Edinonachalie

Definition and origin

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia defines edinonachalie as one of the most important principles of managing socialist production: granting the managers of the various links of the national economy the fullness of decision-making rights required to discharge their duties, and establishing the personal responsibility of workers for the task entrusted to them. It presents the principle as serving democratic centralism, and cites Lenin's view that large-scale machine industry requires "unconditional and strictest unity of will" directing the joint work of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. The encyclopedia states that against the views of the 'workers' opposition' and the 'decists' the party upheld a Marxist reading of the unity of right and responsibility. This is Soviet normative framing and should be read as attributed to that source. The same source argues that under socialism edinonachalie "has nothing in common with the despotic power of enterprise owners in capitalist production," and requires managers to draw on specialists, leading worker-innovators and trade-union organizations where workers' immediate interests are at stake. That too is a normative claim.

The economic transition

For the turn of the late 1920s there are two distinguishable documented accounts. A non-academic blog relates that on 5 September 1929 the Central Committee of the VKP(b) adopted the resolution "On Measures to Streamline Production Management and Establish Edinonachalie," replacing the earlier 'triangle' in which a director, a party secretary and a trade-union committee chair ran a plant together. In that account the new arrangement placed the party secretary, not a production specialist, in first place, allowed a worker to be dismissed without the trade union's sanction, and required the plant director (директор) to clear all production questions with the party chief. The claim that the resolution 'established the director's sole decision-making power' is therefore not supported by this source. On factory-committee oversight, the same source relates that the factory-plant committees were merged into the trade unions in 1918 in the course of the Bolsheviks' 1918 strengthening of their presence in the soviets; the site's earlier assertion that the 1929 resolution 'extinguished' that oversight is not confirmed by any retrieved source.

Edinonachalie in the armed forces

The principle predates 1929. During and just after the Civil War, military commissars stood alongside commanders at the head of units, formations and institutions; where former officers and generals of the old army commanded, commissars performed party control over the commanders' activity in addition to political leadership of the troops. On 24 January 1920 the commander of the Turkestan Front, M. V. Frunze, introduced edinonachalie in his troops by order, abolishing commissar posts under chiefs and commanders and appointing political-work assistants instead. The 11th Congress of the RKP(b) in 1922 officially announced the gradual transition of the armed forces to edinonachalie, and attestation of commanders continued up to 1925 so that those checked could be commanders-edinonachalniki. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia records that edinonachalie in the Red Army was first introduced on the basis of the Central Committee decision of 2 March 1925, initially in two forms: communist commanders with party-political experience fully answerable for all aspects of the troops' activity and performing the commissar's functions, and cases in which the commissar post was retained. On 10 May 1937 the institution of military commissars was reintroduced in all units from regiment upward, in staffs, directorates and institutions; on 12 August 1940 those posts were abolished and full edinonachalie introduced, with deputy commanders (chiefs) for political affairs established at the same time; under the severe conditions of the Great Patriotic War the commissar institution was reintroduced on 16 July 1941, existed until 9 October 1942, and from that date full edinonachalie was exercised in the Armed Forces of the USSR. The Disciplinary Charter of the USSR Armed Forces contained, throughout the existence of the state up to its collapse, a provision requiring a commander to take all measures up to the use of weapons in a combat situation if a subordinate refused to carry out an order, and holding the commander responsible for failing to act.

Distinction from collective decision-making

The counter-principle to edinonachalie is collegiality. Russian Wikipedia notes that edinonachalie entails a negative aspect: the consequences of irrational or ill-considered decisions taken by a commander from subjective assessment, circumstances, enemy disinformation, state of health or other personal motivation. Many states therefore provide for collegiality in important decisions, as a military council at the level of large formations and as a staff working meeting at the level of subunits and units. The collegial body's decision is only advisory, and edinonachalie stands above collegiality. In the Roman army before the reform of Gaius Marius a legion was commanded by six tribunes in rotation and a maniple by two centurions, so collegiality was characteristic of command; the Marius reform moved to edinonachalie with a legate commanding a legion, strengthening centralization of command. In the 19th-century German army, Helmuth von Moltke is credited with laying the modern basis of edinonachalie.

Labour conditions and the purges

The labour conditions of the period in which edinonachalie operated are documented. According to the en.wikipedia article on the history of the USSR 1927-1953, workers' standards of living tended to drop rather than rise during industrialization. The 1932 change to the RSFSR labour code enabled firing workers absent without reason for just one day, meaning loss of the right to use ration and commodity cards, loss of housing rights and blacklisting for new employment; the 1938 legislation introducing labour books was enforced; and the 26 June 1940 decree transferred to an eight-hour working day and a seven-day week and prohibited unauthorized departure, with two to four months' imprisonment for quitting and six months' probation plus 25 per cent pay confiscation for being 20 minutes late. Stalin's Great Terror ravaged the ranks of factory directors and engineers and removed most senior army officers, with 34,000 officers purged; the entire Politburo and most of the Central Committee were purged. The total imprisoned or executed during the Yezhovshchina numbered about two million, and the purges removed many skilled managers and experts and considerably slowed industrial production in 1937.

Limits of the sources

Hiroaki Kuromiya's 'Edinonachalie and the Soviet Industrial Manager, 1928-1937' (Soviet Studies, 1984) could not be consulted in this run because the retrieved JSTOR page was a CAPTCHA error page with no article text. The existing entry's claim, resting on that article, that one-man management incorporated workers' control therefore remains unverified and is neither strengthened nor contradicted here until the article itself is checked. The account of the 5 September 1929 resolution rests on a non-academic blog alone and is presented as attributed to that source.