Party Says No to the Nomenklatura : Soviet Union: Proposed reforms will dismantle the system of elitism that has slowed <i> perestroika.</i>

The Soviet Communist Party, pressing ahead with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s political reforms, outlined far-reaching plans Saturday to decentralize the party’s internal structure by making local officials responsible to the party members who elect them rather than to Moscow.

The changes, if approved by the party’s policy-making Central Committee, will bring vast shifts in political power across the country, breaking the hold that conservative party officials at regional and local levels now have on the entire reform effort.

In broad terms, the move is the first step in dismantling the Soviet system of nomenklatura , in which key jobs are reserved for party appointees and those appointees rise through party ranks largely through political patronage. Long the country’s elite, the members of the nomenklatura form a privileged and, many would say, parasitic class today.

The Central Committee’s Commission on Party Development, which recommended the changes, called for open elections for local and regional party posts, ending the longstanding practice of top-down appointments.

The commission said the change will be applied in other organizations as well so that Soviet enterprises such as factories, public institutions such as schools and perhaps even government bodies will not be required to accept the nominee of the local or higher party committees.

Calling for further democratization of the party, the commission urged the election of party leaders, such as local first secretaries, at open meetings by all the participating delegates rather than by intermediary committees behind closed doors.

The commission also said that senior officials will no longer get a position automatically on elected party bodies because of their other positions.

This change would require regional party leaders, government ministers, top military commanders and others to compete for places on such key bodies as the Central Committee, which is still largely composed of such appointees.

As it struggles to revitalize the country after nearly 20 years of stagnation, the party has committed itself to sharing power, which long ago had become almost absolute, and to divorcing itself from day-to-day administration of the government, the economy and society as a whole in order to concentrate on guiding the nation.

But the nomenklatura system has stood as a major barrier to bringing in new people with new ideas and energy--most were not on the most basic list of approved party personnel and many were not even party members--and thus the system became a barrier to the whole reform effort.

The commission was “unanimous that an influx of active campaigners for perestroika from among Communists, non-party people and members of all sections of the population and nationalities can be ensured only on a democratic basis,” the official news agency Tass said in summarizing the meeting.

Gorbachev has complained that many party officials have been reluctant to press ahead with perestroika , as his political, economic and social reforms are known, and have been unable to cope with the changes that they have already brought.

In recent months, he has traveled to Leningrad and Kiev to oversee the replacement of regional party leaders, and he has repeatedly warned that many more senior officials will be replaced unless they support the reforms with greater vigor.

The commission also recommended an end to the basic screening and selection procedures in which party members are chosen for promotion to jobs within the nomenklatura.

“Participants in the meeting discussed practical measures to dismantle the formal nomenklatura mechanism of personnel policy,” Tass said, “and they concluded that the so-called assessment-and-supervisory list of the nomenklatura should be abolished as, in practical terms, it is under the control of the party committee’s staff.”

Begun by V. I. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, to ensure political discipline at all levels of the party and government, the nomenklatura quickly became the principal method the party used to centralize its power. Under the system, no one could be appointed or elected to a post without the permission of higher authorities, often the Central Committee itself.

Now a complex series of multilevel lists of reserved jobs, of those qualified for them and those under scrutiny for promotion to them, the nomenklatura system defines power in practical terms. It also rewards those who win places in the system by entitling them to such privileges as shopping at well-stocked stores, larger apartments, better medical care and elite schools for their children.

In addition to the party’s own nomenklatura , the government had another, the military had a third and the trade unions, the security police and the Academy of Sciences had still others. Today, there are lists of reserved jobs and qualified personnel at all levels, from the national leadership down to the school systems of small cities.

Soviet sociologists trace the whole system back well beyond Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution to the Table of Ranks that Czar Peter the Great established in 1722 to provide Imperial Russia with a civil service--and force the Russian aristocracy to serve the state.

Although much-criticized privately over the years for discouraging not only dissent but any innovative thinking or local initiative, the nomenklatura system has only recently come under open attack as Gorbachev’s political reforms brought out its most serious shortcomings.

Mediocre, play-it-safe bureaucrats, fearing loss of power and privilege, began to choke his reforms.

At the same time, rising popular anger over privileges has forced the government to shut many of the stores where only members of the nomenklatura could shop. Some bureaucrats have turned in their limousines for ordinary sedans. And the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, is turning over to local health departments most of the clinics and hospitals that formerly served only the nomenklatura.

BACKGROUND

The Soviet Union adopted the system of nomenklatura to bring the best and the brightest among Communist Party members and non-party citizens into the ruling elite. It involved the listing of positions and personnel, along with dossiers of individuals whose loyalty to the party and Soviet system is unquestioned. In practice, however, it became a vehicle for cronyism and bureaucratic inefficiency that have been blamed for the country’s economic stagnation.