Post-Communist transformation and the new elite in Slovakia

For the new elite, we mapped in the years 1997-1998 the current national of fices and interviewed sample of those offices holders. To find the new econ omic elite. we obtained a list of the largest 2000 companies, measured by t otal sales, and interviewed the chief executive officer. For our old econom ic elite we took a random sample of the old nomenclatura by identifying the people in the country wile held nomenclatura positions in 1988. The two ec onomic elites are comparable, since the economic nomenklatura included prim arily manager of large companies. For comparison, we used an elite survey c onducted in the Czech Republic in 1993, Analysis and comparisons of our data give opportunity to answer some basic theoretical hypotheses about emerging of new elite in Slovakia: Demographic composition. (In the economic elite women gained some ground. T he new economic elite is significantly youngest than political and cultural elite.) Circulation vs. Reproduction. (Most of the newcomers to the new economic el ite came from the group of professionals. They are relatively few people in the new economic elite, who was part of the political leadership in 1988.) Power conversion. (The Czech and Slovak difference reflects an important di vergence between the two countries. In the Czech Republic, members of the l ast Communist nomenclature were squeezed out of political life. In Slovakia , the Meciar government has never been that hostile to ex-Communists.) Technocratic advance. (The new economic elite is more likely to have degree s in the natural and social sciences and humanities. but these are less com mon degrees overall than engineering, law and business.) Interrupted embourgeoisement. (The new economic elite comes from the best e ducated pre-Communist families followed by the new cultural elite and then the new political elite. Despite years of discrimination against large and small capitalists, efforts to eliminate pre-Communist educational privilege s and to suppress national differences within Slovakia, these distinctions survived and now resurface after more than four decades.)