The institution of authorized representatives in the Central Nechernozemye villages of the middle 1940s - early 1960s

The essay analyzes the factors of reproduction, organization and work of the institution of authorized representa­tives which was a method to mobilize the most active members of administrative centers for carrying on economic campaigns in the villages of the Central Nechernozemye since the middle of the 1940s until the early 1960s. The analyzed phenomenon was regarded as an instrument of strengthening the authority power in regions in the condi­tions of official institutions'' weakness, excessive centralization of power, few amount of telephones, and "social im­munity" of villagers to collective-farm system. For the decades, the institution of authorized representatives has gained such attributes of power as inner hierarchy, special "normative base", the system of planning and book­keeping, etc. The authorized representatives helped the staff members to organize the processes during economic campaigns. Khrushchev regarded the institution of authorized representatives as an odious characteristic of the Stalin order and tried to dismantle it, but the institution survived in spite of the improvement of telephone industry, the re­forms of regional government, party mobilizations, and quantitative growth of primary party organizations, whose aim was to strengthen the party control over the countryside. Destalinization of daily managing inevitably led to the suppressing of both mobilizing potential of the CPSU members and political order on the whole. Regional govern­ments objected to the abolition of authorized representatives, because they regarded the institution as their personal resource to fulfil the tasks of the center in the chaos of Khrushchev reforms. The slow curtailing of the institution of authorized representatives was not the result of the increased level of party organizational work, but rather it occurred due to the decentralization of power, its "privatization" by local party and economic leadership.