Students of the Soviet system have long struggled to find and fit together the pieces comprising the Soviet political puzzle. Although less evident in the period of openness and radical reform, scholars have labored simply to determine the broad contours of that puzzle. Core pieces have often remained obscure. This book concentrates on one puzzle within the broader Soviet context: political patronage. Widely acknowledged as central to Soviet political life, patronage relations have received almost no systematic attention. My interest in Soviet patronage networks emerged in the twilight of the Khrushchev period, when Western observers were surprised by the top leader's sudden ouster. Scholars struggled to trace the emergence of the Brezhnev regime and the development of a new policy program. Initially I was interested in identifying broad norms of patronage politics, especially as they related to regime formation and power consolidation. Later, in the wake of Gorbachevian reforms, I became more interested in exploring the impact of political and institutional changes on deeply rooted elite behavioral norms. Throughout, I wanted to illuminate broad proclivities that transcended one regime and that were evident in both national and subnational Soviet politics. It was my good fortune that an academic year stay in the USSR yielded not only national, but extensive republic-level, data so that I could consider hypotheses in a comparative light.