RABKRIN

Rabkrin is the contracted name of Narodnyi Kommissariat Raboche–Krest'ianskoi Inspektsii (The People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection), the Soviet governmental institution responsible between 1920 and 1934 for overseeing state administration.

On February 7, 1920, the Soviet Central Executive Committee established Rabkrin to succeed the People's Commissariat for State Control (established December 3, 1917). It was charged with ensuring the effectiveness of government administration and monitoring the implementation of state decrees. The former commisar of state control, Josef Stalin, remained in charge of Rabkrin until he was replaced in April 1922 by A. D. Tsyurupa.

The Soviet leadership soon became concerned that Rabkrin was failing to halt the growth of bureaucraticism, mismanagement, and corruption in the government apparatus. In April 1923, Rabkrin was merged with the Communist Party's Central Control Commission under Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev. The new body was given the broad task of supervising and rationalizing the administration of all party, state, and economic functions. From November 1926 to November 1930, Stalin's close ally, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, headed the joint control agency, which became a powerful political weapon for the consolidation of Stalin's power. In 1928, it was charged with overseeing implementation of the First Five-Year Plan, and played a major role in promoting unrealistically ambitious industrial planning and militaristic campaign methods of economic administration. In November 1930, Andrei Andreyevich Andreyev succeeded as head of the joint control agency until October 1931, when he was replaced by Yan Ernestovich Rudzutak. To strengthen the power of the economic commissariats, the Seventeenth Party Congress (1934) dissolved Rabkrin and transferred its functions to an emasculated Commission for State Control, attached to Sovnarkom and separate from the new Commission for Party Control subordinated to the Central Committee.

See also: central control commission; sovnarkom; stalin, josef vissarionovich

bibliography

Rees, E. A. (1987). State Control in Soviet Russia. The Rise and Fall of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, 1920-1934. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Nick Baron