by James Millar
BRUCE W. MENNING
COUNCIL FOR MUTUAL ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE
The decision to establish the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, also known as COMECON and the CMEA, was announced in a joint communiqu? issued by Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union in January 1949. Albania joined in February 1949; East Germany in 1950; Mongolia in 1962; Cuba in 1972, and Vietnam in 1978. Albania ceased participation in 1961.
COMECON members were united by their commitment to Marxism-Leninism, Soviet-style central planning, and economic development. COMECON served as an organizational counterweight first to the Marshall Plan and then to the European Iron and Steel Community and its successor, the European Economic Community.
COMECON was effectively directed by a group outside its formal organization, the Conference of First Secretaries of Communist and Workers’ Parties and of the Heads of Government of COMECON Member Countries. The Soviet Union dominated COMECON. From 1949 to 1953, Stalin used COMECON primarily to redirect member trade from outside COMECON to within COMECON and to promote substitution of domestic production for imports from outside COMECON. The COMECON economic integration function was stepped up in 1956, the year of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, with the establishment of eight standing commissions, each planning for a different economic sector across the member countries. Notable real achievements included partial unification of electric power grids across East European members, coordination of rail and river transport in Eastern Europe, and the construction of the Friendship pipeline to deliver Siberian oil to Eastern Europe. In 1971 COMECON initiated a compromise Comprehensive Program for Socialist Economic Integration as a counterweight to integration within the European Economic Community. COMECON continued planning various integration and coordination efforts through the 1970s and 1980s. In 1985-1986 these efforts culminated in the Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Progress to the Year 2000. With the loss of Soviet control over its East European trading partners, COMECON tried to survive as a purely coordinating body but was finally formally disbanded in June 1991.
COMECON’s impact on Russia was largely economic. Russia was the largest republic among the Soviet Union’s fifteen republics. The Soviet Union was the dominant member of COMECON. The strategic purpose of COMECON was to tie Eastern Europe economically to the Soviet Union. COMECON trade became largely bilateral with the Soviet Union, mostly Russia, supplying raw materials, noCOUNCIL OF MINISTERS, SOVIET tably oil, to Eastern Europe in return for manufactured goods, notably machinery and equipment. This is the opposite of the trade flow between historically dominant countries and their colonies and dependents. The historical norm is for raw materials to flow from the colonies and dependents to the dominant center, which exports advanced manufactures and services in return. The comparative advantage for Russia within COMECON was, however, as a raw material and fuel exporter. Russia’s loss was that it received in return shoddy and obsolescent COMECON machinery and equipment rather than Western machinery with Western technology embedded in it. The Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Progress to the Year 2000 was only one effort to remedy this problem. Russia also lost out on its potential gains from OPEC’s increase in the price of oil beginning in 1973.
COMECON trade was conducted in “transferable rubles,” basically a bookkeeping unit good only to buy imports from other COMECON partners. However, most purchases and their prices were bilaterally negotiated between the COMECON trade partners. So, the real value of a country’s transferable ruble balance was indeterminate. Russian oil was sold by the Soviet Union to COMECON partners for transferable rubles. OPEC dramatically increased the dollar value of oil exports beginning in 1973. In 1975 COMECON agreed that the transferable ruble price of oil be indexed to the global dollar price, specifically the moving average for the past three years in 1975 and the past five years for every year thereafter. Thus, the prices of Soviet oil exports to COMECON lagged the global price rises through the late 1970s. Only when global oil prices dropped in the early 1980s did the transferable ruble price of Soviet oil catch up. Overall, the Soviet Union paid for its East European “empire” by selling its raw inputs, especially oil, for less than world market prices and by receiving less technologically advanced manufactured goods in return. Much of this cost was borne by Russia. See also: ELECTRICITY GRID; EMPIRE, USSR AS; FOREIGN TRADE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brabant, Jozef M. van. (1980). Socialist Economic Integration: Aspects of Contemporary Economic Problems in Eastern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Marrese, Michael, and Vanous, Jan. (1983). Soviet Subsidization of Trade with Eastern Europe: A Soviet Perspective. Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California. Metcalf, Lee Kendall. (1997). The Council of Mutual Economic Assistance: The Failure of Reform. New York: Columbia University Press. Zwass, Adam. (1989). The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance: The Thorny Path from Political to Economic Integration. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
DANIEL R. KAZMER
COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, IMPERIAL See CABINET OF MINISTERS, IMPERIAL.
COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, SOVIET
In 1946, Sovnarkom-Sovet Ministrov, the government of the USSR-was renamed the Council of Ministers to bring the USSR into line with practice in other great powers. Josef Stalin remained as chairperson until 1953. He was followed by Georgy Malenkov until 1955; then Nikolai Bulganin until 1958; Nikita Khrushchev, from 1958 to 1964; Alexei Kosygin, 1964-1980; Nikolai Tikhonov, 1980-1985; and Nikolai Ryzhkov, 1985-1990. Membership of the Council of Ministers consisted of the chairperson, first deputy chairperson, deputy chairpersons, ministers of the USSR and chairpersons of State Committees of the USSR. Chairpersons of Councils of Ministers of Union republics were ex officio members of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Under the 1977 constitution membership could also include “the heads of other organs and organizations of the USSR.” This allowed the chairperson of the Central Council of Trade Unions or the first secretary of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) to serve on the Council of Ministers. The first Council of Ministers formed under this constitution comprised 109 members.
Ministries and State Committees, as with the commissariats in Sovnarkom, were of two varieties: “union-republican,” which functioned through parallel apparatuses in identically named republican ministries, and “all-union,” which worked by direct control of institutions in the republics or through organs in the republics directly subordinate to the USSR minister. Groups of related ministries were supervised by senior Party leaders serving as deputy chairpersons of the Council of Ministers. In the early postwar years the tendency toward subdivision of
COUNTERREFORMS
ministries, apparent in Sovnarkom during the 1930s, continued until 1948, but it was then followed by a period of amalgamation until 1949, and more modest expansion until 1953. Immediately after Stalin’s death membership of the Council of Ministers was reduced from eighty-six to fifty-five, groups of economic ministries being amalgamated, but this was only temporary, and by the end of 1954 membership had increased again to seventy-six and continued to increase more slowly from that time.
Theoretically responsible and accountable to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, with membership supposedly decided by that institution, but in reality by the Politburo, the Council of Ministers was empowered to deal with all matters of state administration of the USSR outside the competence of the Supreme Soviet, issuing decrees and ordinances and verifying their execution. According to the 1936 and 1977 Constitutions, the Council of Ministers was responsible for direction of the national economy and economic development; social and cultural development, including science and technology; the state budget; planning; defense, state security; general direction of the armed forces; foreign policy; foreign trade and economic; and cultural and scientific cooperation with foreign countries.
By a law of 1978, meetings of the Council of Ministers were to be convened every three months and sessions of its Presidiu
m “regularly (when the need arises).” This institution, created in 1953, consisting of the chairperson, first deputy chairperson and deputy chairpersons of the Council of Ministers, functioned only intermittently until 1978. Often described in Western literature as an “inner cabinet,” it then became primarily responsible for the directions of economic affairs. See also: BULGANIN, NIKOLAI ALEXANDROVICH; BUREAUCRACY, ECONOMIC; KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEY-VICH; KOSYGIN, ALEXEI NIKOLAYEVICH; SOVNARKOM; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; STATE COMMITTEES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Unger, Aryeh. (1981). Constitutional Development in the USSR: A Guide to the Soviet Constitutions. London: Methuen.
DEREK WATSON
COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS See
SOVNARKOM.
COUNTERREFORMS
The Counterreforms of the 1880s and 1890s refer to the body of domestic policies adopted under Tsar Alexander III as an ideological response and reaction to the transformations of the earlier Great Reforms undertaken by so-called “enlightened” bureaucrats with the tacit approval of the assassinated Tsar Alexander II. They were also a response to radicalism growing out of the reform milieu. The conservatives believed the Empire was threatened. Whereas the Great Reforms of the period 1855-1881 in the broadest sense intended to renovate the body politic and instill new principles of self-government, rule of law, citizenship, and even to introduce at the very end a veiled form of elite representation in the legislative process, the coun-terreforms of the new Tsar and his conservative advisers within and outside the bureaucracy aimed to reverse such changes and to reassert traditional autocracy and nationhood and the more manageable and corporatist society organized by legal estates. Immediately after Alexander II’s assassination in March 1881, the new government moved quickly to remove Loris-Melikov and remaining reformers from the government. On April 29, 1881, the Tsar declared that Russia would always remain an autocracy. The reform era was over.
The counterreforms were ushered in by the laws on state order and the pacification of society of August 14, 1881. These laws, sponsored by Minister of Internal Affairs, N. P. Ignat’ev, provided for two types of martial law (condition of safeguard and extraordinary safeguard) that gave the police and administration enhanced powers above and beyond those residing in the new judicial system. These decrees remained in force until just days before the February Revolution of 1917. On August 27, 1882, the government introduced “temporary rules on the press,” which gave more censorship power to the administration. Minister of Internal Affairs D. A. Tolstoy then introduced a new University Statute on August 23, 1884. This effectively repealed university corporate autonomy and bu-reaucratized the administration of higher education. It also placed limits on higher education for women. Finally a cluster of three major acts placed new administrative restrictions on the institutions of self-government, the zemstvos and town dumas. These laws of June 12, 1890 (zemstvo) and June 11, 1892 (town duma) changed the electoral laws to favor the gentry in the case of the zemstvos and large property owners in the cities. Many recent
COUNTRY ESTATES
voters in town and countryside alike were disenfranchised. In addition new bureaucratic instances were established to shore up administrative control over self-government. This would call forth opposition in the form of a zemstvo movement that would be instrumental in the 1905 Revolution. Perhaps most symbolic of all the counterreforms was the notorious act of July 12, 1889 that created the Land Captains (zemskie nachal’niki). These were appointed government officials in the countryside who combined administrative, police, and judicial authority. The aim was once again administrative control, this time over the relatively new peasant institutions and indeed over peasant life in the broadest sense. Control rather than building a new society from the grassroots was the central point of these counterreforms. The counterreforms and their supporting ideology extended into the reign of Nicholas II, making it that much more difficult for the regime to solve its social and political problems. They in fact made revolution more likely. The counterreforms co-existed uneasily with more forward-looking economic policies even during the reign of Alexander III. See also: ALEXANDER III, NICHOLAS II
DANIEL ORLOVSKY
COUNTRY ESTATES
Country estates, some dating back to the fifteenth century, originated as land grants from the crown to trusted servitors. The Russian empire expanded rapidly, particularly in the eighteenth century, and along with it the estate network, which ultimately stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Crimean Peninsula, and from the Duchy of Warsaw to the Ural Mountains. During the estate’s golden age from the reign of Catherine II to the War of 1812, wealthy nobles who had retired from state service built thousands of magnificent houses, most in neoclassical style, surrounded by elegant formal gardens and expansive landscape parks.
Until the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, estates were private princedoms (owned exclusively by nobles) supported by involuntary labor. Thus in some respects the pre-emancipation estate was comparable to the plantation of the American south. Its uniqueness lay in its scores of highly trained serf craftsmen and artists, some of whom founded dynasties of acclaimed artists. Very wealthy landowners took pride in having at hand accomplished architects and painters, musicians, actors, and dancers for entertainment, and cabinetmakers, gilders, embroiderers, lace-makers and other skilled craftsmen who produced all the luxury items they needed. Hence the greatest estates, in addition to being economic centers, were also culturally self-contained worlds that facilitated the rapid development of Russian culture.
Estates also served as important places of inspiration and creativity for Russia’s most renowned authors, painters, and composers. For the intellectual and artistic elite, country estates were Arcadian retreats, places of refuge from the constraints of city life. Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches and Fathers and Sons, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karen-ina, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture are among the many Russian masterpieces composed on a country estate.
After 1861 many small estate owners, unable to survive the loss of their unpaid labor, sold their holdings (a situation memorialized in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard). On larger estates a system similar to sharecropping was devised; these estates retained their economic strength until the revolution. Up to World War I Russia exported tons of grains and other agricultural products produced on thousands of country estates. In non-black-earth (non-chernozem) regions, enterprises on estates such as Khmelita (Smolensk guberniya), exporting prize-winning cheeses, Glubokoye (Pskov guberniya), producing wooden lanterns sold in England, and Polotnyany Zavod (Kaluga gu-berniya), which manufactured the linen paper used for Russian currency, also contributed to the economy.
The Bolshevik revolution destroyed the country estate, and with it much of the provincial economic and cultural infrastructure. Some estate houses have survived as orphanages, sanitariums, institutes, or spas. In the 1970s certain demolished estates associated with famous cultural figures (such as Pushkin’s Mikhailovskoye and Turgenev’s Spasskoye-Lutovinovo) were rebuilt. A few museum estates such as Kuskovo and Ostankino in Moscow and the battered manor houses of the Crimea still offer tourists a glimpse of Russia’s pre-Revolutionary estate splendor. See also: PEASANTRY; SERFDOM; SLAVERY
COURT, HIGH ARBITRATION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blum, Jerome. (1961). Lord and Peasant in Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Roosevelt, Priscilla. (1995). Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
PRISCILLA ROOSEVELT
COURT, HIGH ARBITRATION
The High Arbitration Court is at the top of the system of arbitration courts. These courts were originally created in the Soviet period as informal tribunals to resolve problems in implementing economic plans. In the post-communist era they have been reorganized into a system of courts with exclusive jurisdiction over lawsuits among businesses and between businesses and go
vernment agencies. While for historical reasons they are called “arbitration” courts, in fact they are formal state courts with compulsory jurisdiction and have nothing to do with private arbitration of disputes.
The structure of the courts is governed by the 1995 Constitutional Law on Arbitration Courts. Beneath the High Arbitration Court there are ten appellate courts, each with jurisdiction over a separate large area of the country, and numerous trial courts. The High Arbitration Court is responsible for the management of the entire arbitration court system. Procedural rules are provided by the 2002 Arbitration Procedure Code. Cases are heard in the first instance in the trial court. Either party may then appeal to an appellate instance within the trial court, and may further appeal to the appropriate appellate court. There is no right to appeal to the High Arbitration Court; rather, review by the High Arbitration Court is discretionary with the Court. The High Arbitration Court has original jurisdiction over two types of cases: (1) those concerning the legality of acts of the Federation Council, the State Duma, the president, or the government; and (2) economic disputes between the Russian Federation and one of its eighty-nine subjects. The High Arbitration Court also has, and frequently exercises, the power to issue explanations on matters of judicial practice, for the guidance of the lower courts, lawyers, and the public. The Court also publishes many of its decisions in individual cases on the Internet. See also: COURT, SUPREME; LEGAL SYSTEMS.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
