Political élites in the USSR : central leaders and local cadres from Lenin to Gorbachev /

This book consists of seven previously published essays, an unpublished section of Rigby's PhD dissertation, and a new essay on Gorbachev. The focus is the character and internal relations of the Soviet ruling bureaucracy. The essays constitute a unified whole; the dominant theme that holds them together is Rigby's description and analysis of the origins, development, and operation of the informal and formal aspects of the nomenklatura system. A concluding essay explores the challenges that the nomenklatura and perestroika pose for each other. This is a timely volume for two reasons. It brings together a coherent body of writings by one of the foremost Sovietologists of our time; in addition, an understanding of the Soviet elite from the perspective of the system of recruitment and administration of elite personnel provides insight into one of the strongest sources of resistance to major reform in the Soviet Union. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -D. V. Schwartz, University of Toronto