The Nomenklatura

My personal reward for being Gromyko's adviser was that I became a member of the nomenklatura hierarchy. This is a list of the most important posts in the party, government administration and other institutions. These positions are filled by direct party appointment or with party approval. Nomenklatura is a caste system that applies only to the elite class. Its many levels enjoy varying degrees of privilege according to rank. For Politburo members there is no limit or restriction on privileges. Below this level the grading structure begins. The Central Committee defines the place of anyone eligible for inclusion in the various categories: high party apparatchiki, Cabinet ministers, diplomats or individuals with unusual abilities or exceptional talents such as artists, scientists, Olympic champions and the like. Factory workers, farmers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, store managers and other private citizens are excluded.

Members of the elite have extensive privileges: high salaries, good apartments, dachas, cars with chauffeurs, special railway cars and accommodations, VIP treatment at airports, resorts and hospitals off limits to outsiders, special schools for their children, access to stores selling consumer goods and food at reduced prices. They live far removed from the common man and, indeed, have to go out of their way if they wish to rub elbows with the less exalted. The highest group in the nomenklatura is separated from most citizens by a barrier as psychologically imposing as the Great Wall of China. This class constitutes virtually a state within a state.

Those designated under the system number many thousands. They form the backbone of the status quo in the governmental and societal structure. They will permit no one to transform that society or alter its foreign or domestic policy in any way that may affect their perquisites. It is no small irony to know that this fossilized elite controls the nation that calls on other countries to renounce stability for revolution, to give up privilege for the blessings of proletarianism.