Rabkrin

Historian E.A. Rees has observed that the nature of the state is the "central issue in the study of all political systems," and essential to that its control over and the accountability of its various bureaucratic structures.^[1] Supervision and inspection was important even under the tsarist regime of the pre-revolutionary era, with Russian writer Nikolai Gogol even penning a famous comedy about the topic, Revizor (The Government Inspector ), in 1836.^[1] With the advent of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the subsequent attempt to reorganize and centrally direct industial production under the aegis of War Communism during the civil war which followed, this need for external supervision to prevent bureaucratic abuses increased fantastically.

AS a minority party in an overwhelmingly peasant country, the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [RKP(b)] faced serious opposition at every turn and therefore, in the words of Rees, "relied on the centralized state machine to ensure its survival and to enforce its policies."^[2] The Bolsheviks were nexperienced in both the operation of government and the management of industry and faced a dire shortage of committed and educated cadres.^[2] Communications were disrupted, factories rapidly shuttered, and hyperinflation began to do its destructive work on budgeting and the daily operation of industry and government.

Agencies of external control began as an attempt to build order from chaos — to rationalize production, to increase productivity, to attack criminality, and to attenuate the inevitable abuses of bureaucracy.

On February 7, 1920, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets established the People's Commissariat of Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Rabkin) to succeed the People's Commissariat for State Control [ru ]. The term "Rabkrin" derives from the commissariat's Russian title, Narodny Kommissariat Raboche-Krestyanskoi Inspektsii, with the organization also commonly known by its acronym, RKI. The former People's Commissariat for State Control, Joseph Stalin, was placed in charge of the newly formed agency.

A decree enacted February 8, 1920, expanded the rights of the reorganized inspectorate to suspervise the execution of laws.^[3] The RKI also exerted prosecutorial powers, although these were not explicitly granted, these being needed to pursue and punish culpable parties for the various abuses discovered.^[4]

In addition to its role as an anti-corruption agency, Rabkrin served as an official economic information site, answering thousands of questions about prices and currency reform, and maintained a Central Bureau for Complaints, which during the early years of the New Economic Policy attempted to remedy complaints about tax miscalculations and to retroactively remedy abusive property seizures dating back to the tumultuous time of the civil war.^[4]

Historian Isaac Deutscher described Rabkrin as follows:

"The Rabkrin...was set up to control every branch of the administration, from top to bottom, with a view to eliminating the two major faults, inefficiency and corruption, which the Soviet civil service had inherited from its Tsarist predecessor. It was to act as the stern and enlightened auditor for the whole rickety and creaking governmental machine; to expose abuses of power and red tape; and to train an elite of reliable civil servants for every branch of the government. [Rabkrin] acted through teams of workers and peasants who were free at any time to enter the offices of any Commissariat and watch the work done there.... This system was devised as a method of training an elite for the civil service; but as a result of it the Rabkrin was able to keep its eye on every wheel of the governmental machine.

"The whole bizarre scheme of inspection was one of Lenin's pet ideas. Exasperated by the inefficiency and dishonesty of the civil service, he sought to remedy them by extreme and ruthless 'control from below'... The choice of Stalin for the job gives a measure fo Lenin's high confidence in him, for the Inspectorate was to be a sort of a super-government, itself free from every taint and blemish of officialdom."^[5]

Although Stalin's political opponents attempted to retroactively paint him with the black brush of Rabkin's failure, scholars believe that the Georgian's role overseeing Rabkrin in its stumbling early days was nominal, he being tied up from 1920 to 1922 with the affairs of the military, the People's Commissariat of Nationalities, and the activities of the Politburo.^[6] Effective control was exercised by Stalin's deputy, V.A. Avanesov, historians of Rabkrin indicate.^[7] The RKI was represented in a host of government bodies, including Sovnarkom, the Council of Labor and Defense (STO), and, through Stalin, in the Politburo and the Orgburo of the Communist Party.^[6] It received its instructions and assignments from party, government, and soviet agencies.^[6]

Working in conjunction with the Cheka and the People's Commissariat of Justice, the RKI was both a central conduit and influencer of party and state policy, able to supply information and recommendations on the one hand, while supervising policy implementation and providing feedback on the other.^[6] Only the secret police remained autonomous, answering only to the Politburo — Rabkrin held supervisory control over all other 17 commissariats, historian E.A. Rees has noted.^[6]

Although designed to oversee the state bureaucracy, Rabkrin rapidly developed into a bureaucracy in its own right. While the State Control agency of the tsarist regime in 1917 counted 3,000 employees, the Soviet People's Commissariat of State Control numbered 10,000 in 1920.^[8] In its reorganized form as Rabkrin, the agency grew further, with 12,000 employees on its payroll by 1922.^[8] In addition to the permanent professional staff, many of whom had worked in the RKI's tsarist predecessor, Rabkrin was supplemented with a number of volunteer staff.^[8] The proportion of members of the Communist Party was small during the early years of the agency, and with pay rates poor, the overall quality of personnel was low.^[8]

At the April 1923 12th Congress of theRKP(b), Rabkrin was subjected to a radical reorganization which effectively any pretext that it was a non-party institution.^[9] First, the Central Control Commission (CCC) of the RKP(b), previously limited to 7 members, was expanded to a membership of 50, working under the authority of a 9-person presidium.^[9] The People's Commissar of Rabkrin was henceforth to be appointed by the party Central Committee, making its selection from the presidium of the CCC — effectively placing Rabkrin under CCC control.^[9]

The CCC, which worked hand-in-glove with the secret police (GPU), thereby empowered to use Rabkrin for direct supervision over all aspects of government and state industry.^[9] Additionally, members of the CCC were assigned to the governing collegia of other People's Commissariats, where they served a supervisory function.^[9]

With the coming of 1925, wage standardization became an area of focus of the Soviet leadership. On January 2, Sovnarkom passed a resolution declaring it "indispensible to establish a uniform nomenclature" listing all positions and setting salaries for all departments of the government as well as other institutions that operated as part of the national or local government budget.^[10] Rabkrin was to be instrumental in this reorganization, working with the trade union central council to establish numbers of staff for each unit and then helping to set salary rates in conjunction with the People's Commissariat of Finance and the People's Commissariat of Labor.^[11] This new system was first made effective in Moscow in the fall of 1925 before being made national policy in September 1926.^[11]

General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1922, Stalin entrusted the post of People's Commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate to his trusted ally Grigory Ordzhonikidze, who was in office from 1926 to 1930. Under new leadership, Rabkrin pushed for more industrial/military efficiency from other Soviet economic establishments, most notably the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (Vesenkha) and the State Planning Commission (Gosplan). Along with Stalin's first five-year plan (1928–1932), Rabkrin became responsible for seeking new industrial investments to reach maximum output with minimum input. From 1929 to 1932, power struggles between Vesenkha, which was charged with the task of increasing industrialization, and Rabkrin became more evident.^[12]

Constant investigations into Vensenkha's industrial efficiency led to claims from Rabkrin of neglect and deception. However, many of the reports were falsified, which typified the chaotic nature of Soviet bureaucratic control.^[12] The investigations into other Soviet institutions went hand in hand with the removal of Old Bolshevik members during the early stages of the Great Purge of 1936–1938. Stalin and his administration believed that certain individuals within Soviet establishments, like Vesenkha, were purposely sabotaging the economic growth of the Soviet Union. Rabkrin investigations conveniently provided enough evidence to convict thousands of government officials.^[13]

Within the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, Rabkrin investigations led to departmental dissatisfaction. Many officials felt the overpowered Soviet institution to be abusing its power and making it difficult for collectivized agriculture to succeed under strict procedures. Soviet peasants met the same criticism as internal departments reported peasants as drunks, debauchers, and saboteurs who opposed the Communist Party and its attempts at mass collectivization. Most of the reports were false and wrongly depicted the life of the peasantry, but they justified the authorities in placing extreme production quotas on the agriculture sector. They constantly kept the peasantry busy but made them less likely to take part in immoral behavior.^[14]

In 1929, the Complaints Bureau was combined with the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions Complaint Bureau, another Soviet administrative establishment that was in charge of worker unionization. The merger led to a rise in complaints from both agriculture and industrial sectors^[15] until 1934, the year of the abolition of Rabkrin.

From November 1930 to October 1931, Andrei Andreyev headed Rabkrin. Like his predecessor, Ordzhonikidze, Andreyev pushed for greater industrial growth as well as military expansion. From October 1931 to January 1934, Yan Rudzutak replaced him. After the success of the first five-year plan, the Soviet economy had entered a period of expansion and financial security. Compared to other world powers at the time, which were experiencing the impacts of the Great Depression, the Soviet economy seemed unstoppable from an external perspective.^[16]

At the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party, with its purpose being felt to have been served in creating a more efficient administrative and economic structure, Rabkrin was dissolved, and its functions were passed to the People's Control Commission.^[16] After the People's Control Commission became responsible for productivity, an increase in labor unions became a support system for many Soviet citizens in the industrial areas, which led to less chaos caused by bureaucratic control.

Rabkrin is remembered for its restrictions and its confrontations with other Soviet establishments, but under Stalin's reign, it met limited success in assisting in the creation of the Soviet economy.^[17]

In the view of Isaac Deutscher:

"Lenin's cure proved as bad as the disease. The faults of the civil service, as Lenin himself frequently pointed out, reflected the country's appalling lack of education, its material and spiritual misery, which wcould be cured only gradually, over the lifetime of at least a generation.... With his characteristic belief in the inherent virtues of the working classes, Lenin appealed to the workers against his own bureaucracy. The mill of officialdom, however, turned the workers themselves into bureaucrats. The Commissariat of the Inspectorate, as Lenin was to discover later on, became an additional source of muddle, corruption, and bureaucratic intrigue. In the end it became an unofficial but meddlesome police in charge of the civil service."^[18]

• E.H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia 1: The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, vol. 1. London, Macmillan, 1953.
• E.H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia 4: The Interregnum, 1923–1924. London: Macmillan, 1954.
• E.H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia 5 & 6: Socialism in One Country, 1924–1926, vol. 1 and 2. London: Macmillan, 1958.
• E.H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia 9 & 10: Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929, vol. 1, parts 1 and 2. London: Macmillan, 1969.
• R.W. Davies, "Some Soviet Economic Controllers: Kuibyshev," Soviet Studies, vol. 11, no. 4 (April 1960), pp. 373-392.
• G.A. Dorokhova, Raboche-krest'ianskaia inspektsiia v 1920–1923 gg. [The Worker-Peasant Inspection in 1920–1923] Moscow, 1959.
• S.N. Ikonnikov, Organizatsiia i deiatel'nost' RKI v 1920–1925 gg. [The Organization and Activities of RKI in 1920–1925] Moscow, 1960.
• S.N. Ikonnikov, Sozdanie i deiatel'nost' ob"edinennykh organov TsKK–RKI v 1923–1934 gg. [The Establishment and Activities of the Joint Organs of the CCC–RKI in 1923–1934] Moscow, 1971.
• A.V. Krasnov, TsKK–RKI v bor'be za sotsializm 1923–1934 gg. [The CCC–RKI in the Struggle for Socialism, 1923–1934] Irkutsk, 1973.
• L.F. Morozov and V.P. Portnov, Organy TsKK–RKI v bor'be za sovershenstvovanie sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo apparata (1923–1934 gg.) [The Organs of CCC–RKI in the Struggle to Improve the Soviet State Apparatus, 1923–1934] Moscow, 1964.
• Olga A. Narkiewicz, The Making of the Soviet State Apparatus. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1970.
• L. Orlov, Deiatel'nost' Moskovskoi kontrol'noi komissii i raboche-krest'ianskoi inspektsii v 1924–1934 gg. [Affairs of the Moscow Control Commission and the Worker-Peasant Inspection in 1924–1934] Moscow, 1972.
• Michael Perrins, "Rabkrin and Workers' Control in Russia, 1917–34," European Studies Review, vol. 10 (April 1980), pp. 225–246.
• Roger Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward: Soviet Soicety and Politics under the New Economic Policy. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• E.A. Rees, Rabkrin and the Soviet System of State Control, 1920–1930. PhD dissertation. University of Birmingham, 1982.
• E.A. Rees, State Control in Soviet Russia. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987.
• RKI v sovetskom stroitel'stve [The RKI in Soviet Construction] Moscow, 1926.
• Carmen Sirianni, Workers Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience. London: New Left Books, 1982.
• P.S. Spoerry, The Central Rabkrin Apparatus, 1917–1925. PhD dissertation. Harvard University, 1967.

• Izvestiia gosudarstvennogo kontrolia. Moscow, 1918–1920.
• Izvestiia raboche-krest'ianskoi inspektsii. Moscow, 1920–1923.
• Bulleten' TsKK VKP(b) i NKRKI SSSR i RSFSR. Moscow, 1924–1929.