The legacy of the nomenklatura: economic privilege in postcommunist Russia

In general, for the mass of the population, the economic changes that revolutions introduce have short-term effects only: in the longer term, a new economically-privileged elite usually emerges and economic inequality increases, sometimes manifesting itself in new and more pernicious forms. In this paper the authors examine the economic privileges that these party members enjoyed, within both the official and the unofficial economies. More specifically, the authors ask three questions: who were the communists and what was their socioeconomic profile?; what economic privileges, formal and informal, did party members receive, and how did these privileges vary between the subgroups within the party?; and how do former party members view the transition from a state to a market economy and what implications do these views have for political change in post communist Russia? The data come from a national survey conducted in January-February 1992,m just weeks after the collapse of the Soviet Union; full details of the survey are given in the Appendix. -from Authors