the soviet bureaucratic eliteby john a. armstrong

University of Glasgow

The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite by John A. ArmstrongReview by: David GranickSoviet Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Apr., 1960), pp. 425-429Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/149039 .

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John A. Armstrong, The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite. London: Stevens & Sons Ltd. (originally published by Frederick A. Praeger Inc., New York), I959. 174 pp. 25s.

PROFESSOR Armstrong has broken new ground in the field of Soviet political science and has made a major contribution to our factual knowledge in this area. He has tried to answer the question: Who are the present-day middle-level Soviet decision makers? ('Middle-level' is defined as reaching up to, but not including, members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.) To tackle this problem, he considers the Ukraine in the period from 1938 to 1956. His concentration is mainly on the Communist Party apparatus, and on the State apparatus to a lesser extent. He is forced virtually to ignore the industrialists, military and police. By taking a single Re- public, he limits his field to manageable dimensions and yet has sufficient scope to draw sweeping conclusions. He is to be congratulated on per- forming in a first-rate fashion a most difficult task for, while leaning to some extent on unpublished Soviet Candidate dissertations, he has basically had to compile his own biographical statistics from the Ukrainian press.

The Ukraine, in one important respect, seems to have been an un- usual area of the Soviet Union during the period studied by Armstrong. Under Khrushchev's suzerainty from 1938 to 1949, the operation of its

Party apparatus tended toward oligarchic rather than autocratic rule, and this system continued afterwards as well. Six Party Congresses took place in the Ukraine between 1938 and 1956, and the Central Committee met regularly-except during the war-four times a year, with frequent reports of its proceedings. Armstrong suggests that Khrushchev's record of operating in a 'collective leadership' environ- ment may have contributed significantly to his acceptance as the national Soviet leader, and that the peculiar experience of Ukrainian 6lite members in functioning in this pattern may have contributed to their movement upward into top Soviet positions.

It is also interesting that the War saw little defection by Ukrainian middle-level elite, that they apparently suffered few war losses, and that there was great stability in the top personnel of obkom apparatuses as between the beginning of the War and the immediate period of liberation from the Germans.

In the 1938-56 period, there is a marked contrast between the geographic mobility of middle-level and lower-level officialdom. The

rst group seldom transferred outside of the Ukraine (this applies to State and Party officials, although not to industrial managers, police or military), while lower officials were frequently moved to other parts



426 ARMSTRONG:

of the USSR. This must lend a degree of stability to the work of top personnel which is surprising to this reviewer. Data concerning the first secretaries of the obkom Party committees confirm this impression of geographic stability.

Armstrong's picture of the typical membership pattern of the Ukrainian Party Presidium and of the obkom bureaus is interesting. The Presidium has typically consisted of:

Secretaries of the Central Committee . . 3 or 4 High State officials of the Ukraine .. .. .. 4 or 5 Commanding General of the Kiev Military District .. T

Pre-war, the director of the NKVD was a member and also, occasion- ally, some obkom first secretaries.

The obkom bureau typically consists of:

Obkom secretaries ... . . 4 or 5 City committee and Komsomol first secretaries .. 2 Chairman of the oblast executive committee .... Newspaper editor ........... I Director of the oblast police .... .. I

If the obkom bureau is very large, industrial directors and military officers may be added to the membership.

In both the Presidium and the obkom bureau, Party officials comprise no more than half to two-thirds of the membership. It is interesting that membership in both bodies seems to go with a man's job, following a fairly uniformjob-pattern, rather than representing recognition of the individual in his private capacity. This is a good deal more routinization than one finds in other Communist bodies of the USSR-as exempli- fied, for instance, by the membership of certain members of the diplo- matic corps on the all-Union Central Committee, while their superiors in the corps do not have this personal status.

Particularly fascinating is Armstrong's study of all eighty-seven in- dividuals who held office as obkom first secretaries between February 1939 andJanuary 1956. For seventy per cent. of them, information was available as to their previous jobs. Of this group, half had held a post within the same oblast; one-eighth had been chairman of an oblast executive committee, and three-eighths had been a deputy to an obkom first secretary. Twenty per cent. had moved from the headquarters of the Ukrainian Communist Party.

Armstrong argues that the Party deliberately allows for a 'wastage' of about fifty per cent. among those considered capable enough to warrant election as an obkom first secretary. Most of this wastage occurs in a man's first four years of appointment. This is a good example,



on a massive scale, of the tendency observed elsewhere in the Soviet Union of a marked rejection of the approach of'pick a good man and stick with him'. For after all, an obkom first secretary has usually had a good deal of experience before reaching this post.

The future careers of Armstrong's eighty-seven first secretaries can be summed up in the following table (taken from data on pages 52-53. Unaccountably, eighty-eight secretaries are listed).

First secretary as of 3 January 1956 .. . . 27 Had been first secretary of another oblast .. .. Io First post as first secretary:

In post less than four years .. ... 14 In post more than four years .. .. . 3

Disappeared from public notice after assignment as first secretary in one oblast . ..... .. 24

Assignment lasted less than four years .. .. .. 22

Demoted-but still to an important post-after assignment as first secretary in only one oblast .. 9

Transferred as first secretary to another oblast-but disappeared from public notice after several years .. 7

Promoted (some, apparently, being kicked upstairs) .. 21

Over one-third of the group which was promoted had served as first secretaries in two or more oblasts, and most of the rest had spent a long time as first secretary in a single oblast. Thus the post of oblast first secretary was not considered one in which a man proved himself, and from which he was quickly moved either up or down.

The personnel officials of the obkoms seem-except for a brief post- war period-to have been well under the thumb of the obkom secretaries. Thus they were in no position to consider Party needs on an all- Union or Republic basis, but rather gave stability to their own oblast organization. On the other hand, a personnel job seems to have been a good stepping stone to the position of second obkom secretary, who in turn was in line for a first secretary's job.

The propaganda official-normally fourth or fifth obkom secretary -seems, on the other hand, to have had no real chance of promotion to a 'line' position. His career pattern would lie in the propaganda, ideological and journalistic field. As such, propaganda officials-to- gether with journalists-seem to have formed a 'closed' professional group.

It is interesting that, on the Republic level, the Party official in charge of agriculture has always been a third-rater in importance, while the

THE B UREA UCRA TIC ELI TE 427



428 ARMSTRONG:

State officials in charge of agriculture have been men of an importance second only to the obkom first secretaries. It makes for a curious division of labour, which one might not have expected, showing the vitality of the State apparatus vis-ai-vis the Party apparatus in an area of major political concern.

Armstrong argues briefly for the theory of 'personal followings' in the apparatus, but he makes clear that he has no real evidence for this theory due to the nature of his sources. This reviewer finds the lack of such evidence significant. It is clear enough that officials in Russia as elsewhere will tend, as they move up, to take along with them men whose abilities they know. Such promotion is hardly evidence for the theory of'personal followings'. What is necessary for the theory is that these 'followers' should be kept in high office on political grounds even when their capacities do not seem equal to the job on hand. Khrush- chev's treatment of some of his more prominent 'followers' from the Ukraine would seem to argue against the validity of this theory, but on the other hand conditions may be different at the top of the national apparatus from what they are lower down.

Of great interest is Armstrong's finding of a high rate of interchange between middle levels of the State and Party bureaucracies in the Ukraine, and his conclusion that it is not possible to look upon these as separate career paths.

The major weakness in Armstrong's book is in his treatment of the education of Party officials. He shows the growing proportion with higher education. hi 1955, fifty-six per cent. of all 'directing cadre' (i.e. some 50,000 lower Party and State officials in the Ukraine) had at least some higher education. Armstrong argues that a successful apparatus career today virtually requires further education at an early age. So far so good.

But Armstrong does not here differentiate between higher education through normal State channels-which he, probably correctly, pre- sumes is normally an engineering education-and higher education in the Party schools. But the distinction is significant; for the higher Party schools are devoted much more to the sort of subjects we think of as in the 'liberal arts', generalist tradition-with a bias to Marxist ideology, of course. We are left with a puzzle of some significance: are Arm- strong's middle-elite, and particularly those of the next generation, men with the engineering background which features so heavily in Soviet higher education-or are they, indeed, men whose background is in history, economics, philosophy, belles lettres? The probability is the former, but the evidence is far from clear-cut. Armstrong throws no light on this question; let us hope that he will be able to do so in the future.



The book, generally speaking, is clearly and simply written with no excess verbiage. There are some minor problems of numerical mis- calculations (the average annual attrition rates in the table on page 25 are particularly misleading, as no account is taken of the effect of com- pounding), but they are no more than an author's proper allowance when he does as much statistical compilation as has Armstrong. The index, also, is an excellent one.

DAVID GRANICK

Glasgoiv

A. I. Kremnev, Ekonomika lesnoi promyshlennosti SSSR (Economics of the Timber Industry of the USSR). Moscow-Leningrad: Gosles- bumizdat, I958. 182 pp. 5 rubles.

THIS book was developed by the author during his tenure as a teacher in a wood-technology tekhnikum and is intended to fill a pedagogical void. The publisher's note indicates that it is intended to cast light on the main economic questions faced in the timber industry: the place and importance of the industry in the Soviet economy, the main stages of its development, administration, and economic problems of logging enterprises. A chapter is devoted to each of the first three questions, and the remainder of the text contains chapters on the following topics: planning, forest resources and the geographic distribution of the timber industry, technological progress, fixed capital and its accumulation, working capital and material-technical supply, labour and wages, costs, and accounting and fiances.

The broad range of questions covered in the slender volume neces- sarily limits the depth of treatment, and the material is almost solely descriptive. We are presented, for example, with a long list of the com- ponents of a typical logging enterprise (lespromkhoz) including logging camps, lower landing (where the wood is collected, and in some cases processed, for fial shipment), repair shop, etc. Most of the formu- las cited illustrate simple truisms such as labour productivity per unit of working time is equal to output divided by working time. A re- lated limitation is the heavy Marxist larding initiating each chapter. In discussing administration, for example, there is a dreary repetition of the 'principles of democratic centralism', and 'unity of political and economic leadership', etc. The text is not without misleading state- ments. In emphasizing the role of timber exports in Soviet foreign trade, it is stated that in 1932 wood shipments comprised 40 per cent.

The book, generally speaking, is clearly and simply written with no excess verbiage. There are some minor problems of numerical mis- calculations (the average annual attrition rates in the table on page 25 are particularly misleading, as no account is taken of the effect of com- pounding), but they are no more than an author's proper allowance when he does as much statistical compilation as has Armstrong. The index, also, is an excellent one.

DAVID GRANICK

Glasgoiv

A. I. Kremnev, Ekonomika lesnoi promyshlennosti SSSR (Economics of the Timber Industry of the USSR). Moscow-Leningrad: Gosles- bumizdat, I958. 182 pp. 5 rubles.

THIS book was developed by the author during his tenure as a teacher in a wood-technology tekhnikum and is intended to fill a pedagogical void. The publisher's note indicates that it is intended to cast light on the main economic questions faced in the timber industry: the place and importance of the industry in the Soviet economy, the main stages of its development, administration, and economic problems of logging enterprises. A chapter is devoted to each of the first three questions, and the remainder of the text contains chapters on the following topics: planning, forest resources and the geographic distribution of the timber industry, technological progress, fixed capital and its accumulation, working capital and material-technical supply, labour and wages, costs, and accounting and fiances.

The broad range of questions covered in the slender volume neces- sarily limits the depth of treatment, and the material is almost solely descriptive. We are presented, for example, with a long list of the com- ponents of a typical logging enterprise (lespromkhoz) including logging camps, lower landing (where the wood is collected, and in some cases processed, for fial shipment), repair shop, etc. Most of the formu- las cited illustrate simple truisms such as labour productivity per unit of working time is equal to output divided by working time. A re- lated limitation is the heavy Marxist larding initiating each chapter. In discussing administration, for example, there is a dreary repetition of the 'principles of democratic centralism', and 'unity of political and economic leadership', etc. The text is not without misleading state- ments. In emphasizing the role of timber exports in Soviet foreign trade, it is stated that in 1932 wood shipments comprised 40 per cent.

THE BUREAUCRATIC ELITE THE BUREAUCRATIC ELITE 429 429



the soviet bureaucratic eliteby john a. armstrong

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