Abstract
The USSR Academy of Sciences carries the principal responsibility for formulating and executing policy in fundamental research. Here, as in all other areas of state responsibility, such activities are supervised by the Communist Party which exerts, thereby, a profound influence on the working environment of Soviet scientists. It is the nature of this influence and the broader question of the character of the relationship existing between the Communist Party and the Soviet scientific community that the remaining chapters seek to clarify.
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Notes and References
Yu. Burlin, Tartorganizatsiya’, p. 32; Ronald J. Hill and Peter Frank, The Soviet Communist Party (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981) pp. 22–3 and 51. Whereas the party committees of rural districts (raikoms) are directly subordinated to their respective regional party committees (pbkoms), larger cities are subdivided into urban districts, which introduces an extra tier into the party hierarchy in the form of the city party committee (gorkom). The city party committees of Moscow and Kiev, however, have been granted the status of regional committees.
Jerry F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1979) pp. 456–7; Boris Meissner, ‘The 26th Congress and Soviet Domestic Politics’, Problems of Communism (May–June 1981) pp. 1–23.
M. Tatu, Power in the Kremlin (London: Collins, 1969) p. 292;
Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967) pp. 193–202;
Loren R. Graham, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (London: Allen Lane, 1971) pp. 444–9; J. F. Hough and M. Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed, pp. 411, 425 and 644.
See, for example, R. G. Yanovskii, Politicheskaya ucheba v nauchnom kollektive (Moscow: Politizdat, 1974).
XVIII s”ezd VKP (b): Stenograficheskii otchët (Moscow: Politizdat, 1939) pp. 571–2; see also L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (London: Methuen, 1970) p. 454.
Roy A. Medvedev, On Socialist Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1975) p. 117. The correct titles of the government agencies to which Medvedev refers are: the USSR Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialised Education, and the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology.
See J. F. Hough and M. Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed, pp. 410–24. Here it is estimated that the Central Committee apparatus employs about 1500 responsible officials. See also A. Avtorkhanov, The Communist Party Apparatus (Cleveland and New York: Meridian, 1966) pp. 209–10;
A. Pravdin, ‘Inside the CPSU Central Committee’ (interview with Mervyn Matthews), Survey, vol. 20, no. 4 (Autumn 1974) pp. 94–104;
L. Schapiro, ‘The General Department of the CC of the CPSU’, Survey, vol. 21, no. 3 (Summer 1975) pp. 53–65.
B. Harasymiw, ‘Nomenklatura: The Soviet Communist Party’s Leadership Recruitment System’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. 2, no. 4 (December 1969) p. 503.
For useful comment on the nomenklatura system see B. D. Lebin and M. N. Perfil’ev, Kadry apparata upravleniya v SSSR (Leningrad: Nauka, 1971) pp. 156–9.
T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the USSR 1917–67 (Princeton University Press, 1968) pp. 449–51. See also J. F. Hough and M. Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed, pp. 347–51.
A. Vucinich, The Soviet Academy of Sciences (Stanford University Press, 1956) p. 38.
G. D. Komkov, O. M. Karpenko, B. V. Levshin and L. K. Semenov, Akademiya nauk shtab sovetskoi nauki (Moscow: Nauka, 1968) p. 185; J. F. Hough and M. Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed, p. 348.
O. Yu. Shmidt, ‘Problema nauchnykh kadrov’, Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi Akademii, kniga 37–8 (1930) p. 17.
E. V. Chutkerashvili, Kadry dlya nauki (Moscow: Vysshaya shkola, 1968) p. 310.
G. D. Komkov, B. V. Levshin and E. K. Semenov, Akademiya nauk SSSR (Moscow: Nauka, 1974) p. 462.
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© 1984 Peter Kneen
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Kneen, P. (1984). Natural Scientists and the Communist Party: Structure, Functions and Membership. In: Soviet Scientists and the State. Studies in Soviet History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07332-0_6
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