Organization of economic activity of the Mari, Mordovia and Chuvash economic councils in the first year of their existence: successes and failures

In the article, the author investigates the insufficiently studied topic of transformation of the organization of economic activity of the economic councils of individual territories at the suggestion of N.S. Khrushchev at the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1957 using comparative historical, quantitative methods, analysis and synthesis. As a result, on the basis of the adopted Law On the further improvement of the management of industry and construction, a territorial management system was created, suggesting that the management of industry and construction should be implemented on a territorial basis on the basis of economic administrative regions. Initially, 70 economic administrative regions were formed, including Chuvash, Mari and Mordovia, in each of which a Council of National Economy was created. The economic councils were state bodies for the management of enterprises, construction projects and organizations of the Union-republican industry located on the territory of the economic administrative region. The article defines the first results of the activity of the Union of National Economy of the Mari, Mordovian and Chuvash ASSR in 1957; the personnel situation, which has become one of the main problems in the development of economic councils, is presented; disclosed the main planned performance indicators of the SNKh, which, on the whole, received a satisfactory assessment. However, despite the positive growth of the main economic indicators, serious difficulties and miscalculations were observed in the work of the economic councils, which were indicated, among other things, by the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR. On the basis of documents from the State Archives of the Russian Federation, regional archives and research literature, the author of the article highlighted the main successes and failures in the activities of the SNKh of the republics of the Middle Volga region. The author concluded that for the national regions, the period of activity of the economic councils was a breakthrough in the national economic complex. The Mari, Mordovian and Chuvash economic councils have done significant work to develop the industry in the peripheral regions of the country, significantly enlarging the existing ones and building new powerful and promising enterprises.