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Consociational Dictatorship of Imperium? Non-Russian Political Elites and Central Decision-Making in the USSR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Kenneth C. Farmer
Kenneth C. Farmer*
Affiliation:
Marquette University
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Extract

The purpose of this study is to present some preliminary and necessarily tentative results of a larger, ongoing and incomplete quantitative study of ethnic recruitment to and participation in central decision-making institutions in Communist societies. The time frame of the study is the post-Stalin period, more precisely, the 20th through the 25th CPSU Congresses, 1956-76. The concern of the larger study is to develop a model of consociationalism versus imperium as alternative approaches to the governance of multi-ethnic Communist societies. Clearly, a country such as Yugoslavia more closely approximates the former model, and the USSR the latter.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , spring 1985 , pp. 45 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

1 Kress, John H., “Representation of Positions on the CPSU Politburo,” Slavic Review, 39 (2) (June 1980): 218-38; Ciboski, Kenneth N., “Recruitment to the Soviet Politburo,” , University of Washington, 1971. Of interest also is George K. Schueller, The Politburo (Stanford, 1951).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Tatu, Michel, Power in the Kremlin (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

3 d'Encausse, Hélène Carrère, Decline of an Empire (New York, 1979), p. 142.Google Scholar

4 See Miller, J. H., “Cadres Policy in the Nationality Area,” Soviet Studies, 29 (1) (Jan. 1977): 3–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 The actual power of the CC is an elusive to gauge. It was decisive for Khrushchev in 1957 and 1964, but beyond these famous cases there is little by which to judge its actual influence on outcomes. At worst, it is a rubber stamp for the Politburo; at best — and I lean to this interpretation — the CC is prone to defer to a united Politburo. A divided Politburo, by consensus, irons out its differences in private before going before the CC, and it probably anticipates what will float in the CC, combined perhaps with a little whip activity. This is not dissimilar to the relationship of the British cabinet to its own parliamentary party. It is difficult to guess the outcome of a confrontation between a divided Politburo and the Central Committee, because it so rarely happens; but the fact that it so rarely happens would indicate that the Politburo may fear such a confrontation.Google Scholar

6 Sources of biographical data include: Deputaty Verkhovnogo Soveta, 8th and 9th convocations; Levytsky, Borys, The Soviet Political Elite (Munich, 1969); Who's Who in the USSR (New Jersey, 1962 and 1966); and my personal files of data from the Soviet press.Google Scholar

7 Fleron, Frederic, “System Attributes and Career Attributes.” In Carl Beck et al., Comparative Communist Political Leadership (New York, 1973), pp. 46–47.Google Scholar