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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
The Politburo since its formation in 1919 has been the ruling elite of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. The traditional wisdom is that a blood purge is just around the corner and that a member's tenure is incalculably chaotic. This wisdom of “Evil Empire” is simply mistaken with respect to the Politburo. A statistical review of Politburo membership from 1919 to 1987 shows that the tenure of members is and was virtually the same as that found for elites in many democratic countries and that violence towards members and ex-members is and was rare, except during the Great Purge of 1936–1939. The traditional wisdom was never correct with respect to members' tenures and, with respect to blood purges, it was only correct during the Great Purge.
Depuis sa création en 1919 le Praesidium représente l'élite dirigeante du Parti Communiste de l'U.R.S.S. Selon la sagesse traditionnelle, il y aura bientôt une épuration violente et la période de privilèges d'un membre est fort chaotique. La sagesse de l'« Empire du Mal » a tort en ce qui concerne le Praesidium. Un examen statistique montre que la période de jouissance des membres est et a été pratiquement la même que chez les élites des pays démocratiques, et que la violence faite aux membres et aux anciens membres est et a été rare, sauf pendant la Grande Purge (1936–1939). La sagesse traditionnelle n'a jamais eu raison à l'égard des périodes de privilèges des membres; et, concernant les épurations, elle a eu raison seulement pendant la Grande Purge.
1 This “ruling oligarchy” dates from 1919. See Rigby, T. H., “Foreword,” in Lowenhardt, John, The Soviet Politburo (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1982), 2.Google Scholar We note but ignore (1) the candidate (voice sans vote) members, (2) the renaming of the Politburo (Presidium) and General (First) Secretary in 1952–1966, and (3) the political bureau that was selected in 1917 to lead the revolution, since it never met. See Lowenhardt, The Soviet Politburo, 10; Reshetar, John S. Jr., A Concise History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1960), 136Google Scholar; and Shapiro, Leonard, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Random House, 1971), 175.Google Scholar
2 Errors are common in comparisons of careers of members of Communist and non-Communist elites. For example: “In the Soviet Union, today's equivalent of a US G.S. 15 (a top level civil servant) someday might be elevated to Politburo status. For good or ill, success on even the highest rungs of a Western bureaucracy is not a stepping stone to the highest offices in the land” ( Laird, Roy D., The Politburo [Boulder: Westview Press, 1986], 21).Google Scholar But GS 15 (= FS 1) is usually regarded by students and practitioners of public administration as the top level of middle management in Washington. And Lester Pearson et al. were former bureaucrats who became members of Canadian cabinets.
3 See Casstevens, Thomas W. and Denham, William A. III, “Turnover and Tenure in the Canadian House of Commons, 1867–1968,” this Journal 3 (1970), 655–61Google Scholar; Casstevens, Thomas W. and Ozinga, James R., “The Soviet Central Committee Since Stalin,” American Journal of Political Science 18 (1974), 559–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Casstevens, Thomas W. and Ozinga, James R., “Exponential Survival on the Soviet Central Committee,” American Journal of Political Science 24 (1980), 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio, “The Political Reliability of Italian Governments,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984), 318–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Browne, Eric C., Frendreis, John P. and Gleiber, Dennis W., “The Process of Cabinet Dissolution,” American Journal of Political Science 30 (1986), 628–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 This distinction is slighted by Swearer, Howard R., The Politics of Succession in the U.S.S.R. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), 12–21.Google Scholar Politburo members were still fearful in 1957. See Medvedev, Roy, Khrushchev (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1984), 119–20Google Scholar (quoting Khrushchev quoting Kaganovich). The Guttman Scale for fear is relevant for individuals; see Ozinga, James R., Casstevens, Thomas W. and Casstevens, Harold T. II, “Circulation of Elites,” Crossroads (1989)Google Scholar, n. 1.
5 This terminology is borrowed from Schueller, George K., The Politburo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951), 42Google Scholar; and Salisbury, Harrison E., “Fatal Flaw in the Soviet System,” New York Times Magazine (August 25, 1957)Google Scholar, reprinted in Hendel, Samuel (ed.), The Soviet Crucible (1st-4th eds.; Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1959–1973), 433Google Scholar (in 1st ed.).
6 This terminology appears in Rush, Myron, Political Succession in the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 82Google Scholar; and Salisbury, “Fatal Flaw,” 432 (quoting Khrushchev).
7 Friedrich, Carl J. and Brzezinski, Zbigniew K., Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 56.Google Scholar
8 Armstrong, John A., Ideology, Politics, and Government in the Soviet Union (4th ed.; New York: Praeger, 1978), 85.Google Scholar The Brezhnev years saw the emergence of a new wisdom of “long” tenure for members of the Politburo. See Hough, Jerry F. and Fainsod, Merle, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 479.Google Scholar Mikhail Gorbachev's condemnation of stagnation may revive that wisdom, but tenure was longer on average for members who completed their tenures in the 1940s. See Laird, The Politburo, 56, 107, 137.
9 This view remains the conventional wisdom at senior levels of government in Bonn and Washington, as indicated by private conversations with career officials in both capitals. Compare President Reagan's Evil Empire.
10 Hyland, William G., “Kto Kogo in the Kremlin,” Problems of Communism 31 (1982), 20Google Scholar; Theen, Rolf H. W., “Party and Bureaucracy,” in Hoffmann, Erik P. and Laird, Robbin F. (eds.), The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era (New York: Aldine, 1984), 147–48.Google Scholar
11 Lowenhardt, The Soviet Politburo, 62. The year 1953 is shorthand for the death of Stalin.
12 This system of classification is suggested by Theen, “Party and Bureaucracy,” 147–48. He claims the number who were disgraced or who died by violence is “probably unprecedented,” but that claim is ahistorical. Compare, for example, the Great Terror of the French Revolution. Historically, the killing of leaders is commonplace. See Frazer, James G., The Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1890)Google Scholar, passim. Perhaps our totals are inflated for disgrace, disappearance, execution, assassination and suicide, since we counted as such any disgrace, disappearance, execution, assassination or suicide at or after departure from the Politburo. Politburo membership ended at least six years before the deaths of most (8/14) of the members who died violently: Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Krestinsky, Rudzutak, Rykov, Trotsky and Tomsky. We also eschewed in doubtful cases the benign categories of natural death and retirement without disgrace. Such inflation is favourable to the traditional wisdom, not our critique.
13 The denominator (44) includes all cases with a tenure that began (and sometimes ended) before 1953. For purposes of realistic measurement, we ended the expanded Politburo (Presidium) with the death of Stalin. See notes 21–22.
14 Lowenhardt, The Soviet Politburo, 62. But the probability is not zero; compare assassinations of American Presidents.
15 This terminology is drawn from Rigby, “Foreword,” 1; and Fainsod, Merle, How Russia is Ruled (rev. ed.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This traditional wisdom is disputed of late: “Although the general secretary is the most powerful leader in the Soviet oligarchy, his power is not unlimited. Significant institutional constraints are placed on his power to appoint and dismiss other leaders” ( Hammer, Darrell P., The USSR [Boulder: Westview Press, 1986], 91).Google Scholar
16 Khrushchev, Nikita S., Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 258Google Scholar (quoting Bulganin). The language is reminiscent of a Roman Emperor: “Even innocent people ‘serve him in trembling'… no one dares to disobey” ( Mango, Cyril, Byzantium [New York: Scribner's, 1980], 219).Google Scholar
17 The calculus of probability is relevant for “there is surely a measure of luck in the ebb and flow of political careers” ( Barry, Donald D. and Barner-Barry, Carol, Contemporary Soviet Politics [3rd ed.; Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1987], 130).Google Scholar The role of chance—“indeterminancy”—is noted but ignored by Rush, Political Succession in the USSR, xv.
18 See note 3. The literature in general is reviewed by Casstevens, Thomas W. with Casstevens, Harold T. II, “The Circulation of Elites,” American Journal of Political Science 33 (1989), 294–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Since the model is robust, minor errors in dating careers are inconsequential.
19 The computer programme is given in Casstevens with Casstevens, “The Circulation of Elites,” 311–14. A justification by proof is given in Prather, Ronald E. and Casstevens, Harold T. II, On Least-square Exponential Fits (University of Denver, Department of Mathematics, MS-R-7811, April 1978).Google Scholar
20 Continuous tenures, not persons, are the units of analysis. Five persons had multiple tenures: Aristov, Kosygin, Kuusinen, Shvernik and Suslov.
21 For example, the 14 are discounted or dismissed by Theen, “Party and Bureaucracy,” 147–48. The expanded Politburo never met from October 1952 to March 1953 (Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 281). The statistical point is that the 14 were known to be odd antecedent to our analysis. If the observation at five months is ignored, the first observation is at 24 months: 58 observed, 59.5 expected.
22 Stalin's death was, again, not a numerical watershed. Without the omission, the expectation was 81.6 months for a tenure that began in 1919–1953. Before 1953, in short, the myth of the instability (that is, brevity) of tenure may be dependent on the inclusion of the 14. We note that the 14 were removed from the Politburo by the successors of Stalin, not by Stalin.
23 The “turnover within the Central Committee and Politburo is relatively slow” by some standards but not by the standard of the Australian Parliament or United States Congress (Hammer, The USSR, 91). See Crisp, L. F., The Parliamentary Government of the Commonwealth of Australia (London: Longmans, 1949), 61, 209Google Scholar; Casstevens, Thomas W., “Exponential Models of Legislative Turnover,” in UMAP Modules, 1981 (Boston: Birkhauser, 1982), 61–68Google Scholar; and Finney, Ross L., “Applications of Undergraduate Mathematics,” in Steen, Lynn A. (ed.), Mathematics Tomorrow (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1981), 208.Google Scholar See also note 3.
24 Casstevens and Denham, “Turnover and Tenure in the Canadian House of Commons”; and Tischler, James E., Cox, Rita E., Niemi, P. Jodine, Haddlesey, Zoe C. and Bruder, Gerard V., “The Duration of Commonwealth Cabinets” (Oakland University, Department of Political Science, PS 321 Project, 1986).Google Scholar
25 Perhaps by design on occasion. See Ozinga etal., “Circulation of Elites,” passim, for a critique of some of the literature.
26 During 1919–1987, there were 65 years and four violent departures aside from the Great Purge of 1936–1939. A Poisson model with parameter k = 4/65 yields 61.1 years with zero, 3.8 years with one and 0.1 years with two or more such departures. The observed numbers are 61, 4 and 0. The Poisson distribution, of course, is the classic model of “rare events.”
