Felix Dzerzhinsky and the Soviet bureaucracy

The article is devoted to the consideration of the relationship between F.E. Dzerzhinsky and the Soviet management system of the NEP period. F. E. Dzerzhinsky held the highest management positions in the economic sphere: he was the People's Commissar of Railway Transport and the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. It is shown that F. E. Dzerzhinsky considered the existing management system to be ineffective and the ruling state apparatus as bureaucratic and incapable of properly solving the problems facing the USSR. He repeatedly criticized the system and called for the correction of its negative manifestations. The article shows the futility of this criticism and explains the reasons for this. The main one is that all the shortcomings of the system voiced by F. E. Dzerzhinsky are immanent and, therefore, they cannot be eliminated without dismantling the one-party autocratic command-administrative system of management. No one would have done the latter from the leaders of the USSR of that time. The article concludes that in the confrontation between the management system and one of the leading managers, the system could not but win.