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Van Atta 



Party dominance had at least four sources. First was the party's 

 nomenlclatura power of appointment and removal of personnel throughout the 

 party and state. Second was party discipline, effected by the district and 

 provincial party committees' ability to give party punishments to managers. Too 

 many reprimands certainly stopped career advancement, and could cost a 

 manager his present job. Third was the party member's immunity from state 

 prosecution. Party members had to be thrown out of the party before they could 

 be prosecuted, so crimes (such as the bribery and corruption needed to make 

 any enterprise woric efficiently under the old command system) could not be 

 punished unless the manager has his party card taken away. Fourth was the 

 finely calibrated system of access to privileges and scarce goods. Privilege 

 depended on one's job. The job depended on the party. So the party's 

 manipulation of its personnel powers governed who had what privileges, a 

 powerful lever in a society where distribution of all material benefits and all 

 paths of upward mobility were controlled by the CPSU apparatus. 



When Gorbachev created the USSR Congress of People's Deputies in 

 1989 this system began to break apart. Careers no longer depended on the 

 party. The managers of exemplary farms, who were the ovenv helming majority 

 of rural representatives, used the Congress to shake themselves loose from 

 party control and act on their own Interests Once free of party control, they 

 sought first of all a change in their relationship with suppliers and processors, 

 all of whom had exercised monopoly power over the farms, and secondly they 

 sought to retain and improve their own control over their own subordinates 

 within the farms. Thus they were very interested in maricetization— so long as 



3 Claiming that all managers felt this way is too broad a generalization, of 

 course. But the overwhelming majority did. and do. seem to do so. 



