The Power Ministries

Abstract

For any authoritarian state, such as the Soviet Union was, the centralized control of the means of force in the service of the regime is a key element in the retention of power. Tight control of the Defence Ministry, KGB, Interior Ministry and Foreign Ministry by the communist regime was essential to the maintenance of political power in the USSR. This chapter considers the extent to which institutional structures and behaviour with regard to the power ministries have continued in the Russian Federation in the immediate post-Soviet era. We will consider: the organization and institutional behaviour of the power ministries from the Soviet era to the end of the 1990s; the extent to which the structures and policy aims of these bodies have changed in the contemporary Russian Federation; the place of the power ministries as independent political actors within the broader politics of the Yeltsin era; and the means of oversight and restraints on power in place with regard to the power ministries in Russia today.