How Soviet Government Worked

Some people are often puzzled over the question of how Soviet government actually worked. In America there is even a special scientific discipline, called Kremlinology, dedicated to studying Soviet government in order to understand how its functions and how decisions are made there. From many typical conclusions about USSR, we can conclude that Kremlinology have failed to discover much, if anything at all.

Soviet government indeed was a clutter of layer upon layer of overlapping bureaucracies. Even some of the insiders hardly understood how any of it worked. However, I can write a simple explanation of everything there is to know.

Nominal Government

First of all, there were two layers of governance in the country. One is the official constitutional governmental institutions, and the other is the party and its committees. I will cover the official government institutions first and the party later.

Informally knows as nomenclature because their power was nominal, official government institutions were prescribed in constitutions of either USSR or its consistent republics. Nominally they held respective power within the jurisdiction they were created for but in reality, they always acted on direction of the party. I will explain what that means later, first is the formal structure.

For them most of its existence USSR was a federation of 15 republics: 14 of these were unitary republics and had a name of xSSR format, where x stands for name of the said republic and SSR for Soviet Socialist Republic. The remaining one (RSFSR) was a federation in itself. 

RSFSR and some other SSRs had a republic within them as well, a sub republic. These states would have Autonomous added to their name and would be abbreviated as xASSR, being part of one of the states of the USSR rather than USSR itself they would be subjects to constitution of their respective states rather than that of USSR itself.

There were also Autonomous Oblasts as well as regular oblasts, who had reduced powers and bureaucracies compared to SSRs or ASSRs

Both federal USSR as well as internal republican governments had all three branches of government. 

Legislative was represented by Supreme Soviet, that was directly elected by the people in one candidate uncontested elections, from 1936 to 1989. Before 1936 USSR used complex multi-tier system of Soviets (councils), from which the country name is delivered and that needs a separate article to explain it. After 1989 Gorbachev made system more complex, by Adding Congress of People's Deputies. People would elect members of the Congress who would then elect members of smaller Supreme Soviet out of their own ranks. Then Congress would only meet occasionally, and Supreme Soviet would function as permanent parliament.

Supreme Soviet would elect Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, consisting of 15 members, who would serve as collective head of state as well as collective speaker of the Supreme Soviet. Later Gorbachev replaced Presidium with a single President of the Supreme Soviet.

Executive would consist of council (cabinet) of ministers chaired by the chairman (prime minister). Each minister would head their own relevant department and run things within it. This was by far the most normal of all structures of government, at least at first glance.

The Party

Finally, there was the party (Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU)) where all the real power was for the most of USSR existence.

Soviet constitution had an article 6 that stated that The Party (CPSU) and a managerial and directing role in the state. That was interpreted as very literary. That is government institutions, listed in the previous section of this article, could not act on their own and should only act on policy advice from The Party. That made all these complex structures nothing more than figureheads (very bloated figureheads) of the party where the real power was.

For the most of USSR existence the party authority and this party rule convention was iron clad. Only after the first free elections in 1989, when many independent MPs were elected to Supreme Soviets, that practice started to erode as independents would not follow directives of the party. Gradually their sifted the real power from the party to the government institutions.

The origins of this system could be traced to when the party was founded during Russian Empire times. There at founding congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour (Workers) Party, Lenin proposed a party rule of the democratic centralism. The Lenin's idea was that once a policy is debated and voted by the party members, it should become binding to all individual members of the party. If an any individual member of the party should win and hold any government office, they should vote and act in accordance with the approved policies, rather than according to their individual judgement. Most of the delegates rejected this as a party rule to which Lenin responded that he would simply form a separate fraction with all those who voted in favor. Lenin dubbed his side of the party Bolsheviks and his opponents Mensheviks. Lenin's fraction ended up functioning as be facto separate party, a be it with the same name as that of his rivals, Russian Social Democratic Labour (Workers) Party (Bolsheviks) or RSDRP(b).

Later party name would be changed to All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (A-RCP(b) or VKP(b)) and eventually to Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU)

Even when Bolsheviks took all power in Russia, outlawed all other political parties and even restructured all the government offices to their liking they did not abandon this policy. Party, not government was the key decision maker.

At its foundation, when the party consisted of a handful of enthusiasts, it was possible to hold regular meetings of all members to debate issues and then vote for them.

However, as party grew and eventually assumed leadership role in the party, that system became woefully inadequate to govern. However, party founders did not want to part with that culture of open discussion so first they created a Central Committee that would continue to debate policy just as before and to which regular members would elect members to debate policy on their behalf. Later when even Central Committee became too large and bloated, they created a smaller political bureau (Polit bureau) within Central Commitee, to which already selected for that purpose Central Commitee members would elect best of the best.

Over time they also realized that individual localities need someone who would focus on local areas so they created local committees that would focus on cities, oblasts and so on. Eventually numerous party committees came to duplicate the official government structure where every oblast council would also have a party oblast commitee (obcom) to formulate policy for them.

In addition to territorial, there were also functional committees tasked with various specific work, much like government department. For example, Emergency Commitee (the original one) eventually became feared and all-powerful KGB.

Even if local party members would simply vote on members of all these obcoms and gorcoms, all these numerous committees needed someone to keep track of what they are doing. There were many other bureaucratic formalities that needed to be handled within ever growing party. To do all this a Party Secretariat was created. The Secretariat kept assuming more and more important roles within the party and would eventually become the most powerful structure within the party. The Secretariat leader: General Secretary, would be considered de facto ruler of the USSR.

All of that would of course require a lot of office space to function, so party was one of the biggest structures within USSR. 

Various party committees together were known as party apparatus and people who were part of these structures were called apparatchiks to distinguish them from nomenklatura who manned government offices.

Even if the initial party culture was that of debate and discussion, that only managed to party survive only in Polit bureau. The rest of the party very soon became laden with cronyism, favoritism, patronage and such. Being pre-approved by secretariat to run for anything would effectively guarantee you the office. Because of that, positions within secretariat became highly thought after.

All that effectively made USSR an oligarchy where a few invisible men deep within party structures effectively controlled everything in the country. Because being on bad terms with secretariat meant losing one's job, political career and sometimes life, people within party would end up mostly loyal to their patrons within the system and indifferent to anything else. That would lead to the country being neglected by such one-party system. Eventually in 75 years this system filtered all but complete bootlickers. Then unqualified bootlickers run the country into the ground and USSR collapced.