1. Although renamed the Presidium between 1952 and 1966, throughout this article I shall refer to this body as the Politburo.

2. Somewhat contrary to common practice, the term “member” as used here includes both full and candidate members.

3. Article 38 of the 1961 party statutes, as amended, says only “The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union elects a Politburo.”

4. On the Central Committee, however, see Robert V. Daniels, “Office Holding and Elite Status: The Central Committee of the CPSU,” in Paul Cocks, Robert V. Daniels, and Nancy Whittier Heer, eds., The Dynamics of Soviet Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 77-95. See also “Kto imeet ‘pravo’ na izbranie v rukovodiashchie organy partii na 24 S” ezde KPSS?,” Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, no. 77/71, February 25, 1971.

5. See, among others, Robert Conquest, Poiver and Policy in the U.S.S.R. (New York, 1962) ; Linden, Carl A., Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, 1957-1964 (Baltimore, 1966)Google Scholar ; Ploss, Sidney I., Conflict and Decision-Making in Soviet Russia (Princeton, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Michel, Tatu, Power in the Kremlin (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

6. See Frederic, Fleron, “Representation of Career Types in the Soviet Political Leadership,” in Farrell, R. Barry, ed., Political Leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Chicago, 1970), pp. 108–39, Google Scholar and sources cited therein. See also Skilling, H. Gordon, “Group Conflict in Soviet Politics: Some Conclusions,” in Skilling, H. Gordon and Griffiths, Franklyn, eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton, 1971), p. 379–416.Google Scholar

7. See, for example, Jerome M., Gilison, “New Factors of Stability in Soviet Collective Leadership,” World Politics, 19, no. 4 (July 1967): 563–81 Google Scholar; T. H., Rigby, “The Soviet Leadership: Towards a Self-Stabilizing Oligarchy,” Soviet Studies, 22, no. 2 (October 1970): 167–91 Google Scholar; G rey, Hodnett, “Succession Contingencies in the Soviet Union,” Problems of Communism, 24, no. 2 (March-April 1975): 1–21 Google Scholar; Jerry F., Hough, “The Soviet System: Petrification or Pluralism?,” Problems of Communism, 21, no. 2 (March-April 1972): 25–45 Google Scholar; and Seweryn, Bialer, “The Soviet Political Elite and Internal Developments in the USSR,” in Griffith, William E., ed., The Soviet Empire: Expansion and Detente (Lexington, Mass., 1976), pp. 25–55.Google Scholar

8. Examples include Fleron, Frederic J. Jr., “System Attributes and Career Attributes: The Soviet Political Leadership System, 1952 to 1965,” in Beck, Carl et al., eds., Comparative Communist Political Leadership (New York, 1973), pp. 43–85 Google Scholar; George, Fischer, The Soviet System and Modern Society (New York, 1968)Google Scholar ; and Kenneth N. Ciboski, “Recruitment to the Soviet Politburo” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1971) ; and Kenneth N., Ciboski, “Ambition Theory and Candidate Members of the Soviet Politburo,” Journal of Politics, 36, no. 1 (February 1974): 172–83.Google Scholar

9. Daniels argues that positions are an entirely independent variable in the composition of the Central Committee: “It is therefore possible to view the Central Committee as a well-defined and quite stable set of leading job slots whose occupants enjoy the elite status conferred by Central Committee membership as long as and only as long as they occupy their respective offices” (Daniels, “Office Holding and Elite Status,” p. 78; emphasis added). Nothing quite so definitive can be said about the Politburo.

10. The reader should understand from the outset that “entitlement” connotes at most a practice or working understanding rather than a concrete and formal rule, let alone a legal (even in party terms) right. It is an assertion about the facts, not a fact in itself.

11. Not all authors are equally cautious. Tatu includes numerous references to the compatibility of given posts with Politburo membership (see Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, pp. 189, 193, 294). The matter-of-fact nature of his observations is authoritative but belies the absence of explicit criteria, leading at times to rather facile adjustments of a seemingly ad hoc nature (see the discussion of D. F. Ustinov's predicament between March 1963 and March 1965 in ibid., pp. 330, 344-45). Robert J. Osborne begins with the bold assertion that “the composition of the Politburo reflects that of the Central Committee,” having stated earlier that the latter's membership is “selected not primarily for the individual qualifications and background of its members, but because they have attained certain high positions” in various political institutions ( Osborne, Robert J., The Evolution of Soviet Politics [Homewood, III., 1974], pp. 237 and 236).Google Scholar But Fleron argues that these organs are differently constituted (see Fleron, “Representation of Career Types in the Soviet Political Leadership,” pp. 112-16). Gehlen provides one of the more detailed discussions of the topic, arguing that “efforts did appear to be under way to establish certain guidelines as a means of stabilizing leadership” ( Gehlen, Michael P., The Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Bloomington, Ind., 1969], pp. 54–57).Google Scholar Examples of more conservative approaches include Hammer, Darrell P., USSR: The Politics of Oligarchy (Hinsdale, III., 1974), p. 194 Google Scholar; Reshetar, John S. Jr., The Soviet Polity, 2nd ed. (New York, 1978), pp. 124–25;Google Scholar and Ciboski, “Recruitment to the Soviet Politburo,” chapter 5, passim. Ciboski epitomizes the caution characteristic of writing on this subject: he refers to the existence of a “ ‘norm’ ” that “incumbents in certain positions … become Politburo members” (p. 259, note 239), but later concludes that “in the end, the ‘palace’ politics that exist at the top of the Soviet leadership may be the greatest determinant of who will serve in the Politburo” (p. 272).

12. Although they are not applied here in detailed or rigorous fashion, the reader may find it useful to keep in mind the four criteria of institutionalization suggested by Samuel P. Huntington: adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence (see Huntington, Samuel P., “Political Development and Political Decay,” in Macridis, Roy C. and Brown, Bernard E., eds., Comparative Politics, 2nd ed. [Homewood, III., 1968], pp. 522–23).Google Scholar A base point from which to measure any progress on this dimension of political development is provided by Melvin Croan's injunction that the Soviet regime is “pre-institutional,” specifically the first component of his definition, which states that “the Party exercises its 'leading role’ over society without benefit of regularized procedures for the representation of social forces or even very effective consultation with those special interests upon which it must depend for the attainment of the high level of economic performance and social control which it seeks” (see Croan, 's contribution to the symposium “Five Years After Khrushchev,” Survey, no. 72 [Summer 1969], p. 42).Google Scholar Similarly, several years ago Zvi Gitelman argued that “Communist systems seem to have lost the capacity to continue to create political institutions which are ‘adaptable, complex, autonomous and coherent’ enough to deal effectively with social and economic transformations that they were so successful in bringing about” (see Zvi, Gitelman, “Beyond Leninism: Political Development in Eastern Europe,” Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism, 5, no. 3 [May 1972]: 20).Google Scholar With due regard for the tentativeness of the argument set out in the following pages, it will be shown that such appraisals are unduly pessimistic or premature.

13. It is interesting that Khrushchev's dismissal had no effect in the third period. On the basis of just this one indicator, in fact, one might even argue that the stage for it was set in October 1961, and the consequences left unfulfilled until April 1971.

14. The expectations attendant on candidate membership and the prospects for eventual promotion to full membership are explored in Ciboski, “Ambition Theory.”

15. The continuing decline of this once powerful office is discussed at greater length below. For a general discussion of developments in central government institutions and their relationship to the party's leading organs, see Rigby, T. H., “The Soviet Government since Khrushchev,” Politics (Bedford Park, New South Wales, Australia), 12, no. 1 (May 1977): 5–22.Google Scholar

16. The Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet would be another example of such a group position, but it is omitted from the present analysis.

17. A number of positions which were represented in marginal fashion or have since been abolished are omitted from this discussion. The list of such positions is not inconsiderable— it numbers, by my count, at least twenty-four, including the chairman and first deputy chairman of the Central Committee Bureau for the RSFSR (see note b for table 2), eight ministers, three state committee chairmen, and five oblast and krai first secretaries.

18. The first secretary of Latvia and the minister of agriculture are listed even though both positions have had only one occupant with Politburo status since 1953.

19. Although it broke with tradition in combining the general secretaryship and presidency, Brezhnev's accession to the presidency in June 1977 did confirm this rule.

20. Shvernik, who assumed the post in February 1956, had been a candidate member since March 1953. This body became the Party Commission when the Party-State Control Committee, headed by the full member A. N. Shelepin, was formed in November 1962. Shvernik continued as head until his retirement in April 1966. It was renamed the Party Control Committee at that time, following as it did the dismantling of the Party-State Control Committee in December 1965.

21. Regarding other circumstances surrounding this promotion, see Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, pp. 517-18. .

22. Until recently, Georgia's claim had been marginal—Mzhavanadze had held candidate status for fifteen years after having served four years in the post as a nonmember. Shevardnadze's November 1978 promotion to candidate, while another first secretary from the region also maintains candidate status, confirms the entitlement of the Georgian post.

23. One can wonder if the appointment of a party secretary, albeit one with long ties to the defense establishment, was the price paid for continued representation.

24. The three are: State Planning Committee (Kosygin, March 1959-May 1960) ; People's Control Committee (Voronov, July 1971-April 1973) ; and the Agriculture Ministry (Polianskii, February 1973-March 1976).

25. Cf. Gehlen, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, p. 57.

26. In March 1976, three of the “inner five” (Brezhnev, Suslov, and Kirilenko) were secretaries, and the now departed Podgorny had been a secretary. Only seven of the twentytwo members were currently secretaries, but there were also four former secretaries, and eight other members had been or were republic secretaries, leaving Kosygin, Gromyko, and Grechko as the only members lacking experience in a republic- or national-level secretarial role. Thus, the apparent diversity of Politburo positions and roles belies the considerable uniformity of background that exists a step below the surface. The significance of this situation is reserved for discussion in the concluding section.

27. Identifying individual responsibilities is admittedly problematical because only the position of general secretary is formally designated. The connection is easy to make when the person is also head of a Central Committee department, but this is unfortunately not all that common a practice. More typically, the secretary's area of responsibility will have to be ascertained from a fortuitous reference to it in the press or more generally from his activities as a secretary. Often, however, it is necessary simply to deduce the person's position from his training and career experiences. Another problem is that the responsibilities of high-ranking secretaries are frequently of a general, multifaceted, and overlapping nature, making it hard to disentangle the specific functions of a given individual.

28. See pp. 230-31. From March 14, 1953 to July 1955, only Khrushchev had Politburo status, as first (or general) secretary. In July 1955, he was joined by Suslov, the secretary for ideology. The secretaries for party organs (Aristov), heavy industry (Brezhnev), and culture (Furtseva) held candidate status in the transition period between February 1956 and June 1957, but at that time the secretaries ceased being differentiated when all (except Pospelov) became full members, a situation which lasted until October 1961.

29. To some extent this pattern has existed since July 1955 when Suslov again became a full member. It survived the 1960-61 transformation in the Secretariat-Politburo relationship which saw all the carry-over secretaries continuing as full members (along with five new, nonmember secretaries).

30. These are Shelepin, Ustinov, and Kulakov, respectively. Ustinov was made a candidate member when he joined the Secretariat in March 1965; his promotion to full member came in March 1976. Both Shelepin and Kulakov were nonmembers prior to their promotion to full; Shelepin for three years, and Kulakov for over five years. O. V. Kuusinen's continuation as a full member and secretary from October 1961 until his death in May 1964 complicates the analysis because his responsibility during this period is difficult to define. He acquired these positions in June 1957, and existing references credit him primarily with responsibility for international Communist affairs. It is believed that Ponomarev and Andropov became heads of the Central Committee departments for relations with nonruling and ruling Communist parties, respectively, in 1957 as well. Ponomarev joined the Secretariat in October 1961, Andropov in November 1962. With that, Kuusinen's duties seem to have been redefined in terms of these two positions, reducing him to the simple role of elder statesman. Tatu suggests that this may have happened even earlier. With reference to the May 1960 reshuffle, he states that Kuusinen, then approaching eighty, “was too old to play any responsible role” in secretarial affairs (Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, pp. 85-86).

31. They are Demichev and Ponomarev, respectively. Demichev, who had shifted his duties from the chemical and light industries to culture and ideology in March 1965 when he took over Il'ichev's position, had been a candidate since November 1964. Ponomarev, a secretary since 1961 and head of the International Department since the mid-1950s, was third in seniority on the Secretariat by the time he gained candidate status in May 1972. In terms of continuous service, in fact, he was second only to Suslov. I should also note that, among the remaining positions, there are at least two for which evidence of no»entitlement exists: relations with ruling Communist parties and with heavy industry. In the first case, Andropov became a candidate member when he left the Secretariat to head the KGB in June 1967. Both of his successors, K. F. Katushev and K. V. Rusakov, were nonmembers. Second, Solomentsev was also promoted to candidate in November 1971 after leaving the Secretariat in July to become RSFSR premier. Although Brezhnev had Politburo status in this position in the mid-1950s, none of the incumbents in the 1960s or 1970s has.

32. Ponomarev's position is an exception.

33. See, for example, the discussion of D. S. Polianskii in Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, p. 294, and the somewhat convoluted treatment of Ustinov's situation on pp. 330, 344—45.

34. 3 Likewise, most Politburo members were also members of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers. Of the eleven full members in the pre-Nineteenth Party Congress Politburo, Stalin was chairman and nine others were deputy chairmen; only Khrushchev lacked a seat on the Council of Ministers. The one candidate member, Shvernik, was chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium.

35. See Julian, Towster, Political Power in the U.S.S.R.: 1917-1947 (New York, 1948), p. 285–86.Google Scholar

36. Recent trends in this relationship are discussed in Rigby, “The Soviet Government since Khrushchev,” pp. 14-18, especially p. 15.

37. Molotov, Kaganovich, Bulganin, Beria, Pervukhin, and Saburov began and ended their tenure in the early period. Mikoyan is the only one to continue to serve as a first deputy chairman after July 1957.

38. The individuals in the categories include: (1) Kozlov (March 31, 1958 to May 4, 1960) and Polianskii (October 2, 1965 to February 2, 1973) ; (2) Kosygin (May 4, 1960 to October 15, 1964) and Mazurov (March 26, 1965 to November 28, 1978) ; (3) Tikhonov (September 2, 1976 to the present) ; (4) Kuzmin (May 3, 1957 to July 1957) and Ustinov (March 13, 1963 to March 26, 1965).

39. Actually they can be explained rather well. Again, the significance lies not so much in the deviations from the rule as in the changes in the prestige and power of the position itself. Kuzmin and Tikhonov are both examples of economic experts with strong governmental backgrounds but weak party experience. Kuzmin's position was especially precarious, as pointed out in Conquest, Pozvcr and Policy in the U.S.S.R., pp. 302-4, 347, and in Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, pp. 92-93. Like Kuzmin, Ustinov's problems also reflected the political torrents of the Khrushchev era and represented an upgrading of an individual's governmental responsibilities over his party status at a time when economic reform was on the agenda and the ensuing conflict blocked their political rise (see Tatu, Power in the Kremlin, pp. 330, 344-45, and p. 385, note 2). As these sources indicate, there is also ample cause to question how firmly Kuzmin and Ustinov were fixed in the post of first deputy, given the references to them as simply deputy chairmen in the Soviet press, and that more than anything attenuates the impact of their cases on the general rule.

40. The three were Mikoyan, Pervukhin, and Saburov.

41. These are Malenkov, N. G. Ignatov, and Shelest.

42. These are Polianskii and Shelepin.

43. I have chosen not to delve into this whole debate, which would far exceed the scope of this paper, but merely to tie the research findings presented here into some of the ideas extant in the literature. A recent review of the relevant literature is contained in Valerie Bunce and John M., Echols, “From Soviet Studies to Comparative Politics: The Unfinished Revolution,” Soviet Studies, 31, no. 1 (January 1979): 43–55.Google Scholar

44. See also Blackwell, Robert E. Jr., “Cadres Policy in the Brezhnev Era,” Problems of Communism, 28, no. 2 (March-April 1979): 29–42,Google Scholar and references cited therein. Blackwell refers to a process of “creeping institutionalization,” a term which aptly describes my findings on the development of entitlement and positional representation.

45. Hodnett comments on the Politburo's “ ‘cabinet'-like composition” (see Hodnett, V. “Succession Contingencies in the Soviet Union,” p. 21). Because of the inclusion of regional leaders, this is really too narrow a term to encompass the breadth of interests represented. » See also Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “Toward a Theory of Soviet Leadership Main- S£ tenance,” in Cocks et al., The Dynamics of Soviet Politics, pp. 57-68. S

46. If we distinguish between candidate and full members, the regional party subgroup K stands a step below the other two. It is also less cohesive because of the diversity of K republic interests and because there is no institutional setting in which it convenes alone. I See, however, the strong case made for the general importance of the republic and regional We leaders in T. H., Rigby, “The Soviet Regional Leadership: The Brezhnev Generation,” K Slavic Review, 37, no. 1 (March 1978): 1–24.Google Scholar

47. Following Gehlen's argument (Gehlen, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, p. 55), it may be even more effective now than formerly. He argues that “the assertion of apparatchik supremacy” in 1957-60 caused “such acute information problems” that secretarial rule was unworkable. The significance of the May 1960 changes as a response to such problems is all too often underestimated.

48. As opposed to Hough (in “The Soviet System: Petrification or Pluralism?,” p. 37), this may be preventing or counteracting the consequences of the “devolution of power to the major institutional centers” of which he speaks. It does not seem, however, entirely incompatible with his notion of institutional pluralism. Likewise, the argument here proposes that, at least at the level of Politburo politics, the Soviet leadership system more closely resembles an “adaptive-monocratic” rather than “co-optation” system (see Fleron, Frederic J. Jr., “Co-optation as a Mechanism of Adaption to Change: The Soviet Political Leadership System,” in Kanet, Roger E., ed., The Behavioral Revolution and Communist Studies [New York, 1971], pp. 127–29).Google Scholar