5 - Patronage and regime formation in Lithuania

Summary

The Soviet political structures and norms that we examined at the national level also functioned in the diversity of cultural and developmental settings that constitute the USSR. Our exploration of Soviet national politics naturally concentrated on an elite population that was overwhelmingly Slavic and drawn primarily from the Russian Republic. More than any single cohort, that elite developed the system and its norms. But these same norms – especially those involving patronage politics – have been central to the politics of non-Slavic and subnational settings. An examination of two very different republics, Lithuania and Azerbaidzhan, reveals the critical role of networks in the political life of the locales. Networks have been central to subnational regime formation and governance, helping national authorities to influence an expansive and diverse periphery.

Though culturally and developmentally divergent, Lithuania and Azerbaidzhan were long dominated by powerful networks. In the traditional Soviet systems, the structure and logic of political power in a European Baltic republic and a Muslim Central Asian republic were comparable. The attendant norms of regional political machines were likewise comparable. Even Moscow's relations with the Vilnius and Baku regimes were similar.

Before the tumultuous events of the late 1980s, Lithuania was among the most stable of the Soviet republics, even though it had been incorporated into the USSR against its will. The Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) leadership proved to be especially reliable: its guiding figure, Antanas Snechkus, and his successors dominated the republic's political scene for fifty years.