The Rise and Fall of a Republican Ministry: Communal Economy in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, 1954–63

Abstract

Between 1954 and 1963, the Ministry of Communal Economy of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, led by A. M. A. Abdullaev, conducted a consequential institutional experiment, achieving full urban gasification by 1961 and significant expansion in water supply and electrification. Drawing on previously unused archival material, this article examines how the ministry acquired unusual independence by concentrating executive authority within a peripheral ‘power vertical.’ This autonomy, achieved through internal centralisation, proved structurally fragile: lacking safeguards against central oversight, it collapsed when political conditions shifted, culminating in the minister’s dismissal in 1963. This case illuminates the contested relationship between administrative effectiveness and institutional vulnerability on the Soviet periphery during decentralisation, and contributes to a broader understanding of republican agency, technocracy, and the inherent limits of reform on the Soviet southern flank.