ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE CHUVASH ASSR COUNCIL OF MINISTERS’ APPARATUS IN THE 1980s

The article examines the changes that occurred in the organizational structure of the apparatus of the Chuvash ASSR Council of Ministers in the 1980s. The Council of Ministers, as the supreme executive and administrative body of the state power of the republic, played a significant role in all spheres of public life, and the quality of decisions made and their subsequent implementation in this difficult time for the country largely depended on its apparatus. The source base of the study was primarily previously unpublished resolutions of the Republican government, which approved the changed staffing structure of the Chuvash ASSR Council of Ministers’ apparatus. The central role in the apparatus of the republican government was occupied by the General Affairs Department, which included branch departments and other structural subdivisions. According to the results of the study, it was concluded that during most of the 1980s, changes in the organizational structure of the apparatus of the Chuvash ASSR Council of Ministers were minor, they were limited to the transfer of individual functions from one branch department of the General Affairs Department to another with the corresponding renaming of departments. However, in the years of perestroika, under the conditions of growing political and economic reforms, the apparatus of the Chuvash ASSR Council of Ministers underwent a significant transformation, which was reflected in the adoption at the turn of the 1980s–1990s of new normative legal acts – the Regulations on the Apparatus of the Chuvash ASSR Council of Ministers, the staffing structure of the Council of Ministers’ Apparatus and job descriptions for employees of the Council of Ministers’ apparatus. In so doing, the leadership of the country and the republic demonstrated their readiness for significant changes, albeit within the framework of a centrally planned socialist system.