Nomenklatura

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Part of the Politics series on Communism

History of communism Schools of communism Marxism · Leninism Left communism Trotskyism · Autonomist Marxism Eurocommunism · Maoism Council communism Anarchist communism Christian communism Luxemburgism Political Parties Communist International World Communist Movement International Communist Current Communist Workers International Fourth International States The Soviet Union People's Republic of China Cuba · Vietnam Laos · North Korea Related subjects Socialism Capitalism · Cold War Religious communism New Left · Planned economy Historical materialism Marxist philosophy Left communism Democratic centralism Anti-communism Notable Communists Karl Marx · Friedrich Engels Vladimir Lenin · Leon Trotsky Rosa Luxemburg · Anton Pannekoek Joseph Stalin · Mao Zedong Josip Broz Tito · Che Guevara Fidel Castro · Georg Lukács Antonio Gramsci · Antonio Negri

Communism Portal This box: view • talk • edit

The nomenklatura were a small, élite subset of the general population of Party members in the Soviet Union, having more authority and claiming higher privileges as precisely the same kind of ruling class which Communist doctrine denounced in the "Capitalist" West. Trotskyists acknowledged this distinction, although they preferred the term caste rather than class (see New class).

[edit] Etymology

The Russian term nomenklatura (Russian: номенклату́ра IPA: [nəmʲɪnklʌˈturə]) derived from the Latin nomenclatura meaning a list of names. It was originally the list of powerful positions or jobs whose occupants needed to be approved by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. By extension or metonymy, the term started to be used figuratively, to designate people who effectively occupied these positions^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Description

The nomenklatura were a small, élite subset of the general population of Party members, which was essentially composed of blue-collar workers. The nomenklatura system was a self appointed group running the administration of a country of more than 300 million people^{[citation needed]}. It allowed the Party to control through stringent procedures the selection of candidates for administrative positions.

The nomenklatura (the list) was multi-level; filling a more important position required a higher level of approval in the Party hierarchy.

The nomenklatura covered all kinds of jobs, technical or not; a theater manager would require as much approval as an industrial one (if not more, since producing content for mass viewing was always of fundamental concern for the Party; such institutions always used censors for reviewing and approving content before release).

The nomenklatura did not always need to be Communist Party members, notably in satellite countries which sometimes had additional puppet parties, but the Party had to be convinced that they were reliable and trustworthy. Once a non-member had been promoted, he was often (gently) invited to join the Party, to secure his promotion.

Nomenklatura should not be confused with apparatchiks or the party concrete of the Communist regimes, or Party officials in general. For example, in a state-owned factory, top managers would obviously be nomenklatura and would have to be approved by the Party, but Party officials working at the factory were a separate and independent hierarchy, and they could all be just simple workers. The Party secretary would report to the director as an employee, but the director would report to the secretary as an ordinary Party member. However, important managers usually belonged to higher Party levels than the local cell.

Milovan Djilas wrote of the nomenklatura as the "New class", and it was widely seen (and resented) by ordinary citizens as a bureaucratic élite that enjoyed special privileges and had simply supplanted the earlier wealthy capitalist élites.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Evolution

After the fall of the Communist regimes in central and eastern Europe, the political apparatus that kept the nomenklatura in their positions collapsed with it. Most of the nomenklatura retained their administrative positions. Some were able to use their influence to acquire positions in the new government or secure lucrative positions in formerly state-owned industries.^{[citation needed]}

This evolution can be explained by noticing that the nomenklatura were basically the executives of communist regimes, people having:

• stronger than average managerial abilities
• ambition to pursue a professional career, which at some point required being part of the nomenklatura
• a lot of respect versus hierarchiest
• advanced networking skills, as goods and supplies had to be fought for, be it toilet paper or industrial supplies for a factory. This required lots of interpersonal communication.

Outside of the nomenklatura were only basic jobs or people lacking the above abilities. Therefore, it was quite natural for the nomenklatura to adapt to post-communist regimes, because it consisted in pursuing the same objectives without the need to defend a specific ideology.

In countries other than the Soviet Union where creating small private businesses was allowed, the business oligarchy phenomenon is weaker.