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Dissertation Information for Christopher Sullivan Monty

NAME:
- Christopher Sullivan Monty

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (2004)

ADVISORS:
- J. Arch Getty

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Stephen P. Frank
- Ronald Vroon

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Moscow is far away: Stalin's party inspectors and the politics of personnel during the new economic policy, 1921--1928

Abstract: Based on newly available archival evidence, this study reexamines one of the most hallowed canons in Soviet history, the extension of the central administrative institutions of the Russian Communist Party during the 1920s. Historians explain the emergence of Stalin's dictatorship in terms of his ability, as General Secretary, to effectively supervise local agencies and control appointments to important party and government posts. The Organization-Assignment Department of the Secretariat of the Party's Central Committee occupies a central place in this narrative, as the hub of Stalin's "party machine."

Despite the centrality of central party administration to existing explanations of the outcome of the Russian Revolution, almost nothing has been written about the conduct of the officials employed in these offices. This study examines a corps of party inspectors, the Responsible Instructors of the Central Committee, who supervised the conduct of local officials. My study shows that the existing literature on the Communist Party during the 1920s grossly overstates both the role of ideology in Soviet politics and the coherence of the Bolshevik party/state.

Official organizational policy during the years of the New Economic Policy aimed to maintain the identity of the Bolshevik regime by using the party to reform the state. This project entailed improved supervision of the performance of local party and soviet agencies, the evaluation of regional party officials, and the promotion of new working class cadres into state and party administration from below. In theory, the Responsible Instructors were powerful inspectors, representatives of Moscow charged with realizing this project in the more than eighty administrative subdivisions of the Soviet Republic. In practice, efforts to promote centralization through periodic audits of local agencies proved ineffective. The shortage of experienced communist administrators left the Central Committee dependent on local officials, who successfully manipulated central agencies to their advantage until the advent of Stalinist self-criticism in 1928.

MPACT Scores for Christopher Sullivan Monty

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A+C = 0
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TA = 0
calculated 2008-08-10 22:20:21

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Students under Christopher Sullivan Monty

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None