SUMMARY:

This essay is a contribution to the book forum “Soviet Departmentalism” discussing the edited volume put together by the Tyumen historian Igor Stas’ that introduces departmentalism, or vedomstvennost’, as a vital framework for understanding Soviet history. The volume argues that vedomstvennost’ fundamentally organized the daily lives, urban spaces, and social hierarchies of citizens. Aleksei Popov examines how Soviet ministries and enterprises functioned as autonomous centers of power and knowledge, shaping everything from urban infrastructure to social practices like housing and corporate identity. While praising the book for moving beyond simplistic labels like “bureaucracy,” he also questions whether vedomstvennost’ was truly a form of alternative modernity or merely a by-product of specialized Soviet political language. Popov acknowledges the book’s importance in providing rich empirical data and sparking methodological debate over how researchers conceptualize the Soviet experience within a global context.