"People's Control" in the Soviet Union

Abstract

Lmaintain an effective control system to replace Stalin's terror and KhrushIk chev's early attempts at coercion-by-persuasion. In recent times the slowdown in economic growth and the difficulties of managing an increasingly complex economy have sharpened the problem's urgency. In December 1965, three years after Nikita Khrushchev established the Party-State Control Committee and its local counterparts, the present Soviet leaders clearly signaled their enduring concern by renaming these organs Committees of People's Control.' More recently, at the 23rd Party Congress, the elevation of the NK (narodnyi kontrol) Committee's new head, P. V. Kovanov, from candidate to full member of the Central Committee of the CPSU was clear recognition of the importance of his control duties. This article examines the evolving character of the PGK (partiino-gosudarstvennyi kontrol) mechanism from its 1962 origins to its recent transformation into people's control, and attempts to evaluate the chances the present NK committee network has of providing an effective control system, without terror, for the ponderous Soviet economic machine.