ZW) 
have policy implications, decisionmaking powers frequently devolve 
to local party organs. 
There are a variety of republic, regional, district, town, and primary 
party organizations. The republic and regional central committees are 
modeled on the CPSU Central Committee and have departments in 
party work and functional sectors.* In addition, the district and town 
committees are concerned with party and industrial affairs. There 
are also about 350,000 primary party organizations with from three 
to a thousand members. Their tasks are limited to the admission 
of new members and the improvement of work performance.*® 
Aside from the official structure, other forms of party leadership 
are used at the local level to integrate the party with the economic 
and social sectors. Commissions are frequently established to link 
party activists with nonparty members in order to assist in produc- 
tion.*7 Permanent commissions are also established in districts and 
towns to act as consultative organs for the party apparatus on broad 
economic and ideological issues.*® Although the party has important 
oversight and policymaking functions, the extent of ocean uses and 
the nature of the necessary considerations seems to preclude continual 
or centralized decisionmaking on oceans by the CPSU. 
The limited information available on the CPSU permits only a 
sketch of the party’s structure and operations in ocean policy formula- 
tion. The party is an extensive institution with major power in defining 
policy objectives. Party organizations at different levels are in contact 
with ocean issues and are able to exercise leverage on policy and 
management. It is apparent, however, that power is not completely 
centralized within the party and is dispersed at various levels. Party 
members also do not necessarily display a single view on policy. 
Additionally, as the following section will show, ocean issues require 
technical expertise and power is shared with government institutions. 
THE GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACY 
Many writers have maintained that the Communist Party of the 
Soviet Union manages all domestic sociopolitical and economic ac- 
tivity. The party is assigned the political and economic leadership 
of society. The Soviet Government, on the other hand, has been 
portrayed as merely the tool for implementing party policy. 
As the previous section shows, although party leadership maintains 
supreme political power, it has been diluted through bureaucratic 
growth, institutional alignments, and individual preferences. And while 
the party has vacillated or been torn between its ideological and 
administrative roles and top party leadership concentrated its energies 
on crisis management or political maneuvering, the Government’s chief 
task has been management of the country’s economy. The Government 
directly manages all spheres of economic life. Every industry and 
*# Avtorkhanov, p. 157. Michael P. Gehlen, ‘“‘The Communist Party of the Soviet Union” 
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969) p. 122. 
46 Wesson, p. 103, Gehlen, p. 122, Fainsod, p. 222 ff. 
‘7Gehlen notes that in 1965 in Leningrad there were about 4,000 commissions for economic 
production, pp. 126-8. 
48 Avtorkhanov states that permanent commissions are also being established in republic and re- 
gional committees, p. 142. 
