Table Of ContentST ANTONY'S/MACMILLAN SERIES
General editors: Archie Brown (1978-85) and Rosemary Thorp (1985- ), both Fellows of St Antony's College,
Oxford
Roy Allison FINLAND'S RELATIONS WITH THE SOVIET UNION, 1944-84
Said Amir Arjomand (editor) FROM NATIONALISM TO REVOLUTIONARY ISLAM
Anders As1und PRIVATE ENTERPRISE IN EASTERN EUROPE
Orner Bartov THE EASTERN FRONT, 1941-45, GERMAN TROOPS AND THE BARBARISATION OF
WARFARE
Gail Lee Bernstein and Haruhiro Fukui (editors) JAPAN AND THE WORLD
Archie Brown (editor) POLITICAL CULTURE AND COMMUNIST STUDIES
Archie Brown (editor) POLITICAL LEADERSHIP IN THE SOVIET UNION
Archie Brown and Michael Kaser (editors) SOVIET POLICY FOR THE 1980s
S. B. Burman CHIEFDOM POLITICS AND ALIEN LAW
Helen Callaway GENDER. CULTURE AND EMPIRE
Renfrew Christie ELECTRICITY, INDUSTRY AND CLASS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Robert 0. Collins and Francis M. Deng (editors) THE BRITISH IN THE SUDAN, 189&-1956
Roger Cooter (editor) STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
Wilhelm Deist THE WEHRMACHT AND GERMAN REARMAMENT
Robert Desjardins THE SOVIET UNION THROUGH FRENCH EYES, 1945-85
Guido di Tella ARGENTINA UNDER PERON, 1973-76
Guido di Tella and Rudiger Dornbusch (editors) THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ARGENTINA, 1941>-83
Guido di Tella and D. C. M. Platt (editors) THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ARGENTINA, 1880-1946
Guido di Tel'a and D. Cameron Watt (editors) ARGENTINA BETWEEN THE GREAT POWERS, 1939-46
Saul Dubow RACIAL SEGREGATION AND THE ORIGINS OF APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA,
1919-36
Simon Duke US DEFENCE BASES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Julius A. Elias PLATO'S DEFENCE OF POETRY
Ricardo Ffrench-Davis and Ernesto Tironi (editors) LATIN AMERICA AND THE NEW INTERNATIONAL
ECONOMIC ORDER
Ann Lincoln Fitzpatrick THE GREAT RUSSIAN FAIR: NIZHNII NOVGOROD
David Footman ANTONIN BESSE OF ADEN
Bohdan Harasymiw POLITICAL ELITE RECRUITMENT IN THE SOVIET UNION
Neil Harding (editor) THE STATE IN SOCIALIST SOCIETY
John B. Hattendorf and Robert S. Jordan (editors) MARITIME STRATEGY AND THE BALANCE OF
POWER
Richard Holt SPORT AND SOCIETY IN MODERN FRANCE
Albert Hourani EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Albert Hourani THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST
J. R. Jennings GEORGES SOREL
A. Kemp-Welch (translator) THE BIRTH OF SOLIDARITY
Paul Kennedy and Anthony Nicholls (editors) NATIONALIST AND RACIALIST MOVEMENTS IN BRITAIN
AND GERMANY BEFORE 1914
Richard Kindersley (editor) IN SEARCH OF EUROCOMMUNJSM
Maria D'Aiva G. Kinzo LEGAL OPPOSITION POLITICS UNDER AUTHORITARIAN RULE IN BRAZIL
Bohdan Krawchenko SOCIAL CHANGE AND NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY
UKRAINE
Gisela C. Lebzelter POLITICAL ANTI-SEMITISM IN ENGLAND, 191&-1939
Nancy Lubin LABOUR AND NATIONALITY IN SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA
C. A. MacDonald THE UNITED STATES, BRITAIN AND APPEASEMENT, 193&-39
Robert H. McNeal STALIN: MAN AND RULER
Robert H. McNeal TSAR AND COSSACK, 1855-1914
David Nicholls HAITI IN CARIBBEAN CONTEXT
Patrick O'Brien (editor) RAILWAYS AND THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF WESTERN EUROPE,
1830-1914
Amii Omara-Otunnu POLITICS AND THE MILITARY IN UGANDA, 1890-1985
Roger Owen (editor) STUDIES IN THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF PALESTINE IN THE
NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
Ilan Pappe BRITAIN AND THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT, 194&-51
D. C. M. Platt and Guido di Tella (editors) ARGENTINA, AUSTRALIA AND CANADA: STUDIES IN
COMPARATIVE DEVELOPMENT, 1870-1965
J. L. Porket WORK, EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE SOVIET UNION
Irena Powell WRITERS AND SOCIETY IN MODERN JAPAN
Alex Pravda (editor) HOW RULING COMMUNIST PARTIES ARE GOVERNED
T. H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher (editors) POLITICAL LEGITIMATION IN COMMUNIST STATES
Hans Roggcr JEWISH POLICIES AND RIGHT-WING POLITICS IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA
Marilyn Rueschemeyer PROFESSIONAL WORK AND MARRIAGE
A. J. R. Russell-Wood THE BLACK MAN IN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM IN COLONIAL BRAZIL
Nurit Schleifman UNDERCOVER AGENTS IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
Amnon Sella and Yael Yishai ISRAEL THE PEACEFUL BELLIGERENT, 1967-1979
Aron Sha. BRITAIN AND CHINA, 1941-47
Lewis H. Siegelbaum THE POLITICS OF INDUSTRIAL MOBJLIZAT JON IN RUSSIA, 1914-17
H. Gordon Skilling SAM/ZDAT AND AN INDEPENDENT SOCIETY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN
EUROPE
David Stafford BRITAIN AND EUROPEAN RESISTANCE, 1940-45
Nancy Stepan THE IDEA OF RACE IN SCIENCE
Verena Stokke COFFEE PLANTERS, WORKERS AND WIVES
Jane E. Stromseth THE ORIGINS OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
Marvin Swartz THE POLITICS OF BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY IN THE ERA OF DISRAELI AND
GLADSTONE
Rosemary Thorp (editor) LATIN AMERICA IN THE 1930s
Rosemary Thorp and Laurence Whitehead (editors) JNFLAT JON AND STABJLISAT ION IN LA TIN AMERICA
Rosemary Thorp and Laurence Whitehead (editors) LATIN AMERICAN DEBT AND THE ADJUSTMENT
CRISIS
Rudolf L. Tokes (editor) OPPOSITION IN EASTERN EUROPE
Jane Watts BLACK WRITERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA
Robert Wihtol THE ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT
P. J. Williams THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND POLITICS IN NICARAGUA AND COSTA RICA
Toshio Yokoyama JAPAN IN THE VICTORIAN MIND
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Standing Order Service, Macmillan Distribution Ltd,
Houndmills, Basingstoke. Hampshire, RG212XS, England.
Political Leadership
in the Soviet Union
Edited by
Archie Brown
M
in association with
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
MACMILLAN
© Archie Brown 1989
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
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First published 1989
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Typeset by Wessex Typesetters
(Division of The Eastern Press Ltd)
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Political leadership in the Soviet Union.
1. Soviet Union. Politics, 1917-1988
I. Brown, Archie, 1938-
320.947
ISBN 978-0-333-41343-2 ISBN 978-1-349-20262-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20262-1
Contents
List of Tables Vll
Notes on the Contributors
Vlll
Preface Xl
1 Introduction 1
Archie Brown
2 The Soviet Political Executive, 1917-1986 4
T. H. Rigby
3 Putting Clients in Place: the Role of Patronage in
Cooption into the Soviet Leadership 54
John H. Miller
4 Political Processes and Generational Change 96
Robert V. Daniels
5 Policy Outside and Politics Inside 127
Marie Mendras
6 Power and Policy in a Time of Leadership Transition,
1982-1988 163
Archie Brown
7 Conclusions 218
Archie Brown
Index 233
v
List of Tables
2.1 Positions held by Central Committee members, 1921 16
2.2 Membership of key executive bodies, January 1926 24
2.3 Membership of key executive bodies, February 1934 26
2.4 Membership of key executive bodies, May 1939 32
2.5 Membership of key executive bodies, end of 1951 34
2.6 Membership of key executive bodies, 14 March 1953 37
2.7 Membership of key executive bodies, October 1982 44
2.8 Membership of key executive bodies after Twenty-
Seventh Congress (March 1986) 46
2.9 Renewal of the ruling oligarchy, 1982-6 47
3.1 Recruitment into top positions: sources and
destinations 71
3.2 Distribution of cooptions over time 72
3.3 Some cases of pure patronage? 82
4.1 Turnover in the Central Committee elite, 1956--86 100
4.2 Ageing of the Central Committee, 1952-86 101
4.3 Party and government representation in the Central
Committee elite by geographical area, 1981 and 1986 103
4.4 Allocation of full Central Committee seats, 1981 and
1986 105
4.5 Status Matrices: Central Committee representation of
Union Republics, 1981 and 1986 106
4.6 Functional representation in the Politburo, 1966--86 107
4.7 Survival in the Central Committee, by entry cohort,
1952-86 116
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Archie Brown has been a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford,
and Lecturer in Soviet Institutions at Oxford University since 1971.
A graduate of the London School of Economics, he was Lecturer in
Politics at Glasgow University from 1964 to 1971 and has been Visiting
Professor of Political Science at Yale University, the University of
Connecticut and Columbia University, New York. He gave the 1980
Henry L. Stimson Lectures at Yale. Mr Brown is the author of Soviet
Politics and Political Science (1974) and The Gorbachev Factor in
Soviet Politics (forthcoming) and editor of (and contributor to) The
Soviet Union since the Fall of Khrushchev (with Michael Kaser, 1975;
2nd edn, 1978), Political Culture and Political Change in Communist
States (with Jack Gray, 1977; 2nd edn, 1979), Authority, Power and
Policy in the USSR (with T. H. Rigby and Peter Reddaway, 1980),
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (with
John Fennell, Michael Kaser and H. T. Willetts, 1982), Soviet Policy
for the 1980s (with Michael Kaser, 1982), and Political Culture and
Communist Studies (1984).
Robert V. Daniels is Professor of History at the University of Vermont,
Burlington, where he has taught since 1956. After graduating from
Harvard, he taught at Indiana University and was a research associate
of Columbia University, New York, before moving to Burlington. In
1985 he was a Kennan Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, Washington, DC. He is a former state senator
(latterly as Democratic Party minority leader) in Vermont. Among
other works, Professor Daniels is the author of The Conscience of
the Revolution (1960), A Documentary History of Communism (1960;
rev. edn, 1984), The Nature of Communism (1962), Studying History
(1966), Red October (1967), Russia: The Roots of Confrontation
(1985), and Is Russia Reformable? (1988). He is also co-editor (with
Paul Cocks and Nancy Whittier Heer) of The Dynamics of Soviet
Politics (1976).
Marie Mendras is a Research Fellow at the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique and at the University of Paris 1 (Sorbonne ).
She is a graduate of the Institut d'etudes politiques (Paris), the
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Paris) and (in
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
1983) of the Russian Research Center of Harvard University. She
has made frequent research visits in recent years to the Soviet Union
and is the author of a number of articles on Soviet foreign policy.
John H. Miller is Senior Lecturer in Communist Politics at La Trobe
University, Melbourne, and was from 1984 to 1987 a Research Fellow
in Political Science at the Research School of Social Sciences of
the Australian National University, Canberra. After studying at
Cambridge and Glasgow Universities, he taught at the Institute of
Soviet and East European Studies, Glasgow, from 1968 until 1972
when he took up his present appointment at LaTrobe. Mr Miller is
co-editor (with R. F. Miller and T. H. Rigby) of Gorbachev at the
Helm (1987) and is the author of numerous articles and contributions
to symposia on Soviet politics as well as of a forthcoming book on
the relationship between party and society in the USSR.
T. H. Rigby is Professor of Political Science at the Research School
of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra. He is
a graduate of Melbourne and London Universities and has held
Visiting Fellowships at the Russian Institute of Columbia University,
New York; the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies,
Washington, DC; the London School of Economics; St Antony's
College, Oxford; the Institut fiir Ostrecht, University of Cologne and
the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of
London. His numerous publications include Policy-Making in the
USSR 1953-61: Two Views (with L. G. Churchward, 1962), Commu
nist Party Membership in the USSR 1917-67 (1968), Political and
Administrative Aspects of the Scientific Revolution in the USSR (with
R. F. Miller, 1976), Lenin's Government: Sovnarkom1917-22 (1979),
Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR (co-editor with Archie
Brown and Peter Reddaway, 1980) and Gorbachev at the Helm (co
editor with J. H. Miller and R. F. Miller, 1987).
Preface
This work was planned as a book from the outset, but Chapters 2-6
were presented in their earliest versions as papers at the Third
Congress for Soviet and East European Studies held in Washington,
DC, in late 1985. The papers were subsequently revised as chapters
with various cut-off points between late 1986 and 1988. The book as
a whole thus considers the phenomenon of political leadership in the
Soviet Union over the period of more than seventy years since the
foundation of the Soviet state.
At a late stage of production it was decided that account should
be taken of the exceptionally important developments in the Soviet
leadership which occurred in 1988. These included the proceedings
and resolutions of the Nineteenth Party Conference, the combination
once again of the party General Secretaryship with the office of head
of state, the decision to increase the powers of the Soviet presidency
and the restructuring of the apparatus of the Central Committee of
the party.
As convener of the panel at the Washington conference and editor
of this subsequent volume, I am extremely grateful to the other
contributors for their co-operation as well as for their forbearance
in the face of a longer delay between the completion of some chapters
and the submission of the final manuscript than was originally
intended. Some, at least, of the responsibility for that must be
attributed to Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev and the series of import
ant policy, institutional and personnel changes which took place
throughout 1987 and 1988.
So far as my own contributions to the book are concerned, I wish
to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Nuffield Foundation for the
award of a grant for the study of political leadership which facilitated
my research in this field. The work presented here forms a part of
that larger project.
Lastly, I must record my warmest thanks to my wife, Pat, for her
significant contribution to the book by compiling the index.
The system of transliteration adopted is the British Standard one,
but with some exceptions to accord with customary English usage,
such as 'sky' rather than 'skiy' in the endings of surnames and
perestroika rather than perestroyka. ARCHIE BROWN
St Antony's College, Oxford
xi
