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Political Instructors and the Decline of Communism in Hungary: Apparatus, Nomenclatura and the Issue of Legacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Árpád Szakolczaia  and
Ágnes Horváth
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Extract

This article, based on empirical research conducted in Hungary, interprets and assesses some aspects of the revolutionary changes that happened in Eastern Europe in 1990. The lack of distinction made between the apparatus and the nomenclatura represented a serious impediment to the understanding of both the nature and the dissolution of communist power. Some results of a survey conducted among the party apparatus in Budapest in the autumn of 1988 are presented, including an analysis of the professional and family background of political ‘instructors’ and their value preferences, the reconstruction of the type of career path that joining the apparatus represented for an individual, including the function of privileges and constraints; and the stages in the career of the apparatus itself, including its final dissolution. Finally, a distinction is made between two different ‘legacies’ of communism: the salvaging of the nomenclatura and the lasting impact of the earlier activity of the apparatus on all segments of the population. The widespread image of the thaw after a deep freeze is contrasted with that of a vacuum and its dangers.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 469 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 See, for example, Djilas, Milovan, The New Class (New York: Holt, 1957)Google Scholar; Nove, Alex, ‘Classes in Eastern Europe’, in Giddens, Anthony and Held, David, eds, Classes, Power and Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1982)Google Scholar; Voslensky, Michael, Nomenklatura: Anatomy of the Soviet Ruling Class (Oxford: Bodley Head, 1984)Google Scholar; and Lane, David, Elites and Political Power in the USSR (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1988).Google Scholar

2 On the history of the nomenclatura system, see Rigby, T. H., Political Elites in the USSR (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1990).Google Scholar For the standard account on the nomenclatura, see Harasymiw, Bohdan, Political Elite Recruitement in the Soviet Union (London: Macmillan, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Both of them were dissolved in Hungary well before the elections, even before the new parties were more than tiny groups of Budapest intellectuals. The nomenclatura system was abolished by a Central Committee meeting of 8 May 1989, and the role of the apparatus was substantially reduced from the beginning of 1989. On the way a district party committee actively dissolved itself, in order to prevent the reorganization of the conservative fraction of the party after the 7 October 1989 Congress: see Csanádi, Mária, ‘Egy hanyatlás krónikája: esettanulmány a pártállam felbomlásáról Budapest egy kerületében’ (The chronicle of a decline: a case study of the disintegration of the party state in a district of Budapest), Mozgó Világ, 16 (1990), 52–60.Google Scholar

4 From the works of Foucault, see particularly Discipline and Punish: The Birth of a Prison (New York: Vintage, 1977)Google Scholar; The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1978)Google Scholar; the collection edited by Gordon, Colin, Power/Knowledge: Selected Essays and interviews, 1972–1977, (Brighton: Harvester, 1980)Google Scholar; and two lectures: ‘Governmentality’, in I & C (1980), No. 8, and ‘Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of “Political Reason”’, in McMurrin, S. M., ed., The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1981).Google Scholar

5 This secrecy may explain why the literature on the communist party states laid such a large emphasis on the decision-making process, on the system of organization of the communist states or on the structure of communist parties. See, for example, White, Stephen, Gardner, John and Schöpflin, George, Communist Political Systems: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The complete results of our research will be published in Horváth, Ágnes and Szakolczai, Árpád, The Dissolution of Communist Power in Hungary (London: Routledge, 1991).Google Scholar Our research focused on all the district-level political workers of Budapest. After a pilot study in one district in the spring of 1988, we went to all the other twenty-one district party committees in September and October 1988. We personally collected 202 questionnaires, which represents about two-thirds of the apparatus. We also conducted twenty-five interviews.

7 In the case of the latter, we omitted housewives.

8 See Hankiss, Elemér, Manchiti, Róbert, Füstös, László, Szakolczai, Árpád, Kényszerpályán? A magyar társadalom értékrendi változásai, 1930–1982 (On a forced track? Changes in the value system of Hungarian society, 1930–1982) (Budapest: Institute of Sociology, 1983).Google Scholar This study provides a general background for a number of lines of investigation in this article.

9 In the Hungarian educational system, there is a marked difference between the more scholarly universities and the other, more technical, institutes of higher education.

10 Here we should remark that the minimum age for becoming a member is 14 years for the KISZ and 18 for the party, though exceptions can be made.

11 This question is taken from Kirkpatrick, Jeane et al. , The New Presidential Elite: Men and Women in National Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1976).Google Scholar

12 See Hankiss, et al. , Kényszerpályán?Google Scholar

13 This question is taken from the 1981 survey of the European Value System Study Group. See Harding, Stephen and Phillips, David with Fogarty, Michael, Contrasting Values in Western Europe: Unity, Diversity and Change (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986).Google Scholar

14 See Djilas, , The New Class.Google Scholar