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The Supreme Soviet and Budgetary Politics in the USSR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Stephen White
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Extract

Compared with its counterparts in other countries the Soviet Union's national legislature, the USSR Supreme Soviet, has generally received little attention from scholars. The reasons are not far to seek. The Supreme Soviet meets much less frequently than its counterparts elsewhere; its votes are almost always unanimous; its discussion of government legislation is generally perfunctory and confined to details; and it has yet to ask a Soviet minister to resign. Yet, for all these obvious shortcomings, it has become increasingly apparent in recent years that the Supreme Soviet, like the soviets at lower levels of the state hierarchy, has been assuming greater powers and becoming a less marginal participant in the policy process than it was under Stalin or even Khrushchev. This apparent assumption of authority is evident most clearly in the expansion in the number and powers of the standing commissions attached to each of its chambers, through which, as in most modern legislatures, an increasing proportion of its business is conducted, but it is apparent in other ways as well. All in all, as one commentator has put it, the Supreme Soviet's meetings and discussions were indeed ‘perfunctory’ and ‘stage-managed’ for perhaps the first three decades of its existence (1936–66); but since Stalin, and more particularly since Khrushchev, the Supreme Soviet has made a ‘modest – but in terms of past history, impressive – comeback as an institution with more than purely symbolic functions’.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 75 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 The only book-length treatment of the USSR Supreme Soviet to date is Vanneman, Peter, The Supreme Soviet: Politics and the Legislative Process in the Soviet Political System (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1977).Google Scholar Other recent discussions include Hough, Jerry F. and Fainsod, Merle, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).Google Scholar Chap, 10; White, Stephen, ‘The USSR Supreme Soviet: A Developmental Perspective’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, V (1980), 247–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the same author's ‘The USSR Supreme Soviet’ in Nelson, Daniel and White, Stephen, eds, Communist Legislatures in Comparative Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1982), Chap. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Lees, John D. and Shaw, Malcolm, eds, Committees in Legislatures (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979).Google Scholar Useful comparative discussions are available in Loewenberg, Gerhard and Patterson, Samuel C., eds, Comparing Legislatures (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979)Google Scholar; Mezey, Michael L., Comparative Legislatures (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Olson, David M., The Legislative Process: A Comparative Approach (New York: Harper and Row, 1980).Google Scholar

3 Gilison, Jerome M., British and Soviet Politics: Legitimacy and Convergence (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p. 50.Google Scholar Similar views are expressed in Vanneman, , Supreme Soviet, p. 4Google Scholar, and in Hough, and Fainsod, , How the Soviet Union is Governed, p. 368.Google Scholar

4 About 60 per cent in 1976, according to Shermenev, M. K., ed., Gosudarstvennyi byudzhet SSSR, 2nd edn (Moscow: Finansy, 1978), p. 25.Google Scholar Another calculation is that between 1929 and the present about 10 to 20 per cent of American GNP has been channelled through government budgets, including state and local governments, compared with a postwar average of about 45 percent for the Soviet Union (Gregory, Paul R. and Stuart, Robert C., Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, 2nd edn (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), p. 143).Google Scholar

5 On the historical background to these developments see Vanneman, Supreme Soviet, Chap. 1.

6 For the text and a general discussion of the new Constitution, see Sharlet, Robert, The New Soviet Constitution of 1977 (Brunswick, Ohio: King's Court Communications, 1978)Google Scholar and Feldbrugge, F. J. M., ed., The Constitutions of the USSR and the Union Republics (Alphen aan den Rijn: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1979).Google Scholar

7 The only substantial change in these respects was the introduction, following the nationwide discussion of the draft text in the summer of 1977, of a provision whereby laws might be passed by the Supreme Soviet itself or ‘by a nationwide vote (referendum), conducted by decision of the USSR Supreme Soviet’. See Sharlet, , The New Soviet Constitution, pp. 108–9.Google Scholar

8 For a representative statement of this view see Gureyev, P. P. and Segudin, P. I., eds, Legislation in the USSR (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), Chap. 1.Google Scholar

9 Zakon SSSR O vyborakh v Verkhovnyi Sovet SSSR (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1978)Google Scholar, Arts. 9 and 38.

10 See the illustration in Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR (1979), no. 1, pp. 21–3.Google Scholar

11 The first recorded attempt to challenge this convention was made shortly before the general election of 1979. Two candidates were nominated by a group called ‘Election 79’, the dissident historian Roy Medvedev, who was to have run against a Bolshoi ballerina, and the wife of a recent emigre, Mrs Lyudmilla Agapova, who was to have competed against the RSFSR Supreme Court judge. Both candidatures were ruled out because of a technical irregularity in their nomination, however, and the election took place in its customary atmosphere of unanimity. See The Guardian (London), 3 02 1979, p. 5Google Scholar, and 6 February 1979, p. 4.

12 See Toma, Peter A. and Volgyes, Ivan, Politics in Hungary (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1977), p. 43.Google Scholar

13 For details, see White, Stephen, Gardner, John and Schöpflin, George, Communist Political Systems: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Tables 3.1 and 4. i. The introduction of a degree of choice among a number of approved candidates appears to have been considered briefly in the USSR during the mid-1960s; no proposal to this effect has been made public since that time, however, and it appears not to be a live issue at present. See Friedgut, Theodore H., Political Participation in the USSR (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 145–7Google Scholar, and Hill, Ronald J., Soviet Politics, Political Science and Reform (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1980), pp. 24–30.Google Scholar

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15 The details are presented in White, ‘USSR Supreme Soviet’, Table 6.1.

16 Blondel, Jean, Comparative Legislatures (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 56–60Google Scholar; similarly Herman, Valentine, comp., Parliaments of the World: A Reference Companion (London: Macmillan, 1976), p. 295.Google Scholar

17 The only exceptions to this rule appear to be three disagreements on procedure during the first session of the first convocation in 1938, probably because of inexperience (Vanneman, , Supreme Soviet, p. 92)Google Scholar, and the abstention of an elderly lady deputy, apparently overcome by shock, when the resignation of Georgii Malenkov as Prime Minister was announced to an unsuspecting Supreme Soviet in 1955 (Leonhard, Wolfgang, The Kremlin since Stalin (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 93).Google Scholar

18 See Herman, , Parliaments of the World, pp. 630–7.Google Scholar

19 See, for instance, Fainsod, Merle, How Russia is Ruled, rev. edn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 384Google Scholar; McAuley, Mary, Politics and the Soviet Union (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1977), p. 204Google Scholar; and Armstrong, John A., Ideology, Politics and Government in the Soviet Union, 4th edn (New York: Praeger, 1978), pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

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21 These developments are reviewed in Ronald J. Hill, ‘The Development of Soviet Local Government Since Stalin’, a paper presented to the Second World Congress of Slavists in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, October 1980. Most of the relevant legislation is collected in Nikitin, D. N., ed., Sovety narodnykh deputatov. Status, kompetentsiya, organizatsiya deyatel'nosti (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1980).Google Scholar

22 Details of the reorganization are given in Georgadze, M. P., ed., Verkhovnyi Sovet SSSR (Moscow: Izvestiya, 1975), pp. 119–21.Google Scholar See also Kutafin, O. E., Postoyannye komissii palat Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1971)Google Scholar and Little, D. Richard, ‘Soviet Parliamentary Committees After Khrushchev’, Soviet Studies, xxiv (1972), 41–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 White, , ‘USSR Supreme Soviet’, p. 138.Google Scholar

24 Hough, and Fainsod, , How the Soviet Union is Governed, p. 373.Google Scholar

25 For a fuller discussion see White, , ‘USSR Supreme Soviet’, pp. 138–43.Google Scholar

26 See Minagawa, Shugo, ‘Regional First Secretaries in Soviet Parliamentary Committees’, Soviet Union, VI (1979), 1–40.Google Scholar

27 Reglament Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, Art 51, in Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 1979, no. 17, pp. 296–311.Google Scholar

28 See Shermenev, , Gosudarstvennyi byudzhetGoogle Scholar, Chap. 23; Rovinsky, E. A., ed., Sovetskoe finansovoe pravo, 3rd edn (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1978)Google Scholar, Chap, 10; Shitikov, A. P., ‘Devyatyi sozyv’, Sovety narodnykh deputatov, 1979, no. 2, pp. 16–25.Google Scholar

29 Shitikov, , ‘Devyatyi sozyv’, pp. 21–2.Google Scholar

30 Izvestiya, 1 12 1978, pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

31 See Bunce, Valerie, ‘Elite Succession, Policy Innovation and Petrification in Communist Systems: An Empirical Assessment’, Comparative Political Studies, ix (1976), 3–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the same author's ‘Leadership Succession and Policy Innovation in the Soviet Republics’, Comparative Politics, XI (1979), 379–402.Google Scholar

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35 See Bahry, Donna, ‘Measuring Communist Priorities: Budgets, Investments and the Problem of Equivalence’, Comparative Political Studies, XIII (1980), 267–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Seroka, James H., ‘Yugoslav Budgetary Debates and Implications for Succession, Federalism, and the Distribution of Political Power’, a paper presented to the annual conference of the Political Studies Association in Hull, 04 1981.Google Scholar

36 Hough, and Fainsod, , How the Soviet Union is Governed, p. 378.Google Scholar

37 See, for instance, Brown, Bess, ‘Concerns of the Central Asian Republics Aired at USSR Supreme Soviet’, Radio Liberty Research Report No. 378, 20 12 1979Google Scholar; and Fuller, Elizabeth, ‘Georgian Officials Present Economic Demands at the USSR Supreme Soviet Session’, Radio Liberty Research Report, No. 410, 3 11 1980.Google Scholar

38 The procedure adopted was as follows: total budgetary spending, as proposed by the Minister of Finance in his speech to the Supreme Soviet, was obtained for each year and then combined into totals for each convocation; total agreed expenditure, as expressed in the budgetary law adopted in each year following the plan and budgetary debate, was obtained in the same way; and the variations between the two were then calculated in terms of total expenditure, expenditure by category, and expenditure by union republic (with the exception of a single year, 1974, when the proposed budgetary spending on each of the union republics was presented in too highly aggregate a form to be employed for this purpose). Some degree of imprecision is unavoidably imposed by the fact that government budgetary proposals are presented to the Supreme Soviet in a more highly aggregated form than that in which they are adopted. More detailed figures for budgetary proposals in 1968, however, have been presented in a Soviet source (Kutafin, , Postoyannye komissii, pp. 145–6).Google Scholar These make it clear that no major degree of bias is involved and that a reliable impression at least of general trends may be obtained from the figures published in the Supreme Soviet's stenographic report.

39 Nove, , Soviet Economic System, pp. 229–37Google Scholar; Shermenev, , Gosudarstvennyi byudzhet, Part 3.Google Scholar

40 In 1979, out of a total budgetary expenditure of 276–4 milliard roubles, the national economy accounted for 54·8 per cent of the total; socio-cultural expenditure accounted for 33·6 per cent; defence accounted for 6·2 per cent; administration accounted for 0·9 per cent; and there was an unexplained residual of 4·5 per cent. See Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v 1979 g. Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow: Statistika, 1980), pp. 553–4.Google Scholar

41 See, for instance, Nudnenko, L. A., ‘Otchety deputatov Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR pered izbiratelyami’, Vestnik M. G. U., seriya 12: pravo, 1975, no. 4, pp. 42–8Google Scholar; Georgadze, , Verhovnyi Sovet SSSR, pp. 161–72Google Scholar; Bezuglov, A. A., Deputat v sovete i izbiratel'nom okruge (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1978)Google Scholar; Friedgut, , Political ParticipationGoogle Scholar, Chap. 3; ‘Na prieme u deputata’, Pravda, 7 02 1979, p. 3Google Scholar; Tikhomirov, Yu., ‘S uchetom obshchestvennogomneniya’, Sovety narodnykh deputatov, 1980, no. 7 pp. 9–16Google Scholar; and Hill, , Soviet Politics, Political Science and Reform, Chap. 3.Google Scholar

42 See, for instance, Connor, Walter and Gitelman, Zvi, eds, Public Opinion in European Socialist Systems (New York: Praeger, 1977)Google Scholar, Chap. 4; White, Stephen, Political Culture and Soviet Politics (London: Macmillan, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chap. 5; and Connor, Walter, ‘Mass Expectations and Regime Performance’, in Bialer, Seweryn, ed., The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1981).Google Scholar

43 For some comparative studies, see Wildavsky, Aaron, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 3rd edn (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979)Google Scholar; the same author's Budgeting: A Comparative Theory of Budgetary Processes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975)Google Scholar; Ippolito, Dennis S., The Budget and National Politics (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1978)Google Scholar; Robinson, Ann, Parliament and Public Spending (London: Heinemann, 1978)Google Scholar; and Coombes, David and Walkland, S. A., eds, Parliament and Economic Affairs in Britain, France, Italy and the Netherlands (London: Heinemann, 1980).Google Scholar

44 Nove, , Soviet Economie System, p. 224.Google Scholar

45 Pravda, 25 11 1971, pp. 1–3Google Scholar, and 2 December 1980, pp. 1–5.

46 This argument is presented in Nelson, and White, , Communist LegislaturesGoogle Scholar, Chap. 8; see also Bialer, Seweryn, Stalin's Successors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), Chap. 15.Google Scholar

47 This inequality in representation is pointed out in Gaidukov, D. A., ed., Akiual'nye problemy gosudarstvovedeniya (Moscow: Institut gosudarstva i prava AN SSSR, 1979), p. 143.Google Scholar

48 Similar conclusions are advanced in Echols, , ‘Fiscal Redistribution’, pp. 368–9Google Scholar, and in Bialer, , Stalin's Successors, p. 218.Google Scholar

49 Vanneman, , Supreme Soviet, p. 127.Google Scholar

50 See Churchward, Lloyd G., Contemporary Soviet Government, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1975), p. 129.Google Scholar

51 See, for instance, McAuley, Alistair, Economic Welfare in the Soviet Union (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979)Google Scholar, Chap. 5; Zwick, Peter, ‘Ethnoregional Socioeconomic Fragmentation and Soviet Budgetary Policy’, Soviet Studies, xxxi (1979), 380–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dellenbrant, Jan Ake, Soviet Regional Policy (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1980).Google Scholar

52 Variations in total budgetary expenditure and in expenditure for nine of the union republics for the years 1968–72 are, however, considered in Minagawa, Shugo, ‘The Functions of the Supreme Soviet Organs’, Soviet Studies, XXVII (1975), 46–70, p. 65.Google Scholar

53 Reports on budgetary fulfilment are presented in much less detail, at least in the stenographic record, than budgetary proposals for the year to come. A typical report was that by the Finance Minister on the fulfilment of the state budget for 1976; it had been fulfilled in terms of expenditure by 100·2 per cent and in terms of income by 102·5 per cent, he informed the Supreme Soviet in December 1977. See Vos'maya sessiya Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR: devyatyi sozyv, 14–16 dekabrya 1977g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Izdanie Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 1977), p. 53.Google Scholar

54 Gilison, , British and Soviet Politics, pp. 90–1Google Scholar; similarly Fainsod, , How Russia is Ruled, p. 384.Google Scholar

55 For what it is worth the memoirs of the Soviet Finance Minister for the earlier part of the period we have been considering, A. G. Zverev, do indicate that he and his colleagues ‘always expected some kind of “surprises”’ from the budgetary commissions on these occasions. See his Zapiski ministra (Moscow: Politizdat, 1973), p. 174.Google Scholar

56 See, for instance, Brown, , ‘Concerns of the Central Asian Republics’Google Scholar; Fuller, , ‘Georgian Officials’.Google Scholar

57 Brezhnev, L. I., Leninskim kursom, Vol. 7 (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1979), p. 616.Google Scholar

58 Brezhnev, L. I., Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the XXVI Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Moscow: Novosti, 1981), pp. 114–16.Google Scholar

59 These points are made in Nelson, and White, , Communist LegislaturesGoogle Scholar, Chap. 8, and in Vanneman, , Supreme Soviet, Chap. 9.Google Scholar