Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:29:28.693Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Higher Party Schools to Academies of State Service: The Marketization of Bureaucratic Training in Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Eugene Huskey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What does a postcommunist regime do with its bureaucratic inheritance? Without a replacement bureaucracy at hand, the political leadership in Russia had no choice but to govern through state employees whose values and patterns of behavior were instilled in the Soviet era. Given this reality, one might have expected Russian reformers—and their overseas supporters— to have developed an aggressive and comprehensive policy on retraining officials of state. But instead of a coordinated effort to educate new and existing personnel in a spirit of public, rather than state, service, one finds only a gradual and haphazard reform of bureaucratic training. In this article, Eugene Huskey argues that the driving force behind such training has been the market in higher and continuing education and not a conscious and consistent policy emanating from the presidency or other central institutions of state. The major player in that market is the system of state service academies, which inherited many of their faculty and facilities from the old Higher Party Schools of the communist era. But the market, taken together with the fragmentation of state power, has consistently undermined attempts by the academies to serve as the sole purveyors of training to the bureaucracy. What is as yet unclear is whether the marketization of bureaucratic education and re-education, which discourages the emergence of a coherent national approach to remaking the bureaucracy, is facilitating or impeding the modernization and liberalization of Russian officialdom.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , Summer 2004 , pp. 325 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Research for this study was supported by funding from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, Washington, D.C.

1. For example, Tsebelis, George, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (New York, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes that his “goal is not to make a statement about which institutions are better, but to identify the dimensions along which decision making in different polities is different, and to study the effects of such differences” (1). A forceful argument for the importance of institutional design in shaping political outcomes may be found in Matthew Soberg Shugart and John M. Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (Cambridge, Eng., 1992).

2. See Sartori, Giovanni, Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives, and Outcomes, 2d ed. (New York, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar According to Douglass C. North, the father of neoinstitutional analysis, “institutions are the rules of the game, organizations are the players.” See North, “Institutional Change: A Framework of Analysis” (unpublished paper, 14 December 1994), available at http://www.econwpa.wustl.edu/eps/eh/papers/9412/9412001.pdf (last consulted 19 February 2004). Our concern is with the range of organizations— and the rules governing them—that are responsible for bureaucratic training and retraining in Russia. Thus, the term institution is used here to embrace notjust the organizations, or structures, that play a role in higher and further education—academies of state service, universities, ministerial training institutes—but the formal and informal rules governing their behavior. For an introduction to historical neoinstitutionalism, which is closer to the approach used here than the rational choice neoinstitutionahsm of North and others, see Steinmo, Sven, Thelen, Kathleen, and Longstreth, Frank, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge, Eng., 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. In this sense, the methodology used here has as much in common with the old institutionalism as with the new. The building blocks of comparative analysis remain the endless stories of political change, told in ways that link them to larger analytical themes, whether universal, regional, or national in scope.

4. The Soviet system of higher education was also fragmented, with various central ministries, the Communist Party, and republican governments responsible for their own institutions. But the Communist Party's institutional supervision of education and science— as well as a forced national consensus on political and economic values—ensured a degree of uniformity in curriculum and content that is not present in the postcommunist order. On the fragmentation of Soviet higher education, see Counts, George S., The Challenges of Soviet Education (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

5. For a portrait of the Russian bureaucracy in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, see Brym, Robert J. and Gimpelson, Vladimir, “The Size, Composition, and Dynamics of the Russian State Bureaucracy in the 1990s,” Slavic Review 63, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 90–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Among modern states, Brym and Gimpelson argue, Russia's bureaucracy is relatively modest in size, a point developed with regard to the tsarist and Soviet eras by Stephen Velychenko in “Accîoitre ou reduire? L'administration des États successeurs de l'URSS: Un point de vue historique comparatiste sur le niveau des effectifs,” Revue d ‘études comparatives Est-Ouest, no. 1 (2002): 77-111.

6. For an introduction to the history of the Finance Academy, see Viola Egikova, “Finansovoi akademii-55! Kliuch k sekretam denezhnykh nauk,” Moskovskaiapravda, 13 September 2001, 7. Facilitating the bureaucracy's search for young cadres in the Soviet era was the “state assignment” system, which allowed ministries and agencies to tap fresh graduates in their sector. Some officials today continue to favor the reintroduction of the state distribution system, at least for graduates of the academies of state service, discussed below. “Problemy sovershenstvovaniia rossiiskoi gosudarstvennoi sluzhby,” Chinovnik, 2001, no. 2.

7. For an analysis of the Higher Party Schools, see Armstrong, John A., The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite: A Case Study of the Ukrainian Apparatus (New York, 1959), 34–42.Google Scholar

8. Thomas Remington discusses the scale of continuing education programs in the Higher Party Schools of the late Soviet era in The Truth of Authority: Ideology and Communication in the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh, 1988), 93.

9. Igor’ Sergeev, “Klubnye stranitsy: Sokrat nine drug, no istina dorozhe,” Moskovskii komsomolets, 15 February 2002, 4.

10. In a few cases, such as the Moscow State Social University, an evicted Higher Party School remade itself into a comprehensive university as a means of surviving the transition. Where the former Higher Party School had 18 departments (kafedry) and 2,500 students, its successor, the Moscow State Social University, had 73 departments and more than 30,000 students by the end of the 1990s. Liubov'Piatiletova, “V khrame ne kuriat…,” Trud, 5 July 2000.

11. Personal interviews with Valerii Popov, professor and head of sociology and psychology, Urals Academy of State Service, and Konstantin Zubkov, researcher, Institute of History, Ekaterinburg, 23 May 2002.

12. Grishkovets, A. A., Problemy pravovogo regulirovaniia gosudarstvennoi sluzhby v Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow, 2002), 2:70.Google Scholar

13. Kh. A. Bekov, “Roskadry: Opyt sozdaniia federal'nogo po delam gossluzhby,” Chinovnik, 2001, no. 3.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid. The emergence of the Russian Academy of Management as the leading institution in the new system followed several months of conflict during which three other institutions—Goskomvuz, the Ministry of Nationalities, and the president's Department of State Service—sought to assert control over the network of training centers.

16. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, the Academy of Management has enjoyed the generous support of the Kyrgyz president; indeed the academy's first director was President Askar Akaev's controversial personal adviser, Leonid Levitin. For an introduction to the Academy of State Service in Kazakhstan, see the speech of President Nursultan Nazarbaev, excerpted in “Samo vremia zovet strany i narody k ob'edineniiu usilii,” Nezvisimaia gazeta, 21 June 2000.

17. A question for further study is the extent to which the faculty inherited from the old Higher Party Schools were themselves retrained. Vladimir Mal'tsev, the rector of the Volgo-Viatskaia Academy of State Service argues that foreign assistance, primarily from France, Germany, and Britain, led to extensive exchanges of personnel and materials that resocialized the faculty. See his interview in Il'ia Kochetov, “Ot shkoly Kommunizma k shkole Kapitalizma,” Birzha, 18 March 2002. This retraining does not appear to have been systematic, however, leaving many institutions with teachers who faced alone the difficult—and for many distasteful—task of adapting to a new intellectual and political environment. For a view of the RAGS faculty that suggests many have failed to adapt convincingly to the new order, see Grishkovets, Problemy pravovogo regulirovaniia gosudarslvennoi sluzhby, 78-80.

18. In addition to the presidency, such contracts came from the government and its ministries and from regional administrations. On the rules surrounding the issuance of zakazy for retraining by executive institutions, see “Polozhenie o gosudarstvennom zakaze na professional'nuiu perepodgotovku i povyshenie kvalifikatsii gosudarstvennykh sluzhashchikh federal'nykh organov ispolnitel'noi vlasti,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 February 2001, 6.

19. Nikolai Morozov, “Kogo ‘ne liubit’ prezident?” Komsomol'skaia pravda, 2 December 2000, 10. In recent years there has been an attempt, apparently half-hearted, by the Unity Party (Edinstvo) to create its own higher party schools outside the network of academies of state service. The founders had intended to use the same acronym (VPSh) that had been associated with the Higher Party Schools in the communist era, but officials registering the institutions discouraged that, so it opened as the School of Professional Politics. It appears to function now as a high-priced school for “political technologists,” among whose tasks is to create a convincing narrative for politicians and their policies. See “Vvedenie v skazkoterapiiu,” Kommersant-Vlast', 31 October 2000, 8, and “Vsem partiiam partiia,” Expert, 24 September 2001, 4-7.

20. The program set out in table 1 is longer and more general in its content than the typical 72-hour, two-week course of continuing education.

21. Not all legal norms were respected, however. Although the federal Law on Education mandates that no more than 25 percent of students at state universities can be feepaying, some institutions openly violate that provision. At the local state university in Vladimir, 67 percent of the economics students and 57 percent of the law students were self-financing. V. Kepin, “Skol'ko vreda prinosiat platnoobrazovannye spetsialisty,” Molva [Vladimir], 16 December 2000. According to one source, “40 percent of university-level students pay for their education in full,” though many of those who do not pay tuition have to pay bribes, either directly or indirectly, to secure a state-funded place in university. Iaroslav Kuz'minov, “Obrazovanie i reforma,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 2002, no. 2:7-29.

22. Personal interview with Natal'ia Fedorovna Luk'ianova, head of Department of State and Municipal Administration, Institute for Qualification Raising, Moscow, 27 May 2003.

23. See “Ob utverzhdenii Polozheniia o gosudarstvennom zakaze na professional'nuiu perepodgotovku i povyshenie kvalifikatsii gosudarstvennykh sluzhashchikh federal'nykh organov ispolnitel'noi vlasti,” Sobranie zakonodatel'stva, 2001, no. 8: st.758. It also has responsibility for the Interagency Commission on Professional Retraining and Continuing Education. See Grishkovets, Problemy pravovogo regulirovaniia gosudarstvennoi sluzhby, 90.

24. One such directive is “Gosudarstvennyi obrazovatel'nyi standart dopolnitel'nogo professional'nogo obrazovaniia federal'nykh gosudarstvennykh sluzhashchikh, prikaz no. 1700 Gosudarstvennogo komiteta RF po vysshemu obrazovaniiu ot 25 dekabria 1995,” Biulleleri Gosudarstvennogo komiteta RF po vysshemu obrazovaniiu, 1996, no. 3.

25. A license to conduct continuing education courses may be granted by regional and local governments as well as federal ministries. It is not just the Ministry of Education in Moscow that approves such licenses. The Ministry of Defense, for example, may issue a license to conduct continuing education courses in military affairs. See Kur'ianov, I. I., Dopolnitel'noe professional'noe obrazovanie i motivatsiia kar'ernogo rosta (Moscow, 2001), 23.Google Scholar

26. Marina Shirokova, “Edinstvo stalo praviashchei partiei,” Kommersant-Daily, 23 April 2001, 2. This move by Aiatskov followed a period of tension with the local academy, which was headed by his estranged son-in-law, after his demotion from the post of deputy governor. In the first weeks of 2000, Aiatskov severely criticized the Volga Academy of State Service for “formalism” in its curriculum and for producing students whose quality did not match the resources directed to the institution. “Znaniia chinovnikov idut vrazrez s finansirovaniem,” Izvestiia, 13January 2001, 3.

27. “This is not simply a teaching base,” the rector said, “we're concerned with the training and development of cadres policy in Mordova and Russia.” V Vladimirov, “Mordovskie gossluzhashchie poluchat novye znaniia,” Izvestiia Mordovii, 20 March 2001.

28. See http://www.urags-chel.ru/faculdes/vak.php (last consulted 19 February 2004); Lev Luzin, “Pravovaia ruka polpreda,” Cheliabinskii rabochii, 16 November 2000.

29. Liudmila Bystrykh, “I rukovodit’ nado gramotno,” Udmurtskaiapravda, 15 January 2002.

30. “Upravlenie dolzhno byt’ professional'nym,” Respublika Bashkortostana, 11 May 2001.

31. “Chemu i kak uchit’ chinovnika?” Chinovnik, 2001, no. 3.

32. Maksim Sokolov, “Imperatriks v Kurske,” Izvestiia, 28 October 2000, 3. In Kursk the director of the academy of state service branch was also the head of the city election commission. Sergei Kazovskii, “Provintsial'nye vybory s Iegkim rukoprikladstvom,” Novye izvestiia, 20 January 2001, 4. One should note, of course, that European and American universities have been known to curry political favor with politicians by awarding them honorary degrees.

33. Tamara Loginova, “Chemu uchat v Akademii,” Altaiskaia pravda, 21 July 2001. Presidential officials from the Urals Federal District conduct joint sessions on cadres and training issues with the Urals Academy of State Service in Ekaterinburg and also work there as adjunct lecturers. Personal interview with Valerii Popov, professor and head of sociology and psychology, Urals Academy of State Service, Ekaterinburg, 23 May 2002.

34. Personal interview with Gennadii Petrovich Ovchinnikov, director of the Udmurt Institute of State and Municipal Service, Izhevsk, 19 May 2003.

35. Personal interview with Andrei Nikolaevich Ershov, rector of the Institute of State Service attached to the president of the Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan', 23 May 2003.

36. “O dopolnitel'nykh merakh po podgotovke gosudarstvennykh sluzhashchikh,” Sobranie zakonodatel'stva, 1997, no. 36: st. 4131.

37. Personal interview with Oksana Gamat-Golutvina, Department of Political Science, Russian Academy of State Service, Moscow, 29 May 2002.

38. Estimates of budgetary funding for higher education vary widely, but it is clear that most of the funding comes from fee-paying undergraduates, officials on continuing education courses, and off-budget sources. The head of RAGS, Vladimir Egorov, claimed that only 15 percent of his revenues came directly from the state budget; according to Abel Aganbegian, the figure for the Academy of National Economy was only 3 percent. Irina Demina, “Rektor Akademii gosudarstvennoi sluzhby pri prezidente RF Vladimir Egorov,” Vek, 17 November 2000, 9; “Narodnoe khoziaistvo pod ugrozoi,” Kommersant-Daily, 2 June 2000.

39. The full-time continuing education, or literally “qualification raising” (povyshenie kvalifikatsii), programs range from a minimum of two-week (72 lecture hours) sessions up to several weeks (and 500 lecture hours). If done part-time by correspondence, they may last up to a year. In the late 1990s, for example, the Northern Caucasus Academy of State Service provided a year-long correspondence course for heads of administration, ministers and department heads, and leading businessmen and bankers in the region. “Ne pozdno poduchit'sia i ministru!” Molot, 24 November 1998. The longer the program, the more likely it is to offer instruction on general management and social science themes rather than skills and knowledge related directly to the specialty of the civil servant. Courses that last longer than 500 lecture hours are for requalifying (perepodgotovka) rather than for raising qualifications. The trend, however, is for far shorter programs, and increasing use is being made of two- or three-day seminars, which are more comparable to the continuing education programs for American professionals.

Those who desire a second university-level degree usually participate in evening or correspondence courses that typically last four or five years. In Izhevsk, for example, 70 percent of the students at the local branch of the Urals Academy of State Service are municipal civil servants seeking requalification or second degrees who attend classes after hours and by correspondence. A quarter of those students are under 30. Evgeniia Antonova, “Menedzhery XXI veka,” Udmurtskaia pravda, 27 November 2001. One should also note that some young civil servants come into the bureaucracy without a first degree and take evening or correspondence courses to obtain it.

40. “Prilozhenie k federal'nomu zakonu ‘O federal'nom biudzhete na 2001 goda,'” Rossiiskaia gazeta, 29 December 2000, 2.

41. In theory, all proposals for funding the retraining of officials are vetted initially by the Interagency Commission on Professional Retraining and then zakazy are issued by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Labor. Only those institutions licensed by the state can compete for the zakazy. See “Polozhenie o gosudarstvennom zakaze na professional'nuiu perepodgotovku i povyshenie kvalifikatsii gosudarstvennykh sluzhashchikh federal'nykh organov ispolnitel'noi vlasti,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 February 2001, 6.

42. Statisticheskii biulleteri, August 2001, 35.

43. A. Zaitsev, “Opyt pradedov prigoditsia,” Krasnyi sever [Vologda], 2 November 2000. In a survey of bailiffs conducted in 1999, 85 percent responded that they received no training before starting their jobs. See the excellent study of bailiffs in Peter L. Kahn, “The Russian Bailiffs’ Service and the Enforcement of Civil Judgments,” Post-Soviet Affairs, no. 2 (2002): 167.

44. Konstantin Katanian, “Uchit'sia, pereuchivat'sia ili povyshat'kvalifikatsiiu?“Nezavisimaia gazeta, 17 July 1997.

45. It is important to recognize that the retraining of civil servants represents only a small portion—about 6 percent in one estimation—of the entire population participating in adult, or continuing, education programs, known in Russian as DPO (dopolnitel'noe professional'noe obrazovanie). Most individuals undergoing retraining are unemployed, demobilized from the armed forces, or in private sector employment. See the excellent article on this subject by S. Kondrat'ev and V Valentinov, “Dopolnitel'noe obrazovanie pol'zuetsia sprosom,” Ekonomika i zhizn', 10 June 2000.

46. “Putevki v biurokraty,” Kommersant-Den'gi, 22 March 2000.

47. “Narodnoe khoziaistvo pod ugrozoi,” Kommersant-Daily, 2 June 2000.

48. Personal interview with Natal'ia Fedorovna Luk'ianova, head of the Department of State and Municipal Administration, Institute for Qualification Raising, Moscow, 27 May 2003.

49. Ol'ga Alekseeva, “Konkurs real'nyi i ‘virtual'nyi,'” Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, 27 April 2001, 5.

50. Piatiletova, “V khrame ne kuriat …” The rector of Moscow State Social University, ever the entrepreneur, claimed that the figure should be between 340 and 360. Ibid. See also Kuz'minov, Iaroslav, “Obrazovanie i reforma,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 2002, no. 2: 7–29.Google Scholar

51. Iurii Zav'ialov, “Tsifry interesnee politiki,” Poliarnaia pravda, 23 March 2001.

52. The Academy of State Service in Nizhnii Novgorod, for example, offers a major in regional studies that requires mastering a foreign language as well as one minority language of Russia, such as Tatar or Kalmyk. “V povolzhskoi akademii Gossluzhby s nachala uchebnogo goda budut wedeny 4 novykh spetsiarnosti,” VolgaInform, 10 June 2001, available at http://www.volgainform.ru/allnews/7943 (last consulted 19 February 2004).

53. Ol'ga Reshetnikova, “Rukovodstvo XXI veka,” Delovoe povolzh'e, 25 July 2001.

54. On the somewhat convoluted history of this degree, see “Gosudarstvennoe i munitsipal'noe upravlenie: O nastoiashchem i budushchem spetsial'nosti,” Chinovnik, 2000, no. 4.

55. On the importance of university internships as an entree to permanent employment, see “Putevka v biurokraty,” Kommersant-Den'gi, 22 March 2000.

56. “Ob osnovykh gosudarstvennoi sluzhby Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” Sobranie zakonodatel'stva, 1995, no. 31: St. 2990.

57. Marina Matskiavichene, “Esli pap iurist, smelo shagai po ego stopam,” Vecherniaia Moskva, 15 June 2000.

58. “Gosudarstvennoe i munitsipal'noe upravlenie,” Chinovnik, 2000, no. 1.

59. Personal interview with Aleksandr Panov, editor-in-chief, Chinovnik, Ekaterinburg, 20 May 2002.

60. “Putevka v biurokraty,” Kommersant-Den'gi, 22 March 2000.

61. Statisticheskii biulleten', August 2001, 35-43.

62. Obolonskii, Aleksandr, ed., Gosudarstvennaia sluzhba (Moscow, 1999), 327-66.Google Scholar

63. “Ideia, chto pravitel'stvo luchshe rynka opredelit pobeditelei, korotkii put’ k neudache,” Cazeta, 12 May 2003, 9. For an assessment of the course of this reform, see Eugene Huskey and Alexander Obolonsky, “The Struggle to Reform Russia's Bureaucracy,” Problems of Post-Communism (July-August 2003): 22-33.