by James Millar
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hewitt, George. (1995). “Yet a third consideration of V?lker, Sprachen und Kulturen des s?dlichen Kaukasus.” Central Asian Survey 14(2):285- 310.
B. GEORGE HEWITT
MININ, KUZMA
(d. 1616), organizer, fundraiser, and treasurer of the second national liberation army of 1611-1612.
Kuzma Minin was elected as an elder of the townspeople of Nizhny Novgorod in September 1611, when Moscow was still occupied by the Poles. After the disintegration of the first national liberation army, Minin began to raise funds for the organization of a new militia. Its nucleus was provided by the garrison of Nizhny Novgorod and neighboring Volga towns, together with some refugee servicemen from the Smolensk region. At the request of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, the military commander of the new army, Minin became its official treasurer. When the militia was based at Yaroslavl, in the spring of 1612, Minin was an important member of the provisional government headed by Pozharsky. After the liberation of Moscow in October 1612, Minin, together with Pozharsky and Prince Dmitry Trubetskoy, played a major role in convening the Assembly of the Land, which elected Mikhail Romanov tsar in January 1613. On the day after Mikhail’s coronation, Minin was appointed to the rank of dumny dvoryanin within the council of bo-yars; he died shortly afterwards. Along with Pozharsky, Minin became a Russian national hero who served as a patriotic inspiration in later wars. In early Soviet historiography, his merchant status led him to be viewed as a representative of bourgeois reaction against revolutionary democratic elements such as cossacks and peasants. By the late 1930s he was again seen as a patriot, and his relatively humble social origin made him particularly acceptable as a popular hero during World War II. See also: ASSEMBLY OF LAND; POZHARSKY, DMITRY MIKHAILOVICH; TIME OF TROUBLES; COSSACKS; MERCHANTS; PEASANTRY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dunning, Chester L. (2001). Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Perrie, Maureen. (2002). Pretenders and Popular Monar-chism in Early Modern Russia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles, paperback ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Skrynnikov, Ruslan G. (1988). The Time of Troubles: Russia in Crisis, 1604-1618, ed. and tr. Hugh F. Graham. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
MAUREEN PERRIE
MINISTRIES, ECONOMIC
MINISTRIES, ECONOMIC
The industrial ministries of the Soviet Union were intermediate bodies that dealt directly with production enterprises. They played a key role in resource allocation and were directly responsible for the implementation of state industrial policy as developed and adopted by the Communist Party. In fact, ministers had two lines of responsibilities: one to the Council of Ministers, and the other, more important in the long run, to the Party’s Central Committee. The most important ministers were members of Politburo. The ministries negotiated output targets and input limits with Gosplan, which was responsible for fulfilling the directives of the party and the Council of Ministers.
Once output and input targets were set, the ministries organized the activities of their enterprises to achieve output targets and stay within input limits. Normally the ministries petitioned Gosplan to reconsider their output and input target figures if plan fulfillment was threatened. This practice was called corrections (korrektirovka). Normally aimed at decreasing planned outputs, it was a common practice, although widely condemned by Party officials. The Council of Ministers had the formal authority to decide on these petitions, but in most cases the actual decision was left to Gos-plan. The minister or his deputy and even heads of ministry main administrations (glavki) were members of the Council of Ministers and participated in its sessions. Most of the operational work of the ministries was done by the main administrations.
The industrial ministries were the fund holders (fondoderzhateli) of the economy. Gosplan and Gossnab (State Committee for Material Technical Supply) allocated the most important industrial raw materials, equipment, and semifabricates to the industrial ministries. Moreover, the ministries had their own supply departments that worked with Gossnab. Centrally allocated materials were called funded (fondiruyemie) commodities, which were allocated to the enterprises only by ministries. Enterprises were not legally allowed to exchange funded goods, although they did so.
The ministries existed at three levels. The most important were the All-Union ministries (Soyuznoe ministerstvo). Based in Moscow, All-Union ministries managed an entire branch of the economy, such as machine-building, coal, or electrical products. They concentrated enormous power and financial and material resources, and controlled the most important sectors of the economy. Ministries of the military-industrial complex were concentrated in Moscow. They obtained priority funds and limits allocated by Gosplan. Similarly, the significance of corresponding ministers was very high-they were the direct masters of the enterprises located in all republics that constituted the Soviet Union.
At the second level were the ministries of dual subordination-the Union-Republican Ministry (Soiuzno-respublikanskoe ministerstvo). As a rule, their headquarters were in Moscow. While the capitals of individual republics were the sites of republic-specific branches that conducted everyday activities, plan approval and resource allocation were subordinated to Moscow. Among the dual subordination ministries were the ministries of the coal industry, food industry, and construction. For example, Ukraine produced a bulk of Soviet coal and food output; therefore Union-ministry branches were located in its capital, Kiev.
The republican ministries occupied the lowest level. They were controlled by the republican Councils of Ministers and the Republican Central Committees of the Communist Party. They produced primarily local and regional products.
There were also committees under the Council of Ministers that enjoyed practically the same rights as the ministries: for example, the State Committee on Radio and Television, or the notorious KGB, which nominally was a committee but probably enjoyed a wide scope of powers.
A typical ministry was run by the minister and by deputy ministers who supervised corresponding glavki that, in their turn, controlled all work under their jurisdiction. A special glavk was responsible for logistical aspects of the industry’s performance; technical glavki were in charge of the planning of the industry’s plant operations.
The ministries had authorized territorial representatives in major administrative centers of the Soviet Union who directly supervised the plant’s operations. The ministry, however, was dependent on its subordinated enterprises for information. The enterprises possessed better local information and were reluctant to share this information with the ministry.
Ministries had their own scientific and research institutes and higher education establishments that trained professionals for the industry. The industrial ministries were expected to perform a wide vaMINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS riety of tasks: to plan production, manage material and technical supply, arrange transportation, develop scientific policy, and plan capital investment.
The ministers were responsible for the performance of their enterprises as a whole; at the same time, the employees were not motivated and did not have any incentives to work creatively and to their full potential. The bulk of ministerial decision making was devoted to implementing and monitoring the operational plan after the annual plan had been approved. Under constant pressure to meet plan targets, industrial ministries exercised opportunistic behavior: that is, they bargained for lower output targets, demanded extra inputs, and exploited horizontal and vertical integration strategies to achieve more independence from centralized supplies.
During the later period of the Soviet Union, many attempts were made to improve the work of industrial ministries to make them more effective and efficient. However, these attempts were inconsistent, and the number of bureaucrats was hardly reduced. The giant administrative superstructure of the ministries was a heavy burden on the economy and played an increasingly regressive role. It was p
artially responsible for the economic collapse of Soviet economy. The ministerial bureaucracy continued to play an important role after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Russia, for example, former ministerial officials gained control of significant chunks of industry during the privatization process. See also: COMMAND ADMINISTRATIVE ECONOMY; GOS-PLAN; INDUSTRIALIZATION, SOVIET of Ministers that was responsible for foreign trade in the Soviet economy.
It was a functional ministry in that its jurisdiction cut across the responsibilities of the various branch ministries that managed production and distribution of products. It reported directly to Gosplan and the Council of Ministers. The operating units of the Ministry of Foreign Trade were the Foreign Trade Organizations (FTOs), which controlled exports and imports of specific goods, such as automobiles, aircraft, books, and so forth.
Soviet enterprises generally had no authority or means to export or import to or from abroad. The relevant FTO responded to requests from enterprises under its jurisdiction and, if approved, conducted negotiations, financing, and all other arrangements necessary for the transaction. Imports and exports, and thus the FTOs and the Ministry of Foreign Trade, were subject to the overall annual and quarterly economic plans. In this way, foreign trade was utilized to complement rather than to compete with the plan. See also: COUNCIL OF MINISTERS, SOVIET; FOREIGN TRADE; GOSPLAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (1990). Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins. Hewett, Ed A. (1988). Reforming the Soviet Economy: Equality versus Efficiency. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
JAMES R. MILLAR
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley. Hewett, Edward A. (1988). Reforming the Soviet Economy: Equality Versus Efficiency. Washington, DC: Brook-ings Institution.
PAUL R. GREGORY
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN TRADE
The Ministry of Foreign Trade was a functional ministry subordinate to Gosplan and the Council
MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS
The extent to which Russian regimes have depended upon the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD, Min-isterstvo vnutrennykh del) is symbolized by its surviving the fall of tsarism and the end of the Soviet Union intact and with almost the same name. The ministry’s ancestry runs as far back as the sixteenth century, when Ivan the Terrible established the Brigandage Office to combat banditry. However, a formal Ministry of Internal Affairs was not founded until 1802. From the first, its primary responsibility was to protect the interests of the state, and this was so even before it was made responsible for the Okhranka, or political police, in 1880. The close relationship between regular policing and
MIR
political control has been a central characteristic of the MVD throughout its existence.
The Bolsheviks came to power with utopian notions of policing by social consent and public voluntarism, but because of the new regime’s authoritarian tendencies and the exigencies of the Civil War (1918-1921), it became necessary, by 1918, to transform the “workers’ and peasants’ militia” into a full-time police force; one year later the militia was militarized. Originally envisaged as locally controlled forces loosely subordinated to the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the militia, in practice, were soon closely linked with the Cheka political police force and subject to central control. The NKVD was increasingly identified with political policing; in 1925, the militia and the Cheka’s successor, the OGPU (Unified State Political Directorate), were combined, and in 1932 the NKVD was formally subordinated to the OGPU. Two years later, the roles were technically reversed, with the OGPU absorbed into the NKVD, but in practice this actually reflected the colonization of the NKVD by the political police.
The concentration of law enforcement in the hands of the political police well suited the needs of Josef V. Stalin during the era of purges and collectivization, but in 1941 the regular and political police were once again divided. Regular policing again became the responsibility of the NKVD, while the political police became the NKGB, the People’s Commissariat of State Security. After the war, the NKVD regained the old title of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the NKGB became the MGB, Ministry of State Security. The political police remained very much the senior service, and for a short time (1953-1954) the MVD was reabsorbed into the MGB (which then became the Committee of State Security, KGB), but from this point the regular and political police became increasingly distinct agencies, each with a sense of its own role, history, and identity.
The police and security forces remained a key element of the Communist Party’s apparatus of political control and thus the subject of successive reforms, generally intended to strengthen both their subordination to the leadership and their authority over the masses. In 1956, reflecting concerns among the elite about the power of the security forces, the MVD was decentralized. In 1960, the USSR MVD was dissolved, and day-to-day control of the police passed to the MVDs of the constituent Union republics. In practice, though, the law codes of the republics mirrored their Russian counterpart, and the republican ministries were essentially local agencies for the central government. In 1968 the USSR MVD was reorganized in name as well as practice, after yet one more name change (Ministry for the Defense of Public Order, MOOP, 1962-1968).
The structure of the Ministry for Internal Affairs has not significantly changed, and thus the post-Soviet Russian MVD is similar in essence and organization, if not in scale. In 1991, Boris Yeltsin tried to merge the MVD and the security agencies into a new “super-ministry,” but this was blocked by the Constitutional Court and the idea was dropped. Other reforms were relatively minor, such as the transfer of responsibility for prisons to the Justice Ministry.
As guarantor of the Kremlin’s authority, the MVD controls a sizea ble militarized security force, the Interior Troops (VV). At its peak, in the early 1980s, this force numbered 300,000 officers and men, and its strength of 193,000 in 2003 actually reflected an increase in its size in proportion to the regular army. In the post-Soviet era, most VV units are local garrison forces, largely made up of conscripts, but there are also small commando forces as well as the elite Dzerzhinsky Division, based on the outskirts of Moscow, which has its own armored elements and artillery. See also: STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Galeotti, Mark. (1993). “Perestroika, Perestrelka, Pere-borka: Policing Russia in a Time of Change.” Europe-Asia Studies 45:769-786. Orlovsky, Daniel. (1981). The Limits of Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shelley, Louise. (1996). Policing Soviet Society. London: Routledge. Weissman, Neil. (1985). “Regular Police in Tsarist Russia, 1990-1914.” Russian Review 44:45-68.
MARK GALEOTTI
MIR
The word mir in Russian has several meanings. In addition to “community” and “assembly,” it also means “world” and “peace.” These seemingly diverse meanings had a common historical origin. The village community formed the world for the peasants,
MIR SPACE STATION
where they tried to keep a peaceful society. Thus mir was, in all probability, a peasant-given name for a spontaneously generated peasant organization in early Kievan or pre-Kievan times. It was mentioned in the eleventh century in the first codification of Russian law, Pravda Russkaya, as a body of liability in cases of criminal offense.
Over time, the meaning of mir changed, depending on the political structure of the empire, and came to mean different things to different people. For peasants and others, mir presumably was always a generic term for peasant village-type communities with a variety of structures and functions. The term also denoted those members of a peasant community who were eligible to discuss and decide on communal affairs. At the top of a mir stood an elected elder.
Contrary to the belief of the Slavophiles, communal land redistribution had no long tradition as a function of the mir. Until the end
of the seventeenth century, individual land ownership was common among Russian peasants, and only special land holdings were used jointly. All modern characteristics, such as egalitarian landholding and land redistribution, developed only as results of changes in taxation, as the poll tax was introduced in 1722 and forced upon the peasants by the landowners, who sought to distribute the allotments more equally and thus get more return from their serfs.
In the nineteenth century, mir referred to any and all of the following: a peasant village group as the cooperative owner of communal land property; the gathering of all peasant households of a village or a volost to distribute responsibility for taxes and to redistribute land; a peasant community as the smallest cell of the state’s administration; and, most importantly, the entire system of a peasant community with communal property and land tenure subject to repartitioning. The peasant land was referred to as mirskaya zemlia.
Only at the end of the 1830s did a second term, obshchina, come into use for the village community. Unlike the old folk word mir, the term ob-shchina was invented by the Slavophiles with the special myth of the commune in mind. This term specifically designated the part of the mir’s land that was cultivated individually but that was also redistributable. The relation between both terms is that an obshchina thus coincided with some aspects of a mir but did not encompass all of the mir’s functions. The land of an obshchina either coincided with that of a mir or comprised a part of mir holdings. Every obshchina was perforce related to a mir, but not every mir was connected with an obshchina, because some peasants held their land in hereditary household tenure and did not redistribute it. With increasing confusion between both terms, most educated Russians probably equated mir and obshchina from the 1860s onward. Ob-shchina was also used for peasant groups lacking repartitional land.
