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Nomenklatura and Perestroika

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Ronald J. Hill  and
John Löwenhardt
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Extract

WHILE GORBACHEV'S REFORMS HAVE HAD A BROAD IMPACT ON Soviet society, one key element in the communist system of rule has been particularly affected: the nomenklatura. The word refers to lists of positions for which party committees traditionally held responsibility in recruitment, and lists of persons deemed suitable to fill them. In general, appointments to such posts could not be made without the sanction of the relevant party committee. In some cases, it directly selected the appointee; in others it simply endorsed nominations made elsewhere. The crucial point, however, is that appointments could not be made without the party committee's permission, and that committee's Department of Organizational and Party Work supervised this procedure for staffing the various bureaucratic apparatuses. It has been the essential element in the staffing procedures, and the term covered party involvement in staffing non-party positions, both elective and appointive, the staffing by the party apparatus of positions at lower levels in its own apparatus, and the filling by non-party institutions (such as ministries) of lower-level appointments in their own structures.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1991 , pp. 229 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1991

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References

2 Razumov, Ye. Z., Problemy kadrovoi politiki KPSS, Moscow, Politizdat, 1983, esp. pp. 56–65 Google Scholar.

3 ibid., p. 60.

4 Rigby, T. H., Political Elites in the USSR: Central Leaders and Local Cadres from Lenin to Gorbachev, Aldershot, Edward Elgar, 1990, pp. 6–7 Google Scholar.

5 See Ionescu, Ghita, The Politics of the European Communist States, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967, pp. 60–64 Google Scholar; Harasymiw, Bohdan, Political Recruitment in the Soviet Union, London, Macmillan, 1984 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harasymiw’s earlier article, ‘Nomenklatura: The Soviet Communist Party’s Leadership Recruitment System’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1969, pp. 493–512; Voslensky, Michael, Nomenklatura: Anatomy of the Soviet Ruling Class, London, Bodley Head, 1984 Google Scholar; Nove, Alec, ‘Is There a Ruling Class in the USSR?’, Soviet Studies, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, 1975, pp. 615–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The Class Nature of the Soviet Union Revisited’, Soviet Studies, Vol. XXXV, No. 3, 1983, pp. 298–312.

6 Gorbachev, Mikhail, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, London, Collins, 1987 Google Scholar.

7 However, Rigby quotes Mikoyan’s memoirs to suggest that appointments from the centre were not automatically confirmed at the level to which they were assigned: see Political Elites in the USSR, pp. 57–61.

8 Razumov, op. cit., p. 59. More recently this principle has been eroded: thus, for some weeks in late 1987-early 1988 the Armenian Central Committee stubbornly refused to dismiss its First Secretary, Karen Demirchyan.

9 Agasaryan, S. A., Rassmotrenie trudouykh sporov uyshestoyashchimi U poydke podchinennosti organumi, Yerevan, Izdatel’stvo Yerevanskogo Universiteta, 1987, pp. 44–56 Google Scholar, lists positions not covered by the standard legislation: the bulk of these are typical nomenklutura posts. For commentary, see Löwenhardt, John, ‘Nomenklatura and the Soviet Constitution’, Review of Socialist Law, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1984, pp. 35–55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The party rules adopted at the Twenty-Eighth Congress (Rule 14) place ‘workers of the party apparatus’ under labour legislation.

10 Safronov, Sergei, ‘Bez nomenklaturnoi uzdy’, Partiinaya zhizn’, No. 15, 1990, pp. 52–4Google Scholar (p. 52).

11 See, for example, the criticisms of the party organizations in Estonia (1967), the Udmurt Autonomous Republic (1979) and Tashkent (1987): texts in Sprauochnik partiinogo rabotnika, 7, Moscow, Politizdat, 1967, pp. 323–9; 20, 1980, pp. 362–6; and 28, 1988, pp. 584–8. Razumov, op. cit., pp. 65–71, and Löwenhardt, op. cit., give further detailed examples.

12 See Nove, ‘Is There a Ruling Class?’, p. 635.

13 See Hill, Ronald J., ‘State and Ideology’, in McCauley, Martin (ed.), Khrushchev and Khrwhchevism, London, Macmillan, 1987, pp. 46–60 Google Scholar.

14 At the Central Committee plenum of January 1987: see Pravda, 28 January 1987.

15 XXVII s’ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Souetskogo Soyuza: Stenograjicheskii otchet, Moscow, Politizdat, 1986, Vol. 1, p. 79.

16 See Hahn, Jeffrey W., ‘Moscow’s Electoral Experiment’, Journal of Communist Studies, Vol. 4, No, 2, 1988, pp, 208–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hahn, Jeffrey, ‘An Experiment in Competition: The 1987 Election to the Local Soviets’, Slavic Review, Vol. 47, No. 3, 1988, pp. 434–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Stephen, ‘Reforming the Electoral System’, Journal of Communist Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1988 (special issue on ‘Gorbachev and Gorbachevism’), pp. 1–17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The notion of a ‘reserve’ of deputies was a compromise to reduce the shock of outright defeat in a society that was unaccustomed to such a phenomenon: while the specified seats in the constituency were allocated to those who topped the poll, all other candidates who filled the minimal qualification of 50 per cent plus one vote on a turn-out of at least 50 per cent were deemed to be ‘elected’ as ‘reserves’.

18 Hahn, ‘An Experiment in Competition’, p. 443.

19 Shepotkin, V., ‘Obnovlenie’, Izvestiya, 7 07 1987, p. 2 Google Scholar, quoted in ibid.; Hahn reports other examples of similar occurrences.

20 However, the reform failed to address the serious criticisms of nomenklatura raised by Soviet scholars for more than a decade: see Löwenhardt, John, ‘Political Reform under Gorbachëv: Towards the Defeudalization of Soviet Politics?’, Acta Politica, 1988, No. 1, pp. 3–20 Google Scholar, esp. pp. 13–17.

21 Speech to the Nineteenth Party Conference, Pravda, 29 June 1988, p. 6; some of these points had been made in his speech to the January 1987 Central Committee plenum.

22 Materialy XIX Vsesoyuznoi konferentsii Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza, Moscow, Politizdat, 1988, p. 126.

23 For text see Partiinaya zhizn’, 1988, No. 16, pp. 30–4; a commentary appeared in No. 17, pp. 8–14.

24 For an analysis of the new Instruction, see Löwenhardt, John: ‘Democratization of Party Elections in the Soviet Union: The Central Committee CPSU Instructions on Elections, 1937–1988’, Acta Politica, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1989), pp. 63–81 Google Scholar.

25 Speech at Nineteenth Party Conference, Pravda, 2 July 1988, p. 11.

26 See ‘Ustav Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza’, in KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh s’ ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, Vol. 8, Moscow: Politizdat, 1972, pp. 312–25 (p. 313: Rule 25); for the 1990 rules, Partiinaya zhiz., 1990, No. 15, pp. 16–25.

27 The post of President of the USSR, created in March 1990, to which Gorbachev was elected by the Congress of People’s Deputies, is normally to be filled by nationwide election; originally, the President was flanked by a Presidential Council, appointed by himself, and a Council of the Federation, containing leading state figures from the union republics and attended by representatives of autonomous national units; with the substantial strengthening of the presidency, the creation of the post of vice-president, the upgrading of the Council of the Federation and the replacement of the Presidential Council by a Security Council in December 1990, power was further concentrated in the supreme state institutions, eclipsing Communist Party organs; in July 1990, the Politburo was enlarged and reconstituted to include a significant number of ex officio party functionaries; it now appears quite incapable of performing its earlier policy-making and executive role.

28 See ‘Programmnoe zayavlenie XXVIII s’’ezda KPSS’, Partiinya zhizn’, 1990, No. 15, p. 13; Party Rule 37, ibid., p. 24.

29 See, for example, Izvestiya, 20 February 1990 (the case of Tyume. province committee) and 4 September 1990 (Maikop city committee). In the latter case, the move was justified by reference to the amendment of Article 6 of the Constitution, which meant ‘it would be naive to retain the party’s personnel diktat’; instead, the party would strive to advance its candidates by ‘political methods’. In an interview early in 1990, the Belorussian first secretary, Yefrem Sokolov, remarked that 146 top party, state and government posts were on the CPSU Central Committee nomenklatura list, a number that ought to be reduced to ‘no more than ten’, Pravda, 2 January 1990.

30 See Hill, Ronald J., ‘Glasnost.’ and Soviet Politics’, Coexittmce, Dordrecht, Vol. 26, No. 4 1989, pp. 317–31Google Scholar.

31 See Hill, Ronald J., ‘The Politics of the Congress’, Journal of Commnunist Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, 03 1991, pp. 24–104 Google Scholar.

32 Samolis, T., ‘Ochishchenie: otkrovennyi razgovor’, Pravda, 13 02 1986 Google Scholar.