Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 14 – The new Putin
nomenklatura now faces exactly the same problem, that of transferring power and
property formally from fathers to sons, the old Soviet one did and tried unsuccessfully
to solve by organizing or at least not opposing the destruction of the Soviet
system in 1991, Moscow commentator Dmitry Milin says.
In Soviet times, he writes, the
nomenklatura consisted of “the narrow circle of people who had access to
political and economic power,” that is, those who controlled the offices of the
party state and economic enterprises (newizv.ru/article/general/14-10-2019/dmitriy-milin-novaya-nomenklatura-gotova-peredavat-vlast-i-dolzhnosti-po-nasledstvu).
There were only
two ways to join the nomenklatura, more rarely by displaying personal skills
but increasingly often, especially at the end, “thanks to ‘the ties’ of family
or friends.” It had its own sources of
supply of deficit goods and “stood above the law,” in that the authorities
closed their eyes to “crimes committed by members of the nomenklatura and their
children.”
There was just one thing which the
nomenklatura couldn’t do at least directly: it couldn’t “transfer Soviet
property by inheritance.” It could leave apartments or dachas or similar kinds
of possessions to them but not, at least not easily, its positions in the party
state or over this or that factory or industry.
Milin notes that those inclined to
conspiracy theories argue that the nomenklatura organized the collapse of the
Soviet system “with the goal of obtaining the right of private property to the means
of production of the USSR which belonged to them de facto but not de
jure.”
Most of the Soviet-era nomenklatura wasn’t
able to make the transition to a market economy and gain the power to leave it
to their offspring by inheritance; “but part of the Soviet nomenklatura was
able to do so,” and together with “the most cunning” business types in the
1990s seized the economy and enormous political power as the oligarchs.
With the arrival of Putin, these people
were “removed from politics” and “for a short moment, the link of power and
property appeared to have been broken in Russia,” a moment that lasted until “the
new Putin nomenklatura who formally did not own state property but ran it for
insane amounts of money began to take shape.”
“Families began to be formed who
transferred power and the right of distribution of state and not just private property
to their own children,” Milin continues. Among them are the Patrushevs, the
Fradkovs, the Rogozins, the Ivanovs, and the Arashkovs, as well as many lessert
figures at the regional or even city levels.
As in Soviet times, “the nomenklatura is ‘a
club’ closed to outsiders,” and the power vertical works to keep it so by
restricting who can run for election. But also as in Soviet times, the
nomenklatura as a class stands before exactly the same problem that confronted
its predecessors, the heritability of the property it controls but doesn’t own.
That and not who occupies the top job is the
real “transition” problem in Russia today.
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