Bolshevik Bargaining in Soviet Industry: Communists between State and Society in the Interwar Soviet Union*

This article examines a little-studied aspect of the Soviet Union's history, namely, the activities of the mass membership of the Communist Party during the interwar period. Based on original archival research, it offers a microhistorical view of an industrial primary party organization (PPO) of the Communist Party during some of the most critical moments of Soviet history, including the first Five Year Plan and the repressions of the late 1930s. It shows that all major political initiatives of the leadership generated intense political activity at the bottom levels of the party hierarchy, as the rank-and-file members interpreted and acted on central directives in ways that were in line with their and their colleagues' interests. As these interests were hardly ever in harmony with those of the state apparatus, the result was a permanent state of tension between the executive and political branches of the Soviet party-state. The main argument offered is that, ultimately, PPOs were an extremely important but contradictory element of the Soviet political system, being a reliable constituency of grassroots support while at the same time placing significant limits on the ability of state organs to implement policy. In addition to contributing to the specialized literature on Soviet industrial relations, this article offers novel insight into the classic totalitarian/revisionist debates by identifying a level of the Soviet system where the line between society and the state became blurred and where grassroots agency became possible on the basis of a minimum level of active support for the state.