The People's Commissariat of Communal Services of the RSFSR in the Urban Planning Management System of the 1930s: Lines of Continuity

Abstract

The article continues the series of studies devoted to the system of administrative and scientific institutions that influenced the development of Soviet urban planning in the 1930s. It shows the results of the study of activities of the People's Commissariat of Public Utilities of the RSFSR (NKKH), formed by the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR (20.07.1931). In the 1930s, when against the backdrop of rapid industrialization special hopes were placed on the centralized management of urban planning, the NKKH played a significant role, since its tasks included regulation of the project planning and the practice of building new and reconstructing existing cities in Russia. The study pays attention to the actual conditions of relations between the NKKH and other institutions that were close in purpose, including those of the all-Union level, as well as the ambiguous way of its interaction with the lower level of the system - the departments of communal services managed by the City Executive Committees. Particular attention is paid to the succession of the NKKH, both in working methods and personnel policy, to its predecessor - the Main Directorate of Communal Services of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR (after the liquidation of the latter in 1930 - of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR). Old- school specialists and approaches to the management of the local economy of the pre-revolutionary period had a certain influence on the activities of the NKKH. This was reflected, in particular, in the nature of the town-planning bills created by the NKKH. The difficulties of restructuring of the NKKH work in the second half of the 1930s, which was connected to the change in requirements for a socialist city, are revealed. The study also gives brief biographical information about the main specialists of NKKH.