THE SOVIET UNION

By Jerry Hough

promoting a necessary administrative modernization.

As a result of the elections, seasoned members of the Central Committee continue to occupy high political and administrative positions with the result that the most powerful jobs in the Soviet Union remain largely in the hands of men in their fifties with long years of party administrative experience. Yet, the elections to the republican central committees in 1966 show that an increasing number of new, presumably younger men have moved into important positions at the lower levels. In a very meaningful way these new men seem to comprise a different "generation" from their immediate superiors-a generation with a rather different set of experiences and perspectives. Unless the Soviet system becomes quite rigid-and there is still little

reasons to assume that it will-it is by the perspectives and attitudes of this new generation that the future of Russia is likely to be shaped.

Continuity in Central Personnel

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When one compares the composition of the allUnion Central Committee of the CPSU selected in 1966 with that named in 1961, the impression is one of great stability in membership. In 1961 there were 175 full members of the Central Committee, nine of whom had died by early 1966. Of the remaining 166 members, 83 percent were named to the 1966 Central Committee. This percentage would be even higher if we exclude Nikita Khrushchev, Alexei Adzhubei, and a few other men associated very closely with the deposed leader. In contrast, less than 50 percent of the still living full members of the 1956 Central Committee were re-elected to the Central Committee in 1961.

Indeed, the continuity in certain key categories of personnel is quite remarkable, given the cataclysmic organizational and political changes that have occurred since 1961. Over 70 percent of the obkom first secretaries on the 1966 Central Committee and Auditing Commission were already at that level in the hierarchy in the fall of 1961, and another 15 percent of them had become obkom first secretaries by the summer of 1963. Again it is interesting to recall that less than one-third of the obkom secretaries on the 1961 committees had reached that level at the time of the 20th Party Congress in 1956.

Similarly, if we examine the biographies of the 36 USSR ministers in charge of industry, construction, and transportation in 1966, we find that 14 of them had been ministers in 1957 (three of them since 1940) and that an additional 13 had reached the deputy minister level by that time (at least six in the Stalin period). Of the other ministers in 1966, six had been plant directors in the 1940's while a seventh had been named obkom first secretary in 1953. Over half of all these men have more than 20 years' experience as plant directors or higher, and at least another 25 percent have over 15 years' experience at this level.

Of course, no group of officials is impervious

1 Through the addition of 20 full memberships to the Central Committee, the Soviet leadership did fulfill the old statutory requirement of 25 percent "renewal": fully 25.1 percent of the present voting members were newly elected in 1966. However, the percentage of old members removed was much smaller.

to change. The more stable the personnel, the more susceptible the administrative system is to the inevitable process of aging. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the most notable developments of the last five years has been the aging of the Soviet top administrative elite. The average age of the full members of the Central Committee increased from 49 in 1952 to 51 in 1956, 52 in 1961, and 56 in 1966. As the accompanying chart on page 20 indicates, this increase in average age reflects the aging of nearly all types of key administrative personnel.

Soviet leaders have asserted that stability among the administrative elite is the result of a conscious policy and that it is associated with the general goal of ensuring "objectivity" and "balance" in decisionmaking. According to the first secretary of the Krasnodar kraikom, "in the last year and a half the Central Committee has made a very important turn (povorot) in its work with personnel and has ended [a policy of] mass transfers (perestanovak).2 Leonid Brezhnev himself spoke at the Congress about "the unjustified transferring and replacing of personnel" which had taken place earlier.3

Others have explicitly linked this policy with a desire for more experienced administrators. While some officials may still speak of the desirability of training younger personnel, they now emphasize that this requires the presence of older colleagues. In the words of N. A. Shchelokov, formerly second secretary of the Moldavian Central Committee and as of September 1966 USSR Minister of Public Order, (who incidentally had been a raikom secretary in Dnepropetrovsk in 1938 and chairman of the gorispolkom from 1939 to 1941):

Adaptability in Question

While age and experience may be indispensable for knowledgeable decisions, there comes a point when they may deaden a man's ability to respond creatively to new circumstances. An institution whose personnel policy emphasizes these attributes must face up to the problem of ensuring sufficient change in personnel to prevent bureaucratic stagnation. A party dedicated to the transformation of society must be particularly alert to this danger.

As Professor John Armstrong has suggested, personnel stability is already threatening the efficiency of the Soviet administrative system. Contending that the "obkom secretaries have probably passed their primes in terms of the extremely diverse and complex supervisory duties confronting them," Armstrong concludes: "Probably the Soviet system as a whole will have to pay for the situation by reduced industrial efficiency for several years to come."

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6 John A. Armstrong, "Party Bifurcation and Elite Interests," Soviet Studies, Vol. XVII, No. 4, April 1966, p. 428.

On the surface, at least, this judgment about the obkom first secretaries may be unduly harsh. As a result of the substantial purge of the party apparatus in 1960-61, the provincial party secretaries remain fairly young by Western standards, and the level of their technical competence has risen considerably during the last decade. As we shall see later, the first secretaries in the industrialized regions continue to be men with very considerable industrial experience.

The problem of the adaptability of industrial and military administrators to modern exigencies, however, appears to be quite serious. A 57-year-old industrial administrator may not be considered unduly old in comparison with industrial executives

in the US and elsewhere. Yet the Soviet administrators, over three-fourths of whom had become plant directors during the Stalin period, may well be unwilling or psychologically unable to promote the radically different relationship between ministry and plant essential to effective modernization.

The situation in the Ministry of Defense is even more striking. The top military official in the Ministry, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, for example, became a soldier during World War I, and the

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heads of the Air Force and the strategic rocket forces were both in uniform prior to 1920. In fact, with one exception all of the deputy ministers of defense entered the armed forces by 1920 and presumably fought either in World War I or in the Civil War.

The failure to rejuvenate both the industrial and military officialdom is indeed striking considering the particular demands of innovation in these areas. One cannot easily avoid the suspicion that many of the leaders fear any sizable shake up of the Central Committee on the grounds that it would menace collective leadership and the regime's present, cautious policy based on compromise and negotiation.

Such a fear is not an idle one. Because of the crucial role of the secretariat in personnel selection, members of the Central Committee do not have any really independent power base. Rather they are men whose power rests upon a bureaucratic position to which they have no permanent claim and whose tenure in that position has-in the past at leastdepended on their satisfying their superiors, particularly those in the secretariat. For this reason the Soviet political system has always been particularly susceptible to the creation by the First Secretary of a personal political machine within the Central Committee. If there is a fairly substantial turnover among the country's top administrators, the accompanying changes in Central Committee membership may destroy the base for any stable collective leadership.

Yet, the leadership faces a serious dilemma. If this turnover does not occur, administrative dynamism and adaptability will be difficult to maintain. If the leadership tries to resolve the dilemma by parceling out the power of personnel selection to several individuals representing either key factions, institutional hierarchies, or territorial party organizations, then it will be extremely difficult to avoid widespread pressure for change in the basic political system itself. It is a dilemma which must be faced in the next five years-a dilemma which is of basic political importance in the present period.

Harbingers of Change?

If we turn our attention from the level of officials represented in the all-Union Central Committee to the men just below this administrative level, we find much less stability.

In particular, the rates of turnover in the republican central committees stand in marked contrast to those in the center. While the percentage

of renewal of all-Union Central Committee members required by the Party Rules (25 percent) was barely met, the turnover required for the republican central committees (33 percent) was substantially exceeded. In the Ukraine over 40 percent of the full members of the 1961 central committee were not reelected in 1966, in Belorussia over 45 percent, and in Uzbekistan over 50 percent. In the three smaller republics studied-Latvia, Georgia, and Moldavia -(where there were intervening Party Congresses in 1963 or 1964) 55-60 percent of the 1961 members were removed by 1966.

Some of this turnover may be attributed to the rotation of military personnel outside the republic in question and to changes in the worker-peasant members, but the 1961 members who were party officials and republican administrators have also been removed at a rather high rate. In the three large republics over 40 percent of these men were not re-elected, in the three small republics over 50 percent.

In certain key categories of republican party officials the turnover is even greater than a study of central committee membership indicates. While 11 of the 14 republican first secretaries in 1966 held the same posts in 1961 (and two of those removed were promoted to central posts conferring Politburo membership), 38 of the other 56 secretaries have been replaced in the last five years, 17 of them in the post-Khrushchev period. In a number of the republics all of the heads of the departments of the central committees were replaced, while in others (the Ukraine excepted) the turnover approached 100 percent.

Not all of these party officials have been removed from prominent positions. Some (particularly among the second secretaries) have been transferred to responsible posts outside their respective republics, others have been given equally important jobs within the republics. However, a substantial proportion of the 1961 party officials have been demoted, and in any case a large number of new men have been promoted to top party posts.

Only incomplete information is available on the more junior posts at the center or in the RSFSR. but there is an interesting contrast at high levels within the armed forces. Over half of the deputy ministers of defense in 1961 were retained in their posts in 1966, and the "new" deputy ministers have backgrounds almost identical to their predecessors. Among the commanders of the 18 military districts, however, the turnover rate is over 80 percent. Moreover, it is reasonably clear that the new commanders are over five years younger than

taining administrative efficiency, and it does create a reservoir of new men eager to move up in the hierarchy and with the experience necessary to do so. It seems highly probable, therefore, that if the ambitious goals of the leadership are not realized, there will be strong pressure for a "renewal" of more senior central and regional personnel. It would be rash indeed to assume that no one on the Politburo is capable of taking advantage of these pressures.

The New Generation

A series of questions inevitably arises whenever personnel turnover occurs within a political system, particularly in the case of the Soviet Union. Is there any change in the preparation and career patterns of the new men which would suggest that the leadership is demanding new skills for certain positions or is even transforming the nature of these positions themselves? Is there any change in life pattern which would suggest that the younger men constitute a "new generation" with perspectives and policy views different from their predecessors? In particular, are there any such younger men with new ideals among the officials of the party itself?

Biographical data on the recently promoted officials is not sufficiently complete to permit a precise analysis of changes in the background of all the party secretaries. However, certain facts about their education and experience are ascertainable.

In the first place, despite Soviet statements which might (erroneously) be read to imply a withdrawal of the party apparatus from detailed supervision of industry, the party committees continue to be staffed by men with very considerable technical competence. For example, D. F. Ustinov, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Economy from its creation in 1963 until mid-1965 and an industrial minister since 1941, and M. E. Solomentsov, the former chairman of the Cheliabinsk Sovnarkhoz, were named secretaries of the Central Committee. In the Ukraine a former plant manager (P. E. Shelest) remains the first secretary of the republican central committee.

Рисунок Ю. ЧЕРЕПАНОВА

Parkinson's Law, Soviet Style

-"Maybe you could find me a folding chair?"

-Krokodil (Moscow), Sept. 20, 1965.

On an average the 1961 commanders were born in 1903. The year of birth of nine of the 1966 commanders averages 1906. However, the other nine commanders have just been promoted to this level of the hierarchy, and it is highly probable that they are at least as young as the three commanders born 1909-1912. If so (and this estimate seems conservative), the generalization about the characteristic of the group is accurate. I have included as military districts the groups in Eastern Europe and the GDR.