"Alien" Personnel in the Soviet State

The People's Commissariat of Agriculture under Proletarian Dictatorship, 1918-1929

Bibliographic Data

ID4207186
AuthorsJames W Heinzen, James Heinzen (Yale University, corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume56
Issue1
Pages73-100
Publication date1997-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSlavic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2500656
OpenAlexW2313516501
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited28

Land policy must be carried out by an apparatus that has not grasped the tasks and ideas of Soviet construction in the countryside and that is riddled with elements that are alien and even hostile to Soviet power.-N. M. Shvernik, section chief, People's Commissariat of Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, 1924"Anyone who reads the letters that passed between the Intendants and their superiors or subordinates," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, "cannot fail to be struck by the family likeness between the government officials of the past and those of modern France." He added that not only the personnel and institutions but even the internal bureaucratic terminology of the old regime was similar to that of postrevolutionary, republican France. Despite their obsession with the French Revolution, Russia's revolutionary rulers had probably not read Tocqueville's cautionary tale about the persistence of the old-regime state. If they had, they might have learned quite a bit

Alien · Backwardness · Bureaucracy · Democracy · Dictatorship · Economic growth · Economic history · Government (linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Proletariat · Sociology · State (computer science · Terminology · European history and politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Russia and Soviet political economy · Soviet and Russian History

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub