“WE MUST PROMOTE THE BEST WORKERS TO THESE POSTS...”: REORGANIZATION OF THE PARTY SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT IN THE MIDDLE URALS IN THE 1940s

The article examines the reorganization of the party system of industrial management in the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the VKP(b) in the pre-war and war periods. These changes were associated with the creation of the institute of industry-specific secretaries, as a result of which the powers of one secretary for industry were delegated to industry secretaries for individual industries. It is shown that the creation of the institute of industry-specific secretaries was aimed at eliminating the disproportions and inconsistencies that took place in economic activity. In order to analyze the professional level of these managers, a socio-professional portrait of industry-specific secretaries is given. The authors considers such professional aspects as education level, the specialty obtained, work experience in production, and a managerial position in production. It is established that the overwhelming majority of industry-specific secretaries had higher specialized technical education, most of them had solid production experience and experience in management work in the field of production. A comprehensive analysis of the portrait of these managers allowed concluding that the industry-specific secretaries had the necessary professional and practical skills for the effective management of the industries they supervised. In order to determine the professional competence of the industry-specific secretaries, they were compared with some well-known plant directors of that time, which showed that plant directors had no advantage over the industry secretaries in all the main parameters. It is concluded that the introduction of the institution of industry-specific secretaries was a justified management decision.