People's Control

a system of control in the USSR directed by the Committee of the People’s Control of the USSR.

People’s control is exercised over the Soviet state administrative apparatus and its officials, kolkhoz officials, and the functionaries of other cooperative and public organizations. People’s control bodies systematically check on fulfillment of state plans; the proper and thrifty expenditure of labor, material, and financial resources; the improvement of the administrative apparatus and reduction of administrative costs incurred; and the maintenance of state discipline and legality.

In accordance with the Program of the CPSU of 1961, people’s control is based on a combination of state control and public on-the-spot inspections; that is, state and public elements are joined together in its activity. Along with the regular-staff apparatus, nonstaff departments in various sectors of the economy, science, and culture, as well as standing and temporary commissions manned by public volunteers, are established. Public control measures (warnings, discussions at meetings of work staffs and public organizations of misdemeanors and infringements) are combined with government control measures against violators of state discipline (including impositions of fines and job dismissals).

People’s control committees are established in Union republics and in autonomous republics, krais, and oblasts. Autonomous oblasts also have district, city, and raion committees and groups and offices of people’s control at village and settlement soviets of working people’s deputies, enterprises, kolkhozes, institutions, and military units.

In terms of formation, composition, and forms and means of activity, people’s control is profoundly democratic. For example, members of groups and staffs of offices are elected at meetings of working people’s staffs. Local people’s control committees are formed at sessions of corresponding soviets of working people’s deputies. Production, kolkhoz, and office workers, pensioners, and housewives are elected to bodies of people’s control. Members may be Communists or nonparty members, including representatives of public organizations (such as party, trade union, and Komsomol representatives). The Statute on Bodies of People’s Control in the USSR was approved by the Council of Ministers of the USSR in December 1968 (SP SSSR, 1969, no. 1, art. 2).