Institutionalization and personalism in the policy-making process of the Soviet union and post-Soviet Russia

Stephen Fortescue

pp. 21-50

in: Stephen Fortescue (ed), Russian politics from Lenin to Putin, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

One of the great issues of Soviet studies was, and remains, the relationship between the "institutionalization", on the one hand, and the "personalism", on the other, of the structures and procedures of the political process and the behaviour of those operating within it. Some are impressed by the power of Soviet bureaucratic agencies and the complex and all-embracing bureaucratic procedures they used to exercise that power. Others are impressed by the extent to which the system was dominated by the personal power of a very small number — perhaps one — leader, and how personal loyalties which cut across organizational boundaries — usually, although not necessarily, of a hierarchical nature (i.e. patron-client relationships) — took precedence over and indeed subverted institutional structures, procedures and behaviours.