The People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, also known as Rabkrin (Russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т Рабо́че-крестья́нской инспе́кции, romanized: Narodnyy komissariat Raboche-krest'yanskoy inspektsii; РКИ, RKI; Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, WPI), was a governmental establishment in the Soviet Union of ministerial level (people's commissariat) that was responsible for scrutinizing the state, local and enterprise administrations.
The former commissar of the People's Commissariat for State Control, Joseph Stalin, was placed in charge of the newly formed agency, Rabkrin, which was to signal a new beginning of Soviet administration.
It was to act as the stern and enlightened auditor for the whole rickety and creaking governmental machine; to expose abuses of power and red tape; and to train an élite of reliable civil servants for every branch of the government.
The Central Bureau of Complaints (Russian: Бюро Жалоб, romanized: Biuro Zhalob), founded in 1919, was a department of the Rabkrin whose sole purpose was to find and eliminate inefficiency within the state's administration.
The Complaints Bureau was now used as a channel to encourage Soviet citizens to provide detailed accounts, including evidence and witnesses, of functionaries opposing the state or being part of anti-communist organizations.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1922, Stalin entrusted the post of People's Commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate to his trusted ally Grigory Ordzhonikidze, who was in office from 1926 to 1930.
Many officials felt the overpowered Soviet institution to be abusing its power and making it difficult for collectivized agriculture to succeed under strict procedures.
Most of the reports were false and wrongly depicted the life of the peasantry, but they justified the authorities in placing extreme production quotas on the agriculture sector.
[9] At the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party, with its purpose being felt to have been served in creating a more efficient administrative and economic structure, Rabkrin was dissolved, and its functions were passed to the People's Control Commission.