240 
condition, regulate yard repairs, and so on.!” In an interview, the 
deputy chief of the Ministry of Maritime Fleet division of the ASU, 
E. A. Burson described the evolution of the program. He gives credit 
to the 24th Party Congress for recognition that improving management 
is necessary, and he describes the MMF as having general leadership 
for the development of ASU. In 1972, the Ministry collegium reviewed 
the course of ASU Morflot development. It defined the basic 
directions of development and the necessary measures for implementa- 
tion. The ASU concerns a broad range of maritime transport questions 
and a number of subordinate agencies are involved in its development, 
Soiuzmorniiproekt, Lenmorniiproekt, Chernomorniiproekt, TsNIIMF, 
and also Baltic Steamship Company, and computer centers on a 
number of subordinate ships are doing work on the ASU. The 
development and coordination of this work is complex. A number 
of institutes outside the MMF are also involved and as it has turned 
out, centers use various computers and nonstandard programs that 
cannot be brought together in the framework of one industry.! 
Although the party leadership reserves for itself the power to make 
top policy decisions, there are underlying issues that must be resolved 
at lower levels. The extensive powers of the state were perhaps most 
emphasized during the Khrushchev years. His campaigns to break- 
up the ministerial industrial empires that distorted the economy in 
the interest of particular ministries peaked in 1957 with the elimina- 
tion of ministries. The economy was to be reorganized on the basis 
of sovnarkhozy—regional territorial control. The Soviet Union was 
divided into regional economic councils and management authority 
was distributed between them and local units. The system became 
complex, with a proliferation of state committees and coordinating 
agencies at the center, the republics and the sovnarkhozy. The sov- 
narkhoz system tended toward regionalism, since the main interest 
was in fulfilling regional plans. After Khrushchev’s deposal, the minis- 
try system was resurrected in 1965 reform.!!° 
Ministries can be viewed both as institutions that centralize decision- 
making authority and as organizations that decentralize power. They 
concentrate decisions in Moscow and guide their subordinate agencies. 
Ministries, however, dilute centralized power by making and imple- 
menting decisions designed to promote individual ministry goals. In 
addition, the centralized decisionmaking authority of the ministry itself 
is undermined through the operations of its subordinate agencies and 
subdivisions that work to promote even more narrow interests and 
goals. 
Ocean policymaking also takes place within this complex institu- 
tional framework. The various functional interests in ocean policy 
°7 Voronkov and Klementyev, p. 39. 
8 P. Volkov interview of E. A. Burson, “ASU ‘Morflot’ Takes on Strength,” Vodnyi Transport Oc- 
tober 2, 1973. 
°° There are many other instances illustrating the dispersal of authority and administrative difficul- 
ties in the MMF. See Shadrin, ‘‘The Soviet Merchant Marine,”’ p. 738 ff. for the discussions on the 
design and construction of supertankers and containerization. 
' Abraham Katz, ‘‘The Politics of Economic Reform in the Soviet Union” (New York: Praeger, 
1973). 
