Formation of people’s control in the USSR, forms and methods of its implementation (The case study of the Saratov Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the first half of the 1920s)
Authors:   Saratov State University, Kulikova Svenlana A. 
Published: December 2021

Introduction. The study of the Soviet experience in the formation of the legal foundations of the welfare state, the involvement of workers in the management of public affairs, ensuring equality of rights, freedoms and opportunities for their implementation, is becoming increasingly relevant. The study of the experience of the organization and functioning of the institution of people’s control in the RSFSR and the early years of the USSR is of particular interest, since this institution was inextricably linked with the ideology of building a new type of the state, implemented in the system of socialist governance and was an example of the practical implementation of the principle of direct and permanent exercise of power by workers. Theoretical analysis. In the conditions of the developing Soviet state apparatus, there was a need to create a special system of bodies that would systematically monitor the activities of enterprises, organizations and institutions, monitor the execution of decrees and resolutions of the Soviet government. The ideas of combining state and public control were embodied in the creation of the legal basis for the activities of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, which became a single body of socialist control. The RKIs were assigned duties of various legal nature: political, legal, administrative and economic control. Empirical analysis. The study of archival documents allowed us to consider the application of the mechanisms of formation and activity of the RKI bodies in the Saratov province in the early 1920s. The main problem of the creation and activity of RKI assistance groups during this period was the lack of understanding of the goals of their creation by workers and, as a result, the unwillingness of workers and especially peasants to take part in their work. RKI controllers usually had no experience in auditing activities, so their reports, as a rule, did not analyze the causes of the identified shortcomings, did not mention the measures taken. Most often the controllers recorded cases of mismanagement or abuse, without giving them any assessment. In the mid-1920s, the activities of the provincial and district RKIs acquired a planned character, the directions of control and audit activities were determined by the governing party bodies. Control measures in the period of 1924–1928 began to be carried out more consistently and professionally. Results. In the early 1920s, socialist control was of a syncretic state-public nature, and there was a search for forms and methods of its implementation. The Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, by its political and legal nature, was an institutionalized result of the empirical development of the concept of socialist democracy, which outwardly reflected Lenin’s ideas of popular control in the system of governance of the Soviet state. This body fully met the needs of the new political system, which assumed a radical revision of the forms and methods of governance, including the pre-revolutionary methodology of control and supervision. The participation of the population in the processes of public administration was considered an integral element of state-building, which was to radically change the established system of power relations.