How did the Soviet government actually work?

[The Man]

I mean there is so many things: Premier, General Secretary, Supreme Soviet, Politburo, Central Committee, etc.

How did it work when Stalin was in power?

[ComradeOm]

Your list in somewhat misleading because none of those really mattered during the Stalinist period. Let me put it this way: according to Wheatcroft (From Team-Stalin to Degenerate Tyranny) in 1922 there were: two party congresses; seven plenums of the Central Committee; and 80 meetings of the Politburo. Almost twenty years later in 1951 there were no party congresses (the previous being 1939); no plenums of the Central Committee; and just six Politburo meetings (of which Stalin attended none). This was the culmination of a trend that started in the late 1920s, with the rise of Stalin, in which power increasingly moved from post-October institutions towards a small group of technocrats gathered around Stalin himself

So by the end of the Stalinist period these institutions were either ignored or purely ceremonial in nature. The leading lights of the USSR might be members of these bodies but they did not conduct business through them and they did not owe their authority to membership of them. The real business of government was managed by an informal elite centred on Stalin's office. This was a collection of party bosses, ministers and (after 1941) generals who enjoyed Stalin's confidence. As I noted in the constitution thread, this is not captured in any Soviet constitution and is pretty difficult to map in terms of tracing the real structure of Soviet government

Edit: Just to clarify, I suppose that what I'm saying in my last sentence there (and to a degree throughout the whole post) is that in Stalinist Russia personal connections and patronage were of far more importance than the formal structures of the state apparatus. Mapping the latter is therefore of limited use in understanding the workings of the Soviet state. The soviets, for example, remained the theoretical bedrock of the USSR until 1992 but are of almost no real historical importance after the early/mid 1920s

[Red_Struggle]

http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n2/darcy.htm

This was written by Sam Darcy, CPUSA member who witnessed the 1936 elections to the soviets.

"I had the privilege of observing the nominations and elections in the district in which I lived and worked from beginning to end. The particular election which I referred to was the All-Union elections for selecting of delegates to the All-Union Soviet Congress, that being equivalent of our choosing of members of the United States House of Representatives in Washington. Each institution in the congressional district in which I resided and worked held meetings of the people to nominate candidates. Meetings were held in factories. The Moscow university, which was in this district held a meeting. The Great Lenin Library held a meeting of its staff to put forward candidates. So did all of the cooperative stores associations that operated there. So did the trade union organisations, the Communist Party, the youth organisations, etc. etc. A great many candidates were put forward in each meeting. The procedure for each candidate was to stand up and give a brief biography of his life and reasons why he should or should not be nominated. It was considered a lack of civic responsibility for a candidate to decline out of hand. If he thought he should not be elected it was has duty to take the platform, provide a brief biography of his life, and give the reasons why he should not be accepted. Two whole weeks were set aside for this procedure. Some organisations met every night for the entire period and examined thousands of people who were put forward as candidates there. Each candidate had to submit to questions from the floor. At the end of that time one or more nominees were put in nomination for the entire district with the endorsement of the body choosing him or her.
In addition to putting forth nominees each group chose a number of delegates on a proportional representation basis to a congressional district conference. The congressional district conference also met for a period of about two weeks. The nominations were put before that body. The same procedure was gone through there, each nominee was examined, his or her qualifications weighed against other nominees and finally a vote taken by the delegated body for the final choice.
Frequently the body decided to accept not one nominee but two or three or even more. These nominees, after this thorough process of distillation were then submitted to the electorate for final voting. And the electorate thus, by popular majority, judged one of the candidates in that congressional district they desired to have represent them in the All-Union Soviet Congress."

[ComradeOm]

I slightly more impartial record of Soviet elections (ie, one not written by a Stalinist) is Brailsford's How the Soviets Work (http://www.marxists.org/history/archive/brailsford/1927/soviets-work/index.htm). Its based on observations made during visits to the USSR during the 1920s and is well worth the read. Even then the decay of 'Soviet democracy' is detectable