The Soviet dopusk system as society control lever in the industry of Soviet Lithuania during 1965-1985
ENLike any authoritarian regime, the Soviet system had two levers of society control: cooptation in the ruling class and repression. However, the Soviet regime as society control lever had not only one nomenclature system and not only such strong forms of repression like arrest. There were also other “nomenclatures” which had a strong influence on people’s social and professional mobility. One of these was KGB permit to handle secret documents in a factory or an office (the so-called “dopusk system”). The obtaining of KGB permit to handle secret documents was supposed to be some form of cooptation. On the other hand, refusal of a permit was a form of repression. It is important to note that the dopusk system suited greatly to Brezhnev’s ideological doctrine for the period of “mature socialism”. The existence of enemy classes or social groups could not have been acknowledged by the thesis of the mature socialism – they should have been beaten already before. There are some references to “the remainder of enemy elements” in the KGB documents of Brezhnev era but these references are rare. Politically unreliable people were mostly described as “politically unstable people”. The dopusk system helped the regime to detect politically unreliable people and to prevent their career. Formally the dopusk system was created to keep the secrets of the Soviet state away from intelligence services of the NATO member states. But the dopusk system might be perceived as society control lever because it submitted to some social mobility and career restraint those who were identified as politically un-reliable by the regime. The formal need to keep the state secrets safe was transformed into a broad control of society.
