THE CPSU RULING ELITE 1981-1991 - COMMONALITIES AND DIVISIONS

Based on detailed study of the career paths of 85 party secretaries an d heads of departments of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in post b etween 1981 and 1991, distinctions are made between different types of officials and levels of personnel renewal in various sectors of the p arty's top administration. The communist party elite was not unitary b ut segmented, with important divisions and interests, A systemic chara cteristic of Soviet state socialism was the inability of the party lea dership to exercise control over the government industrial bureaucracy -a failure to achieve precisely the ''fusion of economic and political power'' which many consider to be the hallmark of state socialism, Go rbachev sought to reduce the power of the economic ministries by expos ing them to market forces which logically implied different forms of o wnership, He subverted the ideological and political legitimacy of sta te socialism, dissolved the party's administrative centre, and thereby undermined his own political base.