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The center–regional conflict of the 1930s was shaped by the constraints of power formed by the intersection of formal organizational and informal social structures within the postrevolutionary state. Despite the accumulation of formal powers in the state center, the Provincial Komitetchiki were nonetheless able to assert their own interests into the policy process during the early 1930s. Central leaders did not directly challenge the informal power resources of the Provincial Komitetchiki at this time. Instead, they resorted to a series of organizational reforms that ultimately failed to dislodge the Provincial Komitetchiki from the policy process. The years 1933 and 1934 were characterized by stalemate in the center–regional power struggle. During the mid-1930s, each side attempted to redefine the constraints of power to its own advantage. The Provincial Komitetchiki were unsuccessful in this attempt. Central leaders, however, devised a strategy that moved beyond the established parameters of constraint in the relationship. Through coercive resource mobilization and coalition building, the center engaged in a direct and systematic assault on the informal power resources of the regional leadership. As a result, central actors successfully restructured the relationship between center and regions in the new state. The power constraints in the center–regional relationship were not static, but dynamic. By the end of the 1930s, central actors, in general, and Stalin, in particular, were able to realize more fully their claim on the “despotic” powers of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bolsheviks came to power with great ambitions. Across a vast territory and underdeveloped economy, they aspired to build the world's first socialist state. In the early 1930s, they put their plans into action in a state-led campaign of rapid industrial development. In this effort, the state succeeded in building a command–administrative structure through which it ruled the regions and managed the economy for more than half a century. But as was demonstrated in the last chapter, the command–administrative system did not operate on strictly “bureaucratic” principles. The means of administering the new state relied to a large extent on personalistic structures. The state, in fact, rested on a “patrimonial” system of “infrastructural” power. For central state leaders, the patrimonial system of infrastructural power directly impinged upon their exclusive claim on the “despotic” powers of the state. The intersection of informal and formal structures served to strengthen infrastructural power, but at the same time it formed constraints on despotic power in the new state. An examination of the formal chain of command in the new state would show that, in principle, bureaucratic and coercive powers were clearly concentrated in the state center. But the flow of power was distorted by the intersection of informal personal networks with formal organizational structures. As a result, the interactions between central and regional leaders were constrained by this intersection of informal and formal sources of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]