Patronage and Politics in the USSRHow do Soviet politicians rise to power? How are national and regional regimes formed? How are conflicting political interests brought together as policies are developed in the Soviet Union? In Patronage and Politics in the USSR, first published in 1991, Professor John Willerton offers major insights into the patronage networks that have dominated elite mobility, regime formation, and governance in the Soviet Union during the past twenty-five years. Using the biographical and career details of over two thousand national leaders and regional officials in Azerbaijan and Lithuania, John Willerton traces the patron-client relations underlying recruitment, mobility, and policymaking. He explores the strategies of power consolidation and coalition building used by Soviet chief executives since 1964 as well as the institutional links and policy outcomes that have resulted from network politics. The author also assesses the manner and extent to which leaders in politically stable and less stable settings, spanning different national cultural contexts, have relied upon patronage networks to consolidate power and to govern. Finally, Professor Willerton explores how, in a period of dramatic change, patron-client networks may have given way to institutionalised interest groups and political parties. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 The elite patronage and Soviet politics | 5 |
2 Networks and coalition building in the Brezhnev period | 42 |
3 Patronage and the Brezhnev policy program | 80 |
4 Patronage Gorbachev and the period of reform | 118 |
5 Patronage and regime formation in Lithuania | 157 |
6 Azerbaidzhan and the Aliev network | 191 |
7 The logic of patronage in changing societies | 223 |
Appendix | 242 |
Notes | 249 |
| 283 | |
| 289 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
advance agricultural Akhundov Aliev Andropov associates assumed Azerbaidzhani Bakinsky Rabochy Baku behavior Brezhnev network Brezhnev period Brezhnev program Brezhnev protégés bureaucracy Buro cadres career CC departments CC Plenum CC/CAC clientelistic Council of Ministers CPSU critical Deputy developed Dnepropetrovsk economic election speeches entourage extended network Gorbachev governing coalition Grishkiavichus head hierarchy identified important incumbents industry influence institutional interests Khrushchev Kirilenko Komsomol Kosygin leadership changes Lithuanian membership mobility Moscow Nakhichevan network members nomenklatura nonclients norms Obkom officials organizational party apparatus party first secretaries party leader party Secretary patron-client patronage networks patrons perestroika personnel Podgorny policy program Politburo Politburo and Secretariat political elite politicians positions power consolidation Pravda priority protégés protégés and clients recruitment reform regime formation regional party organizations republic party republic's role RSFSR Sajudis Second Secretary sector senior Snechkus Soviet political Soviet system Soviet Union Stalin Supreme Soviet Suslov tenure turnover Ukraine USSR Vilnius