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Abstract
Amid the extensive literature on the Stalinist dictatorship during the 1930s and the postwar period, the gap in scholarship on the Soviet leadership during the war years is particularly noticeable. This article fills that gap. Stalin’s war cabinet is characterised according to several criteria: first, the formal status of members of the leadership; second, the system of delegating authority; third, the functioning and competency of the structure of collective leadership; and fourth, Stalin’s loyalty to his top associates and the degree of their political immunity. The article demonstrates that the war years saw a relative ‘normalisation’ of the dictatorship. These important changes influenced the subsequent development of the Stalinist system of power and the evolution of Soviet authoritarianism after the dictator’s death.
Notes
1 For a comparative analysis of political and economic wartime regimes, see Wilt (Citation1990), Kershaw and Lewin (Citation1997), Harrison (Citation1998), Overy (Citation2004), Gorlizki and Mommsen (Citation2009).
2 Here, historians pay attention to the changes in Stalin’s politics in the spheres of the economy and ideology and to some degree in the decrease of state control (Moskoff Citation1990; Barber & Harrison Citation1991; Branderberger Citation2002; Miner Citation2003; Goldman & Filtzer Citation2015; Edele & Slaveski Citation2016).
3 The following archival collections were consulted in preparing this piece: the collections of the USSR State Defence Committee (Gosudarstvennyi komitet oborony—GKO) in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii, hereafter RGASPI, f. 644); Politburo (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163); Cadre Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Bolshevik Communist Party (which essentially functioned as the secretariat of GKO member Georgii Malenkov) (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 127); the secretariat of the GKO members at the State Archive of Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, hereafter GARF, f. R-5446); and the personal collections of Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Kliment Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich and Andrei Zhdanov (RGASPI, ff. 74, 77, 81, 82, 84, 558). Documents from the thematic collections of the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation dealing with the period of the war have largely been published as collections of archival documents (Kudryashov Citation2010, Citation2015).
4 Regarding Stalin’s loyalty, see Rigby (Citation1986).
5 The evidence which allows us to reconstruct this episode can be found in the following documents and memoirs: a letter to the Soviet leadership from Lavrentii Beria after his arrest in 1953, published in Istochnik (1994, no. 4, p. 7); the recollections of Anastas Mikoyan published in Reshin et al. (1998 pp. 498–99); and records of conversations with Molotov (Chuev Citation1991, p. 330). Regarding the inaccuracies in the publication of Mikoyan’s memoirs, see Ellman (Citation2001, p. 141).
6 Politburo resolution from 30 June 1941, RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1317, ll. 19–20.
7 RGASPI, f. 664, op. 2, d. 1, ll. 115–16.
8 All of these appointments were made as Politburo resolutions. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1328, l. 206; d. 1331, l. 74; d. 1427, l. 131.
9 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1045, l. 17.
10 RGASPI, f. 84, op. 1, d. 79, ll. 72–5.
11 GKO Resolution, ‘Delegation of Responsibilities among the Members of the State Defence Committee’, 4 February 1942. RGASPI, f. 644, op. 1, d. 20, l. 219 in Istochnik (1995, 2, p. 117).
12 The work of the Operational Bureau will be further discussed below.
13 RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 36, l. 150; d. 94, l. 194; d. 96, l. 1; d. 116, l. 56; d. 184, l. 159.
14 RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 29, ll. 29, 30; d. 37, l. 45; d. 102, l. 11; f. 17, op. 3, d. 1046, ll. 20, 21; d. 1050, ll. 47, 48.
15 RGASPI, d. 644, op. 2, d. 184, ll. 130–33.
16 RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 454, l. 30.
17 RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 36, ll. 79, 103, 104, and 150; d. 37, l. 79; d. 72, l. 210; d. 116, ll. 59, 86; d. 117, l. 139.
18 Original and signed GKO decrees were drawn up. RGASPI, f. 644, op. 1, dd. 1–463; op. 2, dd. 1–536.
19 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1356, ll. 120–21. Politburo Resolution: ‘On the Makeup and Functioning of the Operational Bureau of GKO and the Bureau of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars’.
20 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1356, l. 27. Politburo Resolution: ‘On the Deputies of the Chairman of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars’.
21 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1406, ll. 167–68. The section of this resolution regarding the work of the GKO Operational Bureau was approved as GKO Directive No. 5931 of 19 May 1944. RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 335, ll. 185–86.
22 RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 492, ll. 6–9.
23 RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 492, ll. 6–9.
24 RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 731, ll. 1–17.
25 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1051, l. 60.
26 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1043, ll. 93, 94.
27 RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 43, ll. 142–43.
28 RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 743, l. 84, in Istochnik (1999, 1, pp. 147–49).
29 RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 743, ll. 99–100, in Istochnik (1999, 1, pp. 149–51).
30 RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 137, l. 149.
31 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1361, l. 135.
32 Korotkov (1997, p. 119); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1044, l. 67.
33 As early as 3 July 1942, Malyshev was named Molotov’s deputy in the GKO for overseeing tank production. RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 72, l. 210. In June 1943, he was again appointed People’s Commissar of Tank Production. RGASPI, f. 644, op. 2, d. 183, ll. 61–3.
34 RGASPI, f. 644, op. 1, d. 129, l. 212.
35 RGASPI, f. 84, op. 1, d. 140, ll. 73–4; Mikoyan (1999, p. 466).
36 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1420, l. 136.
37 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 1051, ll. 13, 55. Politburo directives of 14 September and 24 December 1944.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Oleg Khlevniuk
Oleg Khlevniuk, Professor, Leading Research Fellow at the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Staraya Basmannaya, 21/4, Moscow 105066, Russian Federation. Email: [email protected]