What level of autonomy did member states of the SU have?

[Kenco Smooth]

Particularly in the latter half of the 20th century.

Was enough planned and controlled at a national level to challenge the common notion of the Soviet Union as (in practice) a state as opposed to a federation of states?

[Jose Gracchus]

They had no effective autonomy. The purpose of the national republics was to sop to nationalism and provide some 'communists who look like you' to run things locally, and to organize some regional-national development goals.

[W1N5T0N]

autonomy? unheard of in soviet russia.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It depends on whether you look at the Union Republics as whole entities or a conglomerate of regions. Immediately after Stalin's death the focus of central administration shifted from functional to regional. The sovnarkhozy experiment was quite a regionalist one. Also, a few Union Republic party bosses gained seats in the Presidium/Politburo itself.

[Ismail]

In the 1970's a practice of cronyism developed in which local Union Republic party bosses would acquire power and influence and would subtly use nationalism to keep themselves in power. Hence when Gorbachev removed the corrupt Kazakh SSR party boss in 1986 there were suddenly anti-Russian protests.

Actual administrative and economic autonomy though was basically nil. The strength of the whole Union Republic plan was cultural autonomy, which was what really mattered. Volkogonov (who had access to basically everything Lenin and Stalin ever wrote) notes in his book The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire (p. 69) that, "Reading Ioffe's letter to the Soviet Ambassador to Germany Nikolai Krestinsky, Lenin underlined the words: 'What is really necessary is the factual subjugation of Ukraine while retaining its formal independence.'" And Richard Pipes in his book The Formation of the Soviet Union notes (p. viii) a "message sent by Lenin to his operatives in the Baltic regions during the westward advance of the Red Army in the 1920 war with Poland. Urging them to do everything in their power to impose a communist government on Lithuania, he wrote: 'We must ensure that we first sovietize Lithuania and then give it back to the Lithuanians.'"

Trotsky noted (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/red-white/ch09.htm) in 1922 that, "We do not only recognize, but we also give full support to the principle of self-determination, wherever it is directed against feudal, capitalist and imperialist states. But wherever the fiction of self-determination, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, becomes a weapon directed against the proletarian revolution, we have no occasion to treat this fiction differently from the other 'principles' of democracy perverted by capitalism."

Stalin in 1918 basically outlined (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1918/05/10.htm) the Soviet view of autonomy:

The Third Congress of Soviets laid down general provisions of the Constitution of the Soviet Republic, and called upon the labouring elements of the peoples of Russia to say in what concrete political forms they would like to constitute themselves in their regions, and in what relations they would like to stand to the centre. Of all the regions, Finland and the Ukraine, I think, are the only ones that have declared themselves definitely. They have declared in favour of independence. And when the Council of People's Commissars became convinced that not only the bourgeoisie, but also the proletarian elements of these countries were striving for independence, these countries received what they demanded without any hindrance.

As to the other regions, their labouring elements have proved to be rather inert in the matter of the national movement. But the greater their inertia the greater was the activity displayed by the bourgeoisie. Nearly everywhere, in all the regions, bourgeois autonomous groups were formed which set up "National Councils," split their regions into separate national curiae, with national regiments, national budgets, etc., and thus turned their countries into arenas of national conflict and chauvinism. These autonomous groups (I am referring to the Tatar, Bashkir, Kirghiz, Georgian, Armenian and other "National Councils")—all these "National Councils" were out for one thing only, namely, to secure autonomy so that the central government should not interfere in their affairs and not control them. "Give us autonomy and we shall recognize the central Soviet power, but we cannot recognize the local Soviets and they must not interfere in our affairs; we shall organize ourselves as we wish and can, and shall treat our national workers and peasants as we please." That is the sort of autonomy—essentially bourgeois in character—aimed at by the bourgeoisie who demand full power over "their" working people within the framework of autonomy.

It goes without saying that the Soviet power cannot sanction autonomy of this kind. To grant autonomy in order that all power within the autonomous unit may belong to the national bourgeoisie, who insist upon non-interference on the part of the Soviets, to surrender the Tatar, Bashkir, Georgian, Kirghiz, Armenian and other workers to the tender mercies of the Tatar, Georgian, Armenian and other bourgeois— that is something to which the Soviet power cannot consent.

Autonomy is a form. The whole question is what class content is put into this form. The Soviet power is not at all opposed to autonomy. It is in favour of autono-my—but only such autonomy in which the entire power belongs to the workers and peasants, and in which the bourgeois of all nationalities are debarred not only from power, but even from participation in the election of government bodies.

Such autonomy will be autonomy on a Soviet basis.

There are two types of autonomy. One is purely nationalistic. It is built on the principle of extra-territoriality, on the basis of nationalism. The outcome of this type of autonomy is "National Councils," with national regiments around these councils, division of the population into national curiae, and the national strife which is bound to follow from this. That type of autonomy spells inevitable doom for the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies. It is the type of autonomy which the bourgeois Rada was out for. In order to grow and develop, the Rada had naturally to wage war on the workers' and peasants' Soviets. That has also been the outcome of the existence of the Armenian, Georgian and Tatar National Councils in Transcaucasia. Gegech-kori was right when he said to the Transcaucasian Soviets and the Commissariat: "Do you know that the Commissariat and the Soviets have become a fiction, since all power has actually passed into the hands of the National Councils, which possess their own national regiments?"

That type of autonomy we reject in principle.

We propose another type of autonomy, autonomy for regions where one or several nationalities predominate. No national curiae, no national barriers! Autonomy must be Soviet autonomy, based on Soviets. This means that the division of the population of the given region must be on class, not national lines. Class Soviets as the basis of autonomy, and autonomy as the form of expression of the will of these Soviets—such is the nature of the Soviet autonomy we propose.

The bourgeois world has elaborated one definite form of relation between autonomous regions and the central authority. I am referring to the United States of America, Canada and Switzerland. In these countries the central authority consists of a national parliament of the whole country, elected by the entire population of the states (or cantons), and, parallel with this, a federal council, chosen by the governments of the states (or cantons). The result is a two-chamber system, with its legislative red tape and the stifling of all revolutionary initiative.

We are opposed to such a constitution of authority in our country. We are opposed to it not only because socialism categorically repudiates such a two-chamber system, but also because of the practical exigencies of the period we are passing through. The fact is that in the present transitional period, when the bourgeoisie has been broken but not crushed, when the disruption of economic life and of the food supply, aggravated by the machinations of the bourgeoisie, has not yet been eliminated, and when the old, capitalist world has been shattered but the new, socialist world has not yet been completely built—at such a moment the country needs a strong all-Russian power capable of crushing the enemies of socialism completely and organizing a new, communist economy. In short, what we need is that which has come to be called the dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat. To set up sovereign local and regional authorities parallel with the central authority at such a moment would in fact result in the collapse of all authority and a reversion to capitalism. For this reason, all functions of importance to the whole country must be left in the hands of the central authority, and the regional authorities must be vested chiefly with administrative, political and cultural functions of a purely regional nature. These are: education, justice, administration, essential political measures, forms and methods of application of the general decrees in adaptation to the national conditions and manner of life—and all this in the language native to and understood by the population. Hence the generally recognized type of regional union, headed by a regional Central Executive Committee, is the most expedient form of such autonomy.

That is the type of autonomy the necessity of which, in the present transitional period, is dictated both by the interests of consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and by the common struggle of the proletarians of all the nations of Russia against bourgeois nationalism, that last bulwark of imperialism.

[Nox]

Although officially it was a Union of equal Republics, Russia controlled everything.

[tir1944]

Although officially it was a Union of equal Republics, Russia controlled everything.
How about some proof eh?