year later, the ‘inappropriate’ party-state system had
become even more firmly entrenched.
In terms of the specific mechanism of the transfer of authority from state
to party, it seems Osinsky had a point. First, the number of prestigious party
members and official People’s Commissars attending Sovnarkom sittings began
to decline in 1919. This change had been noted at the Eighth Party Congress,
and again, in his Eleventh Party Congress Speech, Lenin stated that ‘we must
raise the prestige of the Sovnarkom. The Commissars must mainly attend the
meetings of the Sovnarkom.’ A year later, at the Twelfth Party Congress in spring
1923, Osinsky again railed against the incorrect relations between party and
state, between the Sovnarkom and the Politburo, stating that a main cause of the
passing of Sovnarkom affairs for resolution by the Politburo, and Sovnarkom’s
eclipse, was the fact that there were no longer many high-status party mem-
bers participating in Sovnarkom.49 He wrote, in his letter to the delegates: ‘In
the Soviet Republic there are two supreme government organs (keeping to one
side the VTsIK Presidium). One of them is Sovnarkom. Members of the Central
Committee do not sit here: from the staff of the government, not including the
deputy chairmen, there are only two there from the Central Committee (really
working). Persons carrying themselves full and formal responsibility for their
departments do not often sit here. Instead, the “technical deputies” sit here, and
if the People’s Commissars do sit, they are not those of the category of first-class
political activists of the party.’50
From its creation, membership of Sovnarkom had been office-specific rather
than person-specific. The collegiality principle in the early Soviet government
meant that provisions were made to allow deputies and assistants to attend in the
place of the official People’s Commissar and there was no quota set of members
to be present for voting. Decisions were made on the majority vote of whoever
was present at that time with the right to a ‘deciding’ vote. During the first four
months of Soviet power, the average number of official People’s Commissars
attending Sovnarkom sittings was 11 of a possible 14.51 In May–June 1919 there
were an average of eight official commissars attending Sovnarkom sittings.52 This
average remained the same for the next two years.53 In April 1921, this figure was
still an average of seven official commissars per Sovnarkom sitting but from this
point the figure fell steadily and in 1922 declined to just three per sitting.54 Thus,
the Sovnarkom records do bear out Osinsky’s claim that from 1921 fewer pres-
tigious party members, and certainly fewer People’s Commissars were partici-
pating in sittings than in 1917–20. Some People’s Commissars had never been
regular attenders of Sovnarkom, preferring to send their assistants instead. Due
to his military obligations, for example, Trotsky was not a regular Sovnarkom
attendee from August 1918 onwards. Yet on the whole it seems that the decrease
in commissars attending Sovnarkom actually occurred after the Civil War had
begun to wind down. The decrease in official commissars attending Sovnarkom
sittings acted as both a cause and self-reinforcing effect of Sovnarkom’s decline
into a subordinate technical apparatus for the Politburo. It was felt that the fewer
important people present, the fewer important decisions could be made. Thus,
more questions were transferred to the Politburo for definitive solution.
Osinsky contested Lenin’s assertion that the practice of referring ‘every t rifle’
to the Politburo had only developed during his illness. On the contrary, as he
had mentioned at the Eleventh Party Congress, this practice had long been
endemic. He stated ‘Nothing of the kind! The same thing was going on when
Lenin was in the Politburo…The Politburo was occupied with vermicelli in a
colossal quantity.’55
Osinsky seems to have a point. From 1920, archive records reveal a growing
trend of appealing questions already decided by Sovnarkom for reconsideration
by the Politburo. There were 5 cases in 1920,56 rising to 17 in 1921,57 peaking at
26 in 1922.58 The protests or appeals covered all areas of government decision-
making. The first case of an explicit appeal against a Sovnarkom decision in
the Politburo found by the author is from 23 January 1920. Commissar for
Foodstuffs Alexander Tsiurupa sent a protest to this Politburo sitting against the
Sovnarkom decision of 3 January which granted permission to Vesenkha organs
to stockpile fodder.59 In another Politburo sitting a week later Krestinsky pro-
posed ‘to reconsider the Sovnarkom decision of 27 January’ (three days before)
on the resumption of the potato campaign.60 There were three further protests in
Politburo sittings this year, the last by Trotsky (later a critic of party interference
in state matters) against the Sovnarkom decision on the preservation of Lugansk
as the centre of Donets Guberniia.61
Examples from the 17 noted cases in 1921 include Fomin’s protest against
the Sovnarkom decision on the transfer of Petrograd port to the jurisdiction
of the People’s Commissariat for External Trade on 16 February,62 and the
appeal of Kamenev of 20 April against the Sovnarkom decision on transport
in Ivanovesnesenkh.63 Appeals of Sovnarkom decisions from 1922 include
that of the Politburo sitting of 15 March, which heard the ‘protest of a minor-
ity of Sovnarkom members (Tsiurupa, Krasin and Sokol’nikov) against the
Sovnarkom decision of 14 March on increasing the working funds of the People’s
Commissariat of External Trade’.64 Further examples from 1922 include discus-
sion of the STO decision on the transfer of Moscow’s two best publishing houses
to the State Publishing House,65 and discussion of Sovnarkom’s decision on
negotiations with Urquart,66 both brought to the Politburo agenda by Kamenev.
April 1922 saw the Politburo discuss cancellation of Sovnarkom’s decisions on
the transfer of agricultural education to the Commissariat of Agriculture,67 on
the procedure of the departure of foreigners abroad,68 and on sugar joint-stock
companies (aktsiz).69 In August, one Sovnarkom decision ‘reconsidered’ by the
Politburo was the rate of the tax in kind.70 Ironically, even Osinsky, the most
militant defender of the state’s autonomy, appealed a Sovnarkom decision to the
Politburo in July 1922. As Deputy Commissar for Agriculture he was dissatisfied
with the proposal accepted by Sovnarkom on 18 July on sowing plots. He wrote a
detailed letter to the Politburo the next day criticizing this decision and pointing
out that it ‘liquidated the plan set out by Lenin and Tsiurupa’.71
Another interesting case confirms Osinsky’s claim that Sovnarkom decisions
were not just appealed in Lenin’s absence.
In January 1922 Lenin himself instructed that a Sovnarkom decision he

disagreed with be appealed to the Politburo. He wrote to Molotov, Politburo
secretary, on 12 January: ‘Having learned from Kamenev that the Sovnarkom
has unanimously adopted Lunacharskii’s absolutely improper proposal to pre-
serve the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet, I suggest that the Politburo should resolve…
to instruct the VTsIK Presidium to rescind the Sovnarkom decision.’72 Lenin’s
proposal sprung from the country’s grave financial position and the need to
increase the proportion of money earmarked for ‘cultural’ work to schools.73
On the same day, 12 January 1922, the Politburo discussed this issue and
adopted a decision ‘to authorize the VTsIK Presidium to rescind the Sovnarkom
decision on preserving the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet’.74 Five days later, on 17
January 1922, the Politburo decided to authorize the VTsIK Presidium ‘to exam-
ine Comrade Lunacharskii’s application in substance’.75 To Lenin’s dismay, the
VTsIK Presidium decided against him. It adopted the decision ‘to bring to the
notice of the Politburo that the group of the VTsIK Presidium, having examined
Lunacharskii’s letter and heard the explanations given by the Director of the
Bolshoi Theatre, Malinovskaia, has found that it economically inexpedient to
close down the Bolshoi theatre’.76 In connection with this proposal the Politburo
instructed the Rabkrin ‘to submit an exact calculation of the maintenance of the
Bolshoi Theatre in its present state, and of the reduction of expenditures which
could be obtained on its closure’. The issue was finally decided in favour of keep-
ing the Bolshoi open on 13 March, when the Politburo, having heard the report
from Rabkrin decided ‘to satisfy the petition of the VTsIK of 6 February 1922’.77
This example demonstrates both Lenin’s attitude to appeals against Sovnarkom
decisions and the range of possible responses to these appeals. Lenin proposed
that the Politburo instruct the VTsIK to change the Sovnarkom decision. This
shows that Lenin did not think it legitimate for the Politburo itself to cancel a
Sovnarkom decision, but recognized that it held the authority to decide, and
then have it formally cancelled through the legitimate channel of the VTsIK.
Many of Lenin’s colleagues in the state organs were not so squeamish about
using the party Politburo as a higher court of appeal against state decisions they
did not agree with. Hence the ‘dragging of every little matter from Sovnarkom
to the Politburo’, which was indicated at the Eleventh Party Congress and is seen
in the various examples listed above, started under Lenin, but then spiralled out
of control in his absence.
As well as those questions transferred explicitly by the commissariats for
solution by the Politburo instead of Sovnarkom, there was also additional over-
lap in the agendas of the two supreme bodies. This was rare in the Politburo’s
first year, but by 1920 this practice appeared more frequently. Examples from
1920 include the discussion of Trotsky’s proposals on the Labour Armies and on
labour obligations these were first discussed in the Politburo on 3 January,78 then
in Sovnarkom on 13 January.79 The Politburo discussed the issues further on 17
January80 and the final conclusions were confirmed into law by Sovnarkom on
29 January and 5 February.81
In spring 1920 the question of the division of the Commissariats of Labour
and Social Security was first discussed by the Politburo on 2 March.82 Sovnarkom
then took up consideration of this question a week later, on 9 March.83 On 15
April the Politburo discussed it once again, and the following day, 16 April, it
was confirmed into law by Sovnarkom.84 Examples of Politburo and Sovnarkom
agenda overlap from 1921 include considerations of the questions of ‘tax-in-
kind’ and ‘bread-tax’, discussed by the Politburo on 29 and 30 March and 5
April,85 and then in Sovnarkom on 5 April.86 Also, the issue of consumer cooper-
atives was discussed by both the Politburo and Sovnarkom: first by the Politburo
on 30 March,87 then in both the Politburo88 and Sovnarkom sittings on 5 April,89
and the decree was finally confirmed in Sovnarkom on 7 April 1921.90 Also, from
mid-1921 the Politburo acquired the right to confirm all grants of large amounts
of money by the state bodies. Various cases appeared on the agendas where the
Politburo examined and confirmed Sovnarkom and STO decisions on granting
of funding to institutions, projects or organizations in this year.91 The year 1922
saw the continuation of ‘confirmations’ of funds granted by the state organs.92
Finally, party records show that it was only from mid-1921 that Sovnarkom
began sending information on its decisions to the party organs. For the period
January 1918–July 1919 Sovnarkom sent only 17 pages of paperwork on its
activity to the CC.93 For the year 1921 this rose to 1113 pages.94 This increased
observation of the party organs over the work of the state enabled the Politburo
to control government decision-making effectively.
The ‘theoretical’ victory of the Politburo:

The Twelfth Party Congress, April 1923
By the time of the Twelfth Party Congress in 1923 the Soviet government was
still facing internal and external volatility. Industrial prices were running at
three times the level of agricultural prices and Trotsky compared the growing
gap between agricultural and industrial prices to the blades of a pair of scissors.
Socially the policy also remained deeply divisive. Rumours circulated that NEP
really stood for ‘New Exploitation of the Proletariat’, many members of which
remained frustrated with the slow progress towards socialism and detested the
new breed of Kulaks, retailers and traders known as Nepmen. This partial revival
of capitalism in the NEP in 1921 created even deeper divisions in the party.
The Right-wing of the party, led by Bukharin, vigorously defended the grad-
ual, peasant-based socialism of the NEP. The Left Opposition, however, quickly
came to feel that more emphasis needed to be placed on a programme of massive
and rapid industrialization if the regime was to survive. They were represented
most powerfully by Trotsky and his ‘platform of 46’, who described the NEP as
‘the first sign of the degeneration of Bolshevism’.
Against this troublesome backdrop, as Lenin lay incapacitated by another
stroke, the ‘theoretical’ debate on party-state relations continued into spring
1923. Lenin continued to dictate his final articles criticizing the existing govern-
ment apparatus and suggested methods to constrain the activity of the Politburo.
Other government figures, including Trotsky and Osinsky still shared Lenin’s
concerns about the Politburo acting as government executive, although per-
haps with rather distinct motives. The final showdown between these ‘pro-state’
activists and the Politburo majority, who jealously guarded their new found
authority, was at the Twelfth Party Congress, in April 1923. Here Osinsky struck
a lonely figure, with few colleagues coming out to support his attack on party-
state relations. Trotsky expressed his opposition views on party-state relations
to his fellow Politburo members in private letters in preparation for the con-
gress, but ultimately toed the party line and did not come out in public against
the Politburo’s overbearing involvement in state affairs. With Lenin now too ill
to attend, Zinoviev delivered the Central Committee’s Political Report at the
congress, with Trotsky preparing the Central Committee’s ‘Thesis on Industry’,
in which he had expounded the necessity of long-term, systematic state eco-
nomic planning, in direct contrast to the opinions of the Politburo majority at
this time. In mid-March 1923 Trotsky presented his thesis to the Politburo and
Central Committee for confirmation. But his report attracted major criticisms
from Politburo members. One paragraph in particular, on ‘the question of the
inter-relationship between party and soviet organizations’ or ‘party institutions
and economic organs’, was strongly censured. Here Trotsky argued for more full
and systematic carrying out of the resolution of the Eleventh Congress on the
delineation of party and Soviet work in the centre and in the localities.95 The
Central Committee accepted Trotsky’s theses, but when it was brought for final
confirmation before the Politburo, Kamenev and others proposed major cor-
rections. Trotsky wrote a secret letter to the Politburo members protesting these
‘corrections’ to his theses which revealed his views on party-state relations in

the central government. Unusually diplomatic in this letter, Trotsky wrote the
following: ‘The question of the inter-relationship between party and soviet orga-
nizations is a fundamental question. Of course, I did not intend to solve this
question in passing in my thesis on the organization of industry. I took only a
small practical part of the question…the inter-relationship between party orga-
nizations and economic organs, especially in the centre, requires fundamental
correction. I did not raise this question in the theses in order to avoid sharp-
ening the issue, which is already very sharp… I hoped for a gradual rectifying
of the Central Committee line on this question under the blows of experience,
and without a fight at the Congress.’ But Trotsky explained that he could not
accept the Kamenev’s corrections to his thesis, approved by the majority of the
Politburo, on this subject. He then stated his views on party-state relations unam-
biguously: ‘Should the Politburo lead the work of Sovnarkom? No. Should the
Politburo lead the work of separate commissariats? No. The programme of the
work of separate commissariats, basic changes of their programme… achieve-
ments of the commissariats, their internal organization, funds for their activity,
selection of their workers: all this should remain wholly outside consideration
and solution by the Politburo, and in a huge part, outside its jurisdiction.’ He
complained that frequently, second-degree conflicts between departments came
through to the Politburo: ‘The Politburo then decides questions delivered up
to it by this or another department, around 17 trillion this month!’ He framed
his objections in technocratic, rather than constitutional, terms: ‘Such types of
decisions are always like a lottery, since the question is torn out of its connection
with all other questions and then decided in a ten minute discussion which does
not allow each to be a planned decision.’96
Like Lenin and Osinsky before him, Trotsky called for a radical change in
existing party-state relations. He proposed that the Politburo give up much of the
day-to-day decision-making on state affairs it had taken over in the preceding
two years, and which detracted from its role as a supreme political organ: ‘In my
opinion, leadership from the Central Committee must be conducted by meth-
ods which are, in significant measure, opposite than those in use today.’ Instead,
‘the Politburo’s real vocation is to check the correctness of the fundamental line
of the work of the departments, to establish a programme for them, and to check
the factual realization of this programme, not in detail, but in general and as a
whole…state questions of first degree importance, such as the creation of the
USSR, are, in practice, outside the field of vision of the Politburo or the Central
Committee. Up to now nobody knew where to send this work to.’ The Politburo
must also focus on ‘questions of intra-party life, principal and organizational

conflicts inside organizations’ which it had side-lined.97
Trotsky proposed to raise the question of the inter-relationship between party
and Soviets ‘in its full volume’ at the Congress and advocated a radical break
in the work of the Central Committee and its Politburo: ‘The Politburo must
refuse to consider the innumerable departmental and inter-departmental con-
flicts and financial appeals presented to it by soviet organs.’98 Unsurprisingly,
the Politburo majority (Kamenev, Stalin, Zinoviev) were not at all receptive to
Trotsky’s suggestions of a radical change in party-state relations, and in particu
lar in breaking the domination of the Politburo over Sovnarkom and STO. On
22 March 1923 they composed a circular to fellow members of the Politburo and
the Central Committee condemning ‘Trotsky’s mistaken plan…on the central
party institutions’ and requesting support to ‘liquidate’ the danger it caused to
the Congress.99 This circular described Trotsky’s proposals as ‘absolutely imper-
missible’ and certain to cause ‘crisis’.100 The authors were adamant remarking
thus: ‘We cannot be responsible for the proposal of such a resolution to the Party
Congress.’ They ridiculed Trotsky’s suggestion that ‘the Politburo must be occu-
pied only with “cleanly” Party questions’ and exaggerated his proposals, argu-
ing that what Trotsky proposed was that ‘the Politburo is insufficiently led by
Sovnarkom and the economic organs’. Finally, they added: ‘Not just once have
we heard such groundless, negative characterization of the work of the Politburo
from Trotsky.’101 Trotsky defending his position in a further letter on 27 March
1923, but his proposals were outvoted in the Politburo and Central Committee
on 30 March.102 He was forced, by party discipline, to deliver the version of his
theses approved by the Politburo at the Twelfth Party Congress. Trotsky obeyed
the instructions of the party and kept his views on the incorrect nature of party-
state relations to himself.
After the Congress, it seems that Trotsky did not air these views again in pub-
lic because they had proved unpopular among delegates when raised by other
party members. His ‘New Course’ published at the end of 1923, discussed the
necessity of uniting economic planning in Gosplan, and argued for more party
democracy instead of bureaucratization, but he did not explicitly tackle the issue
of party-state, or more precisely Politburo-Sovnarkom relations.103 One reason
Trotsky was deterred from mounting a campaign for a radical break in party-
state relations was the widespread hostility towards the platform of Osinsky. This
group was accused of suggesting that the party give up its fundamental role in
the Soviet regime. In his speech to the Ukrainian Communists on the eve of the
Twelfth Party Congress, Trotsky distanced himself from this group and strongly
refuted this proposal, while simultaneously proposing changes in the Politburo’s

overbearing role in government: ‘Our party is the ruling party, which, with the
confidence of the proletariat and, by and large, the mass of the peasantry, holds
in its hands the helm of state activity… To allow any changes whatever in this
field, to allow the idea of partial, whether open or camouflaged, curtailment of
the leading role of our party would mean to bring into question all the achieve-
ments of the revolution and its future.’ He condemned the platform in the party
which ‘diplomatically and evasively raised the question of liquidating party
leadership…it is connected with the former Democratic Centralist group but
all comrades who formerly belonged to it declared they nothing to do with it’.
He declared that ‘the Party itself has now to take up the question of approaching
the state machine in a new way… The Party must more and more persistently
demand and secure from the state, from all its organs, that they learn to work
within the framework of a plan and system, to construct a plan which looks to
the future, not staggering from one case to the next…It is in this sense that the
leading role of the Party must be raised to a higher level.’104
Osinsky was also preparing his own attack on party-state relations. On
26 March 1923 Osinsky distributed a letter to delegates at the Twelfth Party
Congress in response to censorship of his article on incorrect party-state rela-
tions titled ‘Revision of Leninism, or Liquidation of Illiteracy’. He claimed that
the publisher had censored his article and that it lost all meaning; he protested
that ‘not being a delegate at the Congress, and so not having the opportunity to
expound the argument “thrown-out” by the editors there, I am forced to bring it
to the attention of the members of the Congress in written form’.105 Here Osinsky
reprinted the end of the article the ‘beginning from the point where the question
is raised: Which necessary improvements has our party and soviet apparatus
not brought to life?’ In answer to this question Osinsky posited two answers.
First, ‘that internal party democracy must not just be a piece of paper which was
formally signed by the leading group, lacking in real content’. Second, was the
setting in good order of the central government apparatus. Osinsky stated that
‘Comrade Lenin revealed the “open secret”: that the Politburo decides for us
in the final instance concrete soviet affairs… Essentially, in the Soviet Republic
there are two supreme government organs (keeping to one side the VTsIK
Presidium). One of them is Sovnarkom. Members of the Central Committee do
not sit here: from the staff of the government, not including the deputy chair-
men, there are only two there from the Central Committee (really working).
Here, even, rarely sit persons with full and formal responsibility for their depart-
ments. Instead the “technical deputies” sit here, and if the People’s Commissars
do sit, they are not those of the category of first-class political activists of the
party. All work of Sovnarkom is reduced to the passing of this or another
decree… In Sovnarkom no events of an external or internal character demand-
ing government measures are considered, no programmes of action created, no
reports on the work of this or another department are made, no organizational
or administrative directives are given to anyone. In a word, Sovnarkom does not
govern, it only passes a continuous paper ribbon of decrees or estimates. All this,
starting from the selection of staff of Sovnarkom and the “multi-headed-ness”
(mnogogolovosti) of the actual chairmanship…explains how the actual supreme
government organ… appears as a Party organ, the Politburo…the Politburo nat-
urally converts Sovnarkom into a technical apparatus, in order not to create dual
power…In its turn, the Politburo, composed of seven people, has in its ranks
only two people continuously working in Sovnarkom, where they learn about
how the work of the central Soviet state apparatus goes in general. The others do
not have this technical experience…only in the Politburo do they consider con-
crete events of an external and internal character, requiring soviet measures, and
take decisions on them. It is clear that the Politburo has little time remaining for
“cleanly” party questions or even for large-scale political questions.’ Osinsky rec-
ognized that the Politburo’s dominance in the government system had emerged
as a result of the Civil War: ‘From where did such a position arise…It was cre-
ated in the epoch of the civil war, when there was a necessity for quick and
bold decisions. Then a sixteen-headed government could not exist. Full power
direction by three to five people was necessary. The form for it was at hand. The
Politburo, which could decide everything… Since this time the situation has
changed, but all forms and habits remained. With each year the “emergency”
(pozharnaia) structure became all the more unsuitable for systematic, planned
construction.’106
Osinsky also saw that one reason the incorrect system continued was that the
Politburo majority jealously guarded their newly acquired power: ‘The Politburo
leads by patriotism…Naturally, Comrade Kamenev urgently defends the insti-
tution…its members label our proposals as “liberal-bureaucratic methods”, “left
radicalism” and god knows what else. But, Kamenev, we do not pretend to such
leftism. Not blinded by the “patriotism of the Politburo”, we are, simply, in a
position to see clearly the situation in all its unattractive nudity. Like the boy
from Anderson’s tale, when we say that “the emperor goes naked”, we point out
the simple truth.’107 Despite not appearing as a delegate, Osinsky did in fact get
the chance to address the Twelfth Party Congress. Zinoviev opened the congress
with the Central Committee’s Political Report, announcing that he would ‘say a
few words on the theme of party and state’.108 He argued that this question could
not have been raised in the Civil War years when ‘the party was nine-tenths of
the Red Army and the state was organized for war, when all affairs were reduced
to victory over the Whites’.109 Now that the Civil War was over, he stated, it was
inevitable that the question would be raised by people who ‘proposed to recon-
sider the coordination’ of party and state. He argued, however, that the strong
support of workers, especially non-party workers, for ‘the dictatorship of the
party’ meant that ‘it is not necessary to weaken things, to rebuild and so on’. He
labelled those questioning the prevailing party-state relations as ‘smenovekhite’
and exaggerated their arguments, stating that they called for the end of the lead-
ing role of the party.110
Zinoviev argued that ‘at the present, new stage of the revolution the lead-
ing role of the party…must be strengthened’. He ridiculed the ‘bashful atti-
tude’ of those comrades for whom ‘the dictatorship of the party is done, but
not said: why must we be shy to say what is, it is impossible to conceal it…It is
impossible to allow any revisions in this area…the division of labour –yes, the
division of power –no!’111
He defended the party’s interference in economic questions which had previ-
ously been under the jurisdiction of the state bodies. He criticized Krasin’s plea,
made in an article before the congress, to ‘give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’ and
for the party not to meddle in state affairs. Zinoviev conceded that ‘undoubtedly
we must improve’ the work of the Politburo, but that improvement meant not
the Politburo giving up routine decision-making over state affairs, but ‘to spend
more time, to bring more of a plan, to sit more frequently, perhaps have one sit-
ting a week designated specially for general planning directive questions’.112 He
concluded, on the inter-relationship of the party with state organs, ‘We, the old-
Bolshevik Leninists, insist that the party must interfere in the area of nine-tenths
of all work, in the area of the economy. In literally all areas of the economy the
party must lead…The party will lead even more.’113
Osinsky’s speech followed, echoing the sentiments expressed in his letter, to
a hostile reception from the majority of congress delegates: ‘Allow me to pass
on to the serious theme of the inter-relationship of party and state…concerning
this question, Zinoviev put forward the formulation “do not divide power, but
divide labour”…I must say that this formulation is extremely unclear and does
not help in this question…on the delineation of who does what, what belongs
to the Politburo, what to Sovnarkom.’114 Osinsky again criticized the situation
where Sovnarkom was simply a ‘technical organ’ where ‘responsible officials are
afraid to sit, because they sit in the Politburo’. For him the ‘competition’ between
Sovnarkom and the Politburo was ‘startling unhealthy’ in light of policy, and
deviated from the healthy relationship that he had observed in his work in the
localities between Party Guberniia Committees and Soviet Guberniia Executive
Committees. He criticized the hypocritical situation where ‘they want all soviet
affairs to be in the jurisdiction of the Politburo, of a party organ. But at the same
time they refuse to govern from the Politburo because one cannot govern from
a party organ’.115
Despite his private views expressed to the Politburo before the congress,
Trotsky observed party discipline and did not join the calls against the Politburo
domination. He recognized the necessity for the state economic organs STO and
Gosplan to direct the economy, but did not explicitly criticize the Politburo’s
behaviour.116 A couple of other Bolsheviks came out in support of Osinsky’s criti-
cism of existing central party-state relations. Lutovinov stated, ‘I want to say a few
words on party participation, or interference as Zinoviev puts it, in our economic
organs…If the Politburo, where there are only two people actively taking part in
the economic life of the country, practically decides all questions of economic
life, from small to great, unless it was Soloman, cannot solve all these questions
correctly…it is necessary to leave this to the economists.117 Krasin also came out
against the Politburo line, defending himself from Zinoviev’s attack and stating
that he did not want to weaken the party dictatorship, but rather wanted to raise
political leadership to a higher level.118 Despite Krasin’s plea to the congress, ‘You
are no longer an underground party, but a government of a vast country’,119 the
delegates supported the Politburo line and the pro-state speakers had negligible
effect on the outcome of the congress. The Twelfth Congress resolutions paid
lip service to confirmation of the resolution of the Eleventh Party Congress ‘on
the need for a precise division of labour between soviet and party institutions’
but then diluted Lenin’s proposals on changing party-state relations, indicating
that the Politburo would not relinquish its grip on day-to-day decision-making
on state affairs. The resolution ‘On the Central Committee Report’ stated: ‘The
Twelfth Congress confirms the decision of the Eleventh Congresses that “party
organizations settle economic questions only in those cases where, and to the
extent that, such questions actually require a decision of principal by the party”.
But the congress warns against an excessively broad interpretation of these deci-
sions, as this could create political dangers for the party. At the present time the
Russian Communist Party is guiding, and must guide, all the political and cul-
tural work of the state organs, and is directing and must direct the activities of all
the economic organs of the republic. The party’s job is not only to distribute its
personnel correctly among the various branches of state, but also to define and
verify in all essentials the actual course of this work. In no way can the party now
limit its role merely to general propaganda and agitation.’120
Despite his silence at the Twelfth Party Congress in autumn 1923, Trotsky was
moving towards open confrontation with his Politburo colleagues over not only
economic planning but also the issue of party-state relations, perhaps because
of the bearing that the domination of the Politburo had over his first concern
rather than any deeply held democratic impulse.121 In December 1923, Trotsky
took the issue to the party as a whole. He contended that the apparatus was try-
ing to ensure that the ‘leadership by the party gives way to administration by its
executive organs’.122 But Trotsky, by this point, standing isolated, was in no pos
ition to force the changes to remedy this. Lenin had never denied that the party
was the ultimate authority and that all members had the right to appeal to it. He
also rejected plans (such as Osinsky’s) to reconstruct the party-state system for-
mally. Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders could not countenance the introduction
of constitutional limits on the Soviet system such as division of legislative and
executive powers between Sovnarkom and VTsIK, as Osinsky proposed, because
this was viewed as despised ‘bourgeois parliamentarianism’. Instead they worked
from the Paris Commune model where combining the executive and legislative
was key, as Lenin had indicated in State and Revolution. The result was that while
Lenin was able to recognize the incorrect situation in the party-state relations,
his freedom of movement to remedy the problem was limited by his Marxist
ideology. The solution he proposed, to focus on ‘de-bureaucratizing’ the appar
atus through the Rabkrin and greater proletarian composition of government
which were the focus of his final articles, and merely to instruct the Politburo
to regulate and limit its own control over state affairs, to give up the privileges
it had accrued in the Civil War years, was woefully inadequate. Unsurprisingly,
it did not.
7
The Politics of Illness: Lenin

and the Deputies, 1921–4
Lenin had been the guiding force in Sovnarkom since its inception. With rare
exceptions he chaired every sitting in its first three years. As his health failed,
however, from winter 1921 his participation declined. While in 1921 Lenin
presided over 42 of 50 Sovnarkom sittings, the following year he participated
in only 7 out of 83 of the meetings of this state cabinet.1 As his health failed,
Lenin brought in a series of deputies of Sovnarkom and STO to support the
work of these bodies in his prolonged absences: A.I. Rykov in May 1921, A.D.
Tsiurupa in December 1921 and L.B. Kamenev in September 1922. From late
1922 Lenin also made persistent attempts to convince Trotsky to take on the post
of Sovnarkom deputy, but to no avail.
Lenin’s illness and the deputies’ predicament undermined Sovnarkom’s
authority in the Soviet government in a number of ways. First, Lenin refused
to accept that his illness would prevent him working for long and so failed to
appoint a single, strong, consistent replacement during the periods of his illness
following December 1921. He could not envisage the government without him-
self present until the last weeks of his political life, and by then it was too late. He
jealously guarded his bailiwick of the Sovnarkom chairmanship and appointed
deputies to cover for and support him, rather than replace him. He sought to
breach the gap with a collegium of less prestigious, inconsistent and conflicting
deputies who also suffered poor health throughout the same period, which ham-
pered their own work. His fellow Bolshevik leaders also hesitated in addressing
the problem of appointing a full replacement –even temporarily –for Lenin.
Lenin’s armchair at the head of the long table in the Sovnarkom sittings hall
was left empty throughout his illness and even after his death, a symbol of how
Lenin’s status as head of government, and the fear not to encroach on it, ham-
pered the work of the deputies and any possible successor. As Trotsky wrote in
1923, the Politburo members feared that ‘the party will be ill at ease if one of us
should attempt to take Lenin’s place’.2
Moreover, the ill-health and personal weaknesses of those chosen to depu
tize further undermined Sovnarkom’s leadership of government business.
Furthermore, Lenin was determined to restructure the central state apparatus to
deal with the incorrect system of party-state relations and ‘bureaucratism’ which
had emerged, but his analysis of the cause of these problems and the solutions he
devised were fundamentally flawed. He overburdened his already heavily taxed
deputies with a series plans to reform central government in addition to their
day-to-day work actually running Sovnarkom and STO. Sovnarkom stagnated
and the resulting confusion and weakness paved the way for the Politburo to
ascend to the position of governing executive body. Again, the decline of the
Sovnarkom as government executive was not part of an intentional plan, but the
inadvertent side effect of the failure of those in Lenin’s government to appoint
firm leadership of Sovnarkom in his absence for both personal and political rea-
sons. If Lenin had assigned a sole, strong, politically prestigious successor to the
Sovnarkom chairmanship in late 1921or 1922, then Sovnarkom would have had
a fighting chance against the encroachments of the party organs. Rigby argued
that Sovnarkom was built firmly around the personality and superior abilities of
Lenin; in Lenin’s absence it would inevitably decline because no person could
fill his shoes.3 Yet the fact is that nobody was ever given a fair chance to do
so. Instead the politics of illness dragged on, with Lenin and the other party
leaders believing that he would return and so failing to appoint a real successor
as Sovnarkom chairman. With Lenin’s incapacity, other party leaders began to
position themselves for the succession. The government institutions became a
battleground for this fight, and Sovnarkom suffered collateral damage to its sta-
tus as a result. Leading players in the succession struggle had built their power
bases in institutions outside the state cabinet and pursued a strategy of pitting
their own bureaucratic constituencies against it. For certain leaders Sovnarkom
was not as familiar a turf as the party organs and so their allies forced stalemates
there by exploiting the practice, explored above, of the appeal of its decisions to
the Politburo and Central Committee.
Lenin’s first deputy (May–November 1921)
As early as December 1920 Lenin’s illness disturbed his taxing work as

Sovnarkom chairman and by Spring 1921 his headaches and insomnia were
The Politics of Illness 151
seriously debilitating.4 It seems likely that he had suffered a series of mild strokes.
Although no permanent disablement was expected, Lenin saw fit to appoint a
deputy to ease his workload so that state affairs did not suffer. In May 1921 Rykov
was appointed as Lenin’s first deputy in STO.5 Old Bolshevik Aleksei Ivanovich
Rykov was born into a peasant family in Saratov and worked in the revolution-
ary underground, taking an active part in the 1905 revolution. They had parted
ways over Lenin’s attempt to formalize the RSDLP split into separate parties in
1912, but the dispute was interrupted by Rykov’s exile to Siberia. Rykov returned
to Petrograd after the February Revolution, became a member of the Petrograd
and Moscow Soviets, was elected to the Bolshevik Party Central Committee in
August 1917 and was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in
Moscow during the October Revolution.
On 29 October 1917 Rykov was appointed People’s Commissar for Internal
Affairs; yet a week later he was among those moderate Bolsheviks who resigned
their Party Central Committee and state posts, demanding the formation of
a broader socialist coalition government. Rykov quickly returned to govern-
ment service, serving as the chairman of the Supreme Economic Council from
April 1918. Rykov was chosen for this role because he was an administrator
and ‘practical-generalist’, rather than an economic specialist.6 Rykov gave the
Supreme Economic Council firm direction for almost three years.7 He became
a member of the Revolutionary Military Council in July 1919, and served as the
Council of Labour and Defence special representative for foodstuffs for the Red
Army and Navy.8 He was re-elected to the Party Central Committee and entered
the Orgburo on 5 April 1920.
With the introduction of NEP, Lenin saw less need for stringent organiza-
tional centralization of the economy and was more interested in uniting eco-
nomic direction in STO.9 After the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921 and the
introduction of the NEP, the Supreme Economic Council declined in importance
and STO took over functions and role previously ascribed to it in general eco-
nomic direction of the country.10 Thus, Rykov was an obvious choice as Lenin’s
deputy in STO. For three years, as chairman of the Supreme Economic Council,
he had been engaged successfully in these economic and general organizational
tasks. On 24 May 1921 the Politburo discussed ‘the appointment of Rykov as
Deputy to the Chairman of STO’ and two days later the VTsIK Presidium con-
firmed his appointment, retaining his right of a deciding vote in Sovnarkom.11
This 40-year-old, stocky, ruddy-complexioned, brown-bearded Great Russian,
with a kindly, intelligent face and a well-known liking for vodka, brought his
down to earth practical ability and experience in economic matters to the job
of STO deputy.12 He had a reputation for possessing common sense, ‘russkaia

smekalka’, or Russian shrewdness. His remarks in formal debates or informal
conversations were meaty, to the point.13
Since the formal extension of its duties into the economic sphere as the
Labour and Defence Council in April 1920, Lenin had already begun to alter-
nate the chairing of full STO sittings with Rykov.14 Two weeks after his new
appointment, Rykov presided over an STO sitting as the official deputy chair-
man and led STO sittings on 11 occasions in June and July, while in same
period Lenin was able to chair nine sittings himself.15 But in early July 1921
Lenin’s condition worsened. On 8 July he wrote to the Party Secretariat, asking
to be granted leave for one month, with an allowance of visits lasting a couple
of hours up to three times a week to attend sittings of the Politburo, Sovnarkom
and STO. The Politburo confirmed his request on 9 July 1921 and Lenin left for
Gorky three days later.16
Thus, in addition to his duties as deputy chairman of STO, Rykov also cov-
ered for Lenin in Sovnarkom.17 The subtle difference in Rykov’s role in STO vis-
à-vis in Sovnarkom is demonstrated by the fact that Rykov signed those of STO
as ‘deputy chairman’ (zam), but the Sovnarkom minutes he signed simply ‘for’
the chairman (za).18
Correspondence between Rykov and Lenin in June–July 1921 demonstrates
Rykov’s involvement in the full range of state business. Lenin dispensed instruc-
tions to his deputy on policy and administration and praised or criticized Rykov’s
own decisions.19 Unfortunately by mid-summer Rykov’s own health began to
fail. He had an intestinal abscess which required surgery.20 As early as 7 July the
Politburo had discussed Rykov’s leave for treatment. By the end of July he was
out of action, after only two months in his new role.21 Until Lenin’s return to full
work on 13 September 1921, direction of Sovnarkom and STO’s work was left
to Krasin, Semashko and Krestinskii alternately.22 Rykov departed for treatment
in Riga in August 1921.23 His condition worsened and he was granted a further
leave of absence and sent to Germany for surgery in November 1921. He had two
operations and remained there until spring 1922.24 In Rykov’s absence, Varlam
Avanesov chaired STO sittings until Lenin’s return in September 1921. After his
return, Lenin shared the chairing of STO sittings with Avanesov until December,
but took on full direction of Sovnarkom himself. Yet, by late November he was
ailing again. With both chairman and deputy now incapacitated, Lenin’s solu-
tion was to appoint another deputy to direct the work of Sovnarkom and STO
in their absence.
Two deputies (November 1921–April 1922)
Lenin’s choice for second deputy was the 50-year-old Aleksandr Dmitrievich
Tsiurupa. With a splendid white beard and candid eyes, this son of a minor civil
servant had trained as an agronomist and worked as a statistician before his under-
ground revolutionary career led to multiple arrests.25 The selection of Tsuirupa as
second deputy chairman confirms that Lenin’s intention was to appoint another
supporting colleague, not a replacement for his own leading role. Tsuirupa was val-
ued in the Bolshevik Party as ‘a modest person, not an orator, not a writer, but a won-
derful organiser, a practical worker who knew the villages well’.26 A reliable, trusted
old Bolshevik with administrative experience as an official in the economic sphere,
since 1917 he had worked closely with Lenin in the government apparatus.27 He
arrived in Petrograd in November 1917 as a delegate to the All-Russian Foodstuff s
Congress and was soon appointed Deputy People’s Commissar for Foodstuffs and
from February 1918 full People’s Commissar.28 Tsiurupa built a strong apparatus
which was later described by Lenin as ‘one of our best People’s Commissariats’.29
He was one of the major figures in Sovnarkom, one of the institutions ‘big names’
and a constant presence in its meetings, debates and commissions.30 Tsiurupa even
chaired some sittings of Sovnarkom after Lenin was shot in August 1918.31 Despite
the strict rules on speaking in Sovnarkom debates, his opinion was often sought by
Lenin, even on matters in which he was not directly involved with Tsiurupa insist-
ing ‘But I did not ask for the floor!’ and Lenin responding ‘We ask you!’32
Despite his long career as a Bolshevik in the revolutionary underground,
Tsiurupa was not a Central Committee member until 1923, although he did
attend and participate in debates of the Central Committee and Politburo on
his areas of expertise.33 As a ‘blind fanatic’ of requisitioning, he participated in
the 1921 Politburo discussions on the introduction of food tax.34 He and Lenin
took the main parts in the debate and disagreed sharply. Tsiurupa called Lenin
a pedant and a doctrinaire on this issue, but this wrangle did not affect their
relationship negatively.35 In the weeks before the introduction of the NEP, Lenin
made frequent evening visits to Tsiurupa’s Kremlin apartment. Despite the noise
and bustle of Tsiurupa’s four children, he and Lenin ‘argued, discussed, agreed
and argued again’.36 Tsiurupa resisted the repeal of grain requisitioning, but
was gradually weaned away from war communism. Lenin joked to Tsiurupa’s
wife about his ‘unbreaking stubbornness’. After the official introduction of NEP,
Tsiurupa threw his weight behind the policy and reported on the introduc-
tion of the food tax at the Tenth Party Congress. As one of Lenin’s closest and
most capable comrades in the state apparatus, Tsiurupa was a natural choice as
the second STO deputy. But he was selected as an able administrator and state
organizer with expertise and experience in economic affairs, rather than as a first
rate political leader, demonstrating Lenin’s hesitance in appointing a full succes-
sor to take over his Sovnarkom duties.
Unfortunately Tsiurupa, like Lenin and Rykov, was also plagued by chronic
ill-health. He suffered from angina pectoris, poor blood supply to the heart caus-
ing severe chest pains and tightness, shortness of breath, light-headedness, faint-
ing, nausea and irregular heartbeat. In its stable form episodes occur on a regular
basis, mostly set off by physical exertion or mental and emotional stress. In its
worsened state it can become unstable and can result in heart attacks. Liberman
recalled that Tsiurupa ‘was nearly always ill’ and that when he attended meet-
ings he had to sit ‘in a semi-reclining position, his feet stretched out on a near-by
chair’.37 On one occasion Tsiurupa fainted in a Sovnarkom sitting. He sometimes
felt so ill that he had to go into the Sovnarkom telephone booth to lie down on
the sofa inside.38 Tsiurupa’s weak heart was the main reason Lenin insisted on a
lift being installed in the Kremlin.39
As early as 1919 doctors advised Tsiurupa to rest and ease his workload, but
like many Soviet leaders, he did not take care of his health. There were bouts of
illness in December 1920 and in summer 1921 the illness worsened and Tsiurupa
was forced to take three months leave for treatment.40 In autumn 1921 he was
sent to Germany for treatment.41 Meanwhile, between Rykov’s sick leave from
late July and Tsiurupa’s appointment in early December, Lenin had begun to
rely informally upon L.B. Kamenev to assist with running Sovnarkom and STO.
On 26 October 1921 Lenin wrote to Kamenev: ‘The question on tariffs stands
before us in Sovnarkom. Will you go on Tuesday? For sure? It would be better
to put you on to Sovnarkom formally.’42 Further correspondence reveals Lenin’s
reliance on Kamenev in this role, although he would not be officially appointed
as Lenin’s third deputy for over a year.43
As well as appointing the deputies to cover the chairman’s duties in Sovnarkom
and STO meetings, Lenin was also developing a plan for a new, permanent role
for them. He began to conceive of the STO deputies as supreme state ‘instructor-
inspectors’. In addition to their taking over chairmanship of the leading state
organs, their role would involve checking of execution of decisions of Sovnarkom
and STO and the surveillance of the performance and efficiency of the govern-
ment apparatus. Lenin set out the rights and duties of the deputies as a casting
vote in Sovnarkom and STO, the chairing of the meetings in the absence of the
chairman, all the rights of the chairman as far as participation in the collegia and
institutions, and the right to give instructions in regard to practical work to the
People’s Commissars on questions pertaining to the integration and direction of
economic activities. Their task was to integrate and improve the economic work
of the Soviet government as a whole: ‘To make a first-hand study of the specific
features and work of all the economic commissariats and gain an acquaintance
with all the members of their collegia and a number of the top local and regional
workers in this field. To personally attend important collegia meetings of the
respective commissariats…and check…the most vital functions.’44
Tsiurupa agreed to Lenin’s plan and the next day, 1 December 1921, the
Politburo approved Lenin’s proposal ‘On the Work of Tsiurupa’.45 Tsiurupa was
freed from his position as People’s Commissar for Foodstuffs and confirmed
him as second deputy chairman of STO. Two days later the Politburo granted
Lenin further leave due to illness. As a result they also decided to discuss the
issue of ‘Lenin’s Deputy in Sovnarkom’ as opposed to just STO as Lenin himself
had arranged.46 On 7 December 1921 the Politburo went beyond Lenin’s brief
and made Tsiurupa deputy chairman of Sovnarkom as well as STO.47
With Rykov still undergoing medical treatment in Germany, Lenin sent a let-
ter informing him of Tsiurupa’s appointment and an ‘outline of a plan for the
organization of his work and yours’. He added that ‘the first and second deputies,
as you will see from the plan, will have to break new ground’. Lenin explained
that ‘until your return and the experiment with Tsiurupa, this plan will not be
turned into a decision. We shall first try it out and check it in practice.’48 Lenin’s
illness meant that he too was forced to spend the winter of 1921–2 away from the
Kremlin and was instructed by the Politburo to involve himself only in ‘the most
important questions’. In the absence of both Lenin and Rykov in winter 1921–2,
Tsiurupa led the work of both STO and Sovnarkom, chairing all sittings of the
state bodies between 6 December and Rykov’s return to work on 4 April 1922.
Almost as soon as Lenin was forced to withdraw from work, attempts to reverse
Sovnarkom decisions taken under his chairmanship were made. Lenin expected
the deputies to fight his corner.49 As well as chairing sittings, Tsiurupa signed
all telegrams and letters on behalf of the government and was present at some
Politburo meetings, often with a consultative vote, to present proposals and to
participate in debates.50
Lenin’s optimism of a swift return to work as Sovnarkom chairman was dis-
appointed. On 21 January 1922 he informed Tsiurupa: ‘I cannot return to work
earlier than three, maybe four weeks. The present moment is very difficult, and
the Central Committee members cannot tear themselves from other affairs for
close participation in the work of Sovnarkom and STO…The doctor orders that
you must only work eight hours. I absolutely insist that you limit yourself in
the next four weeks, and furthermore take a full rest on Saturdays, Sundays and
Mondays…I am quite sure in the opposite case that you will not manage four
weeks and that, in the current political situation, would be a disaster. From four
o’clock, for two hours you must participate in sittings of Sovnarkom and STO
which are arranged twice a week. The remaining two hours are exclusively for
signing protocols and the necessary minimum conversation by telephone and in
person. If you conduct affairs in such a way, our apparatus will not weaken for
these four weeks.’51 The volume of work connected with chairing of Sovnarkom
and STO did not permit such short hours. In full health, Lenin’s work pattern
in this role had been a minimum 12-hour day, and very often he worked into
the early hours.52 Tsiurupa’s correspondence on state business from this period,
running into hundreds of pages, demonstrates the huge workload he took on.53
Tsiurupa did not submit to the prescribed regime and became indignant when
Sovnarkom Secretary Lidiia Fotieva and his wife ‘terrorised him…to remember
about lunch or the end of his working day’.54
In January and February 1922, in addition to the day-to-day running of sit-
tings, Lenin and Tsiurupa also worked together on a plan ‘to radically reform’
the state organs. They exchanged a series of letters on restructuring the work of
Sovnarkom, STO and MSNK.55 In Lenin’s analysis, ‘The most radical defect of
Sovnarkom and the STO is the absence of any checking-up on fulfilment. We
are being sucked down by the rotten bureaucratic swamp into writing papers,
jawing about decrees, drawing up decrees –and in this sea of paper “live” work is
being drowned. Clever saboteurs are deliberately luring us into this paper swamp.
Most of the People’s Commissars and other grandees are, quite unconsciously,
“sticking their heads into the noose”.’56 Lenin repeated his proposals on the role of
the deputies as supreme state-inspectors: ‘The centre of gravity of your activities
must be just this refashioning of our disgustingly bureaucratic way of work, the
struggle against bureaucracy and red tape, the checking-up on fulfilment.’57 Lenin
outlined the essential tasks of the deputies as relieving the Sovnarkom and STO
of unnecessary burdens and transferring all minor questions to the MSNK and
the administrative sittings of STO. He complained, ‘This has begun. But it will
come apart into two weeks, given our damned Oblomov ways, if it is not followed
up, chased up, flogged along with three knots. The Head of the Administration
Department must be taught…to watch very closely to see that petty questions
are not brought before the Sovnarkom and STO, and that all questions first go
through a triple filter (an inquiry to the appropriate People’s Commissariats; their
urgent reply; the same from the Codification Department)…work out written
regulations for the bringing forward and consideration of questions and check
not less than once a month, that the regulations are being observed and whether
they are achieving their object, i.e., reduction of paper work, red tape, more fore-
thought, more sense of responsibility on the part of the People’s Commissars,
replacement of half-baked decrees by careful, prolonged, businesslike checking-
up on fulfilment…establishment of personal responsibility.’58
Lenin and Tsiurupa continued to develop this plan on the role of the deputies
in reforming and simplifying the state apparatus throughout the rest of February
1922.59 Finally, on 27 February 1922 Lenin wrote up the ‘Draft Directive on the
work of the STO, Sovnarkom, and MSNK’. It announced: ‘The chief defect of
these institutions is that they are over burdened with trivial matters. As a result,
they are floundering in bureaucracy instead of fighting it.’60 Lenin ascribed
the causes of this ‘evil’ as the weakness of the Sovnarkom Administration
Department, the inability of the People’s Commissars to ‘climb out of the mire
of trivialities and bureaucratic details’, the desire of the People’s Commissars
and that of their departmental bureaucrats who ‘egg them on, to shift respon-
sibility on to the Sovnarkom.’ Without these changes Lenin feared ‘we shall not
climb out of the bureaucracy and red tape which are throttling us’.61 In concrete
terms: ‘The staff of the Administration Department of Sovnarkom must regard
as its main task the practical realisation of the following: to reduce the number
of matters coming before the MSNK, STO and Sovnarkom, and to ensure that
the People’s Commissars (jointly) should decide more themselves and answer
for it; to shift the centre of gravity to checking up on effective fulfilment. For the
same purpose, Lenin recommended that the Deputy Chairmen of Sovnarkom,
Comrades Rykov and Tsiurupa, must free themselves of trivial matters and com-
missions, fight against attempts to drag them into matters which should be set-
tled by the People’s Commissars; devote two or three hours a day, as a minimum,
to making the personal acquaintance of the responsible workers, not the gran-
dees, of the…People’s Commissariats, in order to check up and select people;
make use of the staff of the Administration Department of Sovnarkom and some
of the members of the MSNK, and also the Rabkrin, to check up on the work
actually done and what success it has had; in short, they should become practical
instructors in administrative work.’62 On 21 March 1922, with Rykov finally back
from sick leave, Lenin held his first meeting with both deputies to discuss the
current work of Sovnarkom and STO. On 24 March, Rykov lightened Tsiurupa’s
load, chairing his first STO sitting since returning from Germany and on 4 April
led a Sovnarkom sitting.63 His return meant that Lenin could now attempt to put
the programme of the work of his deputies in to practice.
The launch of the deputies programme, April–September 1922
At the Eleventh Party Congress, which opened on 27 March 1922, Lenin

reported on the incorrect relations between state and party that had developed
in the period of his illness and proposed his Deputies programme to remedy
this. On the subject of central soviet institutions and the party’s relation to
them, Lenin lamented that ‘the relations between party and state are not what
they ought to be. On this point we are quite unanimous.’64 He added it was ‘diffi-
cult to get out of this situation by formal means, for there is only one governing
party in our country; and a member of our party cannot be prohibited from
lodging complaints. That is why everything that comes up on the Sovnarkom
is dragged before the Politburo. I, too, am greatly to blame for this, for to a
large extent contact between the Sovnarkom and the Politburo was maintained
through me. When I was obliged to retire from work it was found that the two
wheels were not working in unison and Kamenev had to bear a treble load
to maintain contact…as it is unlikely that I shall return to work in the near
future, all hope devolves on the fact that there are two other deputies, Comrade
Tsiurupa…and Comrade Rykov…Comrade Rykov must be a member of the
Central Committee Bureau and of the Presidium of the VTsIK because there
must be a tie up between these two bodies, for without this tie up the main
wheels sometimes spin in the air.’65
He proposed that the deputies would revitalize Sovnarkom’s status vis-
à-vis the Politburo, through taking on the role of supreme state instructor-
inspectors: ‘The functions of the Sovnarkom must be changed in the direction
in which I have not succeeded in changing them during the past year, that is, it
must pay more attention to executive control. We shall have two deputies, Rykov
and Tsiurupa. When Rykov was in the Extraordinary Council of Workers’ and
Peasants’ Defence for the Supply of the Army and Navy he tightened things up
and the work went well. Tsiurupa organized one of the most efficient People’s
Commissariats. If together they make the maximum effort to improve the
People’s Commissariats in the sense of efficiency and responsibility we shall
make some, even if a little, progress here.’
The congress approved Lenin’s proposals on the deputies and party-state rela-
tions and Tsiurupa quickly got to work implementing the changes he and Lenin
had planned. He sent a proposal on these to the Central Committee plenum on
3 April. The Central Committee confirmed his proposal and instructed Rykov to
‘speed up the question in Sovnarkom and to bring it before the Politburo only if
there were appeals there’.66
Ten days after the congress closed, Lenin completed his final ‘Decision on
the Work of the Deputies’ and sent it to the Politburo on 11 April 1922. This
detailed document was made up of five sections: ‘The general and main func-
tions of the Deputy Chairman’, ‘Specific questions concerning the work of the
deputy chairmen, ‘The deputy chairmen’s methods of work and their staffs’,
‘Co-ordinating the work of the two deputy chairmen’, and ‘Distribution of func-
tions between the deputy chairmen’.67 Lenin outlined the main functions of the
Deputy Chairmen as exercising executive control over the fulfilment of decrees
and decisions, reducing the staffs of Soviet government offices and supervision
of reorganization of the state apparatus along rational lines to combat bureau-
cratic methods and red tape. To counteract the swing in authority towards the
party bodies, their duties included ensuring that no question concerning Soviet
affairs was discussed by other government or party bodies (Presidium of the
VTsIK, Politburo or the Orgburo) without their knowledge and participation.
The deputies were also tasked with relieving Sovnarkom and STO of minor mat-
ters, which should be settled by the administration departments. The deputy
chairmen also had to ensure that MSNK and STO did not assume more func-
tions than necessary and that the People’s Commissars be more self-reliant and
responsible for their duties.68
According to Lenin the deputies should prioritize the work of the economic
commissariats, and ‘devote nine-tenths of their efforts’ to these, and one-tenth
to the rest. Each deputy chairman should, having studied the latest German and
American literature on management and organization of labour, undertake to
organize one or two exemplary departments to enable him to arrive at a stand
ard size of staffs, verify the correctness of this standard, and establish the best
methods of conducting and supervising affairs, with a view to gradually intro-
ducing them into all Soviet offices.
Lenin even suggested a system of bonuses to Soviet employees, in proportion
to turn-over, to improve their work. Lenin saw these exemplary offices as essen-
tial ‘in view of the stubborn resistance of the Soviet bureaucrats who want to
cling to the old bureaucratic methods…they are needed as a means of tightening
up and testing the rest’.69 Lenin also referred to the law being drafted by Tsiurupa
which granted the deputies greater powers to impose penalties for bureaucratic
methods, red tape, inefficiency and neglect. The penalties for the worst offences
must be dismissal or legal prosecution.
Lenin instructed that the deputy chairmen free themselves as far as possible
from minor details and from unnecessary meetings with People’s Commissars
and members of collegia, and from attending commissions. The deputy
chairman should also make efforts to dissolve existing commission and pre-
vent the formation of new ones. He repeated his insistence on a minimal staff
for the deputy chairmen and use the MSNK and Rabkrin apparatus for their
work. Lenin also made provision for the crucial issue of how multiple deputies
should coordinate their work. They should send each other copies of all their
important instructions and written and oral reports. In important cases the
deputies should confer in order to reach a common understanding regarding
aims and activities, to avoid duplication and running at cross-purposes in the
course of their work. In the event of a disagreement arising between the deputy
chairmen, the issue should be settled by the chairman of Sovnarkom, or if he is
absent, by the Politburo. Thus, the deputies programme was intended to reverse
the incorrect party-state relationship that had developed, but in failing to pro-
vide for conflicts between the deputies to be resolved in-house in his absence,
Lenin only reinforced the reliance on the Politburo as the ultimate executive
institution.
Lenin instructed that during the next few months Tsiurupa should preside
over meetings of Sovnarkom and sign the decisions of Sovnarkom and its tele-
graphic orders, and also supervise the work of the commissions of the main and
‘Little’ Sovnarkoms. He should also closely supervise the work of the executive
secretary and the Secretariat of Sovnarkom and be responsible for coordinating
the activities of this staff with those of STO staff and see that there is contact and
‘harmony’ between them. The duties prescribed to Rykov were identical, but in
regards to the STO. The presence of the non-presiding chairman was obligatory
at Sovnarkom and plenary STO sittings. For the purpose of executive control,
the People’s Commissariats were divided as follows: to Tsiurupa: the People’s
Commissariats of Agriculture, Railways, Vesenkha, Posts and Telegraphs, Justice,
Internal Affairs, Nationalities, Education. To Rykov: the People’s Commissariats
of Finance, Foreign Trade, Labour, Public Maintenance, Food, Army and Navy,
Foreign Affairs, Public Health, and the Internal Trade Commission, Central
Council of Cooperative Societies, Central Statistical Board, Regional Economic
Conferences, Concessions Committee, Gosplan.70
Lenin submitted his plan for the restoration of Sovnarkom and STO through
the deputies programme to the Politburo and left the Kremlin to undergo an
operation to remove the bullet lodged in his neck since the assassination attempt
of August 1918.
The Politburo members had a mixed response to the deputies programme.
Rykov and Tomsky made critical remarks on elements of the programme,
but Trotsky’s criticisms were most substantial. He complained that the role of
the deputies was ‘everything and nothing’, and that the Rabkrin was ineffective
and should be scrapped and that Gosplan suffered from ‘academic methods’.71
As soon as he was well enough, in early May, Lenin sent his ‘Reply to Remarks
Concerning the Functions of the Deputy Chairman of Sovnarkom and STO’
to the Politburo where he defended the deputies programme against Trotsky’s
critique. The Rabkrin, Lenin argued, could not be dispensed with as Trotsky
suggested due to the ‘hidebound departmentalism that prevails among even
the best communists, the low standard of efficiency of the employees and the
internal intrigues of the departments’. Lenin conceded there were problems with
Rabkrin, but instead of abolishing it, ‘a lot of hard and systematic work has to be
put in to convert it into an apparatus for investigating and improving all govern-
ment work’ as there was no other means to do so.72 Lenin also defended his ideas
on Gosplan, refuting the complaint that it suffered from ‘academic methods’ but
instead had simply been ‘overloaded with vermicelli’ up to now.73
April 1922 saw the introduction of the deputies programme in practice.
Tsiurupa took over chairmanship of Sovnarkom sittings until the first week of
June.74 Yet, he fell ill again within a month, and Rykov stepped in to alternate
Sovnarkom chairmanship with Tsiurupa’s sittings until early July. At this point
Tsiurupa was forced to take leave. Rykov took over Sovnarkom chairmanship
until Lenin’s return to work in October 1922.75 Rykov, who had been made a
Politburo members at the Eleventh Party Congress, also chaired plenary STO
sittings until the end of the year.76 From April to July 1922, Tsiurupa also turned
his attention to implementing the improvements to the state apparatus outlined
in the deputies programme. He was appointed People’s Commissar of Rabkrin
on 25 April 1922 to allow him to follow through the checking of the function-
ing of the state apparatus.77 First, he addressed the sending of questions to
Sovnarkom and STO, and on reducing their overloaded agendas. He established
a commission devoted to this aim and instructed the Sovnarkom Secretariat to
remove all minor questions which overburdened the state agendas.78 Tsiurupa
then started supervising and checking the work of the MSNK. In June he sent a
note to the chairman of MSNK with a list indicating all the delays he had noted
in its work of preparing decrees in the month of May. He wrote: ‘I ask you to
make sure that such defects are removed by the root.’79 Tsiurupa also worked
to ensure that state officials fulfilled their responsibilities. For example on 24
June Tsiurupa reprimanded the People’s Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatolii
Lunacharsky, after his commissariat failed to send the necessary reporter to a
MSNK sitting for consideration of one of its questions. Tsiurupa wrote: ‘This
procedure is completely inadmissible. Allow me to turn your attention to these
circumstances and to ask you to require most strictly that those who are obliged
to take care of sending reporters do so.’80
Despite his continuing illness, Lenin still managed to involve himself and
interfere in matters coming before Sovnarkom and STO and to attempt to micro-
manage the work of the deputies. In a note to Rykov and Tsiurupa of 15 May
1922 on organization of the state apparatus, Lenin advised that he was against
the merging of People’s Commissariats which the deputies were considering.
Instead, Lenin stressed that he was in favour of simplification of the apparatus
and departments. He also insisted on the introduction of his scheme of bonuses
for simplification of the apparatus and for fast turnovers.81 Lenin also intervened
in day-to-day decision-making. For example, on 16 May, he was again micro-
managing Rykov’s activity, writing the following note: ‘Rykov! It is necessary by
telephone to carry out the decision of STO to send two steamships of the best
Donets coal and to press for its execution.’82
On 23 May 1922, Lenin was forced fully withdraw from politics and take
several months of complete rest at Gorky. Before his departure he instructed
that all current and urgent documents on government business be addressed
to his deputies. He had a severe attack of illness three days later. He was then
absent for four months, only returning to work in mid-October 1922, although
he demanded that Tsiurupa keep him up to date on the work of Sovnarkom with
daily reports. Lenin had not left the state organs in steady hands. First Tsiurupa,
and then Rykov, relapsed into ill-health in mid-1922. They were both completely
out of action by September.83
On 11 September 1922, in light of this erratic leadership of the government,
Lenin proposed to the Politburo the appointment of two more deputies (a dep-
uty chairman of Sovnarkom and a deputy chairman of STO), and selected two of
their own members, Trotsky and Kamenev, for the job.84 Stalin and Rykov were
‘in favour’, Kalinin ‘did not object’, and Kamenev and Tomskii ‘abstained’. Trotsky,
however, ‘categorically refused’.85 Three days later Kamenev was appointed as a
deputy.86 This official appointment, however, only formalized the work Kamenev
had been carrying out already in bearing ‘a treble load to maintain contact’
between party and state.87 Already in June 1922, he had tried to make ‘the two
wheels run together’ more smoothly. Working to coordinate their activities,
Kamenev proposed in the Politburo that the deputies of the Sovnarkom present
a weekly written report on its activity to the Politburo.88 Now Lenin intended
Kamenev to help lift the burden of work from the other two deputies even further.
Lenin returned to work in late-September 1922. He resumed most of his
former duties in Sovnarkom and STO after an absence of almost six months.
On 3, 10, 17, 24 and 31 October Lenin chaired sittings of Sovnarkom and on

19 and 26 October, was present at Politburo meetings. In November, Lenin
attended Politburo meetings on 2, 9, 16 and 23, and also chaired STO sittings
on 3 and 17. Throughout this eight-week period, before his final departure from
the Kremlin, Lenin worked closely with his two currently healthy deputies,
Tsiurupa and Kamenev, meeting with them on an almost daily basis.89 Kamenev
supported Lenin’s work, taking the predominant role in chairing sittings of both
STO and Sovnarkom, alternating with Lenin, until the end of 1922. In STO, in
the ten weeks from mid-October, Kamenev chaired 11 sittings, Lenin chaired 5,
Rykov 1, and Avanesov chaired the last sitting of 1922.90 In the same period, in
Sovnarkom, Kamenev chaired 13 sittings, Lenin led 5 sittings and Tsiurupa and
Rykov chaired 1 each.91
By 29 November 1922 Lenin’s work capacity was declining. On 30 November
packets of papers on state affairs addressed to Lenin were handed to Kamenev
to deal with. Lenin missed the Politburo sitting on this day, but asked for the
minutes to look over. Yet during this time, Lenin continued to obsess over ways
to improve the administrative methods of the government, putting together fur-
ther ‘Proposals for the Distribution of Functions between the Deputy Chairmen
of the Sovnarkom and the STO’.92 In this document Lenin proposed that one
deputy take the STO, and the other two alternate direction of Sovnarkom on a
monthly basis. They should divide the People’s Commissariats between them
according to (or similar) to the spring list of 1922. Each deputy chairman was
to undertake a check of staffs.93 On the morning of 6 December Lenin dictated
further notes on this subject to Kamenev and Tsiurupa.94 On 7 December Lenin
attended the start of a Politburo meeting, but went home early. He left for Gorky
that evening, leaving orders for the Politburo minutes to be sent to him. Rykov
arrived in Moscow on 9 December. Lenin dictated an additional letter concern-
ing the deputies, and copies were sent off to the newly arrived Rykov, as well as
to Tsiurupa and Kamenev, and also to Stalin.95
Repeating his spring 1922 directives, Lenin stressed the point he had been
driving at for over a year, that ‘the work of improving and correcting the whole
apparatus is far more important than the work of chairmanship and the chat-
ting with Deputy People’s Commissars and People’s Commissars, which has
up to now occupied all the deputies time’. Lenin insisted that ‘it is necessary to
arrange, and strictly carry out, a practice under which each deputy, for not less
than two hours per week, goes down to the bottom, makes a personal study of
all the various parts of the apparatus, top and bottom… This…should lead to a
reduction in staff and tighten-up discipline throughout the state machinery.’96
The deputies responded quickly to Lenin’s proposals. On 12 December 1922

they sent a reply detailing their projected distribution of Commissariats. On the
same day Lenin returned to Moscow and finally had a two-hour meeting with
all three deputies to discuss the programme. This was Lenin’s last day work-
ing in his Kremlin office. The problematic issue was left unresolved as Lenin,
despite disagreements with the proposals of his deputies, was forced to cancel
a meeting with them planned for the following day. Instead, he dictated a letter
to Kamenev, Rykov and Tsiurupa: ‘Owing to a recurrence of my illness I must
wind up all political work and take leave again. Therefore our disagreements
lose their practical significance.’ He disagreed, however, with the way the dep
uties had divided the commissariats between themselves, arguing that ‘this dis-
tribution should be more closely adjusted to the ability for purely administrative
work on the part of the various deputies…The functions of chairmanship and
supervision of the proper legal wording of both legislative acts and decisions
of the Financial Committee and so forth should be far more strictly separated
from the functions of checking and improving the administrative apparatus.
Comrade Kamenev is far more suitable for the former functions whereas the
purely administrative functions are more in Tsiurupa’s and Rykov’s line.’97
Despite his criticism, Lenin gave his temporary consent to the proposed dis-
tribution, ‘pending my return to work’.98 But Lenin’s condition deteriorated fur-
ther on 13 December. On the morning of 16 December, he dictated a final ‘letter
to the deputies’, before Lenin suffered another attack that evening.99 He suggested
that ‘it is necessary to hire six stenographers and to note down every meeting,
briefly in 3–4 lines,…to delineate…the most important issues in two or three
lines…in order that the work of all three deputies is conducted in harmony’.100
A week later he composed his ‘testament’ which discussed candidates for the
succession. Neither Tsiurupa nor Rykov were mentioned as potential leaders.
Only Kamenev was considered among the potential successors for leadership.
In Lenin’s last active months he devoted his energies to pushing through
reform of the state apparatus and Tsiurupa was his closest collaborator in this
task. After a month’s rest and some improvement in his health, Lenin worked on
drafting his article ‘How We Should Reorganise the Rabkrin’ in January 1923.
Lenin sought repeatedly to involve Tsiurupa in the work. Lenin highly valued
the input of his deputy, and Commissar of Rabkrin, responsible for implement-
ing the programme of checking of execution which Lenin had been pressing on
for two years. On 26 January Lenin asked for Tsiurupa, the People’s Commissar
for Rabkrin, and the Rabkrin collegium members to read his article, and if
they agreed to arrange a meeting to prepare a plan for the congress. Tsiurupa
approved the article in the part referring to the enlistment of Central Committee
members, but doubted whether it was possible for the Rabkrin to discharge all
its present functions with a reduced staff.
In early February Lenin dictated his final article, still on the issue of
improvement of the state apparatus, ‘Better Fewer, but Better’. He insisted that
the letter be sent to Tsiurupa to look over before it went to press. Again, on 7
February, Lenin asked his secretary whether the Rabkrin collegium intended
to make any decision based on his article, ‘to take a step of state importance’, or
was it putting things off until the congress. On 9 February Lenin confirmed he
would move the question of Rabkrin at the congress and requested Tsiurupa
or Kamenev to check statistics for him.101 On 10 February Lenin asked that
‘Better Fewer, but Better’ article be sent to Tsiurupa to be read urgently.102
Lenin’s condition then deteriorated. On 5–6 March he wrote two final letters,
one to Stalin and one to Trotsky. On 10 March 1923 Lenin suffered his sec-
ond major stroke, and from this date, until his death in January 1924, he was
permanently incapacitated, unable to speak or walk again. He died of a heart
attack ten months later.
Trotsky: The deputy who never was
On 11 September 1922 Lenin proposed the appointment of Trotsky, along-

side Kamenev, as his deputy in Sovnarkom.103 Trotsky refused. The question
of Trotsky’s position came up again a few months later. On 6 January 1923,
on Lenin’s initiative, Stalin again proposed to the Politburo that Trotsky be
appointed a deputy, but this time with a specific brief to preside over STO. On
15 January 1923 the Politburo received a lengthy and closely argued memoran-
dum from Trotsky: ‘A few weeks after I had returned to work (from leave due to
illness), Comrade Lenin asked me to be his deputy. I replied that if the Central
Committee appoints me, then of course I would submit to its instructions, but
that I would regard such a decision as profoundly irrational and in total con-
flict with all my views on organizational matters and the administration of the
economy’, adding that ‘the very existence of a collegia of deputies…was harm-
ful’104 and that ‘the policy of the Central Committee Secretariat, Orgburo and
Politburo was wrong on the (role of) the Soviets’.105 Stalin responded by suggest-
ing that Trotsky could combine the role of deputy with that of heading Gosplan.
Once again Trotsky, argued that this did not solve the basic problem that a col-
legium would ‘be responsible for everything and nothing’.106
Lenin made a final attempt to convince Trotsky to take on the role of

Sovnarkom deputy in Spring 1923. In the weeks before his second major
stroke, Lenin had a long conversation about Trotsky’s future role.107 According
to Trotsky’s account, they discussed the failings in the government apparatus
and Lenin expressed his dissatisfaction with the present set-up: ‘(Lenin) pro-
ceeded to state his plan with passionate conviction. He had a limited amount
of strength to give to the work of direction. He had three deputies. “You know
them. Kamenev is, of course, a clever politician, but what sort of administra-
tor is he? Tsiurupa is ill. Rykov is perhaps an administrator but he will have to
go back to the Supreme Economic Council. You must become a deputy…we
must have a radical realignment of personnel”.’ Trotsky was hesitant because the
(party) ‘apparatus’ already made his work in the War Department increasingly
difficult. Lenin replied ‘Well, that will be your chance to shake up the apparatus’,
hinting at an expression Trotsky had previously used. Trotsky replied that he
‘referred to the bureaucrats not only in state institutions, but in the party as well;
that the cause of all the trouble lay in the combination of the two apparatuses.’
According to Trotsky, Lenin listened intently, and confirmed his suggestions
and put the question point blank: ‘ “You propose to open fire not only against
the state bureaucracy, but against the Organizational Buro of the Party CC as
well?” I couldn’t help laughing this came so unexpectedly, “That seems to be
it”… “Oh well” Lenin went on, obviously pleased that we had called the thing by
the right name, “if that’s the case, then I offer you a bloc against bureaucracy in
general and against the Organizational Buro in particular”. “With a good man,
it is always an honour to form a good bloc”, I replied. We agreed to meet again
sometime later. Lenin suggested that I think over the organization end of the
question. He planned to create a commission attached to the CC for fighting
bureaucracy. We were both to be members. This commission was essentially to
be the lever for breaking up the Stalin faction as the backbone of the bureau-
cracy, and for creating such conditions in the party as would allow me to become
Lenin’s deputy, and as he intended, his successor to the post of Chairman of the
Soviet of People’s Commissars.’108
The problematic nature of Trotsky’s memoir means that historians have
doubted his view of the meaning of Lenin’s offer of the deputy post.109 Yet, con-
sidering Lenin’s struggle to rebalance party-state relations from 1921 onwards,
Deutscher’s interpretation that Lenin ‘may have designed this distribution of
offices between Stalin and Trotsky as a means towards that separation of party
and state on the need for which he had insisted’ seems plausible. As Deutscher
explained: ‘For the separation to be effective it was necessary…that the work of
the government machine should be directed by a man as strong-minded as the

one who would manage the party machine.’110
Some scholars have put the refusal to accept the post down to Trotsky’s arro-
gance; ‘his pride may have been hurt by an arrangement which would have
placed him formally on the same footing as the other vice-premiers who were
Lenin’s inferior assistants’.111 Apparently ‘the demeaning nature of the proposal’
to be one of four deputies, and because the role of Sovnarkom or STO deputy
was ‘so insignificant’, ‘acceptance would have humiliated him’.112 According to
Volkogonov, Trotsky refused to take on the post because he wished to spend the
time ‘pursuing a more congenial occupation, writing’.113 For Danilov, Trotsky
refused as he felt his Jewish ethnicity ruled him out of high office.114
Trotsky had consistently stated that he would not take on the role because the
role of deputy was ill-conceived. It was impossible to fulfil, because of the colle-
gial, multi-deputy system set up by Lenin, alongside individuals with whom he
had serious differences, and who had serious differences with each other on the
direction of policy. Trotsky’s relationship with Rykov was ‘profoundly antagon
istic’, a consequence both of interdepartmental conflict and the clash of sharply
contrary personalities.115 Joint work would have been impracticable.
Trotsky also stated that he refused the position because of the intrusion of
party organs into the jurisdiction of the state bodies. He argued that under the
current system, party interference would severely restrict his freedom of action
as Sovnarkom deputy. Trotsky had been railing against party interference in
state affairs since at least February 1922. He finally accepted Lenin’s offer of the
post of Sovnarkom deputy only after Lenin had agreed to build a bloc with him
to fight the domination of the party bureaucracy over state bodies. Lenin’s wors-
ening health meant that this was never enacted. Instead, the body that Lenin and
Trotsky had envisaged as their tool to limit the power of the Party Secretariat,
the Central Control Commission, was taken over by the very people it was sup-
posed to limit.
Trotsky’s refusal to take on the role of Sovnarkom deputy chairman, how-
ever, displays a ‘tactical rigidity’ in Trotsky’s thinking and behaviour.116 Trotsky
could have attempted to take on party interference and improve the state appar
atus from inside. Instead, he chose to criticize from the sidelines. His own con-
structive efforts to improve the state apparatus came in the form of arguing for
increasing the authority of Gosplan and proposing changes to the party organs
detailed in his booklet ‘The New Course’ prepared in late 1923.117 But Trotsky
had no foothold in the government, no platform from which to launch these
measures and Sovnarkom was thus left without a politically prestigious, strong
leader and never regained the primacy it had possessed in its first years under
Lenin’s full chairmanship.
The reluctance of both Lenin himself along with the Bolshevik leaders to find
a proper replacement for him during his illness made the build-up of power
in an alternative location likely. Lenin, on the advice of his doctors, felt that he
would be able to return to work in the near future. As a result, he only envisaged
people ‘deputizing’ for him, rather than replacing him. While all eyes were on
who would replace Lenin as Sovnarkom chairman, the Troika worked to concen-
trate power in the party’s supreme organs, where Lenin had never held an official
post, without appearing to insult Lenin’s memory or grab power for themselves.
If Lenin had stepped aside for the duration of his illness and appointed in his
place one strong, politically prestigious, able, chairman to lead Sovnarkom as it
had been under Lenin from 1917 to 1920, then it may have been able to reclaim
its role as executive organ of the Soviet government. Instead those in the leading
party organs benefitted from the ‘politics of illness’. Sovnarkom had stagnated
under two years of inconsistent, politically un-prestigious leadership, and the
Politburo had become the real locus of power.
Conclusion
In the year and a half after the October Revolution, Sovnarkom was the prin-
cipal executive body of the early Soviet government, until the supreme party
organ, the Politburo, gradually usurped this role during the Civil War. At this
early stage the Party Central Committee, yet to be expanded into its Politburo-
Orgburo form, played a minor role in ‘government’. By mid-1919, however, once
the Civil War was underway, Sovnarkom began to relinquish direction of some
urgent affairs to the Politburo. Sovnarkom continued to direct business that did
not demand immediate solution: general governmental administration, legal
and domestic issues, and wider economic questions. It was not until mid-1921
that the Politburo, rather than surrender its gains after the Civil War, began to
extend its reach to the full range of ordinary, ‘non-urgent’, government business.
This shift was not a conscious process. When leading state activists, including
Lenin by 1921, observed the change, they protested and proposed measures to
reverse it.
In explaining the decline of the Sovnarkom vis-à-vis the Politburo, Rigby
pointed to immediate features of the state body. He argued that ‘the ever-
increasing flow of government business to the Politburo…was clearly aided by
the defects of Sovnarkom itself as a decision-making body….the relatively minor
matters cluttering its agendas and the numerous second flight officials attending
its meetings seriously limited its capacity to deal with larger issues’.1 He also
blamed Lenin’s failure to appoint a successor to the Sovnarkom chairmanship as
his health worsened from 1921: ‘His failure to make satisfactory arrangements
for its leadership when he fell ill…unable to perform the prime ministerial role
himself, he would not give any of his colleagues a chance to perform it…it was
his failure to entrust the resources of the Sovnarkom chairmanship to another
that disastrously accelerated their dissipation.’2
While archival sources do bear out some elements of Rigby’s explanation,
these are contributing factors to a process already underway. Sovnarkom’s
decline was in motion well before the onset of Lenin’s illness and the ‘minor
matters’ and ‘second rate officials’ were as much a symptom than a cause of
its already undermined position. The final element of Rigby’s explanation of

Sovnarkom’s decline is the expansion of the party apparatus, both in the centre,
with the growing Party Secretariat from March 1919, and its improving net-
works of party committees in the localities.3 But, again, this expansion of the
party machinery says more about ‘how’ the Politburo was able to take power,
not ‘why’? An expanded party apparatus would not automatically mean that the
party machine would cross over from handling ‘party’ business, to become the
actual supreme organ of government. It seems that the final piece of the jigsaw,
the ‘Soviet’ element, needs to complement existing explanations.
A fundamental problem underlying the decline of Sovnarkom is the ques-
tion of why high-status members stopped attending Sovnarkom sittings from
1919 onwards. The condition and ethos of the Soviets from bottom to top must
play a key part in this absence. Fighting the Civil War took some key party
members away from the centre, but is not the whole explanation, as some key
figures remained in Moscow yet still did not attend Sovnarkom sittings. Two
latent aspects of the Soviet political system provided the potential for high-status
members to gradually withdraw from Sovnarkom sittings.
First, the system of collegiality that Bolsheviks leaders attempted to instil
in their Soviet government institutions in the first year or so after the October
Revolution, part of their effort to ‘democratize’ and ‘revolutionize’ the appar
atus, militated against the development of the Sovnarkom as a true cabinet made
up of strong individual ministers. Instead, commissars could send deputies and
members of the commissariat collegia in their place.4 Collegiality had the desired
effect of preventing the rise of ‘dictatorial ministers’, but in the long term made
the Sovnarkom a meeting place for what Osinsky later described as ‘department
people’, not interested in nor able to consider wider policy issues outside their
own narrow interests.
Second, and most crucially, the People’s Commissars were disempowered in
their role as government executives as the basis of their legitimacy, the Soviet
hierarchy, crumbled beneath their feet during the Civil War. Without this man-
date they were simply people appointed by the party and thus their authority
flowed from this alternative source of legitimacy. The VTsIK and Congress of
Soviets occupied a significant position in the political system, however imper-
fect, during the first year or so after the October Revolution. But the Civil War
kicked away this supporting pillar of the Soviet government system and the
Sovnarkom, its apex, was left floating, detached from its former raison d’être.
Thus, it is necessary to understand the decline of the Sovnarkom not just in
immediate competition with the supreme party organ, but also in relation to the
Conclusion 171
rest of the Soviet hierarchy –from the local and regional Soviet apparatus, to the
VTsIK and the Congress of Soviets.
Finally, Rigby’s explanation of Sovnarkom’s decline also highlighted that the
emergency conditions of the Civil War necessitated a more urgent, authoritative
style of decision-making which did not suit the formalized, bureaucratic culture
which Lenin had institutionalized in the state apparatus. Sovnarkom was not
a body fit to deal with critical contingencies demanding immediate decision-
making and implementation. Sovnarkom’s relatively large membership was good
territory for lengthy debate, but the collegial style of decision-making was not
befitting to wartime emergencies. Parliamentary democracies usually develop
smaller ‘war cabinets’ to operate in their stead in emergency conditions, and in
the Russian Civil War, this is where the Politburo came in. The heavy require-
ments for lengthy interdepartmental consultation and voluminous reports prior
to consideration by the Sovnarkom gave the more flexible Politburo, from March
1919, a head start in rapid and authoritative decision-making. But Sovnarkom’s
operational sluggishness could have been overcome and it could have developed
into a war cabinet proper that could compete with the Politburo. It could have
become a smaller, more flexible authoritative executive if its members possessed
a genuine sense of their mandate emanating from the Soviets, not just the party.
Ultimately, the Sovnarkom as government executive made sense only in the con-
text of some semblance of ‘Soviet’ power and legitimacy, which by 1922 had
almost completely disappeared.
The major problem undermining the authority of Lenin’s Sovnarkom was its
decline into ‘departmentalism’ (vedomstvennost’). By 1921 it had become a col-
lection of less politically prestigious individuals interested mainly in pushing
the interest of their own narrow department, rather than a cabinet of leaders
who created joined-up government policy on issues across the board. Why was
this the case? The commissars lacked the sense of legitimacy afforded as repre-
sentatives of the people via the Soviets. Instead, more and more, their positions
and the legitimacy of the government came to rest on the role of the vanguard
party, and thus it was the supreme party apparatus to which the government was
responsible.
Why did this shift in basis of legitimacy of the government occur? Part of the
answer lies in the flaws and internal contradictions built into the Sovnarkom
and Central Executive Committee political system. Drawing from their Marxist
heritage, Bolsheviks felt that moving away from the capitalist economy was as
important in guaranteeing democracy than constructing particular state insti-
tutions, which would only ‘wither away’ eventually anyway. Thus, not enough
attention was paid to the particular forms and relationships of Soviet govern-
ment bodies to enable them to function healthily and independently without
leadership by a charismatic ruler or vanguard party.
The institutions brought forward across the revolution –the Soviets, the
imperial bureaucracy and the party complicated this task even further and
meant that the Bolshevik state builders confusedly welded two different forms of
cabinet government together –one obstructing the other. The Bolsheviks inher-
ited the Soviets, which had come to be seen as organs of revolutionary power,
the hierarchy of which stretched from the local level to the central coordinat-
ing body in the Central Executive Committee of Soviets –essentially a multi-
party representative body –sometimes described as a workers’ parliament. In a
sense the Sovnarkom system established at the Second Congress of Soviets and
enshrined in the 1918 Soviet Constitution replicated, despite the leaders’ reser-
vations about the separation of legislative and executive power as a feature of
bourgeois parliamentary democracy, a British style cabinet government where
a small executive body is, in theory at least, composed by and responsible to a
larger legislative chamber which can cancel its decisions and recall its members.
In this sense the source of legitimacy for the cabinet decisions lie in the repre-
sentative body and the masses who elected it, from below. In this system the
prime minister or chairman and ministers or commissars decide both the broad
outlines of policy (although this can be negotiated outside the structures of gov-
ernment first in their own party) and the issues under their own portfolio. This
system could sustain multiparty Soviets and government as was the case up to
June 1918, and to a limited degree for some time after.
But the Bolsheviks inherited a governmental structure from the tsarist regime
which followed the path of cabinet government owing its legitimacy to powers
from above: tsar and then Communist Party. Perhaps more similar to a presi-
dential system, the council of ministers were not drawn from the representative
assembly but appointed from above. Cabinet work required the sanction and
guidance from the higher power to deliver joined-up government and direction
of policy. As the Soviet regime moved towards exclusion of other parties from
politics, Soviets atrophied during the Civil War, and the notion of legitimacy
of the dictatorship of the proletariat flowing not from the Soviets, but from the
vanguard party, the earlier cabinet-style system began to falter and could not
deter intrusion by the rapidly expanding organs of the party after 1919. It was
these complexities which undermined the work of Sovnarkom as the apex of
the Soviet state structure, but which Lenin could not see nor accept as necessary
for changes or formal delineation, despite recognizing the ‘incorrectness of the
Conclusion 173
party-state situation’ as he grasped at the straws in his final writings trying to

turn back the process of Politburo domination of state affairs.
Perhaps the Sovnarkom’s operational sluggishness could have been over-
come and the body have developed into a war cabinet proper, a smaller, more
flexible authoritative executive to compete with the Politburo if its members
possessed a genuine sense of their independent mandate emanating from the
Soviets, not just the party. For the balance of party and state in the early Soviet
government to work it was necessary for high-status party leaders to partici-
pate in the Sovnarkom. The leaders of the political party in power must lead the
work of the government executive. Lenin recognized this problem and tried to
increase the authority of the state organ in response. He was, however, loathe
to either genuinely reinvigorate the Soviets or formally limit the power of the
Politburo, naively expecting it to limit itself. Osinsky’s metaphor on the patri-
otism of the Politburo summed up the competitive situation that had arisen
between the supreme state and party organs by 1922. This rivalry was made
possible by the dual bases of legitimacy for the early Soviet government: from
the pyramid of ostensibly elected local and regional Soviets culminating in the
Congress of Soviets, VTsIK and the Sovnarkom on the one hand, and from the
vanguard Communist Party with its historic mission, on the other. While the
former had been in decline since mid-1918, the latter had been strengthened
by the experience of the Civil War. Patriotism –attachment to one’s own place
and concern for its defence –had developed among those Politburo members
who had gained expanded authority due to the body’s ascent as a governing
apparatus. They were loathe to undermine their ‘homeland’ and relinquish this
authority in order to return to the original system of government authority
lying in the Sovnarkom. Although Lenin, Osinsky and others recognized that
the transfer of executive power from state to party distorted the original model
of Soviet power where the state’s legitimacy was acquired via organs composed
of elected representatives of the proletariat, Osinsky was the only Bolshevik to
propose the formal delineation of party and state. Lenin, although sharing the
view that the Civil War set up was ‘incorrect’, maintained a disgust for bourgeois
parliamentary democracy and its separation of powers. He found it impossible
to conceive of formally limiting the power of the vanguard party. The Twelfth
Party Congress in March 1923 signalled the final defeat of the remaining pro-
state activists who argued for the limiting of the Politburo’s jurisdiction and
reinvigoration of the Sovnarkom. They were fighting a losing battle as restoring
the state apparatus would have required not just the artificial resuscitation of
the Sovnarkom alone.
Lenin insisted that the socialist democracy he attempted to implement in the

early Soviet government was more democratic than liberal parliamentary sys-
tems because it included not only liberation from economic exploitation but also
the conversion of representative institutions from ‘talking shops’ into ‘working
bodies’. Yet Soviet experience highlights certain theoretical and historical ten-
dencies that reduce the effectiveness of commune democracy as a democratic
method. The rejection of liberal democratic principles of individual rights was
accompanied by the abolition of its procedures. Ultimately, it is not surprising
that the synthesis of executive and legislative functions in one body gives great
scope for the accumulation of executive power at the expense of legislative power.
Fledging ‘Soviet’ rather than simply ‘Bolshevik’ power was trialled in the first
year after the October Revolution, but its naive methods of ‘anti-bureaucratic’
Soviet democracy failed under pressures of Civil War and social-economic dis-
location. The legacy of the political culture of the tsarist past combined with the
Bolshevik leaders’ ideologically driven innovations in governance to hamper the
practical functioning of their state cabinet and opened the door to the unfore-
seen growth of a party-state monolith which would dominate the Soviet political
system until its collapse.
Notes
Introduction
1 S.A. Smith, The Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 167.
2 V.I. Lenin (trans. Robert Service) State and Revolution, (London: Penguin,
2009) p. 79.
3 Daniel T. Orlovsky, ‘The Lower Middle Strata in Revolutionary Russia’, in Edith
Clowes (ed.), Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public
Identity in Late Imperial Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991),
pp. 248–68; Daniel T. Orlovsky, ‘The Hidden Class: White-Collar Workers in the
Soviet 1920s’, in Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Ronald Grigor Suny (eds), Making Workers
Soviet: Power, Class and Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Daniel
T. Orlovsky, ‘State Building in the Civil War Era: The Role of the Lower Middle
Strata’, in Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds),
Party, State and Society in the Russian Civil War (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1989), pp. 180–209; E.A. Rees, The Rise and Fall of the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspectorate, 1920–34 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1987).
4 Quoted in Max Shachtman, The Struggle for the New Course, published in one
volume with his translation of Leon Trotsky’s The New Course (New York: New
International Publishing Company, 1943), p. 54.
5 Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Politics as Practice: Thoughts on a New Soviet Political History’,
Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter 2004), p. 27.
6 M.P. Iroshnikov, Sozdanie sovetskogo tsentral’nogo gosudarstvennogo apparata: Sovet
narodnykh komissarov i narodnye komissariaty oktiabr’ 1917 g.–ianvar’ 1918 g.
(Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1966); E.B. Genkina, Gosudarstvennaia deiatel’nost’
V.I. Lenina 1921–23 (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), E.B. Genkina, Lenin-predsedatel’
sovnarkoma i STO; iz istorii gosudarstvennoi deiatel’nosti V.I. Lenina v 1921–22 gg.
(Moscow: Nauka, 1960); E.B. Genkina, Perekhod sovetskogo gosudarstva k novoi
economicheskoi politike 1921–22 (Moscow: Gospolizdat, 1954); E.N. Gorodetskii,
Rozhdenie sovetskogo gosudarstva 1917–18 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1965); E.I.
Korenevskaia, Stanovlenie vysshikh organov Sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo upravleniia
(Moscow: Nauka, 1975); E.I. Korenevskaia, ‘Organizatsionno-pravovye formy
deiatel’nosti SNK RSFSR (1917–22gg.)’, Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 7 (1968),
pp. 94–6.
176 Notes
7 Stephen Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience. Politics and History since 1917
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 5–6.
8 Leonard Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy (London: Macmillan,
1955); Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2nd edition
(New York: Vintage Books, 1960); Robert Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 11–12, 111; Adam Ulam,
Lenin and the Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of
Communism in Russia (London: Fontana, 1965); Richard Pipes, The Formation
of the Soviet Union, Communism and Nationalism, 1917–23 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1954); Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution
(London: Collins Harvill, 1990); Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime
(London: Fontana, 1994); Richard Pipes, The Three Whys of the Russian Revolution
(Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1995); Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled, Revised
edition (London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).
9 Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, pp. 39, 243.
10 Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956).
11 Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy; T.H. von Laue, Why Lenin? Why
Stalin? A Reappraisal of the Rusian Revolution, 1900–1930 (Michigan: Lippincott,
1964); Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime; Martin Malia, The Soviet
Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York: The Free
Press, 1994).
12 Robert Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary 1879–1929: A Study in History and
Personality (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1973); Stephen Cohen, Bukharin and
the Bolshevik Revolution (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1973).
13 Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants & Soviet Power (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1968; Sheila Fitzpatrick ‘The Civil War as a Formative Experience’ in Abbott
Gleason, Peter Kenez and Richard Stites (eds), Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and
Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
14 A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd
(New York: Norton, 1976); Smith, The Russian Revolution.
15 A. Rabinowitch, The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991) and The Bolsheviks Come to Power.
16 Oscar Anweiler, The Soviets. The Russian Workers, Peasants and Solders Councils,
1905–21 (Pantheon, New York, 1974), p. 218.
17 Ibid., p. 193.
18 T.H. Rigby, Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom 1917–22 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979).
19 A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2007); Simon Pirani, ‘The Party Elite, the Industrial Managers and the
Notes 177
Cells: Early Stages in the Formation of the Soviet Ruling Class in Moscow,

1922–23’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 19, No. 2 (December 2006), p. 200; Simon
Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920–24. Soviet Workers and the New
Communist Elite (London: Routledge, 2008); Eugene Huskey, Executive Power and
Soviet Politics. The Rise and Decline of the Soviet State (New York: M.E. Sharpe,
1992); Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism. The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy
(Oxford: Polity Press, 1990).
20 V.I. Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia (PSS) , 5 izd, tt. 33, 307 (Moscow: Politizdat,
1955–65).
21 Rigby, Lenin’s Government, p. 13.
22 See, for example, Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution.
Chapter 1
1 See Adam Ulam, Lenin and the Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History
of the Triumph of Communism in Russia (London: Fontana, 1965), pp. 176–82;
Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1899–1919 (London: Collins Harvill,
1990), pp. 359–61; L. Shapiro, Origins of the Communist Autocracy, 2nd edition
(London: Macmillan, 1977); Roeder, Red Sunset. The Failure of Soviet Politics (New
Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 44.
2 Neil Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought: Theory and Practice in the democratic
revolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1977).
3 Lars T. Lih, Lenin Rediscovered. What Is to Be Done? In Context
(London: Brill, 2005).
4 James, Ryan. ‘Lenin’s The State and Revolution and Soviet State Violence: A Textual
Analysis’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2007), pp. 151–72.
5 Lenin, The State and Revolution, 79.
6 For full discussion of the historiographical framework on State and Revolution, see
A.J. Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984), chapter one.
7 Richard Sakwa, ‘Commune Democracy and Gorbachev’s Reforms’, Political Studies,
Vol. XXXVII (1989), pp. 224–43. See also David Priestland, ‘Soviet Democracy,
1917–91’, European History Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2002), pp. 111–30. See also
David Priestland, ‘Bolshevik Ideology and the Debate over Party‐State Relations,
1918–21’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1997), pp. 37–61.
8 Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics, p. 82.
9 Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978),
see ‘Appendix 2: Parliament and Government in a Re-constructed Germany’,
p. 1416.
178 Notes
10 John L.H. Keep, The Debate on Soviet power: Minutes of the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee of Soviets, Second Convocation, October 1917–January 1918
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 22.
11 Lenin, State and Revolution.
12 Ibid., p. 42.
13 Ibid., pp. 42–3.
14 Ibid.
15 Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics.
16 Lenin, ‘Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power’, Collected Works, Vol. 26,
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), pp. 87–136.
17 Neil Harding, Leninism (Duke University Press, 1996), p. 309.
18 Sakwa, ‘Commune Democracy and Gorbachev’s Reforms’.
19 Ibid.
20 Harding, Leninism, p. 310.
21 Lenin, PSS, 5 izd, tt.33, 307.
22 Lenin, State and Revolution.
23 E.G. Gimpel’son, Rabochii klass v upravlenii sovetskim gosudarstvom. Noiabr’ 1917–
1920 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1982).
24 Ibid.
25 Daniel Orlovsky, ‘Gimpel’son on the Hegemony of the Working Class’, Slavic
Review, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 104–6.
26 Gimpelson, Rabochii klass v upravlenii sovetskim gosudarstvom. Noiabr’
1917–1920 gg.
27 Roeder, Red Sunset, pp. 48–9.
28 S.A. Smith, Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017), p. 215.
Chapter 2
1 Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (London: Pan, 2002).

2 N.K. Krupskaia, Vospominaniia o Lenine (Moscow: 1968), p. 337.
3 Dekrety Sovetskoi Vlasti, vol. 1 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Polit. Lit, 1957), pp. 20–1. V.D.
Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia o Lenine (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), p. 129 and Leninskii
Sbornik (Moscow: Politizdat, 1924–66), XXI, pp. 91–2, quoted in T.H. Rigby, Lenin’s
Government: Sovnarkom 1917–22 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 5.
4 Dekrety Sovetskoi Vlasti, pp. 20–1.
5 John Keep (trans.), The Debate on Soviet Power. Minutes of the All-Russian
Executive Committee of Soviets Second Convocation October 1917–January 1918
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 59–86.
6 1918 Constitution, articles 37 and 38, translated in A. Unger, Constitutional
Development in the USSR (New York: Pica Press, 1982), p. 31.
Notes 179
7 Keep, The Debate on Soviet Power, pp. 59–86.

8 Vos’moi s”ezd RKP(b) mart 1919. Protokoly (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1959), pp. 161, 191.
9 Rigby, Lenin’s Government, pp. 173–5.
10 Keep, The Debate on Soviet Power, p. 179.
11 Ronald Kowalski, ‘ “Fellow Travellers” or Revolutionary Dreamers? The Left Social
Revolutionaries after 1917’, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 11, No. 2, (1998), p. 4.
12 See M. Melancon, ‘The Left Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Uprising’,
in V.N. Brovkin (ed.), The Bolsheviks in Russian Society. The Revolution and the Civil
Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).
13 M. N. Pokrovskii and Ia. N. Iakovleva (eds.) Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezda sovetov, R. i S. D.
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), pp. 21–5 and 71–6.
14 M. Pokrovskii and Ia. Iakovleva (eds) Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezda sovetov,
(Moscow: Gosizdat, 1928), pp. 90–2.
15 Izvestiia, No. 5 (20 January 1918), p. 1.
16 V.V. Shelokhaev and Ia.V. Leontiev (eds), Partiia levykh sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov:
dokumenty i materialy, vol. 1, Minutes of the First Congress of the Left SR Party,
pp. 141, 155, 163.
17 Ibid., 163.
18 V.I. Lenin, ‘Closing Speech at the Congress of Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies’, 18
November 1917, Pravda, No. 195 (21 November 1917).
19 Ibid.
20 V.I. Lenin, ‘Alliance between the Workers and the Working and Exploited
Peasants. A Letter to Pravda’, written 18 November 1917, Pravda, No. 194 (19
November 1917).
21 A. Rabinowitch, ‘The Bolsheviks in Power’, Izvestiia TsK KPSS, No. 1 (1989),
p. 234.
22 I.U. Amiantov (ed.), Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnikh Kommissarov
RSFSR: noiabr’ 1917–mart 1918 gg (Moscow: Rosspen, 2006), pp. 95–6.
23 For example, N.N. Alekseev, G.D Zaks and A.A. Shreider became Deputy People’s
Commissars in the Commissariats of Agriculture, Enlightenment and Justice
respectively. The collegia, or directing board, of the Commissariat of Agriculture
was particularly Left SR heavy, with L.L. Kostin, I.A. Maiorov, A.E. Feofilaktov
and N.I. Faleev appointed there. Other Left SR collegia members included
L.E. Kronik in the Commissariat of Post and Telegraphs and P.E. Lazimir
in the Military Collegium. Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnikh
Kommissarov RSFSR, pp. 95–6; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii
(hereafter GARF), People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, fond (f) r-393, opis
(op.) 1, delo (d.) 6, ll. 5, 15; Partiia levykh sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: dokumenty
i materialy, vol. 1, p. 14.
24 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, pp. 95–6; Moscow,
State Archive of the Russian Federation, GARF f. r-393, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 5, 15; Partiia
levykh sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: dokumenty i materialy, i. 14.
180 Notes
25 Ibid., pp. 420–37. Attenders of MSNK sittings before the government move to

Moscow included important state activists such as Bogolepov, Lunacharskii,
Shteinberg, Uritskii, Petrovskii, Chicherin, Latsis and Nevskii.
26 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, p. 420.
27 Ibid., pp. 420–37.
28 Ibid., p. 420.
29 Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti (hereafter DSV), vol. 2, p. 573.
30 For more information see Rigby, Lenin’s Government, pp. 76–83.
31 Partiia levykh sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: dokumenty i materialy, vol. 1, p. 15.
32 O. Radkey, The Sickle Under the Hammer (New York: Columbia University Press,
1963), p. 206.
33 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, pp. 99–416.
34 Ibid., p. 99.
35 Ibid., pp. 251, 301.
36 Ibid., pp. 200, 362, See also Left SR Brilliantov, from the Commissariat of Finance,
pursued the nationalization of the banks and the establishment of the statute of the
Central Cooperative Bank via the cabinet, ibid., p. 145.
37 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, pp.195, 203, 332.
38 Ibid., pp. 257, 153, 178.
39 For more detail on methods and areas of Left SR influence in Sovnarkom in the
early months of Soviet power see my article Lara Douds, ‘ “The Dictatorship of
the Democracy”? The Council of People’s Commissars as Bolshevik-Left Socialist
Revolutionary coalition government, December 1917–March 1918’, Historical
Research (February 2017).
40 Partiia levykh sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: dokumenty i materialy, i, ‘Minutes of the
Second Congress of the Left SR Party’ (hereafter ‘Minutes of the Second Congress
of the Left S.R. Party’), p. 224.
41 ‘Minutes of the Second Congress of the Left S.R. Party’, p. 224.
42 Ibid., p. 225.
43 Piati vserossiskii s”ezd sovetov rabochikh, krestianskikh, soldatskikh i kazach’ikh
deputatov: stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo VTsIK, 1918), p. 45.
44 ‘Minutes of the Second Congress of the Left S.R. Party’, p. 347.
45 Ibid., p. 348.
46 Ibid., p. 349.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., pp. 334–44.
51 Radkey, The Sickle under the Hammer, p. 141.
52 Partiia levykh sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: dokumenty i materialy, i. 182.
Notes 181
53 Protokoly zasedanii vserossiiskogo tsentral’nogo ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta 4-go sozyva

54 Rabinowitch, ‘The Bolsheviks in Power’, pp. 288, 442, n. 26.
55 Cited in Rabinowitch, ‘The Bolsheviks in Power’, p. 288.
56 For full elucidation of this argument, see Rabinowitch, ‘The Bolsheviks in Power’,
chapter 11.
57 DSV, vol. 4, pp. 92–4.
58 Rigby, Lenin’s Government, pp. 76, 84.
59 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov and Rossiiskii
gosudarstvennii arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (hereafter RGASPI), fond (f.)
19, opis (op.) 1, delo (d.) 241–51 (January 1919).
60 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, pp. 41, 158, 161.
On the odd occasion he could not attend, shorter sittings went ahead (once in a few
months) when either Sverdlov, Stalin or Trotsky stepped in to chair.
62 RGASPI, f. 19, op. 1, dd. 30–240.
63 Ibid., dd. 203–52.
64 Ibid., dd. 241–51
65 Ibid., dd. 1–9.
66 Ibid., dd. 10–26.
68 Ibid., pp. 70–397.
69 Lidiia Fotieva, Iz zhizni V.I. Lenina (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury,
1967), p. 143; Leninskii sbornik, XXI, pp. 96–7.
70 M.P. Iroshnikov, Predsedatel’ Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov V.I. Ulianov (Lenin).
Ocherk gosudarstvennoi deiatel’nosti v 1917–1918 gg. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1974), pp.
180–3 and E.I. Korenevskaia, ‘Organizatsionno-pravovye formy deiatel’nosti SNK
RSFSR (1917–22gg.)’, Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 7 (1968), pp. 94–6.
71 M.P. Iroshnikov, Predsedatel’ Sovnarkom i soveta oborony V.I. Ulianov
(Lenin): Ocherki gosudarstvennoi deiatel’nosti v iule 1918–marte 1920
(Leningrad: Nauka, 1980), pp. 180–3 and Korenevskaia, ‘Organizatsionno-pravovye
formy deiatel’nosti SNK RSFSR (1917–22gg.)’, pp. 94–6.
72 Fotieva, Iz zhizni V.I. Lenina, pp. 99–101 and DSV, vol. 2, pp. 570–1.
73 GARF f. r-393, op. 2, d. 14, ll. 1–3, 82–3.
74 Fotieva, Iz zhizni V.I. Lenina, p. 101.
75 GARF f. 130, op. 3, d. 45, ll. 1–2.
76 RGASPI, f. 19, op. 1, dd. 241–72.
77 Ibid., d. 1, ll. 1–46.
78 Ibid., dd. 1–9.
79 RGASPI, f. 19, op. 3, dd. 16–26.
182 Notes

A year later, in January 1919, the average remained almost identical (RGASPI
f. 19, op. 1, dd. 241–52).
82 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 1 (2), ll. 166–297.
83 RGASPI f. 19, op. 1, dd. 241–52.
84 Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967),
p. 179; N.K. Krupskaia, Vospominaniia o Lenine (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1957), p. 427.
85 Krupskaia, Vospominaniia o Lenine, pp. 427–8.
86 Ibid., p. 428.
87 Lars Lih, Bread and Authority in Russia 1914–21 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990), p. 79.
88 Tsiurupa was made deputy People’s Commissar for Foodstuffs on 29 November
1917 (RGASPI f. 19, op. 1, d. 14, l. 2). He was confirmed by Sovnarkom as full
People’s Commissar for Foodstuffs on 25 February 1918 (RGASPI f. 19, op. 1,
d. 69, l. 1 ob).
89 Odinadtsatyi s”ezd RKP(b), Mart-aprel’ 1922 goda. Stenograficheskii otchet
(Moscow: 1961), p. 37.
90 G.M. Leplevskii, On the Work of V.I. Lenin in Sovnarkom 1921–22
(Moscow: Politizdat, 1971), p. 11.
91 V.A. Tsiurupa, Kolokola pamiati (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury,
1986), p. 122.
92 Leplevskii, On the Work of V.I. Lenin in Sovnarkom 1921–22, pp. 11–12.
93 Liberman, Building Lenin’s Russia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945),
pp. 13, 66.
94 Fotieva, Iz zhizni Lenina (Moscow, Politizdat, 1967), p. 227.
95 Ibid., p. 227.
96 Osinsky, ‘autobiography’, in Deiateli soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik
i oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii (avtobiografii I biografii) vol. 2 (Moscow: Izd. Russkogo
bibliograficheskogo instituta Granat, 1925–6), p. 89.
97 I.N. Shteinberg, In the Workshop of the Revolution (New York : Rinehart, 1953),
p. 91. Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, pp. 177–9.
98 Ibid.
99 See minutes of the sittings of Sovnarkom between November 1917 and January
1919 from Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov and
RGASPI f. 19, op. 1, dd. 241–51.
100 The following is a list of agenda points from Sovnarkom sittings which are
straightforward appointments of individuals to government posts. These agenda
points often appoint multiple individuals to multiple positions. Amiantov,
Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov (73 points from November
Notes 183
1917–March 1918): p. 21 (15 November), p. 24 (16 November), p. 30 (19

November), p. 31 (19 November, point 22), p. 40 (21 November, point 2a, 4),
p. 48 (24 November, point 2), p. 51 (25 November), p. 58 (27 November), p. 59
(27 November), p. 62 (29 November), p. 65 (30 November), p. 73 (2 December,
point 6), p. 76 (3 December), p. 83 (5 December), p. 93 (8 December), p. 95 (9
December), p. 98 (9 December), p. 100 (11 December,), p. 105 (13 December),
p. 107 (13 December), p. 113 (15 December), p. 120 (17 December), p. 122 (18
December), p. 128 (19 December), p. 149 (21 December), p. 161 (27 December),
p. 174 (30 December), pp. 191–2 (6 January), p. 196 (8 January), p. 199 (9
January), p. 209 (15 January), p. 247 (19 January), p. 250 (20 January), p. 253 (21
January), p. 313 (30 January,), p. 323 (31 January), p. 335 (15 February), p. 340 (16
February), p. 346 (18 February,), p. 378 (25 February), p. 395 (28 February), p. 400
(4 March), p. 417 (9 March) RGASPI, Fond 19, op. 1 (Sample of sittings from
January 1919) d. 241, p. 1 (2 January), d. 249, p. 1 (23 January), d. 251, p. 1 (28
January).
101 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, p. 24 (16
November), p. 149 (21 December), p. 151 (23 December), p. 190 (6 January),
p. 199 (9 January,), p. 222 (16 January), p. 246 (19 January), p. 324 (31 January,),
p. 339 (16 February).
102 The following are just a few examples of a vast list of almost 100 cases between
November 1917–March 1918. Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh
Kommissarov, p. 28 (19 November), p. 47 (22 November), p. 58 (27 November),
pp. 77–9 (4 December), p. 105 (13 December), pp. 128–9 (19 December), p. 163
(29 December), p. 209 (15 January), p. 339 (16 February), p. 397 (28 February),
p. 401 (2 March).
103 Again the following are just a few of numerous examples. Amiantov, Protokoly
zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, p. 20 (15 November), p. 35 (20
November), p. 65 (30 November), p. 77 (4 December), p. 123 (18 December),
p. 175 (30 December), p. 257 (23 January), p. 314 (3 January), p. 419 (9 March).
104 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, p. 77 (3
December), p. 111 (15 December), pp. 122–3 (18 December, points), p. 165 (30
December), p. 246 (19 January).
105 Some cases include Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh
Kommissarov, p. 20 (15 November), p. 87 (6 December), p. 109 (13 December),
p. 116 (16 December), p. 161 (27 December), p. 163 (29 December), p. 178 (2
February).
106 Ibid., p. 50 (24 November), p. 60 (27 November), p. 98 (9 December), p. 107 (13
December), p. 163 (29 December), p. 187 (4 January).
184 Notes
107 Ibid., p. 52 (25 November), p. 59 (27 November), p. 78 (4 December), p. 84
(5 December), p. 128 (19 December), p. 195 (8 January), p. 203 (11 January),
p. 205 (14 January), p. 324 (31 January).
(6 December), p. 96 (9 December), p. 114 (15 December), p. 258 (23 January).
109 Ibid., p. 49 (24 November), p. 117 (16 December), p. 159 (24 December), p. 301
(27 December), p. 341 (16 February), p. 414 (4 March).
110 Ibid., p. 20 (15 November), p. 26 (18 November), p. 52 (25 November), p. 65 (30
November), p. 103 (11 December), p. 107 (13 December), p. 111 (15 December),
p. 222 (16 January), p. 257 (23 January).
111 Ibid., p. 59 (27 November), p. 69 (30 November), p. 103 (11 December), p. 247 (19
January), p. 249 (20 January,).
112 Ibid., p. 170 (30 December), p. 289 (24 January).
113 Ibid., p. 90 (7 December), p. 119 (17 December).
November), p. 87 (6 December), p. 116 (16 December), p. 200 (9 January).
December).
116 Ibid., p. 21 (15 November), p. 28 (19 November), p. 37 (20 November), p. 60
(27 November), p. 72 (2 December), p. 76 (3 December), p. 88 (6 December),
p. 95 (9 December), p. 200 (9 January), p. 210 (15 January), p. 247 (19 January),
p. 305 (29 January), p. 351 (19 February), p. 384 (27 February), p. 395 (28
February).
117 Ibid., p. 53 (23 November), p. 73 (2 December), p. 84 (4 December), p. 98 (9
December).
(15 January).
119 V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (Penguin: London, 1992), pp. 69–70.
120 ‘Tariffs of Pay of the Work of Employees of Central State Institutions’ in
Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 4085 (RSFSR Rabkrin
1917–23), op. 1, d. 8, ll. 1–6.
121 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, p. 23.
122 Ibid., p. 26.
123 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 35 (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976), p. 333.
124 Victor Serge, Memories of a Revolutionary (London: Writers and Readers,
1984), p. 79.
125 Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 42, pp. 37–8.
126 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, 2nd English edition, vol. 42 (Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1971), p. 78.
127 Ibid., pp. 136–7.
Notes 185
128 RGASPI, f. 19, op. 1, d. 241, l. 1 (2 January), d. 249, l. 1 (23 January), d. 251, l. 1 (28
January).
129 Ibid., d. 243 (9 January), d. 245, l. 1 (January 19), d. 251, l. 1 (28 January).
130 Ibid., d. 243, l. 1 (9 January).
131 Ibid., d. 247, l. 1 (18 January), d. 251, l. 1 (28 January, points).
132 Ibid., d. 241, l. 1 (2 January).
133 Ibid., d. 241, l. 1 (2 January), d. 243, l. 1 (9 January), d. 247, l. 1 (18 January).
134 Ibid., d. 241, l. 1 (2 January), d. 245, l. 1 (19 January), d. 251, l. 1.
135 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 1(2), l. 218 and also ll. 213, 235, 289, 290, 292, 297.
136 Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP(b). Avgust 1917-Fevral 1918
137 Ibid., pp.146–227.
138 Ibid., pp. 189–231.
139 RGASPI f. 17, op. 2, dd. 1–15.
140 Ibid.
141 Ibid.
142 Ibid., d. 1, l. 3 (30 March 1918).
143 Ibid.; op. 2, d. 2, l. 1 (16 September).
144 Ibid., d. 1, l. 5 (31 March); f. 17, op. 2, d. 1, l. 7 (7 April), l. 8 (26 April), l. 9
(3 May).
145 Ibid., l. 8 (26 April).
146 Ibid., l. 1 (15 March), l. 8 (26 April).
147 Ibid., l. 8 (26 April) f. 17, op. 2, d. 3, l. 1 (2 October).
148 Ibid., l. 1 (15 March).
149 Ibid., l. 9 (3 May).
150 Ibid., l. 1 (15 March), d. 5, l. 1 (25 October).
151 Ibid., l. 7 (7 April).
152 Ibid., l. 1 (15 March), l. 3 (30 March), l. 6 (4 April).
153 Ibid. (15 March), l. 3 (30 March), l. 6 (4 April).
154 Ibid., d. 3, l. 1 (2 October).
155 Ibid., op. 2, d. 1, l. 1 (15 March), l. 6 (4 April), l. 9 (3 May), d. 5, l. 1 (25 October).
156 Ibid., op. 2, d. 1, ll. 6, 9, d. 2, l. 1, d. 3, ll. 1, 2, d. 4, l. 1, d. 5, l. 1.
157 For more information see T.H. Rigby, ‘Staffing USSR Incorporated: The Origins
of the Nomenklatura System, Soviet Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (October, 1988), pp.
523–37.
158 Vos’moi s”ezd RKP(b) mart 1919. Protokoly (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1959),
pp. 27–9, 164–8.
159 Ibid., pp. 166, 192.
160 Ibid., pp. 193, 222.
161 Ibid., pp. 166, 168.
186 Notes
1 62 Ibid., p. 325.
163 Ibid., p. 429.
164 Ibid., pp. 424–5.
Chapter 3

1967), pp. 118, 141.
University Press, 1979), pp. 101–2. Rigby’s brief treatment of Sovnarkom’s
Administration Department contains some errors; his use of the term
‘Chancellery’ to translate the Russian ‘upravlenie delami’ is perhaps misleading.
The Administration Department was made up of several subsections, including
the ‘kantselariia’. Perhaps it would be more apt to translate this internal section
as the Sovnarkom ‘Chancellery’, rather than ‘General Office’ as Rigby then
resorted to. Rigby also failed to emphasize the innovative, revolutionary nature
of the Sovnarkom apparatus. Instead he emphasized links to the administrative
apparatus of the Tsarist and Provisional Governments’ Council of Ministers.
3 M.P. Iroshnikov, ‘K voprosu o slome burzhuaznoi gosudarstvennoi mashiny v
Rossii’, in Iu. S. Tokarev (ed.), Problemy Gosudarstvennogo stroitel’stva v pervye
gody sovetskoi vlasti. Sbornik statei (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973), pp. 54–5.
4 E.K. Koksharova, ‘V.I. Lenin v sovnarkome v 1917 gody’, in Lenin v 1917 gody.
Vospominaniia (Moscow: Institut Marksizma-leninizma, 1967), pp. 290–3.
6 V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, ‘Pervye dni sovnarkomovskogo apparata’, in Lenin v 1917
gody. Vospominaniia (Moscow: Institut Marksizma-leninizma, 1967), pp. 274–5.
7 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossiiskoi federatsii (GARF) f. 130, op. 1, d. 8, l. 30.
8 Koksharova, ‘V.I. Lenin v sovnarkome v 1917 gody’, pp. 289–90.
9 N.P. Gorbunov, ‘Kak sozdavalsia v oktiabr’skie dni rabochii apparat soveta
narodnykh komissarov’, in Lenin v 1917 gody. Vospominaniia (Moscow: Institut
Marksizma-leninizma, 1967), pp. 278–9.
10 GARF f. 130, op.1, d. 8, ll. 26–30.
11 Gorbunov, ‘Kak sozdavalsia v oktiabr’skie dni rabochii apparat soveta narodnykh
komissarov’, p. 279.
12 N.K. Krupskaia, ‘Pereezd Il’icha v Moskvy i pervye mesiatsy ego raboty v Moskve’,
in Vospominaniia o V.I. Lenine, Vol. 2 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1957), p. 195.
13 Koksharova, ‘V.I. Lenin v sovnarkome v 1917 gody’ and M.N. Skrypnik, ‘Il’ich v
smol’nom’ in Lenin v 1917 gody. Vospominaniia (Moscow: Institut Marksizma-
leninizma, 1967), pp. 288–91.
Notes 187
14 GARF f. 130, op. 1, d. 99 and F. 130, op. 1, d. 45, ll. 107-107 ob.
15 E.V. Klopov, Lenin v Smol’nom. Gosudarstvennaia deiatel’nst’ V.I. Lenina v pervye
mesiaty Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow: Mysl’, 1965), p. 11.
16 V.S. Orlov, ‘V.I. Lenin i sozdanie apparata pervogo v mire raboche-krestianskogo
pravitel’stva’, Voprosy Istorii¸ No. 4 (1963), p. 17.
17 M.P. Iroshnikov, Sozdanie sovetskogo tsentral’nogo gosudarstvennogo apparata: sovet
narodnykh komissariv i narodnye komissariaty, oktiabr 1917-ianvar 1918
(Moscow: Nauka, 1966), p. 76.
18 Koksharova, ‘V.I. Lenin v sovnarkome v 1917 gody’, p. 291.
19 RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 1805, l. 2.
20 Iroshnikov, Sozdanie sovetskogo tsentral’nogo gosudarstvennogo apparata, pp. 76–7.
Rigby relied on the memory of Lidiia Fotieva and the work of Genkina, to state
that: ‘Its total staff in mid-1918 was 61… it grew only modestly after that, reaching
102 in January 1921’ see Rigby, Lenin’s Government, p. 102.
21 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 382, l. 2.
22 Ibid., l. 3.
23 GARF f. 130, op. 5, d. 1088, l. 13. Genkina’s figure of 102 staff members by January
1921 holds up when checked against lists in the Sovnarkom archive.
24 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 73, ll. 8–9, f. 130, op. 1, d. 99; RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 738(1), ll.
9, 12, 19, 28, and d. 404, l. 5.
25 V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, ‘Pereezd sovetskogo pravitel’stva iz petrograda v moskvy’, in
Izbrannie sochineniia, vol. 3 (Moscow: Nauka, 1963), p. 159.
26 RGASPI, f. 5, op. 1, d. 738(1), ll. 9,12,19,28 and GARF f. 130, op. 5, d. 1040, ll.
74, 115–16, d. 1088, ll. 4, 43 ob. and RGASPI f. 17, op. 2, d. 17, l. 8. See also S.B.
Brichkina, ‘Maloe o velikom’ and ‘Leninskaia shkola raboty v apparate sovnarkoma’
in O Vladimir Ilich Lenine: Vospominaniia 1900–22 gody (Moscow: Gosizdat,
1963), pp. 468 and 472–7 and M.A. Volodicheva, ‘Otryvki iz vospominanii’ in
Vospominaniia o V.I. Lenine tom 2 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1957), p. 671.
28 Ibid., p. 199.
29 Ibid., p. 125.
30 Rigby devoted only two pages to the physical creation and functioning of
Sovnarkom’s bureaucracy, spending more time looking at the commissariat
apparatus instead. John Keep later produced a chapter ‘Lenin’s time budget: the
Smolny period’ which touched upon the work Sovnarkom Administration
Department in its earliest months while examining the daily work load of its
chairman. Soviet scholars too largely overlooked this machinery of government.
Rigby, Lenin’s Government, pp. 40–1, 55–6. Rigby’s chapter ‘Acquiring a
Bureaucracy’ focuses mainly on the commissariats and their administrative
machinery, not that of Sovnarkom. John Keep, ‘Lenin’s Time Budget: The Smolny
188 Notes
Period’, in E. Rogovin Frankel, J. Frankel and B. Knei-Paz (eds), Revolution in

Russia. Reassessments of 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),
pp. 326–61.
31 E.N. Gorodetskii, Rozhdenie Sovetskogo gosudarstva, 1917–18 gg. (Moscow: Nauka,
1957), p. 152. This description overlooks key sections of the apparatus. Chugaev
failed to distinguish any internal sections of the Administration Department
at all, instead viewing it as one simple office. D.A. Chugaev, ‘Slom burzhaznoi
gosudarstvennoi mashiny i sozdanie sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo apparata’,
in G.N. Golikov (ed.), Velikaia Oktiabr’skie sotsialisticheskaia Revoliutsiia
(Moscow: Nauka, 1957), pp. 17–26.
32 Iroshnikov, Sozdanie sovetskogo tsentral’nogo gosudarstvennogo apparata, p. 91.
33 RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 1806, l. 86.
34 GARF f. 130, op. 1, d. 99.
35 GARF f. 130, op. 5, d. 1040, ll. 74, 115–16, d. 1088, ll. 4, 43 ob.
36 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 11 (1) (September 1918).
37 RGASPI f. 19, op. 1, dd. 241–50 (January–February 1919) f. 130, op. 3, dd. 39–50
(May-June 1919).
38 GARF f. 130, op. 4, d.1, pp. 58–99 (March–April 1920).
40 Fotieva, Iz zhizni V.I. Lenina, pp. 144–5.
41 Koksharova, ‘V.I. Lenin v sovnarkome v 1917 g.’, p. 293.
43 Ibid., pp. 142–145, and Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 2 (Moscow: 1957), pp. 570–1.
45 Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii raboche-krestianskogo pravitel’stva RSFSR,
(Moscow and Petrograd, 1917–20), 1922, 1/19 and see V.A. Liubisheva,
‘Organizatsiia truda v secretariate V.I. Lenina v Sovnarkome’, in E.N. Gorodetskii
(ed.), Stroitel’stvo sovetskogo gosudarstva:sbornik statei k 70-letiiu ist. nauk. Prof. E.V.
Genkina (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), p. 202.
46 Liubysheva, ‘Organizatsiia truda v secretariat V.I. Lenina v Sovnarkome’, p. 202.
48 RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 475, ll. 1–4.
49 Ibid., dd. 537, 569.
50 Ibid., p. 88.
51 Liubysheva, ‘Organizatsiia truda v secretariat V.I. Lenina v Sovnarkome’, p. 206.
52 V.I. Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 50 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1958–65),
p. 245.
53 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 429(1), ll. 1–14.
54 Ibid., op. 2, d. 429(1), no. 44, 66, 157, 159.
Notes 189
55 Ibid., op. 1, d. 99.
komissarov’, pp. 283–4.
58 Bonch-Bruevich, ‘Pervye dni sovnarkomovskogo apparata’, p. 275.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid, p. 113.
62 Koksharova, ‘V.I. Lenin v Sovnarkome v 1917 g.’, p. 291.
63 K. Shrivastava, News Agencies from Pigeon to Internet (New Dawn: Elgin, 2007).
65 Ibid., p. 84.
66 Ibid., p. 86.
67 See SSSR God Raboty Pravitel’stva. Materialy k otchetu za 1924/25. Pod obshchei
redaktsiei N.P. Gorbunov i A.V. Stoklitskogo (Moscow: Otdel pechati i informatsii
SNK SSSR i STO, 1926). Further editions published yearly until 1930s.
71 Ibid., pp. 97–109.
72 Ibid., pp. 82, 137.
73 Ibid., pp. 71, 79
74 Ibid., p. 89.
75 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 44, p. 254.
77 Ibid., p. 141.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.; letter from the Sovnarkom Secretary Nikolai Gorbunov to Lenin, appended
with a list of the signatures of 19 administrative staff.
80 RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 404, l. 3.
81 Ibid., l. 1.
82 Rigby, Lenin’s Government, pp. 266–7.
83 Nikolai Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin (London: Oxford University Press,
1968), p. 169.
84 RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 404, l. 2. Gorbunov made further allegations of corruption
against his boss: ‘I ceased to respect him after he thought to use his position for
illegal evacuation of his property from Petrograd. I knew from Sverdlov that
the warehouses belonged to Vladimir Dmitrievich personally, not to the CC of
the Party, as Vladimir Dmitrievich said. I refused then to fulfil his demand…
190 Notes
We evacuated the part of the list which really belonged to the Party. I think that
Vladimir Dmitrievich’s attitude to me also caused much damage. In Petrograd
in all conflicts I tried to justify Bonch in the eyes of colleagues, inventing
explanations in every way possible for his behaviour and attitude to comrades.
Now I cannot do this as I have no more justifications for him. His colleagues have
not respected him for a long time.’
85 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 44, l. 1.
komissarov’, pp. 192–4.
87 Ibid., p. 196 (See note of Lenin to Krestinskii 8 December 1920 ‘I propose to
appoint as head of the Administration Department, Nikolai Gorbunov (former
Secretary). I ask the Orgburo to send me Nikolai Gorbunov’).
88 GARF f. 130, op. 3, d. 738(1), l. 9. The 23 members were Abramova, Agranov,
Allilueva, Anni, Afananseva, Belenkaia, Bonch-Bruevich, Brichkina, Berzina,
Volodicheva, Gliasser, Kazak, Kizas, Lekhmus, Meerson, Orlova, Simak,
Stepanova. Siroeshkina, Fediushin, Fotieva and Iagunov. In addition, others
appearing as cell members in various documents were Lepeshinskaia, Avilova and
Ozerevskaia.
89 Ibid., l. 40.
90 Ibid., l. 43.
91 Ibid., l. 48.
92 Ibid., l. 69.
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid., l. 64.
95 RGASPI f. 125, op. 1, d. 1, l. 19.
96 Al’bert Ris Vil’iams (Albert Rhys Williams), O Lenine i oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii
(Moscow: Gosizdat, 1960), p. 68.
97 John Keep, ‘Review of T.H. Rigby Lenin’s Government’, The Slavonic and East
European Review, Vol. 58, No. 2 (April 1980), p. 306.
98 N.P. Eroshkin, Istoriia gosudarstvennyk uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii
(Moscow: RGGU, 2008), pp. 249, 263.
99 Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately (eds), Accusatory Practices. Denunciations
in Modern European History 1789–1989 (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 85–7.
100 M. Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia: The False
Tsars of the Time of Troubles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
D. Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989).
101 O. Figes and B. Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and
Symbols of 1917 (London: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 93.
Notes 191
103 E.B. Genkina, Gosudarstvennaia deiatel’nost’ V.I. Lenina 1921–23

104 GARF f. 130, op. 1, d. 99.
105 Bonch-Bruevich ‘Pervye dni sovnarkomovskogo apparata’, p. 275.
107 V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, Izbrannie sochinenii, vol. 3 (Moscow: Nauka, 1963), p.166.
108 Williams, O Lenine i oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii, pp. 68–70.
110 M.N. Skrypnik, ‘Krest’iane-khodoki y Il’icha v smol’nom’, in Vospominaniia o V.I.
Lenine, vol. 2 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1957), p. 76.
111 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 347, l. 70.
112 Bonch-Bruevich, Izbrannie sochinenii, p. 166.
113 Ibid.
115 Bonch-Brueivch, Izbrannie sochinenii, p. 167. Fotieva, however, claimed that Lenin
did not have separate days for the reception of visitors, he received daily two or
three people, but sometimes the number of visitors reached eight or ten, especially
if they were delegations. Vladimir Ilich received each at exactly the appointed
time. Usually Vladimir Ilich knew beforehand the theme of the chat and kept
notes by him during it. In those rare cases when he did not make progress to end
the chat on time he entrusted the secretary to apologize to those waiting for the
small delay. It seems that initially, in the first year or so, Lenin experimented with
set days for personal receptions. But when Bonch-Bruevich left Sovnarkom, the
new senior Sovnarkom officials set this rule aside and visitors were taken by Lenin
on any day.
116 Bonch-Bruevich, Izbrannie sochineniia, pp. 166–72.
117 N.P. Gorbunov, ‘V Leninskoi Priemnoi’, in Vospominaniia, stat’i, dokumenty
118 Bonch-Bruevich, Izbrannie sochineniia, vol. 3, pp. 167–9.
119 Ibid., pp. 169–71.
121 Genkina, Gosudarstvennaia deiatel’nost’ V.I. Lenina 1921–1923, pp. 389, 396,
Bonch-Bruevich, Izbrannie sochinenii, vol. 3, p. 173.
122 Peter Kenez, Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization
1917–29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 61–4.
123 Shiela Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times:
Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 7,
‘Writing to the Government’.
124 Ibid., p. 91.
192 Notes
1 26 RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 1498, ll. 76–111.

127 Ibid., dd. 1499–501.
128 Koksharova, ‘Lenin v sovnarkome v 1917 gody’, p. 298.
129 V.S. Orlov, ‘V.I. Lenin i sozdanie apparata pervogo v mire raboche-krestianskogo
pravitel’stva’, Voprosy Istorii, No. 4 (1963), p. 23.
130 ‘Kratkaia kharacteristika deiatel’nosti VTsIK i SNK’ (BSNK, MSNK i STO)
(Moscow: TsSU, 1921), p. 126.
132 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 51, pp. 108, 400.
133 Bonch-Bruevich, Izbrannie sochineniia, vol. 3, p. 166.
134 Gorbunov, ‘V Leninskoi Priemnoi’, p. 56.
137 Ibid., vol. 54, pp. 108–9.
138 Ibid., p. 593.
140 RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 1806, ll. 26–70.
141 Ibid., l. 38.
142 A.F. Ilyin-Zhenevskii (trans. Brian Pierce), The Bolsheviks in Power: Reminiscences
of the Year 1918 (London: New Park, 1984), pp. 6–29.
143 Bonch-Bruevich, Izbrannie sochineniia,vol. 3, p. 171.
145 For detail on Nicholas II, see Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: From
Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 2000), p. 261.
146 Jan. T. Gross, ‘A Note on the Nature of Soviet Totalitarianism’, Soviet Studies, No.
34 (July 1982), p. 3, and see S. Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately (eds), Accusatory
Practices. Denunciations in Modern European History 1789–1989 (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
147 Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, chapter 7, ‘Writing to the Government’.
148 Ibid.
149 E.A. Osokina, ‘Krizis snabzheniia 1939–1941 gg. v pis’makh sovetskikh liudei’,
Voprosy istorii, No. 1 (1996).
Chapter 4
1 Described in these words by V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia o Lenine

2 I. Stalin, ‘O Ia. M. Sverdlove’, Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia, vol. 34 (1924), pp. 105–11.
Notes 193
3 Ibid., p. 107, fn. 1.
4 N.V. Nelidov (ed.), Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov: sbornik vospominanii i
statei (Leningrad: Komissiia po istorii Oktibr;skoi revoliutsii i Rossiisskoi
kommunisticheskoi partii, 1962).
5 S. Vereschak, ‘Stalin v tiur’me: vospominaniia politicheskogo zakliuchennogo’, Dni
(22 January 1928), p. 2.
6 William Odom, ‘Sverdlov: Bolshevik Party Organiser’, The Slavonic and East
European Review, Vol. 44, No. 103 (July 1966), pp. 421–43.
7 Ibid., p. 442. See also C. Duval, ‘The Forgotten Bolshevik. Jacob Mikhailovich
Sverdlov 1885–1917’, PhD Dissertation, 1971, University of Texas at Austin,
Department of History.
8 C. Duval, ‘Iakov Mikhailovch Sverdlov. Founder of the Bolshevik Party Machine’,
in R. Carter Elwood (ed.), Reconsiderations on the Russian Revolution (Cambridge,
MA: Slavica, 1976), p. 221.
9 Ibid., p. 223.
10 Elena Stasova, Stranitsy zhizni i borb’y (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1960), pp. 97–8.
11 See Perepiska secretariata TsK RSDRP(b) s mestnymi partiinymi, vol. 1
(Moscow: Gosizdat, 1957).
12 Ibid., p. 101.
13 Stasova, Stranitsy, pp. 100–101.
14 Stasova cited in E.N. Gorodetsky and Iu. Sharapov, Sverdlov: zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’
15 Jointly signed letters of secretariat papers Ia.M. Sverdlov, Izbrannie Proizvedeniia,
vols 1–3 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1957, 1959, 1960), vol. 2, pp. 55, 56.
16 K.T. Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1960), p. 364.
17 L. Trotsky, On Stalin (London: Macgibbon and Kee, 1968), p. 347.
18 Ibid., p. 347.
19 RGASPI, f.17, op. 86, d. 240, ll. 1–4.
20 See Protokoly TsK RSDLP(b), pp. 19, 39 and L. Shapiro, Origin of the Communist
Autocracy, 2nd edition (London: Macmillan, 1971).
21 Deviatyi S”ezd RKP(b) (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1960), p. 806.
22 See Janice Ali, ‘Aspects of the RKP(B) Secretariat, March 1919 to April 1922’, Soviet
Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3 (July 1974), pp. 396–416; Robert Daniels, ‘The Secretariat
and the Local Party Organizations in the Russian Communist Party 1921–23’,
American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 16, No. 1 (February 1957),
pp. 32–49; and Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution 1917–23. A Study
in Organizational Change (London: Macmillan, 1979).
23 G. Gill, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
24 Sverdlov, Izbrannie Proizvedeniia, vol. 2, p. 154.
194 Notes
25 Ibid., pp. 155–7.
26 Sedmoi S”ezd RKP(b). Protokoly (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924), p. 95.
27 Ibid., p. 195.
28 Ibid., p. 186.
29 Ibid., p. 154.
30 See circular letter, ibid., vol 3, p. 198, Sverdlov, Izbrannie Proizvedeniia, vol. 2,
p. 268 and vol. 3, p. 156. GARF, f. 130, op. 2, d. 788a, l. 23.
31 See Charles Duval, ‘Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov: Founder of the Bolshevik
Party Machine’, in R.C. Elwood (ed.) Reconsiderations on the Russian Revolution
(Cambridge MA: Slavica, 1976), p. 231.
32 Vos’moi S’ezd RKP(b), mart 1919 goda. Protokoly (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1959),
pp. 424–5.
33 See Janice Ali, ‘Aspects of the RKP(B) Secretariat, March 1919 to April 1922’, Soviet
Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3 (July 1974), pp. 396–416; R.V. Daniels, ‘The Secretariat
and the Local Party Organizations in the Russian Communist Party 1921–23’,
American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 16, No. 1 (February 1957),
pp. 32–49; and Robert Service The Bolshevik Party in Revolution 1917–23. A Study
in Organizational Change (London: Macmillan, 1979).
34 Vladimir Bonch Bruevich, who claims to have been present at the time, recalls
that Sverdlov was initially not keen to take on this role: ‘I have too much party
work as it is, but you invite me to join the government…You should surely appoint
somebody of our plenipotentiaries’; V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia o Lenine
35 Gorodetskii and Sharapov, Sverdlov, p. 172.
36 Duval, Bolshevik Party Organiser, p. 230.
37 Ibid., p. 121.
38 Petrogradskii golos (21 February 1918), p. 2 and Novyi Den (21 February 1918), p. 3
cited in A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power. The First Year of Soviet Rule in
Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 165.
39 GARF f. 1235, op. 18, d. 7, l. 39.
40 George Denicke (a contemporary Menshevik) quoted in L. Haimson,
The Mensheviks from the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 160–1.
41 See nineteenth session of VTsIK on 12 December 1917 in J. Keep (trans.), The
Debate on Soviet Power: Minutes of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of
Soviets October 1917-January 1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 201, 249.
42 Keep, The Debate on Soviet Power, p. 257.
43 Ibid., p. 265.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid., p. 109.
Notes 195
46 Denicke cited in Haimson, Mensheviks, pp. 160–1.

47 C. Duval, ‘Iakov M. Sverdlov and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of
Soviets (VTsIK): A Study in Bolshevik Consolidation of Power, October 1917–July
1918’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1 (January 1979), p. 341.
48 Cited in Haimson, Mensheviks, p. 160.
49 Quoted in ibid., pp. 160–1.
50 Sverdlov, Izbrannie Proizvedeniia, vol. 2, pp. 246, 248, 249, 253.
51 Gill, Origins, p. 243.
52 Cited in ibid., p. 288.
53 C. Duval, ‘Iakov Mikhailovch Sverdlov. Founder of the Bolshevik Party Machine’,
in R. Carter Elwood (ed.), Reconsiderations on the Russian Revolution (Cambridge,
MA: Slavica, 1976), p. 230.
54 Trotsky, Stalin, p. 399. This uneasy coalition was not to last long and fell apart again
in May 1919.
55 Gill, Origins, p. 52. Gill takes his lead on this topic from A.L. Unger who
expounded this view in his Constitutional Development in the USSR. A.L. Unger,
Constitutional Development in the USSR (New York: Pica Press, 1981), p. 51.
56 Vserossiiskaia tsentral’naia ispol’nitelnaia komiteta piatii sozyv. Protokoly zasedanii.
(Moscow: Izdatel’stvo vserossiiskogo tsentral’nogo komiteta sovetov, 1918).
57 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 8, l. 2. The recollection of Communist delegate Shutskever
describes this sitting and is backed up by the minutes of the sitting of a plenum
of the CC from 16 January 1919 which read: ‘To organize a joint sitting of the
VTsIK with the Moscow Soviet and Trade Union Congress.’ A speech of Lenin
at this sitting was also recorded: V.I. Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. 28
(Moscow: Politizdat, 1955–65), pp. 368–82.
58 Sverdlov, Izbrannie Proizvedeniia, vol. 3, pp. 69, 86, 127, 160.
59 Sedmoi s”ezd sovetov stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1935), p. 60.
University Press, 1979), pp. 170–3.
61 Gorodetskii and Sharapov, Sverdlov, p. 127.
62 Ibid., p. 176. See Keep, Debate on Soviet Power, p. 86.
63 Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, pp. 165–78.
64 L. Stupochenko, ‘V Brestskii Dni’, Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia, No. 4 (16) (1923), pp.
94–111.
65 Nash Vek, 26 February 1918 cited in Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, p. 176.
66 GARF Fond 1235, op. 18, d. 8, ll. 91–110.
67 Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, p. 177.
68 Nash Vek, 26 February 1918 cited in Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, p. 178.
69 K.T. Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, p. 350.
70 GARF f. 1235, op. 18, d. 8, ll. 109–10.
196 Notes
71 Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, p. 171.

72 Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia, p. 146.
73 RGASPI f. 86, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 2–6.
74 A.S. Shutskever, in F.N. Petrov (ed.), O Vladimir Ilich Lenine. Vospominanii’
75 Ibid., p. 449.
Chapter 5
1 Communist historian L. Kritsman, Geroicheskii period velikoi russkoi revoliutsii

(1926), quoted in R.V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist
Opposition in Soviet Russia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), p. 108.
University Press, 1979), p. 245.
3 J. Heinzen, Inventing a Soviet Countryside. State Power and the Transformation of
Rural Russia 1917–29 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), p. 9.
4 E.G. Gimpel’son, Formirovanie sovetskogo politicheskoi sistemy 1917–1923 gg.
(Moscow: Nauka, 1995); E.G. Gimpel’son, Rabochii klass v upravlenii sovetskim
gosudarstvom. Noiabr’ 1917–1920 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1982); E.N. Gorodetskii,
Rozhdenie sovetskogo gosudarstva 1917–18 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1965); E.N.
Gorodetskii (ed.), Stroitel’stvo sovetskogo gosudarstva: sbornik statei k 70-letiiu E.B.
Genkinoi (Moscow: Nauka, 1972); M.P. Iroshnikov, ‘K voprosu o slome burzhuaznoi
gosudarstvennoi mashiny v Rossii’ in Iu.S. Tokarev (ed.), Problemy Gosudarstvennogo
stroitel’stva v pervye gody sovetskoi vlasti. Sbornik statei (Leningrad: Nauka,
1973), pp. 54–5; M.P. Iroshnikov, Osushchestvlenie mechty. V.I. Lenin i gosudarstv
sovetov: istoriko dokumental’nye ocherki (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1980); M.P. Iroshnikov,
Sozdanie sovetskogo tsentral’nogo gosudarstvennogo apparata: sovet narodnykh
komissarov i narodnye komissariaty, oktiabr 1917–ianvar 1918 (Moscow: Nauka,
1966); E.I. Korenevskaia, Stanovlenie vysshikh organov Sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo
upravleniia (Moscow: Nauka, 1975); E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–23, 3
vols (London: Macmillan, 1950–3); W. Pietsch, Revolution und Staat. Institutionen
als Trager der Macht in Sowjetrussland 1917–1922 (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft
und Politik,1969); J. Hough, and M. Fainsod, How the Soviet Union Is Governed
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979).
5 T. Uldricks, Diplomacy and Ideology. The Origins of Soviet Foreign Relations
1917–30 (London: Sage, 1979); G.P. Makarova, Narodnyi Komissariat po delam
natsional’nostei RSFSR 1917–23 gg (Moscow: Nauka, 1987).
6 Daniel T. Orlovsky, ‘State Building in the Civil War Era: The Role of the Lower
Middle Strata’ in Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg, and Ronald Grigor
Notes 197
Suny (eds) Party, State and Society in the Russian Civil War, (Michigan: Indiana
University Press, 1989), p. 198; Heinzen, Inventing a Soviet Countryside, pp. 16–22.
This ‘continuity’ view is also seen in D. Rowney and E. Huskey, Russian Bureaucracy
and the State Officialdom: Officialdom from Alexander III to Vladimir Putin
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), p. 23.
7 Rigby, Lenin’s Government, p. 12.
8 See S. Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Soviet Organization
of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October 1917–21
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in
Power. The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2007), p. 19.
9 I.L. Davitnidze, Kollegii ministerstv. Pravovoe polozhenie i organizatsiia raboty
(Moscow: Iuridicheskaia Literature, 1972).
10 M. Gribanov, ‘K istorii razvitiia edinonachaliia i kollegial’nosti v narodnyk
komissariatakh’, Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, no. 3 (1930), pp. 61–9.
11 Davitnidze, Kollegii ministerstv, p. 33.
12 Quoted in Rigby, Lenin’s Government, pp. 4–5.
13 Lev Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Anchor Foundation,
1980), p. 322.
14 Quoted in Rigby, Lenin’s Government, p. 4.
15 Krupskaia, Vospominaniia o Lenine, pp. 338–9
16 N.K. Krupskaia, Vospominaniia o Lenine, 2nd edition (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo
Politcheskoi Literatury, 1968), pp. 339–40.
17 RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 1806, l. 69.
18 Ibid., l. 34.
19 Ibid., l. 36.
20 Shliapnikov in Krupskaia, Vospominaniia, p. 28.
21 DSV, vol. 1, pp. 59–63 (Decree on Education).
22 See Decree on Commissariat of Paths of Communication, DSV, vol. 2, 18–19.
23 See minutes of Central Committee sitting December 1918 RGASPI f. 17 (Central
Committee of the Russian Communist Party, Bolsheviks), op. 3, d. 7, l. 2: ‘On the
work of the collegia and commissariats, to revive the work of the collegia by the
introduction to them of outstanding local workers from corresponding sections
of local soviets…Recognise that the work undertaken in this direction by Internal
Affairs is correct.’
24 RGASPI f. 5 (Lenin’s Secretariat), op. 1, d. 1806, l. 25.
25 V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution (Penguin: London, 1992), p. 37.
26 Vestnik Narodnogo Komissariata Truda, Nos. 2–3 (1918), pp. 27–28.
27 J.B. Sorenson, The Life and Death of Soviet Trade Unionism (New York: Atherton,
1969), p. 79.
198 Notes
28 Vtoroi Vserossiiskii s”ezd professional’nykh soiuzov, pp. 16–25 ianvaria

1919g., Desiatyi s”ezd RKP(b), Stenograficheskii otchet. Mart 1921 goda
(Moscow: Gosizdat, 1963).
29 Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, p. 112.
30 DSV, vol. 2, pp. 556–7.
31 The ‘Decree on the Title of People’s Commissar’ of 27 July 1918 reads: ‘The title
of People’s Commissar belongs to one person only, confirmed by the VTsIK and
appearing as a member of Sovnarkom, and nobody else can appropriate this title.’
This decree suggests that multiple members of the collegium had been sharing the
title between them. Multiple representatives of commissariats turning up at the
sittings of Sovnarkom had disrupted the continuity of its work. This testifies to the
spirit of ‘collegiality’ and equality within the commissariats. DSV, vol. 3, p. 101.
32 DSV, vol. 1, pp. 20–1.
33 See Shliapnikov’s recollections on the setting up of the Commissariat of Labour: ‘To
the Commission for Labour, or the collegium as it is now called, were appointed
the following persons.’ In Krupskaia, Vospominaniia, p. 26.
34 DSV, vol, 2, p. 489 and vol. 3, p. 310.
35 Although the Bolsheviks wanted to equalize pay across all levels of employees and
workers, within a short period they had begun to develop complex wage scales and
ranks in government institutions. See the chart on ‘Tariffs of Pay of the Work of
Employees of Central State Institutions’ in GARF f. 4085 (RSFSR Rabkrin 1917–
23), op. 1, d. 8, ll. 1–6.
36 DSV, vol. 2, p. 18.
37 DSV, vol. 2, pp. 18–19.
38 V.N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1991), pp. 91–4.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Shliapnikov in Krupskaia, Vospominaniia, p. 26.
43 Pestkovskii cited in L. Trotsky, On Stalin (London: Macgibbon and Kee, 1968), pp.
255–62.
44 Ibid.
45 Sovnarkom sitting of 7 January 1918 in Iu.N Amiantov (ed.), Protokoly zasedanii
Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov RSFSR (Moscow: Rosspen, 2006), p. 191.
46 GARF f. r–4085, op. 1, d. 10, l. 184.
47 RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2663, l. 19.
48 GARF f. 130 (RSFSR Sovnarkom 1917–23), op. 2, d. 11, l. 9.
49 Amiantov, Protokoly, pp. 21–4.
50 Ibid., p. 221.
Notes 199
51 Ibid., p. 339.
52 Ibid., p. 184.
53 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d.1 (2), l. 191. On 1 April, Sovnarkom transferred this question
to ‘a commission of representatives from the Commissariats of Internal Affairs,
Labour and Finance entrusted to work out the question and present a report on
it in Sovnarkom’. The following day, Sovnarkom, having heard the report of this
commission, proposed to ‘transfer this issue to a commission made up of five
members of the VTsIK. Entrust the commission to present the assessment of the
organisation of state control, and to send the project for implementation to the
collegium.’
54 For collegiality in Red Army see D.N. Collins, ‘The Russian Red Guard of 1917
and Lenin's utopia’, Journal of Russian Studies, No. 32 (1976), pp. 3–12; Erickson,
‘The Origins of the Red Army’; John Erickson, ‘Some Military and Political Aspects
of the “Militia Army” Controversy, 1919–1920’, in Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr
(London: Macmillan, 1974); D. Footman, Civil War in Russia (London: Routledge,
1961); On Workers’ Control see: Paul H. Avrich, ‘The Bolshevik Revolution
and Workers’ Control in Russian Industry’, Slavic Review, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1963),
pp. 47–63 ; M. Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control (London: Solidarity,
1970); J.-M.Chauvrier, ‘Controle ouvrier et “autogestion sauvage” en Russie’, Revue
des pays de t'Est, No. 1 (1973), pp. 71–100; Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism: The
Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy (London and New York: Verso, 1990); E.G.
Gimpel’son, ‘On Workers’ Control after the Passage of the Decree Nationalizing
Industry in the USSR’, Soviet Studies in History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (1984), pp. 34–54;
C. Goodey, ‘Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1918’,
Critique, No. 3 (1974), pp. 27–47’; Fredrick I. Kaplan, Bolshevik Ideology and the
Ethics of Soviet Labor. 1917–1920: The Formative Years (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1968); Michael Perrins, ‘Rabkrin and Workers’ Control in Russia, 1917–
34’, European History Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1980), pp. 225–46; W. Rosenberg,
‘Workers and Workers’ Control in the Russian Revolution’, History Workshop, No.
5 (Spring 1978), pp. 89–97; L. Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955).
55 V.I. Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, 3rd edition, XXII (Moscow: Politizdat,
1955–65), p. 41.
56 Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, pp. 104–10.
57 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. XXIII, p. 430.
58 Ibid., pp. 447–8.
59 For background biographical information on Shliapnikov see L.E. Holmes, ‘Soviet
Rewriting of 1917: The Case of Alexander Shliapnikov’, Slavic Review, Vol. 38, No. 2
(June 1979), pp. 224–42 and Barbara Allen, Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885–1937: Life
of an Old Bolshevik (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2015).
200 Notes
60 See John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (London: Penguin, 1977), p. 232
and A.G. Shliapnikov, ‘Vospominaniia’, Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia, No. 10 (1922),
pp. 24–32.
61 Shliapnikov, ‘Vospominaniia’, p. 28: ‘Of all the government institutions the People’s
Commissariat of Labour was organised first.’ See also GARF f. 382 (RSFSR People’s
Commissariat of Labour), op. 1, dd. 10–11.
62 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d. 19, l. 113–22.
63 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972–80), vol. 44, p. 95.
64 Lenin, Collected Works, vols 42, 63–6, 98, 128, 143, vol. 36, pp. 520–3.
65 For background biographical information on Nogin, see V. Arkhangel’sky,
Nogin: zhizn’ zamechatel’nikh lyudei (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1964).
66 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 1 (2), l. 233.
67 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 111–68.
68 DSV, vol. 3, pp. 104–6.
69 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d 19, l. 88.
70 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d 19, ll. 92–8.
71 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d. 9, l. 85
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d. 3, l. 65.
75 Ibid., l. 66.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
80 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d. 9, l. 65.
81 Ibid., l. 64
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid.
88 Ibid., l. 64 ob.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid., l. 57.
91 Ibid., l. 56.
92 Ibid., l. 55.
93 One of the relatives reinstated illegally to the commissariat staff by Shliapnikov.
Ibid., l. 56.
Notes 201
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid., l. 51.
96 Ibid.
97 GARF f. 130, op. 2, d. 11, l.15.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.
101 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 51–40.
102 RGASPI f. 17, op. 2, d. 2, ll. 1–2.
103 Ibid., l. 2.
104 RGASPI f. 17, op. 2, d. 3, l. 1.
105 Ibid., l. 2.
106 RGASPI f. 19 (Sovnarkom and STO RSFSR), op. 1, d. 205, l. 1. The Sovnarkom
minutes read: ‘4. Announcement of Nogin on his leaving the collegium of the
People’s Commissariat of labour in view of his entering Vesenkha. 5. Appointment
as People’s Commissar for Labour (instead of Shliapnikov) of Comrade Shmidt.
Sverdlov suggested it, send for confirmation to VTsIK. 6. Appointment of Radus-
Zenkovich as Deputy People’s Commissar for Labour.’
107 GARF f. 382, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 10-45.
108 Ibid., l. 20.
109 See Nogin still participating in Sovnarkom sittings in May and June 1919: RGASPI
f. 130, op. 3, dd. 39, 40, 42, 47.
110 Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 44, p. 170. However, even in this remote location
Shliapnikov still managed to get himself into a conflict with fellow organizers
in the Gubkom of the CP of Astrakhan (p. 170).The Central Committee got
wind of this and on 19 December Shliapnikov’s new conflict was discussed at
its sitting: ‘From communications with Trotsky it emerges that a conflict has
arisen between Shliapnikov and Bosh from one side, and Zaks from the other. It
has emerged that Bosh has already left for Moscow so that the conflict has been
liquidated. Concerning the future, it was decided that in the case of the emergence
of conflict to allow Trotsky to decide the question and summon Shliapnikov
from Astrakhan through the CC.’ In the end, however, this was not necessary and
Shliapnikov remained in Astrakhan until at least February 1919 (p. 193). Further
correspondence reveals that Shliapnikov was back in Moscow by April 1921 at
the latest (vol. 45, p. 114), but that Lenin was dissuaded from appointing him
to certain positions in the government because of his heavy-handedness. In one
note of this period Lenin wrote, in relation to a government appointment, that
‘Shliapnikov will not do…great tact is essential’ (vol. 45, p. 253).
111 DSV, vol. 7, pp. 48–9.
112 Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, p. 108.
202 Notes
113 V.I. Lenin, ‘Speech to 3rd All-Russian Congress of Economic Work Councils’,
January 1920 in Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. XXV, p. 17.
114 Ibid., pp. 17–19.
115 Ibid.
116 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, 5th edition, vol. XXXX, p. 378.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid.
119 Ibid.
120 Ekonomicheskaia Zhizn’, No. 63 (28 March 1920), p. 3.
121 Deviatyi s”ezd RKP(b), Mart-aprel’ 1920 goda. Protokoly (Moscow: Gosizdat
Politicheskoi Litertury, 1960), pp. 115–27.
122 Ibid., pp. 150–5.
123 Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism): A Reply to
Karl Kautsky (New York: Workers Party of America, 1922), pp. 115, 161.
124 Deviatyi s”ezd RKP(b), pp. 410–11.
125 Ibid., p. 204.
126 Krupskaia, ‘Sistema Teilora i organizatsiia raboty sovetskikh uchrezhdenii’,
Krasnaia Nov’ No. 1 (1921), pp. 140–5.
127 Ibid., 140–1.
128 Ibid.
129 Ibid.
130 Ibid.
131 Ibid., pp. 140–5.
132 1924 USSR Constitution, articles 56 and 57 in A.L. Unger, Constitutional
Development in the USSR (New York: Pica Press, 1981), p. 70.
133 Baylis, Governing by Committee. Collegial Leadership in Advanced Societies
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 3.
134 Max Weber, A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, The Theory of Social and
Economic Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), pp. 392–407.
135 Ibid. Baylis, Governing by Committee, p. 156. This negative characterization of
collegiality in modern political systems seems to be confirmed by the rarity
of collegial government in practice. Baylis highlights that in modern history,
‘Switzerland is the only nation in which both formal and de facto collegial
leadership have persisted…over an extended and uninterrupted period of time,
now some 140 years’ (p. 21). While Baylis’s case study of collegial leadership in
the Swiss political system demonstrates that it is not impossible for a system of
this type to survive, it also highlights specific features that allow it to occur: the
‘political culture and social peculiarities of Switzerland’ provide a highly
favourable setting for collegial government: in particular the cross-cutting
pluralism of language, religion and class, and its strong institutional traditions.
Notes 203
Moreover, its relative ‘economic success’ (i.e. its leading position in international
finance and large foreign investment) make collegiality possible as the affluent
Swiss are able to tolerate inefficiencies in policy-making. If these are the necessary
conditions for successful collegial administration, then it seems that its chances of
survival in the conditions of the early Soviet period were very slim (pp. 32–3).
136 Cited in D. Rowney, Transition to Technocracy. The Structural Origins of the Soviet
Administrative State (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 10.
137 Baylis, Governing by Committee, p. 156.
138 Ibid., p. 156.
139 Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organizations, pp. 329–41.
Chapter 6
1 L.D. Trotsky, quoted in Shachtman, The Struggle for the New Course, published
in one volume with his translation of Leon Trotsky’s The New Course
(New York: New International Publishing Company, 1943), p. 54.
2 Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii raboche-krestianskogo pravitel’stva RSFSR
(Moscow and Petrograd: 1917–22), pp. 1–2.
3 RGASPI, f. 19, op. 1, dd. 370–406.
4 RGASPI f. 19, op. 3, dd. 150–376. See also G.I. Leplevskii, O rabote V.I. Lenina v
Sovnarkome v 1921–1922 gg. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1971).
5 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, dd. 1–15.
6 Ibid., d. 33, l. 2.
7 Ibid., d. 261, l. 4.
8 Ibid., d. 277, l. 1.
9 Ibid., dd. 52–60.
10 Ibid., dd. 61–3.
11 Ibid., dd. 127–57. The practice of telephone surveys originated in late December
1920 and the frequency quickly accelerated in early 1921. Ibid., d. 137.
12 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, dd. 195–286.
13 V. Durdenevskii, ‘Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov’, Sovetskoe pravo, No. 1 (1922),
pp. 66–7.
14 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 310, l. 2.
15 DSV, vol. 5, pp. 425–6.
1967), p.107. Ia.I. Gindin, Vospominaniia o Vladimire Iliche (Moscow: Politizdat,
1973), p. 9.
17 See K.M. Anderson (ed.), Stenogrammy zasedanii Politbiuro TsK VKP(b) 1923–
1938 gg., 3 vols (Moscow: Rosspen, 2007).
204 Notes
18 RGASPI f. 19, op. 1, d. 342, ll. 1–2.

19 Ibid., dd. 247, ll. 1–3, 340, ll. 1–2.
20 Ibid., dd. 241–442.
21 Ibid., op. 4, d. 43, ll. 1–7.
22 Ibid., op. 1, d. 407, ll. 1–3.
23 Ibid., op. 4, d. 45, ll. 1–9. From May to December 1921, STO set up a further 103
commissions. See V. Durdenevskii, ‘Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov’, Sovetskoe
pravo, No.1 (1922), p. 55; S. Brodovich, ‘STO i Ekoso RSFSR’, Vlast’ sovetov, No. 5
(1924), p. 35.
24 Durdenevskii, ‘Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov’, p. 55.
25 RGASPI f. 130, op. 4, d. 1, l. 71.
26 Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii raboche-krestianskogo pravitel’stva RSFSR
(Moscow: 1920), pp. 59–269.
27 RGASPI f. 19, op. 1, d. 408, ll. 1–2.
28 Odinadtsatyi s”ezd RKP (b), mart-aprel’ 1922 goda. Stenograficheskii otchet
29 RGASPI f. 19, op. 4, dd. 58–70. Only a matter of days after Lenin’s damning
speech at Eleventh Party Congress, the STO Commissions on internal trade (26
April 1921), and the ‘Utilization Commission’ (May 1921) were formed and met
throughout the rest of 1921 and the Internal Trade Commission surviving until
1923. Other STO commissions active throughout 1922 included the ‘Commission
for Normalizations of Railway Thoroughfare’, the ‘Extraordinary Commission
on Exports’, the ‘Special Commission on Ural and Siberian Enterprises’, the
‘Commission on Working Pay’ (later the Supreme Tariff Council of STO), and the
‘STO Commission on Fuel Supplies to Railways’, E.B. Genkina, Lenin. Predsedatel’
Sovnarkoma i STO (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960), p. 25.
30 E.B. Genkina, Lenin. Predsedatel’ Sovnarkoma i STO (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo
Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960), p. 25.
31 Ibid.
32 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, dd. 1–16, 68–99, 145–92, 286–305.
33 Ibid., dd. 146 (pt. 14), 147 (pt. 6), 148 (pt. 5), 152 (pt.16), 157 (pt. 20), 160 (pt. 6,
17), 161 (pt. 6), 162 (pt. 2), 164 (pt. 19), 172 (pt. 7), 178 (pt. 5), 183 (pt. 1), 293 (pt.
6), d. 305 (pt. 5).
34 Ibid., dd. 146 (pt. 13), 147 (pt. 1), 152 (pt. 1, 17), 153 (pt. 2, 17), 158 (pt. 13), 172
(pt. 16, 18), 291 (pt. 1, 15), 294 (pt. 11), 298 (pt. 21).
35 David Priestland, ‘Bolshevik Ideology and the debate over party-state relations’,
Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 10 (1997), pp. 41–5.
36 Odinadtsatyi s”ezd, p. 398.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., p. 86.
Notes 205
39 Ibid., pp. 86–7.
40 Ibid. 87.
41 Ibid., pp. 86–8.
42 Ibid., p. 88.
43 Ibid., p. 144.
44 Ibid., p. 145.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., p. 525.
47 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, dd. 62–77.
48 N.S. Simonov, ‘Reforma politicheskaia stroiia: zamysly i real’nost’ (1921–1923gg.)’,
Voprosy istorii KPSS, No. 1 (1991), p. 47.
49 RGASPI f. 50, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 200–5.
50 Ibid., ll. 201.
51 Iu.N. Amiantov (ed.), Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov RSFSR
(Moscow: Rosspen, 2006), pp. 20–398.
52 GARF f. 130, op. 3, dd. 39–49.
53 Ibid., op. 4, d. 1, ll. 58–101.
54 RGASPI f. 19, op. 1, dd. 416–20. RGASPI f. 19, op. 1, dd. 458–540.
55 Odinadtsatyi s”ezd RKP(b), p. 86.
56 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 58 (point 6), d. 60 (point 1), d. 85, d. 97, d. 122.
57 Ibid., dd. 134, 153, 155, 183, 184, 187, 210, 213, 227, 233, 234, 241, 242, 244,. 245.
58 Ibid., dd. 259, 261, 263, 265, 268, 270, 272, 278, 281, 283, 284, 288, 290, 304,. 307,
316, 317, 320 and f. 17, op. 86, d. 17, l. 119.
59 Ibid., d. 58.
60 Ibid., d. 60.
61 Ibid., d. 122.
62 Ibid., d. 134.
63 Ibid., d. 153.
64 Ibid., d. 281.
65 Ibid., d. 263.
66 Ibid., d. 316.
67 Ibid., d. 284.
68 Ibid., d. 288.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., d. 307.
71 Ibid., op. 86, d. 17, ll. 119–20.
72 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 45 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972–80),
pp. 428–9.
73 Ibid., p. 706.
74 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 251.
206 Notes
75 Ibid., d. 253.
76 Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 45, p. 707.
77 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 280.
78 Ibid., d. 52, ll. 1–2.
79 Ibid. f. 19, op. 1, d. 340, ll. 1–2.
80 Ibid. f. 17, op. 3, d. 55, ll. 1–2.
81 Ibid. f. 19, op. 3, d. 344, l. 1 and d. 246, l. 2.
82 Ibid. f. 17, op. 3, d. 64, ll. 1–2.
83 GARF f. 130, op. 4, d. 1, l. 68.
84 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 69 and GARF f. 130, op. 4, d. 1, l. 90.
85 Ibid., dd. 143, 144, 146.
86 Ibid. f. 19, op. 1, d. 416, ll. 1–3.
87 Ibid. f. 17, op. 3, d. 144, ll. 1–2.
88 Ibid. d. 146, l. 1.
89 Ibid. f. 19, op. 1, d. 416, ll. 1–3.
90 Ibid., d. 417, ll. 1–2.
91 Ibid. f. 17, op. 3, dd. 210, 213, 233, 242.
92 Ibid., dd. 268, 270, 272, 278.
93 Ibid., op. 87, d. 29, ll. 1–7.
94 Ibid., dd. 31–5.
95 Ibid., f. 50, op. 1, d. 3, l. 20.
96 Ibid., ll. 117–19.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid., l. 120.
99 Ibid., ll. 121–22.
100 Ibid., l. 122.
101 Ibid., ll. 122–7.
102 Ibid., ll. 134–47.
103 L.D. Trotsky (trans. Max Shachtman) The New Course (New York: New
International Publishing Company, 1943).
104 L.D. Trotsky (trans. Brian Pierce), Tasks Before the Twelfth Congress of the Russian
Communist Party (London: New Park Publications, 1975), pp. 27–30.
105 RGASPI f. 50, op. 1, d. 3, l. 200.
106 Ibid.
107 Ibid., op. 2, d. 3, ll. 200–5.
108 Dvenadtsatyi s”ezd rossiskoi kommunisticheskoi partii (bolshevikov).
Stenograficheskii otchet. 17–25 aprelia 1923 (Moscow : Izdatel’stvo krasnaia nov’,
1923), pp. 40–1.
109 Ibid., pp. 41–3.
110 Ibid. pp. 42–4. Stalin expressed similar sentiments in his organizational report, stating
that Lenin ‘said that the leading role of the Party must be strengthened’, pp. 55–6.
Notes 207
1 11 Ibid., pp. 42–4.
112 Ibid., p. 44.
113 Ibid., pp. 43–4.
114 Ibid., p. 119.
115 Ibid., pp. 119–20.
116 Ibid., p. 319.
117 Ibid., p. 106.
118 Ibid., p. 114.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid., pp. 617–21.
121 Quoted in Max Shachtman, The Struggle for the New Course, published in one
volume with his translation of Trotsky’s The New Course, p. 54.
122 Trotsky, The New Course, p. 25.
Chapter 7
1 RGASPI, f. 19, op. 1, dd. 407–57 and 57 out of 105 STO sittings. Ibid., dd. 458–
540. and even less in STO, just 5 out of 96. Ibid., op. 3, dd. 281–376.
2 L. Trotsky, My Life (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 482.
University Press, 1979), pp. 107–8, 112, 119, 225–6.
4 V.I. Lenin, Lenin, V.I., Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia (PSS), vol. 52, p. 36.
5 Rykov was not, as is mistakenly written in his official Granat Biography, appointed
as Sovnarkom deputy chairman. He was appointed only as Lenin’s deputy in STO
at this time. V.I. Zhelieznova (ed.), ‘Rykov, Aleksei Ivanovich’, Entsiklopedicheskii
slovar’ Granat, 46, Part 2, Columns 223–30 (Moscow: Granat, 1910–48).
6 Samuel Oppenheim, ‘The Supreme Economic Council 1917–21’, Soviet Studies,
Vol. 25, No. 1 (July 1973) pp. 3–37, p. 7.
7 Ibid., pp. 3–27.
8 Odinadtsatyi s”ezd RKP(b), Mart-aprel’ 1922 goda. Stenograficheskii otchet
(Moscow: 1961), pp. 36–7.
9 S.A. Oppenheim, ‘The Supreme Economic Council 1917–21’, Soviet Studies, Vol.
25, No. 1 (July 1973), pp. 11, 23–4.
10 S.A. Oppenheim, ‘Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov (1881–1938): A Political Biography’,
PhD Dissertation, 1972, Indiana University, p. 215: ‘STO was the body which did
what Vesenkha had been organized for, i.e., to unify the economic activities of the
government’.
11 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 169, l. 1.
12 Simon Liberman, Building Lenin’s Russia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1945), p. 65.
208 Notes
13 Ibid., pp. 65–6.
14 RGASPI f. 19, op. 3, dd. 111, 113, 117, 122, 126, 130, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139,
140, 144, 148, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 159, 162, 164, 168, 170, 172, 173, 177, 179,
180, 182, 185, 194, 197, 198, 200, 202, 204, 206, 208, 210, 212, 214, 216.
15 Ibid., dd. 220–39.
16 Ibid., f. 17, op. 3, d. 185, l. 2.
17 Ibid., f. 19, op. 1, dd. 430, 434, 435.
18 Ibid. and op. 3 dd. 220, 221, 223, 226, 228, 231, 234, 236, 237, 238.
19 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. 53, pp. 4, 5, 13, 23, 26–7, 50, 65, 198, 289.
20 Oppenheim, ‘Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov’, p. 218.
21 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3,d. 184, l. 2. As early as 20 April 1921 the Politburo had
discussed ‘Rykov’s illness’ RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 153, l. 2. On the day of Rykov’s
appointment as deputy Lenin wrote a letter to Rykov’s wife, enquiring on his
health.
22 Ibid., f. 19, op 1, dd. 436–9.
23 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. 53, p. 140–2.
24 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 237, l. 1. (point 1. Telephone survey 27 Nov 1921 ‘on the
illness of Rykov’).
p. 179; N.K. Krupskaia, Vospominaniia o Lenine (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1957), p. 427.
26 Krupskaia, Vospominaniia o Lenine, pp. 428.
27 Krupskaia, Vospominaniia o Lenine, pp. 427–8. Lars Lih, Bread and Authority in
Russia 1914–21 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 79.
28 There is some confusion among Tsiurupa’s biographers as to the precise date of
his appointments as deputy, and then full People’s Commissar for Foodstuffs. This
confusion was complicated by the fact that Krupskaia incorrectly recalled in her
memoirs that Tsiurupa was made commissar in early 1919. However the archive
sources allow as to pin-point the precise dates of his appointments. Tsiurupa was
made deputy People’s Commissar for Foodstuffs on 29 November 1917 (RGASPI
f. 19, op. 1, d. 14, l. 2). He was confirmed by Sovnarkom as full People’s Commissar
for Foodstuffs on 25 February 1918 (ibid., d. 69, l. 1 ob).
30 G.M. Leplevskii, On the Work of V.I. Lenin in Sovnarkom 1921–22
(Moscow: Politizdat, 1971), p. 11.
31 V.A. Tsiurupa, Kolokola Pamiati (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury,
1986), p. 122.
32 Leplevskii, On the Work of V.I. Lenin in Sovnarkom 1921–22, pp. 11–12.
33 RGASPI f. 17, op. 2, dd. 16, 24, 45.
p. 179.
Notes 209
35 Tsiurupa, Kolokola Pamiati, pp. 160–1.

36 Ibid., p. 159.
37 Liberman, Building Lenin’s Russia, pp. 13, 66.
38 L. Fotieva, Iz zhizni V.I. Lenina (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury),
p. 227.
39 Ibid., p. 227.
40 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. 53, pp. 25, 38.
41 Ibid., p. 282.
42 Ibid., p. 309.
43 Ibid., p. 311.
44 Ibid., vol. 44, pp. 253–4.
45 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 239, l. 1.
46 Ibid., d. 240, l. 2.
47 Ibid., d. 241, l. 1.
48 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. 54, pp. 50–1.
49 Ibid., p. 71.
50 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, dd. 265, 267, 269, 283, 287, 290, 293 (February–May)
(December 1922–May 1923, dd. 325, 344, 351, 357, 358 364).
51 Tsiurupa, Kolokola Pamiati, p. 170.
53 RGASPI, f. 158 (Tsiurupa), op. 1, dd. 102–14.
54 Tsiurupa, Kolokola Pamiati, p. 170.
56 Ibid., p. 364.
57 Ibid.
59 Ibid., pp. 366–7.
60 Ibid., pp. 369–70.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 RGASPI, f. 19, op. 1, d.473 and op. 3, d. 303.
65 Ibid.
66 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 78, l. 3.
68 Ibid., pp. 152–3.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., pp. 152–9.
71 Jan Meyer (ed.), The Trotsky Papers, vol. 2 (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p. 121.
72 Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. 53, p. 378.
210 Notes
73 Ibid., p. 379.
74 RGASPI, f. 19, op.1, dd. 478–503.
75 Ibid., dd. 504–18.
76 Ibid., op. 3, dd. 301–76.
77 Ibid., d. 290, l. 3 (point 30).
78 GARF f. 5446, op. 31, d. 17, l. 140.
79 Ibid., l. 62.
80 Ibid., d. 40, l. 86.
82 Ibid.
83 Lenin’s letter to Avanesov on Tsiurupa’s illness on 1 September 1922 in Polnoe
Sobranie Sochinenia, vol. 54, pp. 277–8. The Politburo discussed Rykov’s leave due
to illness on 7 September 1922. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 311, l. 3 (point 18).
84 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 312, l. 4.
85 Richard Pipes (ed.), The Unknown Lenin. From the Secret Archive (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1996), p. 171.
86 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 312, l. 2 (point 16).
88 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 297, l. 2 (point 6).
89 Ibid., p. 7.
90 Ibid., op. 3, dd. 357–76.
91 Ibid., op. 1, dd. 519–40.
93 Ibid.
94 ‘Journal of Lenin’s Duty Secretaries’, Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), p. 470.
95 Ibid., p. 10.
96 Ibid., pp. 328–9.
97 Ibid., pp. 331–2.
98 Ibid.
100 Ibid.
101 Journal of Lenin’s Duty Secretaries, p. 11.
102 Ibid., p. 12.
103 Isaac Deutscher claimed that ‘On the 11th April (1922) at a session of the
Politburo, Lenin proposed that Trotsky should be appointed deputy chairman
of the council of People’s Commissars.’ Archival sources reveal no sitting on this
date, and no mention of appointing Trotsky as deputy can be found in any of
the Politburo minutes of spring–summer 1922. Deutscher gives the citation ‘The
Trotsky Archive’ as his source, but subsequent researchers have not come across
Notes 211
such evidence there. Perhaps Deutscher interpreted Trotsky’s critical remarks

on Lenin’s draft on the ‘Programme of the work of the Deputies’ from April
1922 with a personal refusal of the post. Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed.
Trotsky: 1921–1929 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 189. RGASPI
f. 17, op. 3, d. 312, l. 4 and dd. 300–25. Rigby, Lenin’s Government, p. 293 n.19.
104 G. Swain, Trotsky (Harlow: Pearson, 2006), p. 138.
105 D. Volkogonov, Trotsky. The Eternal Revolutionary (London: HarperCollins, 1996),
p. 219.
106 Swain, Trotsky, p. 138.
107 Trotsky, My Life, p. 478.
108 Ibid., pp. 478–9.
109 Swain writes that Lenin offered Trotsky the deputyship to ‘tr(y) to win
Trotsky over’; Swain, Trotsky, p. 136. Pipes states that the offer was made to
‘smooth Trotsky’s ruffled feathers’. R. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime
(London: Harvill, 1994), p. 467.
110 Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed. Trotsky: 1921–1929, p. 36.
111 Ibid., pp. 36–7. Ian Thatcher, ‘On Trotsky’, History Workshop Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1
(1990), p. 244.
112 Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, p. 467.
113 Volkogonov, Trotsky. The Eternal Revolutionary, p. 219.
114 Victor Danilov claimed to have uncovered a document which solved the mystery
of why Trotsky refused the deputyship. He uncritically accepted the explanation
of his refusal, expressed in Trotsky’s concluding speech (recorded by Boris
Bazhanov) at the Joint Plenum of the CC and CCC on 26 October 1923.
In this speech Trotsky states that he turned down the position on the grounds
of his Jewish ethnicity: ‘I should now tell you, comrades, about my conversation
with Vladimir Ilich about the deputy chairmanship of the Sovnarkom…The fact
is, comrades, that there is one personal aspect of my work, which although playing
no role in my personal life and my day-to-day existence, is nonetheless of great
political significance. This is my Jewish origin. I clearly remember Vladmir Ilich
stretched out on the floor in the Smolny on 25 October 1917, saying to me: “We
must make you People’s Commissar of the Interior, Comrade Trotsky…I refused.
I said that in my opinion there was no point in playing into the hands of our
enemies.” “It would be far better”, I said, “if there was not a single Jew in the first
Soviet revolutionary government…When Vladimir Ilich proposed that I take on
the job of sole deputy-chairman, I firmly turned down his offer on the grounds,
as before, that we should not give our enemies the opportunity to say that our
country was being ruled by a Jew.” ’ However, Trotsky’s claim that he refused the
post because of his Jewish background does not stand up to scrutiny, particularly
as Kamenev, already a deputy, was also of Jewish descent. When viewed in its
212 Notes
proper context the speech seems more like a discreet excuse. Trotsky had often
reiterated the real reason for his refusal over the course of the preceding two years.
Cited in R.V. Danilov, ‘We Are Starting to Learn about Trotsky’, History Workshop,
No. 29 (Spring 1990), pp. 143–4.
115 Liberman, Building Lenin’s Russia, p. 67. See for example Tsiurupa’s contrasting
views with the other deputies on the external trade monopoly in letter in RGASPI,
f. 158, op. 1, d. 108, l. 5.
116 Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 2009), p. 299.
117 L. D Trotsky, The New Course (New York: New International Publishing Company,
1943), pp. 78–85.
Conclusion

University Press, 1979), pp. 182–3.
2 Ibid., pp. 227–8.
3 Ibid., pp. 181–4.
4 Lara Cook (Douds), ‘Collegiality in the People’s Commissariats, 1917–20’,
Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2013), pp. 1–31.
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Index
administration 4, 15, 17–20, 22, 24, 31, 46, ‘collegiality’ 3, 4, 10, 66, 72, 73, 97–124
56, 81, 97, 98–101, 105, 108, 119–20, collegium, or collegia plural (commissariat
122–4, 125, 131, 132, 147, 152, 156–7 boards) 23, 29, 30, 46, 49, 80, 97–124
Administration Department of commissions (of Sovnarkom) 32, 39, 50,
Sovnarkom (Upravlenie delami) 10, 62, 107, 113, 134, 121, 129–30, 157,
41, 55–73, 74, 77–80, 94, 156 159, 160, 161
agriculture 47, 49, 137 Central Committee 6, 50–3, 64, 84, 85,
People’s Commissar for 28, 29, 30, 34, 87, 89, 99, 110, 116–17, 131, 133,
45, 52, 127, 130, 133, 137, 139, 160 135–6, 140–2, 143, 146, 150, 151,
Alekseev, N. N. 30 153, 155, 158, 165, 169
Algasov, V. A. 29, 32 Commission of the Party Central
All-Russian Congress of Soviets of the Committee to fight bureaucratism 166
National Economy 108 Communist Party 4, 83, 146, 172–3
army 1, 18, 22, 26, 37–8, 43, 47, 64, 78, Congresses 24, 51–3, 56, 72, 85, 86,
105, 125, 129, 146 87, 119, 120–1, 125, 126, 130, 136,
Avanesov, V. A. 72, 115, 129, 152, 163 138, 139–43, 146, 151, 153, 158, 161,
Avilov, N. P. (Glebov) 107 173
Orgburo 51, 151, 159, 165, 169
Bolshevik Party. See Communist Party party fraction of Sovnarkom
Bonch-Bruevich, V. D. 48, 57–9, 68–71, Administration Department 70–2
74, 76, 77, 80, 94, 99 party fraction of the VTsIK 94–5
Brest-Litovsk, treaty of 33–5, 37, 43, 45, Politburo of 125–47, 151, 152, 153, 155,
46, 51, 52, 90, 92–3 158–63, 165, 168, 169–71, 173
Brilliantov, A. N. 30, 180n. 34 Congress of Soviets 36, 86
Bubnov, A. S. 94, 106, 119 eighth, ninth, tenth 135
Bukharin, N. I. 53, 94, 104, 126, 140 fifth 37, 91
bureaucracy 3, 8, 9 19, 20, 98, 122–3, 129 first 21
‘bureaucratism’ in Soviet government merged with Peasants’ Congress 29
120, 156–7, 166–7 of Peasants Deputies 28
Lenin on bureaucracy 16, 18 second 2, 21, 22–5, 28, 29, 57, 87, 105,
108
Central Control Commission of the Party 167 seventh 118
Central Executive Committee of Soviets. sixth 91
See VTsIK sovereignty of 26, 170,
Central Statistical Administration 127 171, 173
Cheka 52, 69, 80 third, fourth 35
Chicherin, G. V. 42–3 Constituent Assembly 22,
Civil War 12, 20, 37–8, 118, 120, 125, 133 26, 46
effect on regime 4, 6, 9, 24, 39, 40, 52, dissolution of 24, 27, 33, 125
85, 91–2, 118, 121, 125, 126, 127, 131, Constitution of the RSFSR 99, 102, 103,
144–5, 169, 1171, 72, 173, 174 107, 108, 114–15, 122, 172
226 Index
Council of People’s Commissars. See Kremlin 42, 59, 60, 63, 64, 70, 71, 76, 80,
Sovnarkom 106, 153, 154, 155, 160, 164
Krestinskii, N. N. 53, 94, 127, 152,
Defence Council 39–40, 126–7. See also 190n. 87
STO Kronstadt uprising 125–6
Democratic Centralists 118–19, 121, 126 Krupskaia, N. K. 42, 100, 121, 122, 153
Deputy Chairmen of Sovnarkom 150–68
dictatorship of the proletariat 3, 7, 14, 18, ‘labour armies’ 139
27, 36, 47, 172 Latsis, M. I. 90, 180n. 23
Duma 1, 46, 88 Left Communists 36, 37, 93, 94, 108,
Dzerzhinsky, F. E. 69, 94 126, 133
resign from Sovnarkom 35, 46
economy 39, 46, 118, 120, 126, 145, 146, Left SRs 9, 22, 23, 45, 46, 51, 88, 104, 107,
151, 171 108
coalition government 23–4, 25–37,
Fomin, V. V. 137 89–94, 101
food supplies 1, 7, 25, 32, 36, 38, 42, 47, Mirbach assassination 90
49, 50, 95, 96, 110, 126, 130, 131, 153 resign from Sovnarkom 52
foreign policy and relations 37, 38, 47, 50, legitimacy 2, 6, 22, 24, 33
95, 125, 131 regime’s two sources of 170, 171,
Fotieva, L. A. 55, 59, 60–1, 62, 64, 66, 172, 173
67, 156 Lenin, chairman of Sovnarkom, chapters
2, 3 and 6
Germany 15 assassination attempt 42, 153, 160
peace with 23, 34–5, 38, 46, 86, 88, 92, illness chapter 7, 133, 136, 169
93, 94 writings 6, 12–20, 35, 108, 164,
Rykov goes for treatment in 152, 154, 165, 173
155, 157 Little Sovnarkom. See Malyi Sovnarkom
Gorbunov, N. P. 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, Lunacharsky, A. V. 32, 44, 98, 161
66–70, 76–7
Gosplan 129, 142, 146, 160, 161, 165, 167 Malyi Sovnarkom 30–9, 49, 50, 156, 157,
159, 160, 161
industry 38, 39, 49, 118, 120, 124, 130, Martov, Iu. O. 89, 92, 93, 104
140–1 Marxism 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 13, 16, 50, 132,
interdepartmental consultation 61, 73, 147, 171
128, 171 Mensheviks 22, 26, 89, 90, 92, 104, 105
Izmailovich, A. A. 29, 37, 91 Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC)
1, 2
Kadets 26, 27 Miliutin, V. P. 119, 121
Kalinin, M. I. 53, 77, 162
Kamenev, L. B. 53, 87, 88, 137, 140, 141, NEP (New Economic Policy) 120, 126,
142, 144 131, 133, 134, 139–40, 151, 153
as Sovnarkom Deputy Chairman 149, Nevskii, V. I. 39, 106, 180n. 23
154, 158, 162–5, 166 Nicholas II (Tsar) 1, 21, 64, 81
Karelin, V. A. 25, 29, 30, 32, 36, 45, 46, 89 Nogin, V. P. 109–17
Kautsky, Karl 13
Kolchak, Admiral A. V. 38 Osinsky, N. (V. V. Obolenskii) 45, 53, 118–
Kolegaev, A. K. 25, 29, 32, 34 21, 132–8, 140, 141, 142–7, 170, 173
Kollontai, A. M. 44, 45, 94, 126
Krasin, L. B. 39, 137, 145, 146, 152 Pannekoek, Anton 13
Index 227
Paris Commune 16, 18, 147 Shliapnikov, A. G. 30, 45, 62, 105, 109–17,
Parliament, as bourgeois con 3, 13–18, 126
27, 174 Shreider, A. A. 30, 179n. 21
Congress of Soviets as Soviet Shteinberg, I. Z. 32, 34, 46, 92, 93, 107
parliament 89–90, 96, 172 Skrypnik, M. 58, 59, 60, 61, 68–9, 74
parliamentarism and separation of Smirnov, V. M. 118–19
powers 23, 147 Smolny Institute 21, 22, 35, 57–8, 63, 65,
peasantry 1, 3, 22, 23, 25, 28–30, 36–8, 74, 80, 84, 99, 106
74–9, 101, 125, 126 ‘Soviet Democracy’ 3, 22, 27, 80–1, 125,
Committees of the Village Poor 134, 174
(Kombedy) 36 idea of 11–20
Peasants’ Congress 29, 37 Soviets 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 18, 21–3, 24–8, 29,
People’s Commissariats 30, 42, 56, 61, 80, 33, 35, 36, 45, 46, 48
102, 106, 107, 108, 153, 156, 157, 158, local soviets 63
160, 162 relationship between party and soviets
Pestkovskii, S. S. 105 53, 84
Petrovskii, G. I. 32, 180n. 23 Sverdlov and 86–92
Podbelskii, V. N. 100 Sovnarkom 21–54, 55, 83, 125, 148
Pokrovskii, M. N. 90 and agenda 40–1, 128–31
political police. See Cheka appeals against decisions of 137–9
Pravda 26, 28, 51, 60, 132 business 46–50
Proshyan, P. O. 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 46 Spiridonova, M. A. 30, 34, 36, 37, 91
Provisional Government 1, 8, 13, 21, Stalin, I. V. 30, 32, 39, 43, 44, 51, 52, 53,
23, 25, 26, 45, 65, 98, 109, 134, 60, 81, 83, 84, 119, 128, 142, 162, 163,
186n. 2 165, 166
as People’s Commissar for Nationalities
Rabkrin (Workers’ and Peasants’ 43, 105–6
Inspection) 3, 4, 20, 72, 127, 138, 147, Stasova, E. D. 84, 85
157, 160, 161, 164–5 STO (Labour and Defense Council, just
Reception (priemnaia) 3, 4, 10, 12, 56, 63, Defense until March 1920) 41, 62,
73–81 65, 67, 126–7, 128–30, 137, 139, 142,
Red Guards 21, 27, 74 149, 150–7, 160–3, 167
Revolutionary Military Council 39 Stuchka, P. I. 61, 80, 107
Right (and moderate) SRs 22, 26, 90–1, 92, Supreme Economic Council.
93, 104, 105 See Vesenkha
Russian past, continuity with 3 Sverdlov, Ia. M. 10, 32, 33, 43–4,
in personnel 41, 55, 98, 67, 109 51, 113
in political culture. See reception as chairman of CEC and Party
Rykov, A. I. 52, 119, 121 Secretariat 83–96
as Sovnarkom deputy
149–67 Tomskii, M. P. 109, 110, 114–15, 119, 121,
162
Sapronov, T. V. 118–19, 121 Trotsky, L. D. 4, 7, 30, 32, 35, 38, 39, 43,
Schmidt, V. V. 101–17 51, 53, 85, 88, 92, 99, 100, 106, 107,
Secretariat of Communist Party 52–3, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 125, 136, 139,
84–5, 128 140–2, 146–7, 160–1, 162
growth of proposed as Sovnarkom Deputy 149,
Secretariat of Sovnarkom 41, 57, 60–9, 72, 165–7
75, 78, 128 Trutovskii, V. Ie 29, 30, 31, 32
Semashko, N. A. 152 Tsiurupa, A. D. 42
228 Index
as deputy chairman of Sovnarkom 149, VTsIK 28, 29, 25–36, 39, 52, 72, 77, 85,
153–66 88–96, 102, 103, 114, 115, 116, 123,
as People’s Commissar for Food Supply 127, 133–6, 138, 147, 151, 157, 159,
64, 67, 78, 137 170–1, 173
Vesenkha (Supreme Economic Council) ‘war communism’ 12, 38, 120, 125, 126, 153
32, 45, 52, 70, 117, 127, 133, 137, 151, Workers’ Opposition 45, 126
160, 166, 207n. 10
Vikzhel 87, 105 Zaks, G. D. 30, 179, 201
Volodicheva, M. A. 59, 60 Zinoviev, G. E. 53, 93, 140, 142, 144–6

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Inside Lenin’s Government

Inside Lenin’s Government

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My chief debt of gratitude is to Professor David Saunders. Always generous with

CHEKA (Chrezvychainaia komissiia po bor'be s kontrrevoliutsiei i

GOSPLAN (Gosudarstvennaia obshcheplannovaia komissiia) State

MRC (Voenno-​revoliutsionnyi komitet) The Military

NEP (Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika) New Economic Policy

ORGBURO (Organnizatsionnyi Biuro TsK RKPb) The Organizational

POLITBURO (Politicheskii Biuro TsK RKPb) The Political Bureau of the

RABKRIN (Raboche-​krestianskaia inspektsiia) The Worker-​Peasant

SOVNARKOM (Sovet Narodnykh komissarov) The Council of People’s

TsK RKP (b) (Tsentralnyi komitet rossiskoi kommunisticheskoi partii

VESENKHA (Vserossiiskii sovet narodnogo khoziaistva) The National

VTsIK Sovetov (Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nyi Ispolnitel’nyi Komitet) The All

Russia began its tumultuous twentieth century as a decrepit autocratic empire

Marx had taught them to be wary of the ‘bourgeois parliamentary democracy’

role and importance of Soviet institutions have been seriously underestimated.

now-​accessible archival evidence, including agendas, minutes and departmen-

at their disposal to create a superior form of democracy, although the experi-

Sovnarkom (its physical structure, personnel, and organizational culture) and

State and Revolution and the Idea

In explaining the development of Lenin’s government historians have tended

accountability and representation, commune democracy describes an approach

on by the departments, chancelleries and General Staffs. Parliament is given up to

Sovnarkom as Cabinet, 1917–​19

participation whatever by the bourgeoisie. The oppressed masses themselves will

pre-​revolutionary ideology which rejected separation of powers as bourgeois

In practice, however, limitations on the independent power of Sovnarkom,

SR leader Victor Chernov as president of the assembly, the delegates approved

commissars attended their first coalition government meeting. With Lenin

under their control. Second, decisions were made in Sovnarkom by majority

War produced confusion, division, attack and retaliation, intense propaganda,

The Sovnarkom Secretariat had considerable influence over the content of

N. Chicherin, was a diplomat in the service of the Russian Empire. He spoke

Sovnarkom and this assembly. He brought his skills as an experienced party

Sovnarkom at work, 1917–​19

highly lucrative posts in banks or joint-​stock companies, as constantly happens

After the conclusion of peace, the Central Committee met sporadically

peace.153 On 2 October 1918 the ‘international position’ was considered and

The Sovnarkom Administration

The administrative machinery of Sovnarkom was crucial to the functioning

case. As prominent staff members recalled, in Sovnarkom’s Administration

in Smolny in mid-​1917, in his capacity leading the Information Bureau of the

The internal structure of the Sovnarkom Administration Department has

approvals had been completed. It was up to the Secretariat to ensure proper

registration of letter-​complaints must be conducted.’ He entrusted the head of

switchboard of the Kremlin…a telephone connection was set up in the booth

subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers, changing its name in August

The ‘anti-​bureaucratic’ apparatus

Various individuals who worked in the Sovnarkom Administration

Lenin’s war on bureaucratism in state institutions. Indeed, in a letter of 1921

Uncollegial behaviour: The Bonch-​

Gorbunov contrasted these collegial norms with the dictatorial, ‘bureau-

‘Party-​ization’ of the Sovnarkom Administration Department

The ‘party-​ization’ of the Sovnarkom Administration Department began in

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cover image © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

MRC (Voenno-revoliutsionnyi komitet) The Military

RABKRIN (Raboche-krestianskaia inspektsiia) The Worker-Peasant

now-accessible archival evidence, including agendas, minutes and departmen-

Sovnarkom as Cabinet, 1917–19

pre-revolutionary ideology which rejected separation of powers as bourgeois

Sovnarkom at work, 1917–19

highly lucrative posts in banks or joint-stock companies, as constantly happens

in Smolny in mid-1917, in his capacity leading the Information Bureau of the

registration of letter-complaints must be conducted.’ He entrusted the head of

The ‘anti-bureaucratic’ apparatus

Uncollegial behaviour: The Bonch-

‘Party-ization’ of the Sovnarkom Administration Department

The ‘party-ization’ of the Sovnarkom Administration Department began in

Department party cell was bringing in party comrades to replace non-party

In the immediate post-revolution months, Sverdlov’s participation in the

The collegia included elected representatives from mass organizations rele

The All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions asserted without hesitation

decision-making. According to the memoirs of a contemporary state activist,

soviet, that is, socialist-democracy, and the application of dictatorial power

There is no doubt that the collegium is an essential higher-level school of admin-

necessary to be vigilant, in order that one-man management…does not weaken

Sovnarkom had functioned as the highest decision-making body in the Soviet

As de facto control over government decision-making began to shift from

‘corrections’ to his theses which revealed his views on party-state relations in

must also focus on ‘questions of intra-party life, principal and organizational

Lenin’s first deputy (May–November 1921)

Two deputies (November 1921–April 1922)

The launch of the deputies programme, April–September 1922

the government machine should be directed by a man as strong-minded as the

party-state situation’ as he grasped at the straws in his final writings trying to

7 Keep, The Debate on Soviet Power, pp. 59–86.

25 Ibid., pp. 420–37. Attenders of MSNK sittings before the government move to

53 Protokoly zasedanii vserossiiskogo tsentral’nogo ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta 4-go sozyva

80 Amiantov, Protokoly zasedanii Soveta Narodnykh Kommissarov, pp. 175–325.

1917–March 1918): p. 21 (15 November), p. 24 (16 November), p. 30 (19

Period’, in E. Rogovin Frankel, J. Frankel and B. Knei-Paz (eds), Revolution in

103 E.B. Genkina, Gosudarstvennaia deiatel’nost’ V.I. Lenina 1921–23