Saulius Grybkauskas - Governing the Soviet Unions National Republics: The Second Secretaries of the Communist Party

Second Secretary of the Central Committee of a Soviet republic does not sound a very important position, but as this book shows it was an extremely important role, one that helped hold the Soviet Union together and helped to keep it going for so long. The key was that Second Secretaries were both members of a Soviet republics ruling body and at the same time members of the All-Union ruling elite they were often characterised as Moscows governor generals. This book examines how the position of Second Secretary was established by Khrushchev in the 1950s, explores how it took on increasingly important political functions representing Moscows interests in the republics and the republics interests in Moscow, and discusses how the conflicts, inherent in the role, developed. The book also provides biographical details of the people who held the position and argues that the role was extremely effective in managing what could otherwise have been very difficult relationships between centre and periphery.

Saulius Grybkauskas is a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director for Research at the Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius, Lithuania

This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-quality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects.

Appropriating Place and Constructing Identity

The Second Secretaries of the Communist Party

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First published 2021

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2021 Saulius Grybkauskas

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ISBN: 978-1-138-39175-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-42254-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by codeMantra

Translated by Diana Bartkute Barnard, and edited by Michael Loader

This monograph is a result of almost ten years work. It started from research into the activities of second secretaries in Soviet Lithuania, along with a comparison of second secretaries in Latvia carried out during a 20092011 postdoctoral study organised by the Research Council of Lithuania. As early as during my postdoctoral studies it became obvious that the political institution of second secretaries was a phenomenon characteristic not only of the Baltic republics but of the whole USSR. The image of an omnipotent representative of the Kremlin nicknamed a governor general and purportedly having greater political influence than the first secretary was merely a myth deeply rooted in historical memory. It thus became obvious that the question of how the Soviet periphery was controlled, the analysis of which involved research into the political decisions of Moscow, interaction between the centre and republics, Soviet nationalities policy, the collective picture of second secretaries, the nomenklatura and personal networks, was considerably harder to define. Only at the very first glance might one have the impression that second secretaries are a very narrow group of functionaries and played only a small part in the relations between Moscow and the national republics.

This theme enables a discussion of the Soviet period from a number of perspectives. First of all, it can be seen as a Soviet empire, discerning national discrimination and exceptional career opportunities within the political space of the USSR in the activity of second secretaries. Or it can be approached from the point of view of social history: by examining separate groups of top-level functionaries, manifestations of nationalism, and the role of ethnicity with the characteristic notion of the self and of the other. Economic policy is also important because second secretaries operated as the agents of the unified complex of Soviet national economy; even Soviet day-to-day life, leisure, and consumption should be taken into account as daily life was a vital context both of the way of feeling and the behaviour of the governors general. In addressing all these questions, I utilised material from the archives of Lithuania and Latvia, as well as Estonia, Moscow, Georgia/Sakartvel, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Belarus. For half a year, I collected materials in the archives of the Hoover Institution during a research stay at Stanford University, California as a Fulbright visiting scholar. I am grateful to Professor Amir Weiner of Stanford University for his consultations during the visit. I am deeply indebted to Valerii Kharazov (19182013), Vitalii Sobolev, Nikolai Leonov, and Albert Rachkov for not being afraid to meet a historian in Moscow from a foreign land and to share their experiences of the behind-the-scenes activities of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU CC).

Interviews conducted in Lithuania and Latvia were integral to the research for this book. For their interesting stories I extend my thanks to Vytautas Astrauskas, Valerjonas Baltrnas, Andrei and Sergei Belukha, Vladimir Beriozov (19292016), Jonas Baravykas, Aleksandras Garifulinas, Sofija Grikeviien, eslovas Jurnas, Vilius Kazanaviius, Vanda Kliknien, Vladimir Korniyenka, Lionginas Maksimovas, Vladislovas Mikuiauskas, Justas Vincas Paleckis, Sergei Rybakov, Bernadeta Sakalauskien, Lionginas epetys and Janis Urbanovi and Gennadij Loskutov