The Soviet Managerial Elite

...This is a healthy reminder that political issues require political solutions—i.e., policy decisions which economic instruments serve...

...Now David Granick has taken a firm grip on a key issue, the structure and scope of "the managerial revolution" in Russia today...

...This hypothesis, while associated with a new type of "Republican Marxism" in this country, in fact has vigorous proponents in both major American political parties...

...Granick points out the notorious ambiguity of the term "class...

...for what policy purposes...

...Part VI takes us "Inside the Factory" for a close survey of plant procedures...

...This is an important book...

...Breaking Up the Bureaucracy," Part IV, deals with problems ranging from organizational personality to the role of the market...

...Economic competition between America and Russia is discussed with reference to rate of growth and the underdeveloped countries...

...It is impossible "to distinguish them from Communist Party officials and other subgroups within the stratum at the top of the Soviet ladder of power, prestige, and income...

...To what conclusions has Granick led us...

...My impression is that the Moscow-Peking thesis is rather an untested inference derived from the hypothesis...

...The real question is whether they form a distinct class within the elite and hence a potential counter-elite...

...Soviet managers do form a distinct class—in terms of income, education, Party membership, self-imagery—by comparison with the Soviet mass...

...in what situations...

...First of all, he properly stresses that our confidence in "economic solutions" is misplaced: "Simple political decisions as to what Americans and Russians wish to do, as well as the human relations skill with which they do it, are overwhelmingly more important...

...The maturation of the Russian economy will not necessarily tame the Soviet polity...

...On the contrary, interaction between managerial and Party personnel has been so pervasive, under clear Party domination, that "the two groups are highly similar in income, education, political activity, and even in the fact of having as members the same individuals at different stages of their career...

...The book concludes with an evaluation of the hypothesis that "Business Hands Across The Iron Curtain" will strengthen the forces tending toward stability and conservatism in Soviet society and thereby justify the American strategy of buying time because "historical forces" guarantee that Soviet policy must get better and can't get worse...

...Yet the theory of a virtually inevitable model for mature modern societies remains attractive, particularly for one school of cold war theorists...

...This theory has all the charms of simplicity—and all the pitfalls...

...It articulates a hypothesis crucial to American policy—crucial because any policy involves implicit acceptance or rejection of it...

...What, then, about the "managerial class," whose emergence is expected to be so fraught with historical meaning...

...Indeed, we are very much in the dark about the validity of the central proposition on which this superstructure of interpretation reposes— namely, that the structure of Soviet society is becoming more like our own each year...

...The final section looks at the larger issues relevant to policy thinking about cold war and competitive coexistence...

...A Skeptical Tory...

...Who has demonstrated that Moscow really is more conservative than Peking— on what issues...

...Granick then takes us on a guided tour of the Soviet managerial elite: their composition and recruitment, their problems and powers, their "style...

...Accordingly, the hypothesis that urban industrial maturation must historically force a stable conservative polity upon the Russians proves to be a slender reed...

...Part V asks "Who Runs The Business...

...The nature of these two large-scale internal-market economies is such that "neither American trade with Russia, nor competition with her in the markets of other countries, is likely to have much effect toward either a permanent improvement or worsening of our mutual relations...

...In this case, since the hypothesis can only be ignored at our peril, far better that it be made explicit and Granick has done just that...

...My colleague W. W. Rostow has shown, for example, that the "drive to maturity" involves a sequence of choices between military and welfare priorities that deeply modify the ultimate shape of the mature society...

...His book is subtitled "A Study of the Organization Man in Russian Industry" and his first chapter poses the question directly: "Brothers Under The Skin...

...and Granick explains the "circle of control" which involves the clash between Commissar and Party Secretary, the participation of trade-unions, both immature and overripe, and informal groups...

...The American policy of containment—of buying time until Russia matures—makes good sense on the hypothesis that a mature Russia must be much like a mature America, i.e., relatively stable, conservative, peaceable...

...Is it...

...Author, "The Passing of Traditional Society" ACCORDING TO ONE theory of history now current, the evolution of urban industrial society is a homogenizing process: Countries of varied climate and culture, ideology and religion, traditions and institutions tend—once they have achieved industrial maturity—to evolve in similar, even identical fashion...

...Such trade and competition are essentially irrelevant to the basic political issues which divide the world...

...Here, says Granick, the answer is no...

...Part II exhibits the "Managers in their Formative Years" by giving data on their ancestors, education and first jobs...

...His devotion to the evidence, his lucid exegesis, his considered judgment give importance to his conclusion that the hypothesis must be rejected—at least in its currently fashionable form...

...The several efforts to confront this question, as shown by Daniel Bell's notable essay, "Ten Theories in Search of Reality," have gone wide of the mark...

...Part III, on "The Manager's Way of Life," covers standard of living and the symptomatology of ulcers, bonuses, job security and upward mobility...

...His next chapter disposes of the principal American stereotypes about the Soviet economy and its management—e.g., "Everyone knows that Russian managers have no authority and all decisions are made at the top"—by judiciously differentiating the "truths and canards" they contain...

...Certain recurrent symptoms in the present conduct of international politics—notably the alleged anxiety of conservative Moscow over radical Peking—are adduced as evidence to support the hypothesis...

...But this is hardly relevant...