Power and Corruption: The “Chelyabinsk Leaders” Privileged Life in the Second Half of the 1940s

Abstract

In the early postwar years, leaders of the Chelyabinsk region sought to significantly expand the privileges that they had been given by the Supreme authorities. Yet still in the years of the war, regional authorities withdrew an agricultural farm from the healthcare system and subordinated it so that its produce did not serve hospitals and sanatoriums but fed the members of the regional authorities. After the war, at the expense of illegally obtained incomes from the agricultural farm and also from the secret fund of the Chairman of the Executive Committee, the “Chelyabinsk leaders” equipped and maintained luxury villas, arranged banquets and free lunches for themselves, paid for apartments and got illegal cash benefits. They also planned to start up a luxury vacation site near Chelyabinsk with hunting-fishing facilities. The way to the “beautiful life” of the Chelyabinsk authorities was blocked by the Director of the agricultural farm who openly and actively opposed to the illegal transfers of funds and advocated for the return of this farm to the healthcare system. The leaders of the Executive Committee initially tried to persuade the much too principled and zealous Director, then moved on to intimidation and eventually began to seek his conviction on criminal charges. After a period of hard confrontation the Director was dismissed, his complaints to the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) and the USSR Prosecutor’s Office remained without proper attention. Only when the Management of the Affairs of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) had established the fact that over a few years the authorities of the Chelyabinsk region illegally provided themselves with food products and did not pay for housing and utilities, when the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) declared them guilty, reprimanded and ordered to pay damages, the complaints of the Director of the farm were admitted to further proceedings.