Nomenklatura
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The nomenklatura were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the communist party of each country or region.
Virtually all were members of the Communist Party. Critics of Stalin, such as Milovan Đilas, critically defined them as a new class. Trotskyism uses the term caste rather than class, because it sees the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state, not a new class society. Later developments of Trotsky's theories, notably Tony Cliff's theory of State Capitalism, did refer to the nomenklatura as a new class.
See also
- Apparatchik
- Criticisms of communist party rule
- Eastern Bloc politics
- Eastern Bloc economies
- New Soviet man
- New class
- Oligarc (Soviet Union)
- Partmaximum
- Politburo
- Politruk