The Relationship Between Departmentalism and Regionalism in the First Year of the Sovnarkhoz Reform in the Soviet Union

This paper examines the relationship between departmentalism (vedomstvennost’) and regionalism (mestnichestvo) in the Sovnarkhoz (People’s Economic Council) system established in 1957, in an attempt to reform the economic management structure of the Soviet Union. This study refutes the conventional wisdom that the Sovnarkhoz reform was a dichotomous opposition between decentralization and recentralization. For a meticulous analysis, by exploring the joint meeting of the chairmen of the regional Sovnarkhozes, the chairmen of the USSR and Russian Gosplans, and officials from Gosplan and central ministries held in December of the first year of the Sovnarkhoz reform, it is investigated the perception of the highest economic functionaries on the contemporary Soviet economy and the discursive field they formed. At this meeting, strong voices were expressed from below criticizing the central departmentalism that was still not liquidated even after the reform, while there were statements warning against regionalism from the center to the regions and between provinces. The alarm bell against regionalism would become the basis for the abolition of the Sovnarkhoz system eight years later. The remarks against departmentalism and regionalism that emerged at this meeting not only resonated throughout the period of the Sovnarkhoz reform, but also continued thereafter. Therefore, the Sovnarkhoz reform is not only supposed to be considered as an economic management reform, but also has the significance of revealing the pivotal long-term issue in the Soviet history, namely, the relationship between departmentalism and regionalism. The history of the construction of the Soviet socialist economy was not so much antagonistic contradictions explained by the existing keywords of decentralization and recentralization, but rather a process of resolving non-antagonistic contradictions that constantly sought a point of balance between departmentalism and regionalism.