Document 40

OGPU report on attitudes of economic managers, 1931

RGASPI, f. 85, op. 1s, d. 143, ll. 1-2. Typed copy.

Debate occasioned by Comrade Ordzhonikidze's speech is now in its fourth day. The speech was pivotal to the work of the Conference. Wearied by the debate, Conference members are filling the House of Unions snack bar and corridors. They make it a point to go into the hall for the speech by Comrade [I. P.] Pavlunovsky [ Deputy chairman of VSNKh, responsible for defense industries] and when they hear applause, assuming that Politburo and Government members Comrades Stalin and Molotov are speaking.

There's no consensus among Conference members, the reason for this being their heterogeneous makeup. Group allegiance depends on where the member works and the type of work he does.

A number of people said the following: the reform of industrial management which created conglomerates was designed to bring administrators closer to actual production. However, because of the push to industrialize and shortages of materials, which pointed up the need for greater distribution planning, and also because credit reforms were misunderstood, the reform actually resulted in increased bureaucracy and a dilution of responsibility.

Now Comrade Ordzhonikidze makes the role of directors of enterprises and chiefs of construction crucial, giving them the right to conclude agreements and relieving them of the responsibility of overseeing supply departments.

The group which includes the non-party delegation from Transcaucasia (Chichinadze, Ter-Asvatsaturov, and Melik Pashaev) along with Shablievsky, the recently appointed Chair of the North Caucasian Krai Economic Council, says that a real boss has come onto the scene, changing everything and saying what everyone wanted to hear. Now everything hinges on accountability, one-man management, and supply. The laissez-faire attitude has come to an end: firm directives from the presidium [of VSNKh] have taken over.

In the lobbies no one talked about politics as such.

Genak (from VSNKh) finds that the talk at the congress consists mainly of platitudes. Directors don't shout "give us one-man management," but, silent and apprehensive, listen as"adopt one-man management" is shouted at them. . . .

Metigovsky, the director of the Saratov Raion Power Plant, is glad that I. N. Smirnov [expelled from the party in 1927 for his ties to Trotsky, reinstated in 1930 and employed in the VSNKh bureaucracy] with his proposal that supply be organized according to the model of Chusosnabarm [acronym for the Defense Council plenipotentiary for army supplies in charge of the entire system of special, supra-departmental bodies (with the acronym ChUSO) that supplied the Red Army during the Civil War and period of war communism] has been criticized.