ABSTRACT

By 1957 Khrushchev was convinced of the necessity of reorganizing the economic administration. Since the beginning of the 1930s, when the skeleton of the economic administrative system was set, Soviet industry had grown considerably. Yet Stalin’s reorganizations of the economic administrative system generally never went beyond merging or dividing the existing People’s Commissariats, later renamed into ministries. How to reorganize the economic administration seemed to be clear to Khrushchev as well: along with preserving centralized planning, to abolish the industrial ministries and devolve their managerial authority to the regional economic councils and the republican governments.