Control of the Central Committee of the CPSU over regional party committees in 1946–1953

This article examines the attempts of the Central Committee of the CPSU to establish effective control over the work of regional party committees in the early post-war years. To achieve this goal, the center streamlined and intensively applied control practices developed in the pre-war years. However, standard measures did not give the desired result: the available resources were insufficient for detailed monitoring of the situation at the local level, selective inspections had a short-term mobilizing effect and failed to address key shortcomings in the work of the implementers. In early 1953, the top leadership decided to tighten control with the help of mass and regular inspections, but immediately after Stalin's death gave up excessive pressure on the regions.