The raikom 1933–39: Adapting to Change

Abstract

Overshadowed by the political departments in 1933–34, the raikoms emerged as victors from the administrative-jurisdictional conflicts in the autumn of 1934. Prior to this the raikom internal structure had been transformed more fundamentally. This change — the replacement of raikom functional departments by a number of raikom instructors — was announced at the seventeenth party congress early in 1934 as part of a package of organisational innovations and modifications, the primary objective of which was to move the party’s and state’s organisational basis from a functional one to a production one. As a matter of fact, the gist of the reshaping of the raikom was contrary to the trend of the 1934 reorganisation. The following analysis seeks to explain why this was so.