3 - Centralization as a determinant of elite circulation

Summary

Centralization as a property of the system

The movement of actors across the array of political offices provides a particularly important index for power and policy in any political system. In the Soviet case, where effectively all social activity transpires through the medium of the party-state, the import of this proposition is especially pronounced. On the one hand, such activity is not so much regulated as it is (in principle) consciously planned, organized and directed by the central authorities whose formal lines of command run from Moscow to republic and provincial capitals whence they radiate outward to, ultimately, the basic units of political, economic and social organization. In the official parlance of the Soviet regime, there is a ‘monolithic party’ which directs a ‘unified state structure’ which in turn superintends a ‘single economic mechanism.’

On the other hand, however, both our discussion of the Soviet form of organization and the discrepancies which we have observed between the mobility patterns evident in the BSSR and those which would be expected within a formal bureaucratic hierarchy would lead us to question the effectiveness of centralization, Soviet-style. As Lindblom has pointed out, the grand attempt at central direction which seems to be a defining feature of Soviet-type regimes is in fact fraught with a number of impediments embedded in the very structures that appear to privilege the role of the political centre. We have summed up the consequence of these structural impediments as ‘the tendency toward the personal appropriation of public office’ and have noted in this respect the ability of those in subordinate positions to reinterpret, deflect or simply ignore the directives of superiors and to elude responsibility in doing so. Within this context, then, ‘cadres policy’ assumes crucial importance.