DOCSLIB.ORG

Rebuilding the Soviet Nomenklatura 1945-1948

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Rebuilding the Soviet Nomenklatura 1945-1948 Cahiers du monde russe Russie - Empire russe - Union soviétique et États indépendants 44/2-3 | 2003 Les pratiques administratives en Union soviétique, 1920-1960 Rebuilding the Soviet nomenklatura 1945-1948 Moshe LEWIN Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/8608 DOI : 10.4000/monderusse.8608 ISSN : 1777-5388 Éditeur Éditions de l’EHESS Édition imprimée Date de publication : 1 avril 2003 Pagination : 219-252 ISBN : 2-7132-1813-6 ISSN : 1252-6576 Référence électronique Moshe LEWIN, « Rebuilding the Soviet nomenklatura 1945-1948 », Cahiers du monde russe [En ligne], 44/2-3 | 2003, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2007, consulté le 10 décembre 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/monderusse/8608 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.8608 © École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. Cet article est disponible en ligne à l’adresse : http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_REVUE=CMR&ID_NUMPUBLIE=CMR_442&ID_ARTICLE=CMR_442_0219 Rebuilding the Soviet nomenklatura 1945-1948 par Moshe LEWIN | Editions de l'EHESS | Cahiers du monde russe 2003/2-3 Vol 44 ISSN 1252-6576 | ISBN 2713218136 | pages 219 à 252 Pour citer cet article : — LEWIN M., Rebuilding the Soviet nomenklatura 1945-1948, Cahiers du monde russe 2003/2, Vol 44, p. 219-252. Distribution électronique Cairn pour les Editions de l'EHESS. © Editions de l'EHESS. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit. MOSHE LEWIN REBUILDING THE SOVIET NOMENKLATURA 1945-1948 The term “nomenklatura” became popular in Soviet studies in the early 1980s and it was used to denote both the set of procedures the ruling party developed to conduct its staffing policies, and the cohort itself of officials who, having been selected through these procedures, coalesced into the Soviet Union’s “ruling class.” Before proceeding any further, it is worth pointing out the curious fact that earlier, often very reputable, histories of the Soviet political system did not even use this term, although the discovery of “nomenklatura” implied that it revealed something new and that earlier writers might have missed something important. An implication like that would be inaccurate. Earlier authors often departed from the common knowledge that the ruling party, in fact and by its own admission, had appointed its own members to the most important positions in the state’s administration and in the party’s own apparatus, since the early stages of the regime. And it was done by a well-known party apparatus department — the Uchraspred. The precise staffing procedures of the country’s institutions could await further more detailed monographs. Despite the impression of some new revelation, a new key to Soviet reality, the authors who put such a great emphasis on “the nomenklatura” and “its power” did in fact tell the same story, sometimes even less competently than others. Introducing a new, catchy term meant just this — a term. On the other hand, the classifier “ruling class” that intended to reveal the socio-political content of the “Soviet nomenklatura” was potentially a more interesting idea — had it not been for the fact that it was used, primarily, as an ideological teaser. “Ruling classes,” it seems, is not the term writers like Milovan Djilas or Michael Voslensky would use to tease other countries — but they were ready to use it for the USSR in order to beat it at its own game, using Marxist vocabulary to imply that the USSR had a class structure and a “ruling class.” But the play with these terms did not improve matters for us either. All this was said by — and maybe taken from — say, a Soviet oppositionist like Christian Rakovsky, who analyzed the making of a Soviet ruling stratum in texts from 1928 Cahiers du Monde russe, 44/2-3, Avril-septembre 2003, p. 219-252. 220 MOSHE LEWIN and 1931 but used “ruling stratum” or “elite”, not “class” — the latter having been a contentious term among party oppositionists of the 1920s, notably because it was quite problematic to speak then of the Soviet leadership and of its apparaty as being owners of production means as was the case with feudal lords or capitalist entrepreneurs.1 “Nomenklatura” proponents might have had a point had they explained what was gained by the new emphasis on “ruling class” instead of some other concept. An elite is a narrower, less ramified social group than a “class.” A class may contain one or more elites but it also needs a rather large social base of its own and supportive groups inside society. If better defined and shown as evolving over time, the definition and study of such social constructs could have deepened our understanding of the evolution, vitality or decline of the system, because the development, especially after Stalin, made the use of a sui generis “ruling class” justified at some stage. With a further proviso that the role of the different meanings and practices related to the term “nomenklatura” needs explaining and should not be used as just some catchy novelty. Be that as it may, we are mentioning the “class” versus “elite” (or “stratum”) quandary just in passing. Our main focus here for the moment is the actual technique of the “nomenklatura” as one of the party’s devices to maintain its control. It is sometimes claimed, notably these days in Russia, that the “nomenklatura” system was the ultimate arcanum imperii of the regime. We will show why dealing with “the technique” is of interest, but will also insist that handling the staffing of leading positions in party and state apparaty can be understood only as part of a broader ongoing process of the bureaucratic takeover of all the levers of power, whereby the administrative upper layers — the main object of the party’s control — turned into an encrusted power grid. If so, “nomenklatura” in itself was no key to the system. Actually, there was no single key to this gate although many just craved for one — a bundle of keys is necessary. Bureaucracy was not just being there — it was evolving, exhibiting trends and undergoing changes. The ruling networks were “mutating” — and so was the society around them. No particular technique gives a sufficient account of the complexity of the phenomenon. Our study does focus on the “technique” and cannot do much more — but the correlations with broader systemic trends will be strongly suggested as crucial for the analysis of the stages the system went through and of its demise. Otherwise, the outlandishly sounding term “nomenklatura” remains just a scarecrow. We are concentrating on the1945-1948 period, notably because good archival material became available but also because this was an important postwar period when the system, including the party machinery, had to be rebuilt, thereby unraveling also many phenomena the party was facing and was going to face till the 1. Milovan Djilas, The new class: an analysis of the Communist system (New York, 1957); M. Voslensky, Nomenklatura: the Soviet ruling class (preface by M. Djilas) (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984). REBUILDING THE SOVIET NOMENKLATURA, 1945-1948 221 end of its existence.2 Occasional glimpses into later years will also be offered to make these implications clearer. But first, a thumbnail sketch should be offered of the making of policies that can be grouped under the “nomenklatura” label. TThhee ccaaddrreess’’ ppooll ii ccyy:: ddeell vvii nngg ii nntt oo tt hhee aappppaarraatt uuss ooff tt hhee CCeenntt rraall CCoommmmii tt tt eeee Party and state organizations must be staffed — and the party took this function upon itself from the very beginning, for the party’s own cadres in the first place. Quite soon though, all the key positions of power and influence in the state were included in what became an intricate procedure being worked and reworked as the system passed through ever more complicated stages. “Nomenklatura” meant, at first, a list of key jobs in party and state administrations to be filled by politically reliable and professionally competent personnel. But the term came to be used to denote the whole, ever more complicated set of procedures of selecting personnel for jobs of responsibility, from the highest to the lowest in all the administrations. A special department in the party apparatus — changing its name and structure over time — dealt with this task. It worked at establishing lists by branch, rank and category, and fixing the level of party or state body (Politbiuro (PB), Orgbiuro, TsK Secretariat, Sovmin or ministries themselves) — obviously depending on the ranks to be filled — to whom names of candidates for office were to be submitted for final approval (or rejection). The practice was actually begotten initially by the dearth of leading party personnel during the civil war. It made the early administrative bodies of the party’s Central Committee — the Organizational bureau, the Secretariat and an “Uchraspred” (Uchetno-raspredelitel´nyi otdel: Registration and Distribution Department) — indispensable and overworked. Thus a very much needed candidate for party secretaryship in a locality — who had to be elected according to the party’s statute — was sent in from above and quite predictably, immediately elected. The habit stayed on — the proverbial Il n’y a que le provisoire qui dure proved to be valid yet again: the practice of election of top officials by the membership of local organizations began to wither away initially, in fact, unwittingly.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Title of Thesis: ABSTRACT CLASSIFYING BIAS
    ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: CLASSIFYING BIAS IN LARGE MULTILINGUAL CORPORA VIA CROWDSOURCING AND TOPIC MODELING Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang Thesis Directed By: Dr. David Zajic, Ph.D. Our project extends previous algorithmic approaches to finding bias in large text corpora. We used multilingual topic modeling to examine language-specific bias in the English, Spanish, and Russian versions of Wikipedia. In particular, we placed Spanish articles discussing the Cold War on a Russian-English viewpoint spectrum based on similarity in topic distribution. We then crowdsourced human annotations of Spanish Wikipedia articles for comparison to the topic model. Our hypothesis was that human annotators and topic modeling algorithms would provide correlated results for bias. However, that was not the case. Our annotators indicated that humans were more perceptive of sentiment in article text than topic distribution, which suggests that our classifier provides a different perspective on a text’s bias. CLASSIFYING BIAS IN LARGE MULTILINGUAL CORPORA VIA CROWDSOURCING AND TOPIC MODELING by Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Gemstone Honors Program, University of Maryland, 2018 Advisory Committee: Dr. David Zajic, Chair Dr. Brian Butler Dr. Marine Carpuat Dr. Melanie Kill Dr. Philip Resnik Mr. Ed Summers © Copyright by Team BIASES: Brianna Caljean, Katherine Calvert, Ashley Chang, Elliot Frank, Rosana Garay Jáuregui, Geoffrey Palo, Ryan Rinker, Gareth Weakly, Nicolette Wolfrey, William Zhang 2018 Acknowledgements We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to our mentor, Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Legacies
    1 The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Legacies Vladimir Tismaneanu The revolutions of 1989 were, no matter how one judges their nature, a true world-historical event, in the Hegelian sense: they established a historical cleavage (only to some extent conventional) between the world before and after 89. During that year, what appeared to be an immutable, ostensibly indestructible system collapsed with breath-taking alacrity. And this happened not because of external blows (although external pressure did matter), as in the case of Nazi Germany, but as a consequence of the development of insuperable inner tensions. The Leninist systems were terminally sick, and the disease affected first and foremost their capacity for self-regeneration. After decades of toying with the ideas of intrasystemic reforms (“institutional amphibiousness”, as it were, to use X. L. Ding’s concept, as developed by Archie Brown in his writings on Gorbachev and Gorbachevism), it had become clear that communism did not have the resources for readjustment and that the solution lay not within but outside, and even against, the existing order.1 The importance of these revolutions cannot therefore be overestimated: they represent the triumph of civic dignity and political morality over ideological monism, bureaucratic cynicism and police dictatorship.2 Rooted in an individualistic concept of freedom, programmatically skeptical of all ideological blueprints for social engineering, these revolutions were, at least in their first stage, liberal and non-utopian.3 The fact that 1 See Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 157-189. In this paper I elaborate upon and revisit the main ideas I put them forward in my introduction to Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., The Revolutions of 1989 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999) as well as in my book Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York: Free Press, 1992; revised and expanded paperback, with new afterword, Free Press, 1993).
    [Show full text]
  • Discerning the Global 1989 Through the Lens of 1989 As World-Historical
    www.ssoar.info Discerning the global in the European revolutions of 1989 Armbruster, Chris Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Arbeitspapier / working paper Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Armbruster, C. (2008). Discerning the global in the European revolutions of 1989. (Working Paper Series of the Research Network 1989, 12). Berlin. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-27092 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz This document is made available under a CC BY-NC-ND Licence (Namensnennung-Nicht-kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung) zur (Attribution-Non Comercial-NoDerivatives). For more Information Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.de Working Paper Series of the Research Network 1989 Working Paper 12/2008 ISSN 1867-2833 Discerning the Global in the European Revolutions of 1989 Chris Armbruster Executive Director, Research Network 1989 www.cee-socialscience.net/1989 Research Associate, Max Planck Digital Library, Max Planck Society www.mpdl.mpg.d Abstract With the benefit of hindsight it becomes easier to appraise the historical significance and impact of the European revolutions of 1989. By a privileging a global point of view, it becomes possible to leave behind the prevalent perspective of 1989 as a regional transition of Central Europe only. This essay does not substitute the stultifying regional perspective for a globalist
    [Show full text]
  • Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes: a Comparison of Stalinism and Putinism
    TOTALITARIAN AND AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES: A COMPARISON OF STALINISM AND PUTINISM A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BY ONUR YENGİL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF EURASIAN STUDIES AUGUST 2016 Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences Prof. Dr. Meliha Altunışık Director I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Science. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pınar Akçalı Head of Department This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Science. Prof. Dr. Ayşe Pamir Dietrich Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pınar Akçalı Co-Supervisor Supervisor Examining Committee Members Assist. Prof. Dr. Işık Kuşçu Bonnenfant (METU, IR) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pınar Akçalı (METU, ADM) Assist. Prof. Dr. Yuliya Biletska (Karabük, IR) PLAGIARISM I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Name, Last name : Onur Yengil Signature : iii ABSTRACT TOTALITARIAN AND AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES: A COMPARISON OF STALINISM AND PUTINISM Yengil, Onur M. Sc., Department of Eurasian Studies Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pınar Akçalı Co-Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ayşe Pamir Dietrich August 2016, 164 pages This thesis aims to compare and contrast Stalin’s Soviet Union with Putin’s post- Soviet Russia by looking at the totalitarian and authoritarian characteristics that these two periods as well as these two leaders display.
    [Show full text]
  • Anatoly Chernyaev, Georgi Arbatov, and the Foundations of the Soviet Collapse, 1970-1979
    THE RUSTY CURTAIN: ANATOLY CHERNYAEV, GEORGI ARBATOV, AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE SOVIET COLLAPSE, 1970-1979 Michael Ginnetti A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2015 Committee: Douglas Forsyth, Advisor Beth Griech-Polelle © 2015 Michael Ginnetti All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Douglas Forsyth, Advisor “It seems the Western interpreters of Marxism are right when they say it is an outdated gospel.” Such a harsh condemnation of communist ideology might be expected from some persecuted Soviet dissident or perhaps a war-drumming functionary in Washington. However, this quote is from none other than Anatoly Chernyaev, a high-level apparatchik working for the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who found himself disillusioned with the state of Soviet society in the 1970s. In much the same way, Georgi Arbatov, the director of the Soviet Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada, declared that, “one had a particularly sickening feeling inside because of the intolerable propaganda.” From these perceptions of the Soviet Union in the 1970s, Chernyaev and Arbatov would rise to become personal foreign policy advisors to Mikhail Gorbachev and active reformers in the 1980s. The current restrictions on research in Russia have turned the personal writings of Chernyaev and Arbatov into resources of nearly exclusive importance on the history of the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Not only were Chernyaev and Arbatov highly placed individuals within the Soviet government, they were remarkably intelligent, creative, and observant men who recorded their thoughts, impressions, and memories of the Soviet Union as it was before the implosion of the communist system.
    [Show full text]
  • Cultural Response to Totalitarianism in Select Movies Produced in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland Between 1956 and 1989 Kazimierz Robak University of South Florida
    University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2009 Cultural response to totalitarianism in select movies produced in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland between 1956 and 1989 Kazimierz Robak University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Robak, Kazimierz, "Cultural response to totalitarianism in select movies produced in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland between 1956 and 1989" (2009). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2167 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cultural Response to Totalitarianism in Select Movies Produced in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland between 1956 and 1989 by Kazimierz Robak A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Maria Cizmic, Ph.D. Silvio Gaggi, Ph.D. Adriana Novoa, Ph.D. Date of Approval: April 6, 2009 Keywords: bolshevism, communism, communist propaganda, sovietism, film, peter bacso, milos forman, jan nemec, istvan szabo, bela tarrr, andrzej wajda, janusz zaorski © Copyright 2009, Kazimierz Robak Dedication To my wife Grażyna Walczak, my best friend, companion and love and to Olga, a wonderful daughter Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Maria Cizmic, who has been an extraordinary advisor in the best tradition of this institution.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origins of Oligarchy: the Evolution of Communism and the System of Pressure Groups in the USSR
    CONFRONTATION AND COOPERATION 1000 YEARS OF POLISH–GERMAN–RUSSIAN RELATIONS T h e J o u r n a l o f K o l e g i u m J a g i e l l o n s K i e T o r u n s K a s z K o l a W y z s z a V o l . i : 3 9 – 4 4 DOI: 10.2478/conc-2014-0006 Jaryna Boreńko The origins of oligarchy: the evolution of communism and the system of pressure groups in the USSR Key words: nomenklatura, Soviet Union, Ukraine, Russia 1. Introduction more than antidemocratic. Such structures, referred to as oligarchies, are not a novelty in the history of the The phenomenon of oligarchy in post-Soviet countries, development of group system in Soviet society. They mainly in Russia and Ukraine, has recently become result from the evolution of the communist system, the label for the functioning of the political system to especially specific activities of pressure groups. When distinguish the real participants of political processes. we pay more attention to the characteristics of political They, in fact, due to their un-established legal status activity and behaviour, and less to the institutional replace the formal structures of a state, such as political conditioning of the system, the evolution of the group parties or local authorities, in the process of decision system in Russian policy perceived as the phenomenon making. The characteristics of the oligarchs` activities, of the influence of informal subjects on decision their high position on the lists of the wealthiest people making, enables the comprehension of the character of of the world, as well as their participation in opposition the modern day oligarchy.
    [Show full text]
  • Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media Communication and Society General Editor: James Curran
    Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media Communication and Society General editor: James Curran Social Work, the Media and Public Relations Bob Franklin and Dave Murphy What News? The Market, Politics and the Local Press Bob Franklin and Dave Murphy Images of the Enemy: Reporting the New Cold War Brian McNair Pluralism, Politics and the Marketplace: The Regulation of German Broadcasting Vincent Porter and Suzanne Hasselbach Potboilers: Methods, Concepts and Case Studies in Popular Fiction Jerry Palmer Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media Brian McNair London and New York First published 1991 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “ To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1991 Brian McNair All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data McNair, Brian Glasnost, perestroika and the Soviet media. – (Communication and scoiety). 1. Soviet Union. Mass media I. Title II. Series 302.230947 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data McNair, Brian Glasnost, perestroika and the Soviet media / Brian McNair.
    [Show full text]
  • Perestroika and the Decline of Soviet Legitimacy
    Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Master's Theses Graduate College 8-1993 Contracts in Conflict: erP estroika and the Decline of Soviet Legitimacy Karl Glenn Hokenmaier Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses Part of the European History Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Hokenmaier, Karl Glenn, "Contracts in Conflict: erP estroika and the Decline of Soviet Legitimacy" (1993). Master's Theses. 775. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/775 This Masters Thesis-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONTRACTS IN CONFLICT: PERESTROIKA AND THE DECLINE OF SOVIET LEGITIMACY by Karl Glenn Hokenmaier A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of Political Science Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan August 1993 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CONTRACTS IN CONFLICT: PERESTROIKA AND THE DECLINE OF SOVIET LEGITIMACY Karl Glenn Hokenmaier, M.A. Western Michigan University, 1993 Gorbachev’s perception of the Soviet Union’s socio-economic crisis and his subsequent actions to correct the economy and reform the political system were linked with attempts to renegotiate the social contract between the state and the Soviet people. However, reformulation of the social contract was incompatible with the conditions of a second arrangement between the leadership and the nomenklatura-the Soviet ruling class.
    [Show full text]
  • LESSONS of 1HB EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS of 1989 Gale
    LESSONS OF 1HB EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1989 Gale Stokes There is little doubt what the greatest lesson of 1989 is: communism failed. Recent commentary to the contrary, this fai1ure is not a parochial event limited in its significance to Eastern Europe, to the resolution of the Cold War, or to Western policy initiatives, but rather a moment ofglobal importance in the most important family of events of the last few hundred years. These events do not have a satisfactory name, even though we all know how fundamental they are. Instead of calling them the industrial revolution, modernization, the great transformation, the single transition, or the emergence of capitalism, I would like to call them the energy revolution. This name emphasizes the fundamental innovation that underlies the earthquake of change that humanity has witnessed in the past ten generations or so, the ongoing discovery and elaboration of how to extract energy systematically from non-living things such as gunpowder, coal, oil, uranium, and silicon.1 This discovery is comparable to only one other in human history, the discovery of how to extract energy systematically from living things, the agricultural revolution. And just like agricultural societies wiped the hunting and gathering peoples off the face of the earth by virtue of the vastly greater power they were able to produce, save, and expend, so the societies in which the energy revolution has proceeded are now in the process of wiping agricultural peoples off the face of the earth. The unprecedented social forces generated by the energy revolution have pushed every human society to find new ways of organizing itself.
    [Show full text]
  • J. Arch Getty
    J. Arch Getty Afraid of Their Shadows: The Bolshevik Recourse to Terror, 1932-1938 Political terror has long been a basic part of our understanding of the Stalinist sys- tem. First appearing in the earliest days of the Soviet regime, it reached unimagi- nable heights in the 1930s. Historians and political scientists have long speculated on the causes of (or reasons for) the "Great Terror" or "Great Purges" of that dec- ade. Explanations have been extremely varied, ranging from the systemic needs of a "totalitarian" regime to the inherent evils of communism to the megalomaniac needs of an absolutist Stalin. More recently, a variety of other factors have been brought into the academic conversation. Social historians have wondered about social and status conflicts (workers vs. foremen, rank and file party members vs. the party nomenklatura), structural/institutional conflicts (party vs. police, police vs. military), mentalities, and changing social roles in the "quicksand society" of the 1930s1. The opening of central archives of the Communist Party in Moscow offers the opportunity to investigate the high-level political component of the terror phe- nomenon2 .We now have a huge number of memoranda, stenographic records, protocols, and other Central Committee and Politburo documents that can shed a great deal of light on the internal workings of the top-level party leadership. These party documents, most of which were prepared for internal rather than public consumption, can help illustrate the mentality and self-representation of the Bol- shevik leadership, as well as its understanding and construction of reality. The self-image and view of the world of those making key political decisions, includ- ing those relating to terror, would appear to be relevant areas of inquiry.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Mykola Doroshko the Ruling Stratum in the Ukrainian SSR
    Mykola Doroshko The Ruling Stratum in the Ukrainian SSR during the Holodomor of 1932–33 In recent times a large body of literature has been published about the initiators of the Holodomor, that is, those who engineered the famine-genocide that took place in Ukraine in 1932–33. The general public is familiar with their names. However, there are far fewer scholarly works devoted to the activities of the immediate executors of Stalin’s directives during the greatest national catastrophe in Ukrainian history—the Communist Party and Soviet nomenklatura (party appointees) of the Ukrainian SSR, which constituted the nucleus of the Kremlin’s colonial administration in the republic. Stalin’s intention to punish the Ukrainian peasants for their resistance to the policy of all-out collectivization by means of a terror-famine depended both on the top ranks of the Soviet Ukrainian leadership and on the utterly compliant local apparatus of power in the republic. Was this apparatus capable of starving the Ukrainian peasants into submission? The state grain-procurement campaigns of 1932 and 1933, the main goal of which was to confiscate grain from the Ukrainian peasantry, were directed by Stanislav Kosior, general secretary of the Central Committee, Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (CC CP[B]U), Vlas Chubar, head of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, and Hryhorii Petrovsky, head of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (VUTsVK). In possession of information about the actual state of affairs in Ukrainian agriculture, the leaders of Soviet Ukraine took certain steps to convince the Kremlin leadership that the grain-procurement plans issued from above were unrealistic.
    [Show full text]