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In Search of Generations in Soviet Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Mark R. Beissinger
Mark R. Beissinger
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Abstract

The hypothesis that generation has become a major source of political cleavage within the Soviet regional party apparatus is examined in the context of existing models of political generations. The attitudes of a sample of RSFSR provincial officials toward problems in the Soviet economy, as expressed in their newspaper writings, are analyzed according to several variables, including political generation. While it is difficult to speak of a significant difference in perspectives along strict generational lines, generational differences appear to be more significant within subgroups of the elite than within the elite as a whole. Several attitudinal subgroups within the younger generation are identified and their views of economic problems compared with those of their elders and with those of their generational peers. The findings suggest that the process of generational change in the Soviet Union is likely to be more complex than the traditional models of political generations lead one to expect.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , January 1986 , pp. 288 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1986

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References

1 See, for instance, the following works on the subject: Bialer, Seweryn, Stalin's Successors: Leadership, Stability, and Change in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Hough, Jerry F., Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1980)Google Scholar; Rush, Myron, “The Future Soviet Leadership,” in Melanson, Richard, ed., Neither Cold War nor Detente?: Soviet-American Relations in the 1980s (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1982), 69–89Google Scholar; Odom, William E., “Choice and Change in Soviet Politics,” Problems of Communism 32 (May-June 1983), 1–21Google Scholar; Gray, Colin S., “The Most Dangerous Decade: Historic Mission, Legitimacy, and the Dynamics of the Soviet Empire in the 1980s,” Orbis 25 (Spring 1981), 13–28Google Scholar; Ford, Robert A. D., “The Soviet Union: The Next Decade,” Foreign Affairs 62 (Summer 1984), 1132-44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salter, Albert L., “Portrait of an Emerging Soviet Elite Generation,” The Washington Papers 6 (No. 59, 1978), 25–40Google Scholar; Breslauer, George, “Is there a Generation Gap in the Soviet Political Establishment?: Demand Articulation by RSFSR Provincial Party First Secretaries,” Soviet Studies 36 (January 1984), 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nagle, John D., “A New Look at the Soviet Elite: A Generational Model of the Soviet System,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 3 (Spring 1975), 1–13Google Scholar.

2 Pravda, August 16, 1983, p. 1. Similar meetings with groups of party veterans in the armed forces and in other institutions have been held over the past two years. See Pravda, December 15, 1983, p. 3.

3 From 1966 to 1982, the average age of Politburo members climbed from 55 to 68; the average age of the Council of Ministers, from 58 to 65; and the average age of the Central Committee, from 56 to 63.

4 On this point, see Feuer, Lewis S., The Conflict of Generations: The Character and Significance of Student Movements (New York: Basic Books, 1969), 88–172Google Scholar; Fainsod, Merle, How Russia Is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 283–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mouly, Ruth W., “Values and Aspirations of Soviet Youth,” in Cocks, Paul and others, eds., The Dynamics of Soviet Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 221-38Google Scholar; Bauer, Raymond A. and others, How the Soviet System Worlds: Cultural, Psychological and Social Themes (New York: Vintage Books, 1961)Google Scholar; Shernock, Stanley K., “Politics and Opportunity in the Post-Revolutionary Generation: The Cases of Nazi Germany, Stalinist U.S.S.R., and Maoist China,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 12 (Spring 1984), 137-59Google Scholar.

5 For a sampling of this debate, see: Rintala, Marvin, “Political Generations,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, VI (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 92–96Google Scholar; Abramson, Paul R., Generational Change in American Politics (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1975)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin and Ladd, Everett Carll Jr., “The Political Future of Activist Generations,” in Altbach, Philip G. and Laufer, Robert S., eds., The New Pilgrims: Youth Protest in Transition (New York: David McKay, 1972), 63–84Google Scholar; Karl Mannheim, “The Problem of Generations,” Ibid., 101-38; Inglehart, Ronald, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

6 Samuels, Richard J., in , Samuels, ed., Political Generations and Political Development (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1977), 1–2Google Scholar.

7 On the scholarly debate over whether background characteristics such as age, class, or education have an impact upon the attitudes and behavior of elites, see Searing, Donald D., “The Comparative Study of Elite Socialization,” Comparative Political Studies 1 (January 1969), 471–500CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suleiman, Ezra N., Politics, Power, and Bureaucracy in France: The Administrative Elite (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 100–112Google Scholar; Putnam, Robert D., The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976)Google Scholar; Czudnowski, Moshe M., “Political Recruitment,” in Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson W., eds., Handbook of Political Science, II (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 190-95Google Scholar. In the literature on generation and elite recruitment, see also the following works: Gusfield, Joseph R., “The Problem of Generations in an Organizational Structure,” Social Forces 35 (May 1957), 323-30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; contributions by Harold Isaacs, Alfred Stepan, Myron Weiner, William Quandt, Amos Perlmutter, and Lucian Pye in Samuels (fn. 6), 39-124; Michael Yahuda, “Political Generations in China,” The China Quarterly (No. 80, 1979), 793-805; Mills, William de B., “Generational Change in China,” Problems of Communism 32 (November-December 1983), 16–35Google Scholar.

8 Rush (fn. 1), 82-3; Odom (fn. 1), 12; William E. Griffith, “Generational Change and Political Leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,” in Samuels (fn. 6), 125-34. See also Samuel P. Huntington's comments in Samuels (fn. 6), 130.

9 Bialer (fn. 1), 104-06; emphasis in original.

10 Hough (fn. 1), 147 and 157.

11 The sample used to produce these and subsequent figures is the chronological generations sample, consisting of 39 officials born after 1925 and 35 born in or before 1925. Educational degrees or titles beyond the level of a college education are, for instance, Candidate of Sciences and Doctor of Sciences (roughly equivalent or superior to masters and doctorate degrees), or such titles as Dotsent or Professor.

12 Because the data on class background are missing in the biographies of 49% of officials born in or before 1925 and 62% of those born after 1925, the figures may be somewhat inflated; the proportion from an urban, particularly white-collar, background may be higher in each category than indicated here.

13 Breslauer (fn. 1).

14 For further elaboration of the role of the RSFSR regional party apparatus as the recruiting ground for the Soviet leadership, see Rigby, T. H., “The Soviet Regional Leadership: The Brezhnev Generation,” Slavic Review 37 (March 1978), 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Every General Secretary since Stalin (with the exception of Malenkov, who held the post only briefly, but who did have career experience in the Moscow city party organization) worked at one point in his career for the RSFSR regional party apparatus. Of those included in the present sample, two former RSFSR obkom first secretaries have become Central Committee secretaries at the national level: Ligachev and Romanov.

15 For further information on the purge of 1983-1984 and its effects on the regional party apparatus, see Beissinger, Mark R., “The Age of the Soviet Oligarchs,” Current History 83 (October 1984), 305-08Google Scholar, 339-442. Among the RSFSR obkom first secretaries included in this study who lost influence after Brezhnev's death, four officials of the older generation were either retired or removed from their posts (M. A. Ponomarev, first secretary of Vladimir obkom; A. A. Kandrenkov, first secretary of Kaluga obkom; N. V. Bannikov, first secretary of Irkutsk obkom; and L. S. Kulichenko, first secretary of Volgograd obkom), as well as one official of the post-Stalin generation (I. A. Bondarenko, first secretary of Rostov obkom). One official of the older generation (M. G. Voropaev, formerly first secretary of Cheliabinsk obkom and now a deputy chairman of the Party Control Commission) and two members of the post-Stalin generation (M. P. Trunov, formerly first secretary of Belgorod obkom and now chairman of the Central Board of Cooperatives, and V. P. Lomakin, formerly first secretary of Primor'e kraikom and now Soviet ambassador to Czechoslovakia) were transferred to positions of reduced influence.

16 At least 6 out of the 76 oblispolkom chairmen and obkom second secretaries included in this study have been promoted to the post of obkom first secretary since Brezhnev died. Among them are: P. M. Telepnev, first secretary of Arkhangel'sk obkom; V. I. Sitnikov, first secretary of Irkutsk obkom; A. G. Mel'nikov, first secretary of Tomsk obkom; A. F. Ponomarev, first secretary of Belgorod obkom; R. S. Bobovikov, first secretary of Vladimir obkom; and D. N. Gagarov, first secretary of Primor'e kraikom.

17 , Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule (New York: Vintage Press, 1958), 93Google Scholar.

18 The following newspapers were used: Pravda, Izvestiia, Ekonomicheskaia gazeta, Sotsialisticheskaia industriia, Sel'skaia zhizn', Krasnaia zvezda, Komsomol'skaia pravda, Literaturnaia gazeta, and Sovetskaia Rossiia.

19 Officials who did not publish any articles on industrial management were eliminated from the sample, since no indication of attitudinal orientation was available.

20 See Breslauer, George W., “Research Note,” Soviet Studies 33 (July 1981), 446-47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; his interviews were conducted among emigrés who had been employees of the Soviet media.

21 Breslauer (fn. 1).

22 Since some party officials publish more regularly in the press than others, and since that pattern could be the result of a large number of factors, simply counting the number of times an official raised a particular problem would not necessarily be an accurate reflection of his attitudes in relation to the attitudes of others. I therefore decided to measure the degree of an individual's concern about a particular problem by comparing the number of articles in which it was raised to the total number of articles written by that official on issues of industrial management.

23 Hough (fn. 1), 60.

24 Bialer (fn. 1), 100-102. For the difference between chronological and recruitment generations in the social science literature on political socialization, see Hyman, Herbert H., Political Socialization: A Study in the Psychology of Political Behavior (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), 129-30Google Scholar.

25 Because in a few cases it was difficult to obtain biographical information on the initial year of party membership, 7 officials included in the sample using Hough's chronological generational criteria (4 Stalinists and 3 post-Stalinists) could not be included in the sample using Bialer's recruitment-generational criteria. As will be shown below, the missing data do not affect the findings of this study. Using Hough's criteria, the sample is composed of 39 post-Stalinists and 35 Stalinists; using Bialer's criteria, the sample is composed of 29 post-Stalinists and 38 Stalinists. It should.be noted that for purposes of simplification, the four categories of generations used by both these authors were telescoped into two, Stalinist and post-Stalinist.

26 See, for instance, Gustafson, Thane, Reform in Soviet Politics: Lessons of Recent Policies on Land and Water (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 These differences cannot be explained by reference to the type of higher education that the officials of each generation received, since nearly identical proportions of both received a higher education in engineering while very small proportions of both had a higher education in economics. Using chronological generation criteria, one finds that 57% of the Stalinists and 58% of the post-Stalinists had a higher education in engineering. None of the Stalinists were trained in economics, and only 5% of post-Stalinists were. Information on educational specialization was missing for one post-Stalinist.

28 A .05 level of significance was chosen, with one degree of freedom.

29 Further analysis reveals that this anomaly is not the result of the 7 cases that were eliminated from the recruitment generation sample because of lack of information: when these cases are eliminated from the chronological generation sample, the results remain exactly the same.

30 Again, it appears that this anomaly is not due to the different sizes of the samples; see fn. 29.

31 Both of the generational samples were divided into officials from high-growth and low-growth regions. Since the U.S.S.R. stopped publishing information on regional growth rates after 1975, the 1965-1975 period was used. Officials from regions with an average or higher-than-average growth rate were classified in the high-growth category. For the source of these figures, see Narodnoe khoziaistvo RSFSR v 1975 godu: Statisticheskii ezhegodnik [The national economy of the RSFSR in 1975: Statistical yearbook] (Moscow: “Statistika,” 1976), 47–48Google Scholar.

32 The sample was divided into those officials who had a higher education with an industrial specialization (engineering, technical, or economic) and those whose higher education was not industrially related. Five officials (3 Stalinists and 2 post-Stalinists) who had no higher education were eliminated from the sample, as was another post-Stalinist for whom no information could be found. Because of the difference in sample sizes, chi-square had to be recalculated for chronological generation. The previous sample size had produced a chi-square score of 3.0 for plan fulfillment, whereas the new sample resulted in a chi-square score of 2.3.

33 These findings occurred despite the fact that chi-square tends to take on smaller values when smaller sample sizes are used.

34 The reader should be warned against attempting to use the findings of this study to predict the attitudes of individual officials or leaders in the Soviet hierarchy without closely examining their writings; not all of the potential cleavages within the party elite have been explored here. This becomes clear when one examines the concerns expressed by the current members of the Soviet leadership who are included in this study. Grigorii Romanov's interests, for example, appear to be typical for his particular generational and administrative subgroup. (Born in 1923, he was classified as a Stalinist from a high-growth region.) Romanov frequently cites the issues of productivity and technical innovation and devotes considerable attention to the issue of material waste in the production process—a pattern typical of other industrial specialists of the older generation. On the other hand, Yegor Ligachev, born in 1920, devotes particular attention to the issue of plan fulfillment—as one would expect of a post-Stalinist from a low-growth region—even though Ligachev formally falls into the category of Stalinist from a low-growth region. If Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been included in this study, he would have been classified as a post-Stalinist from a high-growth region. Yet his emphasis in recent months on beefing up discipline and improving the operation of the planning system is more typical of post-Stalinists from low-growth regions. Several explanations might be given for this. First, Stavropol' krai, Gorbachev's native region, has experienced only slightly above-average industrial growth rates in the past two decades. Second, post-Stalinists without a higher industrial education (such as Gorbachev) tend to put particular emphasis on the issue of plan fulfillment in their articles. Finally, it may be that, upon assuming higher responsibilities in the party, Gorbachev began to reflect the views of post-Stalinists from low-growth regions in spite of his prior administrative experience—either because of political expediency or because of different perspectives gained from his new responsibilities.

35 Jorge Dominguez, in Samuels (fn. 6), 135-41.

36 Samuels (fn. 6), 1-2.