In the Soviet times, under conditions of chronic labor shortages, non-existing marketing and rudimentary finances, HR function occupied a very strong position among all functions, just after the production. However, the HR function was largely decentralized. In any large enterprise there were five units responsible for personnel issues. The local Communist Party committee supervised general social atmosphere and had its final voice in all promotions. The Personnel department dealt with routine functions of legal paperwork in hiring, firing and performance assessment. The local trade union was responsible for the social life, including holiday camps, kindergartens, sport and social events and the most important issue – allocation of housing among employees. The Salary department was responsible for salary administration. Finally, the special unit in direct supervision of the Chief Engineer dealt with issues of job design and work safety. Such decentralization meant that there never has been a clearly articulated human resource strategy at enterprise levels. Even when such programs were designed as a part of the “complex enterprise development plans,” they were mostly mechanical combination of particular measures and initiatives. Only under extraordinary circumstances (the appointment of a new General Director, massive expansion of production facilities etc.) the old Stalin’s slogan “The cadres decide everything” was reused to adjust the system of human resource policies to new conditions. Even in such situations the emphasis was given to resources: to arrange with the industrial ministry higher rates for particular works, to “squeeze” from the local authorities production facilities for housing construction and to set low performance targets to have more reasons for quarterly and annual premium and bonuses – those three tricks were largely considered as a master-key to all problems in human resource management.