Milovan Dzhilas’ Classic ‘The New Class’ Precisely Describes the Political and Administrative Elite of Post-Soviet Russia, Expert on Russian Regions Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 1 – After Yugoslav communist leader and theorist Milovan Dzhilas published his description of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union in his 1957 classic, The New Class, many accepted his ideas and used them to describe and analyze the Soviet system. Now, an expert on Russian regions argues that Dzhilas’ ideas apply to post-Soviet Russia as well.
    Dmitry Loboyko, the sociologist who heads Samara’s Center for Regional Research, made that argument in the Russian journal Sotsiologiya at the end of last year (https://regional.expert/science_articles/novyii%CC%86-klass-milovana-dzhilasa-kak-opisatelnaya-model-politiko-administrativnoi%CC%86-elityi.pdf) and has reposted it on his organization’s web page (regional.expert/«novyij-klass»-milovana-dzhilasa-kak-opisatelnaya-model-politiko-administrativnoj-elityi-postsovetskoj-rossii.html).
    Dzhilas argued that the rulers of the Soviet Union were best understood as a class rather than as an administrative category and behaved in much the same way that ruling classes always do, extracted resources for themselves, taking them away from others, and ultimately sparking revolutionary strivings among the latter.
    What is striking about Loboyko’s article is that he applies Dzhilas’ thinking not just to the USSR but to the Russian Federation since 1991 and that this argument is being put forward not by someone in Moscow but by a scholar in the regions  who specializes in the ways in which society and government work beyond the ring road.