“Give us a secretary who would be with the people”: de-stalinization of the communist party’s power in the rural districts of the central part of Non-Black Soil area of Russia (1953 - early 1960's)

From 1953 to the early 1960s the top leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) tried to de-Stalinize the party power in the rural districts in its effort to raise the efficiency of kolkhoz and sovkhoz system in the agriculture of the USSR. However, as it is seen from the documents of regional and district party committees, the party bureaucracy in Central part of Non-Black Soil Area used all top-down reorganizations in its own interests to gain power. “Emergency” style of management exercised by local authorities which was losing ground among the population was replaced by rigid control from the party management. This control was based on well-developed non-formal relations within the partite-soviet nomenclature as well as on the dense network of primary party organizations encompassing kolkhozes and sovkhozes. The collective farmers’ awareness of this bureaucratic effect of de-Stalinization resulted in their mistrust in local authorities and their move from the countryside to urban areas.