Nomenklaturg" The Soviet Ruling Class

...That signal was provided in 1934 by Stalin's murder of Sergei Kirov, First Secretary of the Party in Leningrad, and a Politburo member...

...This new group found its champion in Stalin, whose interests he carefully and methodically advanced...

...Keeping the "Reds" at bay at home, while encouraging them abroad-that, in a nutshell, is the policy of the nomenklatura...

...The nomenklatura, Voslensky writes, "is a class of privileged exploiters...

...From this brief summary of Voslen-sky's description of the nomenklatura, it is evident that the Marxist view of the state as the apparatus of the ruling class applies with singular accuracy to the Soviet Union...

...According to Voslensky, Nomenklatura is the country of the special, with special accommodations built by special builders, special country houses and vacation homes, special hospitals, out-patients' departments, and convalescent homes, special products sold in special shops, special buffets and canteens, special hairdressers, garages, gas stations, and license plates, a special information network, special kindergartens, schools, and institutions of higher education, special waiting rooms at stations and airports, and even a special cemetery...

...And in 1976, Andrei Sakharov wrote, "Although the appropriate sociological studies either have not been carried out in our country, or have been classified as secret, it may be affirmed that as early as the 1920s and 30s-and definitely in the post-war years-a special Party-bureaucratic stratum was formed and Joseph Shattan is Policy and Programs Officer at the Department of State's Bureau of Human Rights...

...And not a few analysts of Soviet affairs have declared that the whole problem is really no problem at all, that the Soviets are essentially no different from us...

...What it fears above all else is the possibility that its subjects may one day tire of living in oppression and servitude: Because the mere existence of a free and affluent West shows its subjects that the capitalist system, in spite of all its faults, provides better living conditions, the nomenklatura believes that that day might come...

...in real socialist society it is not money, but privilege...

...The nomenklatura is the "collective owner" of the means of production...

...Who knows what dangerous ideas the soldiers might have become infected with...

...While it is still possible for a humble Party member to enter the charmed ranks of the nomenklatura- assuming, of course, that he possesses such necessary personal attributes as obsequiousness, cunning, and a total lack of scruples-such career paths are becoming rare...

...It is sometimes said in the West that the Soviet elite is •about to undergo'a momentous generational change, and that as younger leaders assume control, the Soviet Union is bound to become more liberal...

...But he is astute enough to recognize that all comparisons between the "privileged classes in the bourgeois West" and the nomenklatura are fundamentally misleading...

...rule...

...Indeed, some of Marx's writings, such as his violently anti-Russian History of the Secret Diplomacy of the Eighteenth Century, are actually banned in the Soviet Union, and "the real Leninists were shot forty years ago in the cellars of the NKVD...

...In the first historical stage, Lenin created a "party of a new type," an organization of professional revolutionaries which became the embryo of the new class...

...The story goes that one day Leonid Brezhnev invited his provincial mother to the Kremlin for a visit...

...The essential feature of capitalist society," he writes, "is not privilege, but money...

...So different is its way of life from that of the average Soviet citizen that the 750,000 officials who belong to the nomenklatura (counting their family members, the figure comes to about 3 million) might well be said to inhabit a special country of their own, Nomen-klaturia, where life is sweet indeed...

...Some Western students have found the answer to the Soviet riddle in the obscure formulations of Marxist-Leninist ideology...

...Voslensky compares the Soviet frontier to a ring fence around a huge concentration camp...

...Viewing the Soviet state as the creature of the nomenklatura yields a number of insights into the nature of Soviet foreign policy...

...The latter needed only a signal to fling themselves like a pack of wolves on the enfeebled old fogies who were keeping them out of good positions...

...But the sheer magnitude of its self-appointed task made it impossible for the small group of professional revolutionaries to administer an entire country alone...

...In order to get people back to work as quickly as possible, medical care is also provided in case of illness...

...In this connection, the nomenklatura's reluctance to commit Soviet troops to the invasion and occupation of Poland, despite its alarm over Solidarity's activities, may have stemmed, at least in part, from its unwillingness to expose large numbers of its people to what can only be called a revolutionary situation...

...Because it cannot be sure that its subjects will prove reliable in the event of a crisis, it must avoid crises whenever possible...

...But if Voslensky is not the first writer to analyze the class structure of the Soviet Union, his is certainly the most comprehensive account of the nomenklatura to date: of its origins, its way of life, its outlook, and its ambitions...

...Because Voslensky's analysis of the structure, organization, and mode of behavior of the nomenklatura is unrelentingly grim, perhaps it is best to conclude on a somewhat lighter note...

...It has therefore constructed an elaborate system of frontier fortifications...

...Most high-level nomenklaturists were appointed during the Yezhov period and the war," Voslensky informs us, "and the present corps of officials has just had time to bring up its children, who are now of an age to become nomenklaturists themselves...

...The nomenklatura seeks to maintain and extend its power through the production of arms and advanced police equipment...

...yet when one considers Jaruzelski's actions in light of the nomenklatura's class in-terests, it seems clear that the General actually rescued both the Soviet and Polish nomenklaturas from an extremely dangerous situation...

...If, after Voslensky's masterful survey, the term nomenklatura does not enter our language, and if the notion of a Soviet ruling class fails to inform our perception of Soviet policy, the fault will be ours, not his...

...Not unreasonably, the nomenklatura secretly believes that if it allowed its subjects to travel freely across Soviet frontiers, the country would soon be empty...

...This chauvinism "was erected by the feudal aristocracy, and Stalin and his heirs superimposed onto it Marxist terminology and ideas from Marx and Lenin that serve the interests of the nomenklatura...

...As Voslensky observes: Stalin was well aware of the envious glances the nomenklaturists cast at the Leninists...

...Should someone nevertheless manage to escape, Soviet search parties often pursue the runaway slave beyond Soviet territory...

...He showed her his eighteen-room apartment, his collection of cars, his precious gems, his country dacha, yet the old lady seemed unimpressed...

...it is therefore up to the West to ease this historic insecurity by offering various and sundry unilateral concessions...

...Naturally, when they grow old and end up in old age homes, their life expectancy shortens drastically: The nomenklatura can hardly be expected to support those elements of the population from which it cannot derive a profit...

...Those who answer this question affirmatively often cite Soviet declarations in support of world revolution and the in...

...Marxist-Leninist ideology is a "superstructure" elaborated by the nomenklatura to justify its exploitative...

...He proceeded to take her in his private plane to his hunting lodge, but her gloom only deepened...

...The true ideology of the nomenklatura, according to Voslensky, is "Stalinist chauvinism...

...others have tried to solve the mystery of Soviet intentions by placing them within the context of Russian history...

...The nomenklatura fears that the countries of the Third World will take the Japanese path and make the Western system even more predominant on the world scale, permitting it not only to survive but to triumph...

...His assassination was the opening move in a massive purge of the Bolshevik old guard, which the late Bertram Wolfe called "a coup d'e'tat in the Party," and which Voslensky calls "a bloodthirsty change of direction inside the new ruling class...

...evitable, world-wide triumph of socialism...

...This is the nomenklatura, as its members call themselves...

...Although Soviet propaganda tirelessly maintains that there are no longer any "antagonistic classes" in Soviet society, this is obviously a ruse designed to induce "false consciousness" among the masses...

...They were forced to admit a new group into their ranks, careerists attracted solely by the prospect of rapid advancement, and soon the "Old Bolsheviks" found themselves "up against new forces, devoid of idealism, whose only clear aim was to creep into the bed of power...

...It therefore tries to force the developing countries down the Cuban path, which explains its dogged neocolonialist expansionism in Asia, Africa and Latin America...

...Michael Voslensky, a prominent Soviet historian who was expatriated by the regime in 1977 and now directs the Institute of Contemporary Soviet Research in Munich, has developed a different line of argument...

...Back in 1969, the Program of the Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union declared, "In the course of the past half century it is neither workers nor peasants nor intellectuals who have become the ruling class, but a fourth group: the new exploiting class that reigns autocratically and holds all the threads of power in its hands, their majesties the bureaucratic elite...

...Finally, he asked her what was wrong, wasn't she proud of him...

...Dominium, with its connotations both of power and ownership, is precisely the quality which distinguishes the nomenklatura from alleged Western counterparts...

...Those old men who preserved some loyalty to the revolution in spite of their good jobs, their prestige, and the good life they led were alien and antipathetic to the newcomers...

...One often hears it argued, for example, that the Soviet leadership's awareness that the country has so often been invaded in the past causes it to live in a state of chronic insecurity...

...The destruction of the old guard and the replacement of convinced Communists by a new group of cynics interested only in their own welfare was the third and final stage in the nomenklatura's sanguinary ascent to power...

...By adopting the modest life-style prescribed by the nomenklatura, Soviet wage-earners can maintain their strength, reproduce themselves, and contribute to the greater glory of their masters...

...Once in power, the nomenklatura has made the most of a good thing...

...It monopolizes all the political and economic resources of the country...

...Their opponents reply by questioning the sincerity of such pronouncements...

...There mav well be some truth in this assertion, but surely the nomenklatura's awareness that it rules a population whose loyalty is far from certain is also likely to induce a degree of caution...

...Apologists for General Jaruzelski claim that he is essentially a Polish patriot who acted to stave off an otherwise imminent Soviet invasion...

...Ever since the Soviet regime was established, understanding this riddle cum mystery cum enigma has been a major preoccupation of Western foreign policy...

...Although the nomenklatura derives the right to rule from Marxist-Leninist ideology, Voslensky stresses that vir-tually no one in the nomenklatura really believes in Marxism-Leninism...

...It acquired wealth from power, not power from wealth...

...According to Voslensky, the nomenklatura consolidated its power in three stages...

...could be discerned...

...Finally, consider the much-debated question of whether the Soviet Union is bent on world domination...

...Again, it is often said that the Soviet Union's Leninist orientation leads it to adopt a very cautious foreign policy...

...The same consideration underlies nomenklatura policy in the countries of the Third World...

...Having consolidated its position under Stalin, the nomenklatura has increasingly come to resemble a caste, into which one is born, rather than a class' open to outsiders...

...Yet even a cursory familiarity with the Soviet class structure suggests a very different explanation for Soviet insecurity: When less than 1.5 percent of the population mercilessly exploits more than 98.5 percent of the population in the name of a doctrine no one believes in, one might well expect the exploiting class to feel insecure...

...or the 'new class,' as Milovan Djilas has named them...

...BOOK REVIEWS NOMENKLATURA: THE SOVIET RULING CLASS Michael Voslensky/Doubleday/$18.95 Joseph Shattan Everyone is familiar with Winston Churchill's characterization of the Soviet Union as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma...

...According to Voslensky, the nomenklatura's foreign policy once again reflects its class interests...

...if one of their propagandists tries to deny it, disbelieve him, for it is a blatant lie...

...The domestic policy of the nomenklatura class is to consolidate its dictatorial power, and its foreign policy is to extend it to the whole world...

...Of course I am, son," she replied, "only I can't help worrying about what might happen if the Reds should ever come back...

...Yet when one recalls the caste-like nature of the nomenklatura, and when one further learns from Voslen-sky that the jeunesse doree of the nomenklatura look down on their teachers in much the same way as "the children of the Athenian aristocracy probably looked down on their slave schoolmasters," it becomes exceedingly difficult to believe in the alleged liberal tendencies of the younger nomenklaturists...

...Voslensky observes that the material privileges of what he calls-wrongly, in my view-"the ruling classes in the West" are far smaller than those of the nomenklatura...

...How is one to decide between these two views...

...Everyone inside is assumed to be prepared to do anything for the sake of getting out, so everything possible must be done to prevent this...

...In the second stage, this party managed to seize power in Russia in 1917, and undertook to reorganize the whole of society, thereby becoming a ruling class...

...Soviet policy, he asserts, is best understood as reflecting the interests of the Soviet ruling class, the nomenklatura...

...In thinking about the status of the nomenklatura, it might be helpful to recall that in classical Roman law, slavery was defined as an institu-tion, "whereby someone is subject to the dominium of another, contrary to nature...

...If he is to remain productive, the Soviet worker must be provided with certain bare necessities: "Accommodation not exceeding twelve meters per person, a simple diet, cheap public transport to take him to work, and cheap propaganda newspapers and propaganda films...

...Far more typical are careers such as those of Brezhnev's son Yuri, Kosygin's daughter Ludmila, Mikoyan's son Sergo, Andropov's son Igor, and Gromyko's son Anatoly, all of whom enjoy comfortable positions in the nomenklatura by virtue of their illustrious parentage...

...It is good form among them to be outspokenly anti-Semitic...

...How Western concessions can possibly serve to alleviate this sense of insecurity is far from self-evident...

...Consumer goods are regarded as a necessary evil, an unavoidable concession to the labor force...

...As this has nothing to do with any provocative attitude on the part of the West, but is a consequence of its mere existence, no amount of detente or "good conduct" on its part will cause the Soviet leaders to depart from their general line and abandon their objective of destroying the Western system...

...Of course, Voslensky is not the first writer to draw attention to the nomenklatura, or to describe its essential characteristics...

...still others have sought to penetrate the enigma of the Soviet policy-making process by differentiating between moderates and hardliners, hawks and doves...

...A corollary of this chauvinistic ideology is anti-Semitism, which "seemed to have leaped from behind German lines [during World War II] and infected the nomenklatura leaders...