Dismantling an Innovation: The November 1964 Decision Reunifying Industrial and Agricultural Organs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Abstract

Two years after the November 1962 decision to divide the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) into separate industrial and agricultural organs, the new Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership reunited the party. The reorganization was and remains the most fundamental reform of the Soviet political system since the Great Purges. Restructuring the CPSU "on the production principle" had divided party committees below the union-republican level into industrial and agricultural organizations. Raikoms and some gorkoms were abolished; territorial production kolkhozsovkhoz administration (TPA) party committees and zonal-industrial party committees were established. The CPSU Central Committee (CC) and its unionrepublican counterparts acquired specialized bureaus to oversee production in the different economic spheres. 1 As a result of the 1962 reorganization, party involvement in the economy became more frequent and more occupied with details of production. Moreover, partkoms' economic interventions became oriented primarily toward development and guidance through the restructuring of productive relationships, introducing new products and technology, and planning.