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. Konstantin Gudkov and Alexander Dudnev contend that while the book provides a valuable framework for understanding how industrial ministries shaped the urban landscape of the Urals and Siberia, it relies too heavily on a value-neutral, top-down perspective that overlooks historical criticisms of vedomstvennost’. To counter this, Gudkov and Dudnev use the architectural history of interwar Moscow to highlight “situations of departmentalism” where local actors actively resisted bureaucratic silos. They propose that municipal authorities, housing cooperatives, and grassroots communities offered a “healthy” socialist alternative to the isolated, company-town model of the newly industrialized regions. The essay advocates for a pluralistic historical lens that recognizes how solidarity and local governance served as vital checks against the totalizing influence of the Soviet departmental hierarchy.