5 - Stalin as Prime Minister: power and the Politburo, By J. Arch Getty

Stalin as Prime Minister: power and the Politburo

• By J. Arch Getty, Professor of History, Department of History UCLA
• Edited by Sarah Davies, University of Durham, James Harris, University of Leeds
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

• being Chapter 5 of Stalin: A New History, Edited by Sarah Davies, University of Durham , James Harris, University of Leeds  

• Publisher:

• Cambridge University Press

• Online publication date: November 2009

• Print publication year: 2005

The 1930s was the time when Stalin achieved an extreme centralisation of decision-making functions in the top Party bodies and ultimately in his own hands. It was also the time when the formal supreme policy body fell into disarray and disuse. According to our literature, the ultimate institutional locus of power, the Politburo, became less and less a collective organ of decision-making. Its formal procedures and routines fell into disuse and its meetings became less and less frequent. In 1930, the Politburo met seven to eight times per month on average, but by 1936 it never met more than once per month and in three months of that year did not meet at all.1 Decision-making at the top, formerly the province of the Politburo, was now carried out by informal, ad hoc subgroups of top leaders (some of them Politburo members and some not) who gathered when necessary to make decisions that then emerged as Politburo resolutions, whether or not the Politburo actually met. As these ‘small loose-knit kitchen cabinets’ replaced the Politburo, ‘procedural indeterminacy’ and ‘formlessness’ replaced structure.2 Here we shall look at the changes in the Politburo in the context of the relationship between Stalin and his colleagues in order to raise questions of power at the top of the Stalinist system. We will look at the withering away of the Politburo in the 1930s in comparative perspective and in terms of ‘who decided what’ at the top, and then conclude with some reflections on power and institutions in the Stalinist context. We shall suggest that the Politburo was never an organ of collective decision making but rather a facade masking the practices of persons and groupings (some of them operating without Stalin): a team of senior politicians 1 O. V. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro: mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody (Moscow: Rosspen, 1996), p. 288. Although changes in reporting procedures make it difficult to determine exactly when the Politburo met in 1937 and after, it seems that in the two years before the outbreak of war in 1941, it did not meet at all. 2 Y. Gorlizki, ‘Stalin’s Cabinet: the Politburo and Decision-Making in the Post-war Years’, Europe-Asia Studies 2 (2001), 291–6. 83 with personal relationships to Stalin and to each other. Raising questions about the Politburo’s very existence, we will suggest that it was always more a symbol than an institution, and will therefore question whether its organisation, structure, and frequency of meeting are as important as the practices it masked. It seems that there is some relationship between Stalin’s accretion of power and changes in the Politburo. In his masterful study of the Politburo, Oleg Khlevniuk has documented the two processes, suggesting a kind of inverse proportional relationship: as Stalin’s power grew, those around him were reduced from independent politicians to slaves, and the Politburo’s status as a ‘collective organ of power’ decreased.3 Yet the relationship between the two processes remains unclear. In the 1920s, the Politburo had met in expanded venues that included not only Politburo members, but also a larger group of members of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission, Secretariat department heads, and other specialists and guests. In these larger meetings, Stalin was unchallenged. They offered him the opportunity to perform his power and, on the face of it, they would seem only to enhance that power. There are few better ways to dominate others than in face-to-face settings in front of others. It is not therefore immediately evident that eliminating Politburo meetings would necessarily be in Stalin’s interest or that it would enhance or better demonstrate his power. The official image of the Politburo, enshrined in the Party’s rules and propaganda, was that the Central Committee elected the best comrades to the Politburo, which was an organ of collective decision-making. It reached unanimous decisions because they were the correct decisions. This ‘collective leadership’ myth really came into its own after 1956 when Stalin’s heirs sought to link their rule with the supposedly halcyon, collective Lenin period, and it remains with us today. In fact, the Politburo was never a collective or collegial organ of power. From the beginning, the Politburo was politicised around a dominant team and real decisions were made outside the meeting space of the committee. Well before Stalin took power, Lenin had packed the leading Party organs with Bolsheviks who followed his line. He personalised and factionalised the Party Congress, the Central Committee, and the Politburo, working against rather than for the institutionalisation of collective 3 ‘There is no doubt that with the strengthening of Stalin’s personal power his need to discuss problems with his colleagues diminished.’ R. W. Davies, O. Khlevniuk, E. A. Rees, L. Kosheleva, and L. Rogovaia (eds.), The Stalin–Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–1936 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. xii–xiii. See Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, ch. 2. Khlevniuk quotes Moshe Lewin’s remark about Stalin converting his lieutenants into ‘slaves’ (p. 245). 84 . Pragmatist that he was, he had little respect for institutional boundaries or guidelines when his proposals were at stake. In 1920, in a walk around the Kremlin, Lenin advised a young and naıive Central Committee Secretary named Molotov to politicise the Secretariat, leaving the ‘technical work’ of that body to underlings. In 1921, at the Tenth Party Congress, he sponsored a ban on factions, while using a faction (his ‘platform of 10’) to control the Congress and defeat any dissidence. In private, he was frank about what he was doing: Is the majority entitled to be a majority? If it wants to be, then how should it be done? ... if the majority does not come to an arrangement, then the minority can win. This does happen. We are not a faction. We came as a faction, but we do not constitute a faction here. We should use our right in elections. In elections of delegates we have fought to win at the Congress. And this we should do.4 In 1922, he sent Mikoian to Siberia to make sure no Trotsky supporters were elected to the Eleventh Congress.5 Lenin found a room in the Kremlin to hold a secret preparatory meeting consisting of only his supporters and excluding others. Ironically, it was Stalin who worried about bypassing the Congress. Lenin replied, ‘Comrade Stalin, you are an old experienced factionalist yourself. Do not worry. Right now, we cannot do this any other way. I want everyone to be well prepared for the vote’6 Later, Lenin proposed holding Politburo meetings without Trotsky who was, of course, a member of that body.7 As Molotov remembered, important decisions and votes of the Politburo were always prepared in advance by a smaller group: ‘There was always the leading team in the Politburo ... all issues of prime importance were first addressed by the Politburo’s leading group. That tradition started under Lenin.’8 After Lenin, the tradition of secret premeetings continued, both for the Politburo and the Central Committee, with positions formulated without the participation of the full membership. According to the Politburo’s technical secretary Boris Bazhanov, On the eve of a Politburo meeting ... the Troika [Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev] decided how each question should be resolved at tomorrow’s session, agreeing even on what roles each would play in the discussion ... In effect everything had already been decided in the Troika’s tight little circle.9 4 Quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 123. 5 A. I. Mikoian, Tak bylo: razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999), p. 199. 6 F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed s Molotovym: iz dnevnika F. Chueva (Moscow: ‘Terra’, 1991), p. 181. 7 Chuev, Sto sorok besed, p. 200. 8 Ibid., p. 424. 9 Boris Bazhanov, Vospominaniia byvshego sekretaria Stalina (Saint-Petersburg: Vsemirnoe Slovo, 1992), p. 47. Mikoian recalls party leaders sneaking into the Orgburo’s meeting room for secret pre-meetings without Trotskyist members.10 Trotsky was, of course, aware of these practices and made a kind of passive protest in Politburo meetings by refusing to speak or accept assignments and by obtrusively ignoring the proceedings while reading French novels.11 Stalin’s letters to Politburo members show that later a ‘leading group’ continued to orchestrate and script Politburo meetings in special preparatory Monday sessions to prepare for the meeting.12 In 1930, newly appointed Politburo member S. I. Syrtsov quickly discovered that the Politburo had become a myth: ‘The Politburo is a fiction. Everything is really decided behind the Politburo’s back by a small clique ... It seems to me an abnormal situation when a whole series of Politburo questions is pre-decided by a particular group.’13 In fact, there was nothing abnormal about it. From the beginning, the Politburo was never an organ of collective leadership, never what it was represented to be. One could say that the Politburo-as-institution never existed. Like many committees in the real world, it was a mask for a team that made decisions outside of the space and time of Politburo meetings, which took place merely to perform and promulgate them. Normalising the Politburo We still have to explain the decline of the Politburo’s meetings. They provided a stage for Stalin to perform his power before and over those present, and were hardly a threat to that power.14 Actually, the attenuation of these meetings had causes other than Stalin’s personal power. One way to investigate this is to look at the Politburo (and the upper Stalinist leadership in general) as a cabinet, in comparative terms. Changes in the Stalinist Politburo seem to have paralleled changes in other cabinets in contemporary industrial countries that did not suffer from Stalinist dictatorship or tyranny. Convergence theorists in the 1970s pointed to a number of parallels between Soviet and Western political structures, and analysts of 10 Chuev, Sto sorok besed, p. 224; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, p. 48; Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 266. 11 Bazhanov, Vospominaniia, p. 73. 12 O. V. Khlevniuk et al. (eds.), Pis’ma I. V. Stalina V. M. Molotovu, 1925–1936: Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Rossiia Molodaia, 1995). See especially the letters for 1926. 13 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (hemefirth RGASPI) f. 589, op. 3, d. 9333 (2), ll. 120–36. For a full account of Syrtsov’s travails, see Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, pp. 44–9. 14 Whether one follows Durkheim (that ritual performance demonstrates power relationships) or Geertz and Foucault (that they inscribe and create social and power relationships), there is a consensus that power and performance are related. 86 Brezhnev’s Politburo wondered if that body was not approaching the status of a collegial cabinet.15 Nevertheless, there are obvious and important differences between Stalin’s Politburo and Western cabinets. Stalin’s Politburo was not elected nor was it composed or installed as the result of any meaningful elections. It had no parliamentary responsibility and manifestly dominated the body that it supposedly served, the Central Committee. Stalin, unlike other prime ministers, could and did capriciously kill or imprison any of his cabinet’s members or their families. Yet it is precisely these differences that make similarities between Stalin’s Politburo and other cabinets all the more suggestive. The USSR shared many features with contemporaneous modern societies in the West, including the European democracies, Nazi Germany, and the USA. Although they had dramatically different political systems, they had much in common after the First World War. At varying stages of development, all were industrial societies where urban populations were outstripping (or soon to outstrip) peasantries in weight of numbers. All were being welded together more tightly by modern transportation and communication networks. All had large and modernising military establishments. All had state police forces that carried out surveillance over their populations. All were becoming mass societies with mass cultures, media, and entertainment. All were becoming economically deep and broad, intensive and extensive complex economies. Those economies were increasingly directed and planned by their governments, regardless of the forms those governments took. Everywhere, there was a bigger role for government.16 We take as our comparison the Stalinist Politburo and the British Cabinet, largely because both are well studied and documented.17 15 See John W. Meyer et al., ‘Covergence and Divergence in Development’, Annual Review of Sociology 1 (1975), 223–46. For a recent example, see Thomas Baylis, Governing By Committee: Collegial Leadership in Advanced Societies (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989). 16 For suggestive and challenging works that put modern Russia into a context of European modernity in the twentieth century, see: David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis (eds.), Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices (Houndsmills, N. Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Peter Holquist, ‘Society Versus the State, Society Wielding the State: Educated Society and State Power in Russia, 1914–1921’, Mouvement Social 196 (2001); Peter Holquist, ‘‘‘Information is the alpha and omega of our work’’: Bolshevik Surveillance in its Pan-European Context’, Journal of Modern History 3 (1997), 21–40; Stephen Kotkin, ‘Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar Conjuncture’, Kritika 1 (2001); Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 17 E. A. Rees has engaged this cabinet comparison and the literature relating to it (without reference to the 2003 paper on which this chapter is based). See his ‘Introduction’, to E. A. Rees (ed.), The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship: The Politburo, 1924–1953 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) pp. 10–11 and p. 17, n. 17.  In recent years, a number of students of British politics, inspired by the observations of cabinet veteran Richard Crossman, have argued that the governmental system has evolved from a parliamentary-cabinet into a ‘core executive’ in which ‘Cabinet is confined largely to rubberstamping decisions rather than developing a strategic overview of government.’18 As with the Politburo, meetings of the full cabinet become less frequent and tend to approve decisions reached earlier by the prime minister and smaller groups of associates.19 When the cabinet does meet, the prime minister is in control. Some parallels are quite striking. Politburo meetings were rarely minuted and transcribed, perhaps because as in the British case, ‘they do not take down in shorthand what was actually said because they prefer to record what should have been said.’20 Control of texts and meeting results is a crucial component of political power. Stalin’s summaries of Central Committee plena exercised through his control over editing of the texts of the plena’s minuted decisions, became sources of power for him as the final printed versions he produced sometimes bore little relation to what had actually been said. In this way, Stalin was able to represent his views as those of the Central Committee.21 His habit of waiting until the end of the meeting to speak, to sum up the discussion, allowed him to characterise the decision of the meeting in any way he chose. In the British Cabinet, Cabinet decisions (minutes) are often formulated by the prime minister verbally and then recorded by the Cabinet; the prime minister has the right to ‘interpret the consensus’ and write up the decision. ‘It is always understood in British Cabinet life that the Prime Minister can define the consensus as being what he thinks fit. Even though a majority of the opinions expressed were against him, that would not necessarily prevent him from deciding as he wishes.’ 18 Martin J. Smith, The Core Executive in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1999), p. 76. See also Richard Crossman, Inside View (London: Cape, 1972); Richard Crossman, The Myths of Cabinet Government (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972); Graham P. Thomas, Prime Minister and Cabinet Today (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998). 19 ‘we prefer not to use the word disintegration with its connotation of a process of movement away from an integrated cabinet, since we prefer to avoid the implication that in all countries there used to be ‘‘golden age’’ of cabinet government in which the cabinet members sitting collectively took the important decisions.’ Thomas T. Mackie and Brian W. Hogwood, ‘Decision Arenas in Executive Decision Making: Cabinet Committees in Comparative Perspective’, British Journal of Political Science 3 (1984), 311. 20 Crossman, Myths, pp. 41–2. 21 See, for example, J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 229–44; James Seaman, ‘The Politics of Texts: Central Committee of the CPSU Plenum Stenograms, 1924–1941’, unpublished Ph.D. diss., UCLA (2004). 88 ‘Sometimes, as a member of the cabinet [reading them], it was not your impression of what happened ... Once the Prime Minister has summed up, though, it may not represent the discussion at all, once he sums up, the Secretary of the Cabinet will record it.’22 As the Politburo met less and less often in the 1930s, decisions promulgated over its name were taken by smaller, ad hoc groups convened for specific purposes and often meeting in Stalin’s office (the famous sextets, septets, etc.). At other times, standing or ad hoc commissions were charged with recommending decisions on various topics.23 Stalin was not always a member of these groups, and it is unlikely that he ultimately approved each of their decisions.24 Called ‘segmented’ or ‘fragmented’ decision-making, such arrangements are not at all uncommon in modern government arrangements (the American government being a prime example).25 ‘Real debates occur therefore in smaller groups, either formally constituted ... or informally called together – typically when two or three members see each other, one of them being, in many cases at least, the prime minister. Thus ... true debates of the full cabinet are relatively rare.’26 Given what we know of Stalin’s practice, the following account by a British Cabinet participant would not be far wrong if ‘Stalin’ were substituted for ‘Mrs. Thatcher’: She would have an idea, or somebody would, and she would talk to them. She would bring two or three people in for the second meeting and we’d discuss it a bit further ... She ... would then identify those in the cabinet who had the most concerns about that policy and then they were talked to ... and by the time it came to the cabinet it was a fait accompli. (Lord Wakeham)27 22 Crossman, Myths, pp. 33–7. 23 On Politburo commissions see Jana Howlett et al., ‘The CPSU’s Top Bodies Under Stalin: Their Operational Records and Structure of Command’, University of Toronto Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project Working Paper No. 1 (1996), p. 7. O. V. Khlevniuk, Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody: sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: AIROXX, 1995), pp. 44–73. 24 Stalin was not a member of every Politburo standing commission. Gorlizki (‘Stalin’s Cabinet’, p. 294) notes that the various –‘tets’ sometimes met without Stalin in the 1940s. For the matter of Stalin approving all such decisions, see below. 25 Rudi Andeweg, ‘A Model of the Cabinet System: the Dimensions of Cabinet DecisionMaking Processes’, in Jean Blondel and Ferdinand Muller-Rommel (eds.), Governing Together: The Extent and Limits of Joint Decision-Making in Western European Cabinets (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), p. 29. 26 Blondel and Muller-Rommel (eds.), Governing Together, p. 12. 27 Smith, Core Executive, p. 89. Compare with Gorlizki’s formulation: ‘These narrow and informal Politburo meetings were freed from the schedules and procedures which hamstrung the official or de jure cabinet. In the company of a small circle of colleagues, all of whom were well known to Stalin and to each other, there was all the less reason to follow the inconvenient and time-consuming protocols of formal Politburo sessions.’ Gorlizki, ‘Stalin’s Cabinet’, p. 295. Stalin never abolished the Politburo, even after it ceased to meet. Among the reasons for keeping it, in addition to the need for a formal, public institutional face for the leadership, was Stalin’s desire to ‘bind his co-leaders in a system of collective responsibility ... indispensable as a tool for controlling the leadership’.28 Richard Crossman, during his years in the British Cabinet, seems also to have felt the pressure of democratic centralism: ‘Collective responsibility ... means that everybody who is in the Government must accept and publicly support every ‘‘Cabinet decision’’, even if he was not present at the discussion or, frequently, was completely unaware the decision had been taken’.29 How can we account for the similarity in practices between the British Cabinet and Stalin’s Politburo? One obvious answer would have to do with the leader’s power. It is likely that Thatcher and Stalin shared a hunger for total power, if not an equal ability to realise it. In such segmented decision-making environments, the boss ‘is at the centre of the networks that traverse the core executive and therefore he or she has access to all areas of government.’30 It is therefore not obvious how the replacement of cabinet meetings (which he or she firmly controls) by segmented decision-making necessarily reflects changes in the leader’s power. Andeweg argues that although ‘truly collective and collegial cabinets may have existed in the past in some countries ... It is highly improbable that this type will be found frequently in large and complex modern societies’.31 In his study of cabinet practices, he found a positive correlation between size/complexity of government and economy on the one hand, and segmented, subcommittee decision-making on the other. Thus, segmented forms (with fewer meetings of the entire cabinet) were more common in Britain and France, while full cabinet meetings were held more often in Ireland, Norway, and other relatively small systems.32 Other research produced similar results.33 As Crossman put it, ‘one 28 Gorlizki, ‘Stalin’s Cabinet’, p. 297. 29 Crossman, Myths, p. 53. 30 Smith, Core Executive, p. 77. Simon James argues that fragmented decision-making ‘enhances the premier’s position: he becomes one of the few who knows what is going on in all areas of government.’ Simon James, British Cabinet Government (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 179. 31 Andeweg, ‘Model of the Cabinet System’, p. 38. 32 Andeweg, ‘Model of the Cabinet System’, pp. 29–30. 33 ‘The full meeting has also ceased to be regarded as crucial for decision-making, at least in a large number of cases and in most countries ... the ideal of a cabinet meeting truly taking the most important decisions does not correspond to reality.’ Andre-Paul Frognier, ‘The Single-Party/Coalition Distinction and Cabinet Decision-Making’, in Blondel and Muller-Rommel (eds.), Governing Together, pp. 78–81. On Switzerland, see Baylis, Governing by Committee. 90 underlying cause of this change is quite simply the enormous growth in the powers of modern government’.34 There is no doubt that the complexity of Soviet government increased dramatically in the twenty years following 1917. The size of the apparatus grew tremendously after 1929 along with the economy, now a matter for state administration. The number of commissariats grew almost every year and, at the top, members of the Politburo came more and more to be economic administrators. With this expansion came an increasingly heavy workload for the Politburo. In 1930, 2,857 items came before the Politburo; by 1934 the annual number was 3,982.35 The last Politburo meeting of 1930 (25 December) had 100 items on its agenda. The last meeting for 1936 (27 December) had 453.36 The Politburo, like other cabinets, had ‘a full agenda of issues for decision; it is to prevent overcrowding of the cabinet agenda that mechanisms for taking decisions elsewhere are established.’ They needed ‘a repertoire of formal and informal mechanisms for processing’ the huge number of matters coming before it.37 The Politburo in the early 30s, like the Central Committee in the early 20s, was swamped and tried to cope with the crush of business in various ways, including trying to meet more often. In the 1920s, the Politburo typically met three times per month (on the 5th, 15th, and 25th) with extra sessions as needed.38 At the end of 1930, six meetings per month were planned, but in 1931 the Politburo met more than six times in nine of the months for a total of ninety-four meetings instead of seventy-two.39 Members also tried to streamline their meetings. Mikoian remembers Lenin’s vigorous chairing practices: each reporter got no more than three minutes to speak; seven for ‘especially complex’ matters. Items requiring any discussion at all were immediately referred to a working committee (delovaia komissiia) which was to report back and present a draft resolution. ‘Only this can explain how Lenin could deal with so many varied questions in such a short time’.40 It must have been in this spirit when, at the end of 1929, the Politburo ordered that no requests or reports from lower bodies to the Politburo could exceed five to ten pages and that they must reach the Secretariat no later than six days before the Politburo meeting, complete with a pre-drafted Politburo 34 Crossman, Myths, p. ix. 35 Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, p. 289. 36 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 808 (Protocol No. 21) and d. 982 (Protocol No. 44). 37 Mackie and Hogwood, ‘Decision Arenas’, p. 311. 38 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 761, l. 11. 39 RGASPI f. 17, op. 162, d. 9, l. 112; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, p. 289. 40 Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 201. .41 A year later, in November of 1931, the Politburo reduced the maximum size of submissions to four to five pages, but a few days later settled on a maximum of eight pages.42 Stalin ordered in September 1932 that no more than fifteen items could appear on any Politburo meeting’s agenda.43 By the spring of 1931, all requests for Politburo decisions from localities were shunted to the Secretariat for decision, except for questions of ‘exceptional importance’ that could come to the Politburo.44 But the most important expedient the Politburo used to get through the mountain of paper was decision-making by polling the members (oprosom). Questions not requiring extended discussion were routed to Politburo members for their approval outside normal Politburo meeting times. By the beginning of 1931, the number of questions decided oprosom exceeded those on the agenda by a wide margin. By the end of 1934, at its final meeting of the year, the Politburo took up eight questions at its meeting but the protocols indicate that 260 questions had been decided oprosom. 45 It seemed less and less useful to call the entire Politburo together for a meeting and more often this happened only when some serious matter required the attention of all Politburo members, regardless of their current specialised activity. As in other large and complex organisations, each member was busy with his own bailiwick. Khrushchev would later complain that decisionmaking by small groups shut the other Politburo members out of the process. He complained that even though he was a Politburo member, he knew nothing about the details of Soviet policy on naval affairs, Poland, Germany, and other topics: ‘I was already a Politburo member, but we never discussed the problem [of West Berlin]. I do not know who discussed it with Stalin.’46 But does the American Secretary of Agriculture participate in discussions about foreign policy? Does every British cabinet minister know or care much about the Navy? ‘Ministers often do not have 41 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 761, ll. 11–12. Fearing attempts to inflate the reports, the decree specified that a page could consist of no more than 1,500 characters: 30 lines of 50 characters! 42 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 858, l. 2; d. 860, l. 2. 43 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 898, l. 8. 44 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 823, l. 9. 45 RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 771 (Protocol No. 112); d. 808 (Protocol No. 21); d. 955 (Protocol No. 17). 46 Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev et al., Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes, 1st edn. (Boston: Little Brown, 1990), pp. 18, 202. In Britain, ‘it was usual, during and after the Second World War, for many other policy questions to be formulated and settled within cabinet committees and small groups of Ministers ... major decisions were not reported to the full cabinet but were, even at that level, shrouded in secrecy.’ Mackie and Hogwood, ‘Decision Arenas’, p. 303. 92 J. Arch Getty  the interest, time or ability to be involved in other areas of policy ... They do not read papers of other departments if they feel it has no implications for their own department’.47 Did Khrushchev really want or have time to know about the Navy at the time? As Molotov recalls, Had we convened to make a democratic decision on each question that came up, we should have inflicted harm on the state and on the Party, because this would have dragged out a solution to the question.48 With hundreds of opros cards flying about, with several commissions and ad hoc groups constantly meeting to draft decisions, with the steady traffic of groups of senior officials through Stalin’s office, a continuous series of specialised meetings took the place of occasional assemblies of generalists. This is a quite logical development in any growing organisation. It is hard to imagine how they could have dealt with the mass of information and barrage of issues in any other way. Thus we can decouple the supposed decline of the Politburo as an institution from the process of Stalin’s accretion of total power. That some of the evolution (or devolution) of the Stalinist Politburo seems to have been paralleled elsewhere where there was no dictatorship suggests that the withering away of the Politburo may have been the result of modernisation and complexity rather than dictatorship.49 47 Smith, Core Executive, p. 76. ‘In fact, your colleagues were a little apt to be cross with you if you bored them with a topic which was neither politically eye-catching, nor was something which any of the rest of them were involved with.’ Maurice Kogan (ed.), The Politics of Education: Edward Boyle and Anthony Crossland in Conversation with Maurice Kogan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), p. 105. 48 Chuev, Sto sorok besed, p. 468. 49 However, it would be an exaggeration to use comparative modernity as the sole explanation here. Kenneth Jowitt called the Soviet Union a combination of modern and traditional political features: a historically distinct type of ‘routinisation in a neo-traditional direction.’ Modern features (science, empiricism, rational administration) were mixed with traditional ones (charisma, the heroic, personal, and voluntarist.) The traditional, pre-modern features that characterised Stalinist personal politics included patrons (the ‘big men’ of peasant-status societies), a public emphasis on ‘notables’, non-cash privileges, blat and reciprocity in social interactions, charismatic emphasis on secrecy, a precise array of titles, and a public (and private) understanding of power as patrimonial. See Kenneth Jowitt, New World Disorder: the Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). For an analysis of the popular understanding of patrimonial power under Stalin, see Jeffrey Brooks, ‘Thank You, Comrade Stalin!’: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). For similar approaches, see also T. Martin, ‘Modernisation or Neo-Traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primordialism’, in S. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (New York: Routledge, 2000), and Andrew George Walder, Communist Neo-traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).  Who decided what? The Politburo protocols and other materials at our disposal still do not tell us much about the actual mechanics of decision-making in the narrow elite. The materials we do have make it clear that no major decision of national scope could have been taken without Stalin’s initiative or explicit approval. Certainly, no Politburo member could advance fundamental criticism of the government’s policy (the ‘General Line’) or argue for major changes of direction at odds with Stalin and the majority, even if he wanted to, and expect to keep his seat in the cabinet.50 Recognising this, however, does not exhaust the subjects of power or decision-making. The ability to decide the directions of national policy is only one form of power, and while it is important, it does not begin to encompass the myriad personal relationships and venues in which power was won, lost, and deployed. Thousands of decisions were taken at Politburo level that directly affected the real lives of real people no less than questions of global strategy, and Stalin did not take them all. Aside from the laconic Politburo protocols and the spotty memoir evidence, we now have a unique set of sources for the 1930s shedding light on decisionmaking in the inner circle: the correspondence between Stalin and L. M. Kaganovich while the former was on his lengthy annual holidays in the south.51 During Stalin’s absences, Kaganovich as tacit Second Secretary of the Central Committee, supervised decision-making in Moscow while in communication with Stalin.52 For these annual periods, which in the 1930s ranged from two to three months, we have a continuous written record that provides an invaluable window on the policy process in the Politburo. The editors of this correspondence stress the constant communication between Stalin and his Moscow lieutenants as evidence of Stalin’s hands-on control of matters even when he was not present. But one can see this glass as half empty rather than half full. On the face of it, it seems quite remarkable that a micromanaging dictator would absent himself for three months per year to a faraway place with no telephone during what had 50 Of course, the same might be said of the British or American cabinets. 51 An excellent critical edition of this correspondence, with extensive notes and crossreferences, has recently been published. O. V. Khlevniuk, R. U. Devis (R. W. Davies), L. P. Kosheleva, E. A. Ris (E. A. Rees), and L. A. Rogovaia (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska 1931–1936gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001). 52 Formally, the position of Second Secretary of the Central Committee did not exist, but numerous documents show that Molotov filled this function until 1930. When Molotov was transferred to Sovnarkom, Kaganovich took over the job. Khlevniuk et al. (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich, p. 26. 94 become the most crucial season of all for the Soviet economy: harvest time. One cannot imagine a British prime minister or American president so absenting her/himself, with or without a telephone.53 It is really quite striking. Even though Stalin was in close contact with his lieutenants, that contact was not face to face nor even by voice; it was written and thereby without the nuance, body language, and voice inflection that are so important to any human communication. Those written communications took two to three days each way (telegrams were faster but rarer). Frequently questions and answers from both sides passed each other in transit.54 Looking closely at one of these periods can be quite revealing. 1934 was the last period of Stalin’s absence without a telephone. It was also the busiest year of the 1930s for Politburo resolutions: there were 3,945 decisions listed on Politburo protocols for that year and the Politburo met forty-six times. During Stalin’s holiday (August through October, 1934), more than a quarter of Politburo decisions (1,038 of the year’s 3,945) were registered and sixteen of the Politburo’s forty-six meetings took place without Stalin’s presence.55 In general, communications Stalin received included protocols of Politburo meetings, notifications of decisions taken by polling or by Politburo commissions, communications received for information purposes (diplomatic and internal letters), and requests for his decision on various matters. The tone of the correspondence clearly shows the subordinate relationship. Kaganovich was often asking for guidance. ‘I ask your opinion’ or ‘I request instructions’ (effectively the same thing) were common ways for him to end a letter to Stalin, and Kaganovich flattered the boss by characterising the latter’s decisions as ‘wise’ or ‘absolutely correct’. All of Stalin’s ‘proposals’ were of course quickly confirmed by Kaganovich and the others as Politburo decisions. Yet Politburo members took a large number of decisions without Stalin’s participation. Stalin intervened in only 119 (11 per cent) of the 1,038 recorded Politburo decisions taken during his vacation in 1934.56 The great majority of his interventions (91 of 119, or 76 per cent) were 53 We do not know when secure government (VCh) telephone service was established between Moscow and the south, but circumstantial evidence suggests 1935. Khlevniuk et al. (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich, p. 8. 54 Stalin and Kaganovich had to number each letter so the recipient could keep track. 55 Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, pp. 288–9. 56 These and the following calculations were made by comparing the decisions recorded in Politburo Prococols Nos. 11–15 (RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, dd. 949–53), August–October 1934, with matters answered or initiated by Stalin in the same period. Khlevniuk et al. (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich, pp. 414–519. responses to initiatives from Kaganovich. The remainder consists of points first raised by Stalin.57 These numbers show that of all Politburo decisions taken in these three months, Stalin either did not respond to, or routinely confirmed, his lieutenants’ decisions 96 per cent of the time. Of his replies to Kaganovich’s requests for guidance, he confirmed his lieutenants’ proposal or decision without modification 84 per cent of the time. Clearly, some kinds of questions had to be referred to the boss. As in any cabinet system, foreign policy, military policy, security, major budgetary allocations, and government reorganisation were matters for the leader’s personal attention and decision.58 Virtually anything having to do with the NKVD or security matters came to Stalin.59 However, Stalin left many matters to Kaganovich and the other Politburo members for decision, and many of them were not trivial. Issues such as supply for the Far Eastern Red Army, most appointments at the RSFSR level (All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), Gosplan RSFSR, and RSFSR Commissariats), specific matters of product import/export, agricultural seed loans to the regions, exceptions 57 Stalin initiated very few new projects in absentia. His unsolicited communications often related to things he read in Pravda or Bol’shevik, objecting to particular journalistic formulations. (Khlevniuk et al. (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich, pp. 419, 452.) On one occasion, he became excited over the accomplishments of aviator Gromov and suggested laudatory recognition. Other times, he sent general messages exhorting his Politburo colleagues in general to greater firmness on grain collection or in negotiations with foreign powers. 58 Examples include treaties with foreign states, entry into the League of Nations, scheduling military manœuvres, appointments of Commissars and their deputies and of regionallevel (obkom, kraikom) party posts, the reorganisation of trade unions and commissariats in industry and trade, and quarterly capital allocations. 59 ‘Security matters’ were broadly defined under Stalin and included such things as proposed commercial flight routes by Lufthansa and PanAm (he was against them from fear of espionage). In another case, he dwelt at length on the case of a mentally unbalanced civil defence leader who made anti-Soviet statements to his young charges (Stalin wanted him to be shot). Stalin and Politburo Decisions, August–October 1934 Total Politburo decisions 1,038 Politburo decisions without Stalin’s participation 919 Total Politburo decisions with Stalin’s participation 119 Stalin replies to Politburo requests for ruling 91 Stalin agrees with Politburo proposal without modification 76 Stalin disagrees with or changes Politburo decision, subject to the Cambridge Core from grain procurement targets, and allocations of housing funds and industrial materials were often left to the lieutenants’ discretion. On some very important questions, Stalin contented himself with providing general guidance or exhortation and then turning the matter over to Kaganovich and the team. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria had made the Soviet Far Eastern Railway (KVZhD) untenable, and negotiations were underway in 1934 to sell it to the Japanese. These negotiations were tense and difficult, with Japanese harassment and arrests of KVZhD personnel, border incursions on both sides, hard bargaining about price, and mutual strategic de´marches in the press meant to embarrass the other side. The USSR had seen war scares on much less. The Politburo was continually formulating detailed instructions to its negotiators, statements to the Japanese, and oral messages to be sent unofficially. With Stalin gone, the Politburo took decisions nineteen times on the KVZhD. Of these, Kaganovich sent thirteen messages to Stalin, consisting of draft diplomatic statements and requests for advice. Of these thirteen messages, Stalin agreed six times without comment. He disagreed or suggested changes twice, and did not reply at all five times. Once, he sent an unsolicited message advising Kaganovich in general terms to be tough with the Japanese. Effectively, Stalin allowed his lieutenants to conduct these delicate and dangerous negotiations. If, as Khlevniuk has argued, Stalin’s growing political power reduced his colleagues from independent politicians to slaves, one would expect his micromanagement of all decision-making to increase. Instead, the opposite seems to have been the case: he often seems to have delegated more in the 1930s than previously. In September 1933, he wrote from his holiday location to Kaganovich and the Politburo in Moscow: ‘I cannot and should not have to decide any and all questions that animate the Politburo ... you yourselves can consider things and work them out.’60 Stalin did not micromanage or even approve everything. Molotov remembers hundreds of Politburo resolutions sent to Stalin after going out over his signature. They remained piled up in bundles in the corner of his office, signed for him by his staff, but unread by him. Molotov recalls Stalin asking what was important for him to look at and decide; when they told him what needed attention, he would concentrate on it. ‘You can’t say, as Kirov did, that ‘‘Not one question is decided unless Stalin is the author of it.’’ That’s wrong. You can’t even say that about Lenin.’61 60 RGASPI f. 558, op. 11, d. 80, l. 87. 61 Chuev, Sto sorok besed, pp. 258–9, 263. Similarly, ‘the prime minister will rarely be directly involved in issues, though he or she will be able to select a very limited number of issues for personal intervention and that intervention will often be decisive. The prime Stalin as Prime Minister 97  For example, N.I. Ezhov, as Orgburo member and Secretary of the Central Committee, in 1936 resolved major disputes between the First Secretary of Voronezh Regional Committee (Obkom) and the Commissariat of Heavy Industry over the right to appoint factory directors, and between party First Secretaries and the Council of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom) over the appointment of State Harvest Plenipotentiaries. 62 Such issues involved high-ranking disputants and senior appointments. 63 Stalin frequently referred questions that had reached him down to his lieutenants for decision. His notation, ‘kak byt’?’ (‘What to do?’) is frequently found on archival documents that Stalin directed to his associates for decision on such non-trivial matters as Evgenii Varga’s resignation as Director of the Scientific Research Institute of World Economy, the appointment of senior political department (politotdel) workers on the railroads, and the staff of the newspaper Izvestiia. Stalin’s lieutenants also wielded considerable power as framers of questions. Matters coming to Stalin for his personal decision or approval, even on important personnel questions, arrived as recommended appointments. Sometimes, subordinates offered the dictator a choice of two or three candidates for a post, and sometimes Stalin refused the choices and appointed another candidate altogether. But most often a single proposed candidate came to Stalin and most often he approved the recommendation. We have something like a picture of the process for 1935–6. Malenkov, as head of the personnel department of the Central Committee (ORPO), proposed candidates for high Party posts.64 His recommendations went to Ezhov, a Secretary of the Central Committee, who negotiated with the parties concerned and put the matter on Stalin’s desk for approval: Comrade Stalin! I have summoned Pshenitsyn. He agrees to become Second Secretary in Sverdlovsk [replacing Strogonov]. I had a telephone conversation with Comrade Kabakov [Sverdlovsk First Secretary]. He is very satisfied at Strogonov being placed at the disposal of the Central Committee. He agrees with the candidacy of Pshenitsyn, and asks for a quick formulation.65 On other occasions, Ezhov was more forthright in his recommendations to Stalin: ‘Comrade Stalin! To name Kalygin as Secretary of Voronezh minister will often be unaware of decisions taken in the name of his or her government, even decisions taken in the name of cabinet committees.’ Mackie and Hogwood, ‘Decision Arenas’, pp. 310–11. 62 RGASPI f. 17, op. 120, d. 19, ll. 88–9; f. 671, op. 1, d. 18, l. 88. 63 RGASPI f. 17, op. 120, d. 20, l. 24. 64 RGASPI f. 671, op. 1, d. 18, l. 123. 65 Ibid., ll. 18–19. 98  [gorkom] Riabinin [First Secretary of Voronezh Obkom] agrees. Comrades Kaganovich and Molotov agree. I ask approval. Ezhov’.66 On another occasion, Ezhov simply wrote to Stalin that ‘we should approve Kogan’s request to leave the Moscow-Volga project.’67 Stalin’s lieutenants were powerful political actors. Each of them headed their own networks of patronage and were masters in their own bureaucratic houses.68 They battled with each other over budgets and lines of turf authority. Among many notable fights, Zhdanov struggled with Malenkov; Ordzhonikidze with Kuibyshev; Kuibyshev with Andreev; Ordzhonikidze with Molotov.69 These were more than just business-like squabbles; they were battles of titans whose resolution affected the livelihoods, powers, and fates of thousands of underlings, each of whom deployed their own powers in response. Although Kaganovich assures us that these fights were business, not personal,70 we have evidence that sometimes they ran deeper. Aside from Mikoian’s polite recollection that ‘Sergo did not love Molotov very much’,71 we have correspondence between Stalin and Ordzhonikidze in which the latter calls Molotov an obscenity (negodiai) and complains that Molotov had opposed him from the beginning. Molotov and Ordzhonikidze began to ignore each other, and their mutual attempts to isolate the other threatened the government. In all these fights, Stalin was at pains to moderate and act as referee.72 Politburo members were not slaves, nor was their power reduced as Stalin’s increased.73 Sometimes Politburo members argued with Stalin; we know that Ordzhonikidze, Molotov, and Voroshilov did more than once, and occasionally they won the argument.74 True, they were not able to challenge Stalin’s control over global decisions, but what cabinet 66 Ibid., l. 97. 67 Ibid., ll. 59–61. 68 Khlevniuk reminds us that each Politburo member had groups of followers in the provinces and in the vedomstva (institutions) he controlled (Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, pp. 262–3). Stalin frequently acted as referee among them and their empires. 69 Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Ordzhonikidze’s Takeover of VSNKh: A Case Study in Soviet Bureaucratic Politics’, Soviet Studies 2 (1985), 153–72; Jonathan Harris, ‘The Origins of the Conflict between Malenkov and Zhdanov, 1939–1941’, Slavic Review 2 (1976), 287–303; Khlevniuk et al. (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich, pp. 20–1, 303; Khlevniuk, Stalinskoe Politbiuro, pp. 79, 85, 242–5, 59–60, 63–4; F. Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich: Ispoved’ stalinskogo apostola (Moscow: Otechestvo, 1992), p. 130; Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 324. 70 Chuev, Tak govoril Kaganovich, p. 130. 71 Mikoian, Tak bylo, p. 324. 72 RGASPI f. 558, op. 11, d. 779, ll. 23, 29–31, 33. See also Khlevniuk et al. (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich, p. 21; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, p. 85. 73 See Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, ch. 2. Khlevniuk quotes Moshe Lewin’s remark about Stalin converting his lieutenants into ‘slaves’ (p. 245). 74 Chuev, Sto sorok besed, pp. 70, 297, 453; Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, pp. 241–5; Khlevniuk et al. (eds.), Stalin i Kaganovich, pp. 33, 132. Nevertheless, these were extremely powerful men whose authority grew along with Stalin’s. One source of Stalin’s authority from the earliest days was his ability to work in committee: to listen, to moderate, to referee, to steer the discussion toward a consensus. This had earned him the respect, co-operation, and loyalty of senior Bolsheviks. Khrushchev tells us that Stalin did not like to be alone, that he always wanted people around him. Put another way, he functioned best in groups. His office logs do not suggest a lonely and solitary dictator who made decisions without discussion and consultation with others. During his working hours he was nearly always in the company of his team which often remained in his office for many hours at a stretch while lesser figures came and went.75 As we have seen, team members were able to take decisions even when the boss was on holiday for months at a time. They were loyal to him and he to them. Although some recently appointed Politburo members were purged in the Great Terror of the 1930s, the core group (Molotov, Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, Mikoian, Andreev, Voroshilov) was untouched.76 To a considerable extent, the top Stalinist leadership seems to have been a team effort in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.77 The supposition that the Politburo stopped meeting because Stalin’s enhanced power obviated any need to discuss problems with his colleagues is not supported by any documentary evidence and contradicted by a good deal we now know. Whether or not the Politburo met in a given period, the group context of his decision-making seems to have remained largely the same throughout his reign. Power and Stalin’s government What was the Politburo? Yoram Gorlizki has made a convincing case that the Politburo had two faces: a public one, a ‘robust symbol’ designed to project unity and wise leadership, and a hidden one. Behind the scenes, the hidden Politburo was actually many Politburos, a constantly shifting composition of senior members who came together for specific purposes 75 The logs are published in Istoricheskii arkhiv 6 (1994); 2–6 (1995); 2–6 (1996); 1 (1997). Stalin defined this team as ‘not accidentally ... having come together in the struggle with Trotskyist-Zinovievist and Bukharin-Rykov deviations.’ Stalin letter to Ordzhonikidze, after 9 September 1931, RGASPI f. 558, op. 11, d. 779, ll. 21–3. 76 T. H. Rigby, ‘Was Stalin a Disloyal Patron?’ Soviet Studies 3 (1986), 311–24. 77 See Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ‘From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny’, in Rees (ed.), The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship, pp. 79–107. 100 J. Arch Getty and decisions.78 What Victor Thompson called the ‘dramaturgy’ myth of hierarchical formal organisations that concealed the real decision-making power applies here. The appearance of a stable and wise institution creates regime legitimacy and provides the public with a sense of stability and order. It is a far better and more respectable public image than the naked reality of changing groups of lieutenants and cliques.79 But what lay behind the facade? Was the Politburo, even the hidden one(s) ever an institution, either before or after it stopped meeting? Oleg Kharkhordin wrote that governments and institutions exist only because people believe they do. In reality, they are little more than collections of individuals banded together to deploy power behind an institutional fac¸ade. Foucault argued much the same thing; the state for him being ‘nothing more than a composite reality and mythicised abstraction’ of polyvalent and diverse relations of force.80 For Pierre Bourdieu, the notion of ‘the state’ makes sense only as a convenient stenographic label.81 Going back to Max Weber, he notes that states (or in our case, the Politburo) are not really grounded in logical, linguistic, or empirical reality. Weber observed that the empirical reality of the state was united by idea and belief, hiding a plethora of human actions and reactions. We use words like ‘state’ or ‘Politburo’ to describe actions that are really performed by individuals.82 The state (or the Politburo) belongs to the ‘realm of symbolic production’ and exists only at the level of belief. Those behind the fac¸ade are able to monopolise and manipulate what Bourdieu called ‘symbolic capital.’ The state is something that is naturally and subconsciously ‘misrecognised’ by the public as a real institution, a recognised authority, when in fact it is a set of contingencies and arrangements.83 Further, part of the state’s symbolic projection of itself involves structuring the very categories of thought that citizens (and we ourselves) use to understand it. Bourdieu wants 78 Gorlizki, ‘Stalin’s Cabinet’. In other venues, ‘cabinets perform a legitimating role, by their very existence as much as by what they actually discuss or decide.’ Mackie and Hogwood, ‘Decision Arenas’, p. 306. 79 Baylis, Governing by Committee, p. 16. 80 Oleg Kharkhordin, ‘What is the State? The Russian Concept of Gosudarstvo in the European Context’, History and Theory 40 (2001), 234. 81 Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 111. 82 See Kharkhordin’s discussion which follows Alf Ross and Bourdieu. Kharkhordin, ‘What is the State?’, pp. 206–9. 83 Bourdieu defines ‘symbolic violence’ as the process in which elites impose meanings on symbols to produce ‘misrecognition’ of how they were produced. The result is ‘illusio’, in which people believe and are thus caught up in a system that seems naturally produced. 101  ‘to expose the danger of always being thought by a state that we believe we are thinking ... One of the major powers of the state is to produce and impose ... categories of thought that we spontaneously apply to ... the state itself.’84 The state (or Politburo) thus exists because we think it does and because it wants us to think so. The Politburo was particularly good at this: Soviet citizens and later scholars continue to believe it existed as an institution because it said it did. It issued decrees, was referred to in the controlled public discourse, and carried a roster of members even when it never met. Like Soviet citizens, we continue to fall for the trick; we imagine it as a real institution, study its procedures and organisation, worry about crises and changes in its work, and refer to it as a tangible, objective body. The Stalinists instinctively grasped the unreality of institutions and the personal practices behind it. Their habit of creating a new institution for each new task, the chronic overlapping of functions between agencies, and the bewildering array of large and small agencies devoted to the same task were hallmarks of Bolshevik institutional nihilism. What counted was the personal power of the person leading an agency. That is why Stalin spent so much time on personnel questions. Of all the committees, temporary and permanent commissions, commissariats, and the like devoted to a given policy area, the one headed by an authoritative person was the one that called the tune. Even at the top, the institutional indeterminacy would have horrified a management specialist but it did not bother the Stalinists at all. Although there were rough understandings of what issues were to come before the Politburo, the Secretariat, or the Orgburo, in practice the distinctions were vague. Lenin admitted as early as 1920 that the difference between the Orgburo (personnel) and the Politburo (policy) was artificial.85 The boundaries between the Secretariat and the Orgburo were even vaguer. An examination of the protocols of these two bodies in the 1920s and 1930s shows that they handled precisely the same types of questions with only one difference: when several high-ranking members were available for a meeting, it was recorded as a meeting of the Orgburo. When only one or two was present, it was called a meeting of the Secretariat, but the agenda and the list of reporters were essentially the same.86 84 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field’, Sociological Theory 1 (1994), 1. 85 Lenin quoted in Gorlizki, ‘Stalin’s Cabinet’, p. 308. 86 In the archives, protocols of these two bodies are kept together in the same folders, mixed together in one series: RGASPI f. 17, op. 112 and 113. According to interviews with archivists in the Central Committee Department of RGASPI the Orgburo and Secretariat were ‘the same’. 102, on 29 Apr 2019 at 04:21:29, Of course, if people believed that the Politburo existed, then it existed. If they believed it had authority, it had authority. But to say this is really to say that the elite’s symbolic violence was successful enough that people accepted the proffered classifications and recognised the authority the symbols indicated. This allowed members of the elite to exert power behind the facade. But as Bourdieu warns us, we need not accept these classifications and misrecognitions. If our goal is the real locus of politics and power, we might profitably shift our focus from institutions, organisational charts, and meeting frequencies to the practices of personalised power behind them.87 Looking for the real exercise of power, our agnosticism about the Politburo as institution can lead us to think of it not as a tangible entity with an objective life and death of its own, but as a symbol, a marker of power. Timothy Mitchell has argued that state structures are really ‘effects’ of practices that lay behind them. In his view, we should understand a state institution ‘not as an actual structure, but as the powerful, metaphysical effect of practices that make such structures appear to exist ... an entity comes to seem something much more than the sum of the everyday activities that constitute it’.88 The essence of being a Politburo member was not institutional membership; this should be obvious for an institution that did not meet. When Stalin and the Politburo co-opted a new member, they were exercising the power of performative naming, an act of classification.89 Politburo membership was an honorific, a symbolic credential that bestowed and reflected personal power, more than a job. It marked a person who held authority to do things, to go places, to settle disputes, and to exercise power. Politburo membership in the Stalinist system was not about the Politburo-as-institution; it was about personal power, about occupying a place in a personal table of ranks. The regularly meeting Politburo could disappear, insofar as it ever existed. But Politburo members continued to command more respect and obedience than others as a result of their closeness to Stalin, whether or not the Politburo actually existed. The same could be said of Orgburo or Secretariat membership, being First Secretary of a province, or a member of the State Defence Committee (GKO) during the war. These were men sitting in rooms (or travelling 87 Graeme Gill described a personalised politics in which personal authority, connections, clientage, and connections were the operative mode of politics rather than institutions and bureaucracies exercising power.    Graeme Gill, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 88 Timothy Mitchell, ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics’, American Political Science Review 1 (1991), 94. 89 See the discussion of Bourdieu’s idea of nomination as a form of symbolic capital in Kharkhordin, ‘What is the State?’, pp. 236–8.
That power had little to do with the formal workings of the organisation or commissariat that defined the position on its personnel roster. The power was not about the meetings or rules of the institution (vedomstvo) that carried the job description. It was about the authority that accrued to the individual that held the power to judge disputes, enforce orders, and protect himself. N. I. Ezhov was simultaneously Secretary of the Central Committee, candidate member of the Politburo, member of the Orgburo, head of the NKVD, the Commissariat of Water Transport, and the Party Control Commission (KPK), and Presidium Member of the Supreme Soviet and Executive Committee Member of the Comintern. Some of these bodies rarely met and when they did Ezhov did not attend. Each of these ‘jobs’ was really a symbolic badge on his imaginary official tunic. The combination of traditional honorifics (Supreme Soviet, Comintern), statusconferring ranks (Politburo, Secretariat), vestigial titles (KPK), and actual work (NKVD, Water Transport) demonstrated his power. His reputation as someone close to the main patrimonial personality gave him the authority he needed not only to arrest people, but to resolve disputes among those with lower rank, to satisfy petitions from supplicants, to exercise patronage, and in his own disputes to stand on equal footing with others having the same level on the table of ranks. His power and authority had absolutely nothing to do with the ‘reality’ of any of these agencies, their frequency of meeting, or the supposed collective nature of their deliberations. Members of the high elite used symbolic emblems to enhance their own power: they carried ‘authority’ with them wherever they went because they were close to Stalin.90 Precisely because institutions were so weak, high-ranking officials frequently went out on various ad hoc missions: to push forward the harvest, to change local leaderships, and so on. Their Politburo membership (even when the Politburo as a committee stopped meeting) was a sign of their personal connections in the complicated matrix of power in which they lived and travelled. When Kaganovich went to Smolensk, when Zhdanov went to Bashkiriia, when Molotov went to Ukraine, they exercised power not as institutional members but as power-laden individuals whose authority derived from their personal association with other powerful persons (Stalin). In these local venues, their presence was decisive and their personal power was as absolute as Stalin’s. 90 Of course, other personal attributes also provided symbolic authority, including one’s revolutionary biography, friendship with Lenin, and Civil War accomplishments. 104. Authoritative persons also became members of higher bodies like the Politburo, Orgburo, Secretariat, and Central Committee as a reflection of personal power they had already accrued. Many of the younger politicians who frequented Stalin’s office and functioned at the level of Politburo members became ‘real’ Politburo members only at the next Party congress, as symbolic confirmation of personal authority they already had.91 Similarly, senior politicians could be excluded completely from Stalin’s decision-making team while retaining their seats on the Politburo.92 It was personal relationships, not institutions, that produced power. Earlier we found that the declining frequency and changing structure of Politburo meetings were similar to those that characterised cabinets in European countries with large-scale and complex governmental tasks. Without overlooking some obvious differences, Stalin seems to have functioned rather like a prime minister, with the Politburo as his cabinet. Like strong British prime ministers, he controlled the agenda, led the decision-making process, and formulated the final decisions that were promulgated under the name of the Politburo regardless of the actual discussion and consensus of the meeting (if one were even held). Some of the differences between Stalin’s Politburo and, say, Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet are obvious. Others are less apparent but nevertheless intriguing. First, although Stalin was a dictator, his Politburo functioned much more as a team effort than Western cabinets generally do. When he was on the job in Moscow, he was constantly in contact or meeting with his senior lieutenants (whether or not such encounters were called Politburo meetings) to a much greater extent than typical prime ministers. Almost every day they spent hours together in his office. Secondly, while the membership of Western cabinets can change every few years with a new election, the membership of Stalin’s cabinet/team was of much longer standing. The inner membership core was stable and of long duration, working with him from the early 1920s until his death in 1953. And thirdly, despite Stalin’s life-and-death power over them, they seem to have exercised much more independent authority than British cabinet ministers. They not only had vast authority over bureaucratic 91 Zhdanov, Ezhov, and Malenkov are examples from the 1930s; Malyshev, Patolichev, Pervukhin, Saburov, and Zverev from the 1940s. Ezhov was already functioning as an Orgburo member before 1934, when that status was made official for him. Acquiring the badge did not appreciably change his actual functions, but ‘externally’ it gave him the right to formally adjudicate disputes at higher levels without having to get Stalin’s approval each time. See J. Arch Getty, A Good Party Worker: the Rise of N. I. Ezhov (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming, 2006). 92 This happened to Molotov, Voroshilov, and Kaganovich in the 1940s. My thanks to Sheila Fitzpatrick for stressing the importance of exclusion as well as inclusion. Stalin as Prime Minister 105 but also Stalin left them in charge while he absented himself for two or three months a year on holiday. It is difficult to imagine another European prime minister leaving his lieutenants so unsupervised, and not only because he knew that they feared him and would obey him. As members of the team, it did not occur to them to defy Stalin because that would mean defying the team, the consensus, the common understanding of the country’s proper direction. It is tempting to see these structural changes in the USSR and elsewhere simply as functions of modernity, of the changes in government that follow from the desire of modern states, whatever their ideology, to take upon themselves more and more control over and disciplining of the lives of their citizens. According to this view, the enhanced and growing mission and scope of modern governments might require new governmental arrangements including declining formal meeting frequency and segmented decision-making. Yet we should beware of applying comparative modernity too rigidly. The fact that the Politburo and other cabinets were working even when they did not meet is a clue that something is at work here other than the comparative structural similarities inspired by growing complexity. The Politburo published decisions when it had stopped meeting altogether: it existed even when it did not exist. These decisions were received and obeyed just as if they had emanated from a formal meeting and vote. Common sense alone should suggest therefore that our focus should be less on the habits of organisations in their formal sense than on the practices and people behind them. When Mrs. Thatcher met with a few people, then consulted with a few more, then stamped the final decision as one of the Cabinet and personally phrased the text, she was doing exactly what Stalin did. The meeting of the actual organisation, its frequency, subcommittee structure, voting practices, and official membership composition were formalities, afterthoughts. In the case of the Politburo, it had always been so, even in Lenin’s time. Stalin’s rise to absolute power is an established fact. It is also easily established that the decreasing frequency of Politburo meetings can be explained by increasing complexity of the system as happened elsewhere. But it is not clear that either of these mutually unrelated phenomena played the decisive role in the actual practices of decision-making, which seem to have been relatively unchanged before, during, and after Stalin’s unchallenged reign. Those practices were personal and personalised, having to do with loyalty, team effort, patronage and clientage, and a behind-the-scenes fluidity and informality rather than with formal structures, which were used merely as symbolic devices to project a power whose origins were primordial and personalised. It would be interesting 106  to investigate to what extent such ancient and traditional forms of power lay behind systems like those in the USA and Europe; systems that we are used to thinking of as modern, highly structured, and institutionalised. Although Bourdieu and others have drawn our attention to the importance of the personalised practices that lay behind apparent institutions, the general relationship between (or combination of) modernity and primordialism in the realm of political decision-making remains unexplored territory for future research.