Party Recruitment and the Nationalities in the USSR: A Study in Centre-Republican Relationships

The Soviet political system is usually thought of as an extremely centralized, uniform system. The centre decides, the Republican or local authorities obey. There is little scope for local initiative or autonomy. Yet, at the same time, another image of political life edges its way forward. Georgia was run for many years by its local boss, Mzhavanadze, along lines that clearly were not what the centre wanted; frequent reports appear of muddle, confusion, the non-implementation of legislation or the activities of local ‘family circles’. Somehow we have to make sense of these two aspects of Soviet politics. Is it that the centre chooses to exert its power in some policy areas and not in others, or is it that some are less amenable to control? Are some geographical or cultural regions treated differently from others? How much local autonomy is there? The question of the degree of decentralization in the Soviet system has been raised most recently and explored most interestingly by Hough. This is a contribution to the same theme. It does not provide any grand answers but it does focus attention on a topic that is of key importance in itself and about which we know little: the process of party recruitment. The paper seeks to explore the relationship between central party authorities and the Republican party organizations by looking at the recruitment of the different nationalities.