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Political Mobility and the Soviet Political Process: A Partial Test of Two Models*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Philip D. Stewart ,
Robert L. Arnett ,
William T. Ebert ,
Raymond E. McPhail ,
Terrence L. Rich  and
Craig E. Schopmeyer
Philip D. Stewart
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Robert L. Arnett
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
William T. Ebert
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Raymond E. McPhail
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Terrence L. Rich
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Craig E. Schopmeyer
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
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Abstract

This article provides a partial test of the rational-technical model and of the patronage model of political mobility in the Soviet Communist Party. Two major hypotheses are examined: 1) the greater the number of patron client ties acquired by regional Party secretaries, the greater the probability of their upward mobility, and 2) the better the economic performance of the regions for which secretaries are responsible, the greater the probability of their upward mobility. Multiple regression analysis indicates only very weak support for these hypotheses for the 1955–1968 period in the RSFSR. Considerably greater support for the hypotheses is found when the following variables are controlled: level of economic development, political regime, and Party cohort. Changes in the level of policy conflict within the central elite are found to account for much of the variation over time in the explanatory power of the two models.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , December 1972 , pp. 1269 - 1290
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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Footnotes

*

The Soviet Elite Mobility Project and Research Archive, SEMPRA, of which this study is a part, was initiated in 1967 with a small grant from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Ohio State University for the design and compilation of a coding scheme for reducing Soviet elite biographies to metric format. For her assistance on this codebook we are indebted to Fran Netting. Throughout, the Department of Political Science Polimetrics Laboratory (C. Richard Hofstetter, Director), and the Behavioral Science Laboratory (Philip M. Burgess, Director), of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences have provided invaluable programming and statistical consultation. The University Instruction and Research Computer Center freely provided the large amount of computer time necessary to this study. Assistance from Philip M. Burgess, C. Richard Hofstetter, James Ludwig, Larry Mayer, Giacomo Sani, Nancy Schecter, Ann Rappoport, and Thomas Conrad as well as numerous other colleagues and students, is appreciatively acknowledged. The authors are grateful to John A. Armstrong and an anonymous referee for their support and valuable criticisms, but accept full responsibility for the content.

References

1 For the fullest statement of the patron-client model see Armstrong, John A., The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite: A Case Study of the Ukrainian Apparatus (New York: Praeger, 1959)Google Scholar. See also the effective development administration theory as developed by Hough, Jerry in The Soviet Prefects (Cambridge: Harvard, 1969), esp. chaps. 13–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hough builds upon the rational-technical model elaborated by Moore, Barrington in his Terror and Progress USSR: Some Sources of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship (Cambridge: Harvard, 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Armstrong, p. 146. For other discussions of patronage see: Barghoorn, Frederick C., Politics in the USSR (Boston: Little Brown, 1966), pp. 184–185, 186, 206–207, and 211Google Scholar; Barghoorn, Frederick C., “Trends in Top Political Leadership in the USSR,” in Political Leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, ed. Farrell, R. Barry (Chicago: Aldine, 1970), pp. 62–63, 75–77Google Scholar; Hough, Jerry, Soviet Prefects, pp. 276–277, also chap. 7Google Scholar; Linden, Carl A., Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership: 1957–1964 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1966), p. 13Google Scholar; Stewart, Philip D., Political Power in the Soviet Union: A Study of Decision-Making in Stalingrad (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), pp. 143–150Google Scholar. Sidney Ploss and Seweryn Bialer utilize the concept by categorizing individuals as protégés of particular leaders. See Ploss, Sidney, Conflict and Decision-Making in Soviet Russia: A Case Study of Agricultural Policy, 1954–1963 (Princeton: Princeton, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also Bialer, Seweryn, “How Russians Rule Russia,” Problems of Communism, 13 (09–10, 1964), 45–52Google Scholar. Note also Bilinsky, Yaroslav, The Second Soviet Republic: The Ukraine After World War II (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1964), pp. 231–241Google Scholar for documentation of the importance of personal affiliation among Khrushchev and his aids in the Ukraine.

3 Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. and Huntington, Samuel P., Political Power: USA/USSR (New York: Viking, 1964), p. 147Google Scholar.

4 Moore, pp. 184–193, 222–226. For other discussions of the rational-technical model, see: Beck, Carl, “Bureaucracy and Political Development in Eastern Europe,” Bureaucracy and Political Development, ed. LaPalombara, Joseph (Princeton: Princeton, 1963), pp. 268–300Google Scholar; Brzezinski, Zbigniew K., Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics (New York: Praeger, 1962), pp. 26–36 and 72–91Google Scholar. Brzezinski examines the limits of rational-technical evolution and refutes its political consequences. See also, Fainsod, Merle, “Bureaucracy and Modernization: The Russian and Soviet Case,” in LaPalombara, , pp. 233–267Google Scholar, and Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar.

5 Hough, p. 296. The other elements of his theory include (1) incentive pay to compensate for the non-routinized nature of the executive positions and the vagueness of the rules under which development executives must function; (2) provision for “dual supervision” because of the dysfunctional effects of the straight line of command in a development environment; (3) “provision for a governmental mechanism on the regional level to regulate the relationships of the specialized development institutions with each other and with the community.”

6 Hough, p. 297.

7 Fainsod, Merle, How Russia is Ruled, revised ed. (Cambridge: Harvard, 1963), p. 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Rush, Myron, The Rise of Khrushchev (Washington: Public Affairs, 1958), pp. 2, 59, 68, 83–84Google Scholar.

8 Kremlinological theories are seen here as including “conflict theories” as a subset. See Linden, , Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, p. 7Google Scholar.

9 See Conquest, Robert, Power and Policy in the USSR: The Study of Soviet Dynastics (New York: St. Martin's, 1961)Google Scholar, especially chaps. 9, 12, and 13.

10 Linden, p. 11.

11 Most of the evidence supporting this position is found in Conquest, Linden, , and Tatu, Michel, Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev to Kosygin (New York: Viking, 1970)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the assumptions and arguments of the “conflict school” note the following: Linden, Carl, “Khrushchev and the Party Battle,” Problems of Communism, 12 (09–10, 1963), 27–35Google Scholar; Rigby, Thomas H., “The Extents and Limits of Authority (a rejoinder to Mr. Linden),” Problems of Communism, 12 (09–10, 1963), 36–41Google Scholar; Linden, Carl, “Facts in Search of a Theory,” Problems of Communism, 12 (11–12, 1963), 56–58Google Scholar; and Tucker, Robert C., “The Conflict Model,” Problems of Communism, 12 (09–10, 1963), 59–61Google Scholar.

12 Linden, Carl, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, chap. 1, especially pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

13 While the early work of Barrington Moore cited above laid out the essential features of the rational-technical model, its further adaptation into the model of effective development administration is due to the work of Jerry Hough, chaps. 8–12, but especially chap. 11. On the concept of bargaining, see especially chap. 15, pp. 281–282, 285–286, 312–314.

14 Hough, especially chaps. 11–13.

15 Armstrong, p. 146.

16 See the works cited in footnote 2 above.

17 Rigby, T. H., “Social Orientation of Recruitment and Distribution of Membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” The American Slavic and East European Review, 16 (04, 1957), 275–290CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Gehlen, Michael P., “The Educational Backgrounds and Career Orientations of the Members of the Central Committee of the CPSU,” The American Behavioral Scientist, 9 (04, 1966), 11–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gehlen, Michael P. and McBride, Michael, “The Soviet Central Committee: An Elite Analysis,” The American Political Science Review, 62 (12, 1968), 1232–1241CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fischer, George, The Soviet System and Modern Society (New York: Atherton, 1968)Google Scholar; Hough, Jerry, “The Soviet Elite: I, Groups and Individuals,” Problems of Communism, 16 (01–02, 1967), 28–35Google Scholar; and Hough, Jerry, “The Soviet Elite: II, In Whose Hands the Future?” Problems of Communism, 16 (03–04, 1967), 18–25Google Scholar.

19 Fleron, Frederick J., “Cooptation as a Mechanism of Adaptation to Change: The Soviet Political Leadership System,” Polity, 2 (Winter, 1967), 176–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Fleron, Frederick, “Representation of Career Types in the Soviet Political Leadership,” in Farrell, , Political Leadership, pp. 108–139Google Scholar.

20 Hodnett, Grey, “The Obkom First Secretaries,” Slavic Review, 24 (12, 1965), 636–665CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other studies of the backgrounds of Soviet elites see: Rigby, T. H., Communist Party Membership in the USSR: 1917–1967 (Princeton: Princeton, 1968) esp. Part 2, chaps. 11–16Google Scholar; Gehlen, Michael P., “The Soviet Apparatchiki,” in Farrell, , ed., pp. 140–156Google Scholar; Duevel, Christian, “The Central Committee and the Central Auditing Commission elected by the 23rd CPSU Congress: A Study of the Political Survival of their Members and a Profile of their Professional and Political Composition,” Radio Liberty Research Paper, 6 (New York: Radio Liberty, 1966)Google Scholar; Bailer, Seweryn, “Notes on the Study of Soviet Elites,” Paper presented at the 1964 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science AssociationGoogle Scholar; Bilinsky, Yaroslav, “Changes in the Central Committee: Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1961–1966,” Monograph Series in World Affairs, 4 (Denver: University of Denver, 1967)Google Scholar; Lewtzkyj, Borys, “Generations in Conflict,” Problems of Communism, 16 (01–02, 03–04, 1967), 36–40Google Scholar; Armstrong, John, “Party Bifurcation and Elite Interests,” Soviet Studies, 17 (04, 1966), 417–430CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bialer, Seweryn, “Twenty-four Men Who Rule Russia,” The New York Times Magazine, 11 1, 1964, p. 105Google Scholar; Frank, Peter, “The CPSU Obkom First Secretary: A Profile,” The British Journal of Political Science, 1 (04, 1971), 173–190CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rigby, T. H., “Changing Compositions of the Supreme Soviet,” The Political Quarterly, 24 (07–09, 1963), 309–315Google Scholar; Avtorkhanov, Abdurakham, The Communist Party Apparatus (Chicago: Regnery, 1966)Google Scholar.

21 Work currently in progress will expand this study to all USSR oblasti.

22 Meyer, Alfred G., The Soviet Political System: An Interpretation (New York: Random House, 1965), p. 147Google Scholar.

23 Hough notes, for instance, that former obkom secretaries constituted nine of eleven voting members on the Politburo in 1967. Hough, The Soviet Prefects, p. 285.

24 On the “prefectoral” role of the obkom first secretaries, see Hough, chaps. 2, 3, 5, and 12.

25 Hough.

26 For one effort at operationalizing the concept of mobility of Soviet elites, see Stewart, Political Power chap. 7.

27 For one attempt at conceptualizing potential influence in Soviet politics, see Stewart, pp. 3–13 and 194–212.

28 One of the most obvious weaknesses in this mobility index is the large number of zero scores. Zeros were assigned under two conditions: (1) no biographical data were available on the individual after he left the oblast Party first secretaryship and (2) the secretary retired or is assumed to have retired because of age. In only four cases were secretaries known to have retired. In the rest, the assumption was made that the secretary was demoted to an insignificant position. While this was doubtless the case in most instances, several other possibilities must be considered: (1) the secretary may have been assigned to a sensitive position whose title could not be published; and (2) the individual may have been promoted without this fact's having been observed by the compilers of biographical data in the West. But despite these possibilities, the fact that most of those coded “unknown” were, at the time of their first secretaryship, either deputies to the USSR Supreme Soviet or members of the Central Committee who failed to reappear in either of these bodies after losing the first secretaryship, gives us confidence in the direction if not the distance components of the codes.

29 Armstrong, , The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite, p. 146Google Scholar.

30 This conception tends to be supported by the correlation between these two variables of .40, suggesting that they share only 16 per cent of their variance. It should be clear, however, that the Politburo-Secretariat links variable does not measure ties with each member of these bodies, but rather the measure consists of an aggregation of such individual links as identified by temporal-geographic coincidence.

31 See for example Conquest, Power and Policy, especially chaps. 9–14.

32 The time periods adopted here are 1955–1957; 1958–1960; 1961–1963; 1964; 1965–1967. The first three periods cover roughly “Khrushchev's rise,” “Khrushchev's ascendancy,” and “Khrushchev's time of troubles.’ ” The year 1964 is singled out for two reasons: it is a transitional year, but most importantly it is the year of the undoing of Khrushchev's bifurcation of the CPSU that led to 33 RSFSR first secretaries losing their jobs almost entirely as the result of this institutional change. The 1965–1967 period constituted the first part of the “Brezhnev-Kosygin era.”

33 Linden, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, especially chaps. 1, 2.

34 On the relationship of agricultural policy to leadership conflict see Sidney Ploss, Conflict and Decision Making; Linden, chap. 4; and Hough, Jerry, “Enter N. S. Khrushchev,” Problems of Communism, 13 (07–08, 1964), 28–33Google Scholar.

35 Such data are generally published in the oblast press, however. A fuller test of these two models could be made by a future student willing to spend some time in the Lenin Library at Moscow collecting such data. Existing deficiencies in the biographic data could also be overcome in this manner. See Stewart, , Political Power, pp. x–xiGoogle Scholar, on the use of the oblast press.

36 Much of the analysis presented in the text was also done using only the growth rates for the last full calendar year completed by each secretary prior to leaving the position. Average figures are used in the present study on the assumption that at decision time, a man's overall record most probably forms the basis for both the direction and distance of his move, while the last year's performance probably is the source of the occasion for the decision about his future. See Stewart, and Rich, , The Relationship of Economic Performance to Political Mobility of Soviet Middle-Level Elites (Working Paper #4, SEMPRA, The Ohio State University, 1970)Google Scholar, mimeo, for an analysis using “last-year” growth rates.

37 Lonsdale, Richard E. and Thompson, John H., “A Map of the USSR's Manufacturing,” Economic Geographic 36 (01, 1960), pp. 36–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The weights range from 8.20 for Moscow city to 0.05. The median oblast produced 0.65 per cent of the total USSR manufacturing. For a complete elaboration of the industrial and agricultural weights, see Stewart, and Arnett, , Oblast Economic Profiles and the Political Mobility of Soviet Elites (Working Paper #5, SEMPRA, The Ohio State University, 1970)Google Scholar, mimeo. All of the “working papers” cited here are available upon request. For an earlier use of the Lonsdale data to study obkom elites, see Hodnett, “Obkom Secretaries.”

38 This assumption finds some indirect support in Hough, , The Soviet Prefects, especially p. 296Google Scholar, but also see chaps. 14 and 11 and 3. Hough's phrase is fulfillment of the “basic missions.” It is clear from his chapter 3 that the main component of this mission is economic growth.

39 Barrington Moore, 188–190, 193.

40 For a fuller elaboration of this measure, see Stewart and Arnett. For other efforts at examining the effects of region type upon politics, see Hough, The Soviet Prefects, chaps. 11–13, and Hodnett, “Obkom Secretaries.”

41 Moore, pp. 184–193, 222–226.

42 See Armstrong, , The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite, p. 146Google Scholar, but especially his concept of the “men of '38.”

43 Edinger, L. J. and Searing, D. D., “Social Background in Elite Analysis: A Methodological Inquiry,” The American Political Science Review, 61 (06, 1967), 428–445CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Two important analyses of the backgrounds of Soviet officials are George Fischer, The Soviet System and Modern Society; and Blackwell, Robert E. Jr., Social Backgrounds of Political Leaders in the Soviet Union: An Analysis of the Obkom Leadership in the CPSU, 1950–1968 (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1971)Google Scholar. A systematic study of the relationship of background variables to such dependent variables as political mobility, level of development of oblast assignment, level of economic performance, and tenure while an obkom first secretary is currently being completed as a part of the Soviet Elite Mobility Project.

44 Preliminary work on a causal model of Soviet political mobility, incorporating the variables in this study as well as background variables and such political behavior variables as participation and political communicalion, is now in progress as a part of this project.

45 As indicated by stepwise regression analysis. For a discussion of the stepwise regression procedure, see Draper, N. R. and Smith, H., Applied Regression Analysis (New York: Wiley, 1966), pp. 171–172Google Scholar.

46 While the period of Khrushchev's rise may appropriately be thought to extend from 1953–1957, because of data limitations for this study, discussion of this regime is restricted to the years 1955–1957. On “Khrushchev's rise,” see Rush, The Rise of Khrushchev; on “Khrushchev's ascendancy,” see Linden, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, chaps. 2, 3, and also see Conquest, Power and Policy, chap. 14; on “Khrushchev's ‘time of troubles’ “ see Linden, chaps. 6–9, and also Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, parts 1–3; on the “Transition” see Tatu, part 4, and Linden, chap. 10; and on the “Brezhnev-Kosygin era” see Tatu, part 5.

47 As determined by stepwise regression. The partial beta's are .301 for career group links and .296 for food and clothing performance.

48 On patronage during the period, see Conquest, chaps. 11 and 12. On the significance of agricultural policy, see Ploss, Conflict and Decision-Making. The Central Committee plenum resolutions of the period are reported in Spravochnik Partiinogo Rabotnika (Handbook of a Party Worker) (Moskva: Gospolitizdat, 1957) hereafter cited as Spravochnik, pp. 101–130, also pp. 131–248Google Scholar.

49 Spravochnik, pp. 112–119. On relations between the oblast Party first secretaries and the regional economic councils, see Stewart, , Political Power, pp. 114–117Google Scholar; and Hough, , The Soviet Prefects, especially p. 104Google Scholar.

50 For a detailed analysis, see Armstrong, “Party Bifurcation.”

51 The Central Committee plenum resolution ending the bifurcation is reported in Spravochnik (1966), pp. 100–101Google Scholar.

52 Armstrong, “Party Bifurcation.”

53 That the high performers and the well-connected were probably different people is suggested by the correlation of .19 between food-clothing performance and Politburo-Secretariat links.

54 Because of the high correlation between tenure and Politburo-Secretariat links (.75), in a stepwise regression the latter variable adds only about 3 per cent to the 21 per cent of the variance explained by the former variable. On the problem of multicollinearity, see Blalock, Hubert M. Jr., “Correlated Independent Variables: The Problem of Multicollinearity,” in Tufte, Edward, ed., The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1970)Google Scholar; see also Gordon, R. A., “Issues in Multiple Regression,” American Journal of Sociology, 73 (03, 1968), 592–616CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Armstrong, “Party Bifurcation.”

56 A validity study of this construct of political conflict is currently in progress as a part of this project. For several major studies of leadership politics where this concept appears as an underlying working hypothesis, see Tatu, , Power in the Kremlin, pp. 114–122Google Scholar; Linden, , Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, especially pp. 58–70Google Scholar; also note Ploss, Conflict and Decision-Making.

57 The annual figures on which these calculations are based are reported in Appendix E.

58 Moore, , Terror and Progress, pp. 188–193, but especially pp. 224Google Scholar.

59 A potentially significant intervening variable in the analysis of the unimportant oblasti is the geographic location of seven of these regions on the Soviet Union's frontiers with other countries—significant because of the great emphasis the Soviet Union places on the security of its borders and the correspondingly large role likely to be played by both regular and border forces within these regions. Under these conditions it is probable that our measures of performance are unrelated to mobility decisions in the border areas. To the extent that this assumption is valid, it may be anticipated that the actual significance of performance variables in the nonborder unimportant oblasti may be somewhat higher than indicated by the data in Table 5. To test this assumption the variables in the models were regressed against mobility for the unimportant regions, excluding those that share borders with other countries. (The excluded oblasti are indicated by an asterisk in Appendix C.) To the extent that one would expect the explanatory power of performance variables to increase when the border regions are excluded, the assumption is not supported by the data. The beta's for the industrial and food-clothing indices drop from .13 to −.09 and from .08 to −.16 respectively. A marked change does occur, however, in the variance explained by the patronage variables. The beta for Politiburo-Secretariat links drop from .04 to −.59. These findings suggest that although the general interpretation of the intervening effects of level of development on mobility is not altered by controlling for the impact of the military in border regions, for the nonborder unimportant oblasti extensive career group ties tend to be strongly associated with downward mobility, whereas Politiburo-Secretariat links are only weakly associated with upward mobility.

60 The problem of multicollinearity is again evident here. The two patronage variables are correlated .76, and the food-clothing index is correlated .85 with career group links.

61 For a systematic analysis of “groupism” in the Soviet Union, see Lodge, Milton, Soviet Elite Attitudes Since Stalin (Columbus: Merrill, 1969), especially chap. 3Google Scholar. Also see Stewart, Philip D., “Soviet Interest Groups and the Policy Process: The Repeal of Production Education,” World Politics, 22 (10, 1969), 29–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Armstrong, “Party Bifurcation.”

62 Fainsod, , How Russia is Ruled, especially pp. 120–121Google Scholar.

63 Linden, chap. 1, especially pp. 12–13.

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