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² Hough, Jerry F., “The Brezhnev Era: The Man and the System,” Problems of Communism, XXV (March-April 1976), 1–17Google Scholar, at 14.

³ For the two major variants, see Fainsod, Merle, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Friedrich, Carl J. and Brzezinski, Zbigniew K., Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

⁴ Conquest, Robert, Power and Policy in the USSR (New York: St. Martin's, 1961)Google Scholar; Linden, Carl, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

⁵ Ross, Dennis, “Coalition Maintenance in the Soviet Union,” World Politics, XXXII (January 1980), 258–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ On the subject of succession, see Hodnett, Grey, “Soviet Succession Contingencies,” Problems of Communism, XXIV (March-April 1975), 1–21Google Scholar; Rush, Myron, “The Problem of Succession,” in Wesson, Robert, ed., The Soviet Union: Looking to the 1980s (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 177–89Google Scholar; Breslauer, George W., “Political Succession and the Soviet Policy Agenda,” Problems of Communism, XXIX (May-June 1980), 34–52Google Scholar. Two major recent studies of succession are Bialer, Seweryn, Stalin's Successors: Leadership, Stability, and Change in the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar, and Hough, Jerry F., Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1980)Google Scholar. Valerie Bunce has made very effective use of political economy approaches in “Elite Succession, Petrification, and Policy Innovation in Communist States: An Empirical Assessment,” Comparative Political Studies, IX (April 1976), 3–39Google Scholar, and “The Succession Connection: Policy Cycles and Political Change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 74 (December 1980), 966–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Enumerated in Paige (fn. 1), 153, and discussed throughout the book.

⁸ For example: Bialer, Seweryn, “The Soviet Political Elite and Internal Development in the USSR,” in Griffith, William E., ed., The Soviet Empire: Expansion and Detente: Critical Choices for Americans (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1976), 25–55Google Scholar, at 31! Breslauer, George W., “On the Adaptability of Soviet Welfare State Authoritarianism,” in Ryavec, Karl W., ed., Soviet Society and the Communist Party (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978), 3–25Google Scholar, at 25; Hodnett (fn. 6), 13.

⁹ Pravda, June 26, 1979. All translations are by the author.

¹⁰ Pravda, March 16, 1953.

¹¹ See Pravda, December 5, 1976, May 12, 1978, and June 22, 1979, for examples; December 13, 1970, is an instance when only the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers are mentioned.

¹² Daniels, Robert V., “Office-Holding and Elite Status,” in Cocks, Paul and others, eds., The Dynamics, of Soviet Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976)Google Scholar, notes 1 and 2, cites the major studies in which the Central Committee is equated to the elite.

¹³ Ibid., 91.

¹⁴ Ross (fn. 5), 262.

¹⁵ Welsh, William A., Leaders and Elites (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979), 15–21Google Scholar, discusses criteria for differentiating the two.

¹⁶ Jennings, , Leadership and Isolation: A Study of Personality in Inter-Personal Relations, 2d ed. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1950), 205Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Barghoom, Frederick C., “Trends in Top Political Leadership in the USSR,” in Farrell, R. Barry, ed., Political Leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Chicago: Aldine, 1970), 61–87Google Scholar, at 77.

¹⁸ Hage, Jerald and Dewar, Robert, “Elite Values versus Organizational Structure in Predicting Innovation,” Administrative Science Quarterly, XVIII (September 1973), 279–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 282.

¹⁹ Linden (fn. 4).

²⁰ Brzezinski, Zbigniew K., “The Soviet Political System: Transformation or Degeneration?” in Brzezinski, , ed., Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 1–34Google Scholar.

²¹ Brown, Archie, “Political Developments: Some Conclusions and an Interpretation,” in Brown, Archie and Kaser, Michael, eds., The Soviet Union Since the Fall of Khrushchev (London: Macmillan, 1975), 218–75Google Scholar, at 234; Tatu, Michel, Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev to Kosygin (New York: Viking, 1970), 528Google Scholar.

²² Yanov, Alexander, Detente After Brezhnev: The Domestic Roots of Soviet Foreign Policy (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1977), 40Google Scholar.

²³ Breslauer (fn. 8) .

²⁴ Hough (fn. 2), 5–8. Archie Brown analyzes Brezhnev's leadership at length in “The Power of the General Secretary of the CPSU,” in Rigby, T. H. and others, eds., Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR: Essays Dedicated to Leonard Schapiro (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), 135–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ T h e differences are discussed in Burns (fn. 1), 141–254, 257–397.

²⁶ Cocks, “The Policy Process and Bureaucratic Politics,” in Cocks (fn. 12), 156–78, at 168.

²⁷ Lindblom, , Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 121Google Scholar.

²⁸ Meyer, , “Authority in Communist Political Systems,” in Edinger, Lewis J., ed., Political Leadership in Industrialized Societies (New York: Wiley, 1967), 84–107, at 103–7Google Scholar.

²⁹ Mills, Richard M., “Issues and Leadership in Soviet Politics,” in Dirscherl, Denis, ed., The New Russia: Communism in Evolution (Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum, 1968), 1–12Google Scholar, at 10; Barghoorn (fn. 17), 67; Shulman, Marshall, “SALT and the Soviet Union,” in Willrich, Mason and Rhinelander, John B., eds., SALT: The Moscow Agreements and Beyond (New York: Free Press, 1974), 101–21Google Scholar, at 108; Brown (fn. 21), 244; Blackwell, Robert E. Jr., “Cadres Policy in the Brezhnev Era,” Problems of Communism, XXVIII (March-April 1979), 29–42, at 38Google Scholar.

³⁰ Irving Janis has developed some interesting perspectives on these phenomena in his Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), esp. 2–135Google Scholar.

³¹ Verba, Sidney, Small Groups and Political Behavior: A Study of Leadership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 19Google Scholar.

³² Mintzberg, , The Nature of Managerial Work (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 54–99Google Scholar. The caution expressed by the mutatis mutandis in the text is not only meant to qualify the ensuing discussion. It is also intended to signal the author's implicit recognition of some complex epistemological and methodological problems in the study of Soviet politics which revolve around the related questions of whether the Soviet system is or is not best described as totalitarian, and whether it is illuminating or deceptive to apply to the study of Soviet politics the conventional techniques of comparative political analysis one would use in analyzing the politics of most other states. Regarding the study of the Soviet leadership in its recent and current manifestations, it is clear that the totalitarian paradigm (the epistemological question) and Kremlinological research techniques (the methodological question) “find” too few relevant data and restrict the scope of inquiry too severely. We pay too high a price in lost analytical opportunities by ignoring the techniques employed in comparative political analysis. Moreover, it is necessary to go beyond those techniques and consider the substantial insights found in the literature on management. The Soviets themselves are the first to claim that their system is unique and therefore cannot be compared to any other that currently exists; it would be misleading for us to take them at their word.

³³ Reddin, , Managerial Effectiveness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 5–6Google Scholar. The extreme pressure upon the Soviet leaders to increase profits (an effectiveness consideration, according to Reddin) is illustrated in Brezhnev's unusual exhortation to the Central Committee in December 1973: “All of us, both at the center and in the localities, must study that complex art of making money. There is nothing to be ashamed of here, because it is the people's money which is involved.” Brezhnev, Leonid I., Voprosy upravleniia ekonomikoi razvitogo sotsialisticheskpgo obshchestva. Rechi, doklady, vystupleniia [Problems of Managing the Economy of a Developed Socialist Society. Speeches, Reports, Addresses] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1976), 413Google Scholar.

³⁴ Breslauer (fn. 8).

³⁵ Rigby, T. H., “The Soviet Leadership: Towards a Self-Stabilizing Oligarchy,” Soviet Studies, XXII (October 1970), 167–91, at 185CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁷ Rigby (fn. 35), 174.

³⁸ Reddin (fn. 33), 139–56, 253–71.

³⁹ See, e.g., Pravda, February 20, 1973, for Podgorny's remarks.

⁴⁰ Hough (fn. 2), 5–6, is among the few who have used the speeches for extracting such materials.

⁴¹ Pravda, December 20, 1976.

⁴² Bowers, David G. and Seashore, Stanley E., “Predicting Organizational Effectiveness with a Four-Factor Theory of Leadership,” Administrative Science Quarterly, XI (no. 2, 1966–1967), 238–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ See Mills (fn. 29).

⁴⁴ Brezhnev (fn. 33), throughout, contains the speeches that are most relevant to this study's concerns.

⁴⁵ See Pravda, April 3, 1973, and July 29, 1979.

⁴⁶ Pravda, April 3, 1973.

⁴⁷ Brezhnev (fn. 33), 468–78. Major excerpts from this very interesting speech are in “L. I. Brezhnev: From a Speech to a Meeting of the USSR Council of Ministers, October 1, 1974,” Soviet Law and Government, XVII (Fall 1978), 3–17Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Pravda, November 28, 1979.

⁴⁹ tenure in office, votes of no-confidence by the Central Committee, and even a multiparty system—however remote they may seem in practical terms at present.

⁵⁰ Hammer, Darrel P., “Brezhnev and the Communist Party,” Soviet Union/Union Sovietique, II (No. 1, 1975), 1–21, at 1Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Verba (fn. 31), 186–201.

⁵² Blackwell (fn. 29) discusses this matter in detail.

⁵³ Hough, Jerry F. and Fainsod, Merle, How the Soviet Union Is Governed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 144–46Google Scholar, 474–79. The circular flow of power theory posits that, in the Stalin and Khrushchev eras, the General Secretary's power derived from his authority to nominate, appoint, or confirm the selection of key party officials at all levels. In particular, the local and regional party officials who owed their jobs to the General Secretary would see to it that the delegates selected to attend the Party Congress would be sure to vote for the General Secretary's list of Central Committee nominees. The Central Committee, formed in this fashion, could then be counted upon to approve the General Secretary's nominees for Politburo membership. Conversely, they would support the General Secretary's proposals to expel individual Politburo or Central Committee members who had lost the confidence of, or were dangerous to, the General Secretary. Although this theory does explain much about Soviet politics, the fact that the Central Committee voted Khrushchev out of office in 1964 limits the theory's explanatory power. In addition, in the Brezhnev era the gigantic and complex process of political patronage (the theory's chief empirical referent) has been modified because of a lower rate of turnover of key personnel at all levels.

⁵⁴ See the articles “The Concept of Consensus” by Edward Shils and “The Study of Consensus” by Lipsitz, Lewis in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, III (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968), 260–66Google Scholar and 266–67, respectively. See also Partridge, P. H., Consent and Consensus (London: Pall Mall, 1971), 71–119Google Scholar, and Birnbaum, Pierre and others, eds., Democracy, Consensus and Social Contract (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1978), 173–202Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ In a corporatist system, the political leadership, the bureaucracy, and the economically and politically powerful forces in society strive to maintain a high level of unity, stability, and control by restricting interest aggregation and articulation to essentially one officially sanctioned organization per functional interest group. That organization is required to operate within fairly narrowly circumscribed limits in performing its function of representing the group's interests, and the organization's processes of leadership selection are controlled by the political leadership or by its proxies. These matters are discussed by Bunce, Valerie and Echols, John M. III, “Soviet Politics in the Brezhnev Era: ‘Pluralism’ or ‘Corporatism’?” in Kelley, Donald R., ed., Soviet Politics in the Brezhnev Era (New York: Praeger, 1980), 1–26Google Scholar. The most advanced theoretical discussions of corporatism derive from the study of Latin American politics. The best entry into the issues and literature is in Collier, Ruth Berins and Collier, David, “Inducements versus Constraints: Disaggregating ‘Corporatism,’“ American Political Science Review, Vol. 73 (December 1979), 967–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The strongest case for applying the term pluralism to the Soviet Union (in the qualified sense of “institutional pluralism”) is elaborated by Hough, in Hough and Fainsod (fn. 53), 518–55, esp. 547–55. His justification is grounded more in an analysis of some as yet weakly developed, and weakly institutionalized, trends than in a description of characteristic, important, and longstanding patterns of decision-making interaction. Finally, it must be noted that the analytical and theoretical validity of the major pluralist approach in interpreting even American politics has been seriously questioned. See Garson, G. David, Group Theories of Politics (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1978)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ This suggestion can be made on the example of Barrington Moore's innovative predictions regarding alternative directions the Soviet political system might take; see his classic, Terror and Progress USSR: Some Sources of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 7, “Images of the Future,” 179–231.

⁵⁷ Stewart, Philip D., “Attitudes of Regional Soviet Political Leaders Toward Understanding the Potential for Change,” in Hermann, Margaret G., ed., A Psychological Examination of Political Leaders (New York: Free Press, 1977), 237–73Google Scholar, at 265–73. At the same time, the major countervailing force to elite differentiation ought to be noted: Robert G. Putnam has used the term “consensual elite,” meaning that the Soviet elite is possessed of a broad and deep ideological consensus distinguishing it from other elites that are more differentiated. See his The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 115–21Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Nagle, John D., System and Succession: The Social Bases of Political Elite Recruitment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), 183–226Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 210.

⁶⁰ Stewart (fn. 57). In spite of the difficulties associated with them, these methods are the best tools available to the researcher, given the impossibility of conducting surveys. See also Lodge, Milton C., Soviet Elite Attitudes Since Stalin (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1969)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Blackwell, Robert E. Jr., “Career Development in the Soviet Obkom Elite: A Conservative Trend,” Soviet Studies, XXIV (July 1972), 24–40, at 36–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁶³ Ibid., 417.

⁶⁴ Black, Cyril E., The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York: Harper & Row, Torchbook ed., 1967), 17Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Dimock, Marshall E., Administrative Vitality: The Conflict with Bureaucracy (New York: Harper Brothers, 1959), 103Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Lowenthal, Richard, “The Ruling Party in a Mature Society,” in Field, Mark G., ed., Social Consequences of Modernization in Communist Societies (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 81–118Google Scholar, at 90.

⁶⁷ Rigby (fn. 35), 167.

⁶⁸ Bunce (fn. 6).

⁶⁹ Hodnett (fn. 6).

⁷⁰ Breslauer (fn. 8), 25.

⁷¹ Hough and Fainsod (fn. 53), 479.

⁷² Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, “Soviet Politics: From the F u t u r e to the Past?” in Cocks (fn. 12), 337–51, at 351.

⁷³ Nagle (fn. 58), 211.

⁷⁴ Field, Mark G., “Soviet Society and Communist Party Controls: A Case of Constricted Development,” in Treadgold, Donald W., ed., Soviet and Chinese Communism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 185–211Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Brezhnev (fn. 33), 76, 141–42, 151, 270–71, 362, 365–66, 415. The salience of this issue is demonstrated in various contexts: see Bunce (fn. 6, 1976); Bunce and Echols (fn. 55), esp. 15–16; Breslauer (fn. 8) ; Breslauer, “Images of the Future and Lessons of the Past,” in Wesson (fn. 6), 191–204; and Ross (fn. 5), esp. 269–78.

⁷⁶ Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “Toward a Theory of Soviet Leadership Maintenance,” in Cocks (fn. 12), 51–76, at 76.

⁷⁷ Ross (fn. 5), 270–71. Bialer (fn. 6), 183–205, discusses legitimacy comprehensively.

⁷⁸ Regarding the first question, Soviet policy could go a good deal further in the direction of the Hungarian experience, but that has not happened so far. Resolution of this problem is contingent to a considerable extent upon solving the second question, which involves improving the qualifications of the functional elites through training, retraining, and replacement. This seems to be a prerequisite for accelerating the rate of incremental change in the system, a need that has been recognized by the leadership.

⁷⁹ Bialer, Seweryn has analyzed these problems comprehensively in “The Politics of Stringency in the USSR,” Problems of Communism, XXIX (May-June 1980), 19–33Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Paul Cocks has addressed this issue in passing, in his studies of Soviet discussions of organization theory and practice (fn. 26); see also Cocks, , “Retooling the Directed Society: Administrative Modernization and Developed Socialism,” in Triska, Jan F. and Cocks, Paul M., eds., Political Development in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1977), 53–92Google Scholar, and Cocks, , “Rethinking the Organizational Weapon: The Soviet System in a Systems Age,” World Politics, XXXII (January 1980), 228–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.