Apparatchik

Apparatchik (Russian аппаратчик, means " person of the apparatus ") is a derived from the Russian loan word for a certain type of a functionary or bureaucrat. According to Pierre Bourdieu apparatchik is mainly characterized in that its central or even a single social system of reference is the organizational apparatus to which it owes its position in society.

Originally, the term usually used pejoratively referred to the real-socialist states and their party apparatuses, in particular the Communist Party, and later the concept but was transferred to other state and forms of organization. Apparatchik, a loan word in many languages ​​, for example English is the use since 1941 occupied. Similar concept is the concept of " functionary ", but which is also often used directly in the sense of filling a function of a social group. Another related, but even more negative occupied Word is the " fat cat " - an apparatchik is for bigwigs unjustified privileges and deliberate abuse of power.

History

The term was coined in the context of the Soviet Union, where apparatchik increasingly occupied the new positions of power in the years after the Russian Revolution. In 1922 you could, out of about 15,000 apparatchik, about 4 % of the party membership. In the 1960s were an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people have been redistributed to the party apparatchik bureaucracy the CPSU and its affiliated organizations. Apparatschiksysteme not stay here on the states of the Warsaw Pact limited, but diffused to other authoritarian systems, so that for example in the early 1960s, the full development of a Apparatschiksystems was stated for the People's Republic of China.

Although apparatchiks in the real-socialist states throughout different varieties of Marxist ideologies represented, so they made after the transformation of these states but quickly the organization elites in nationalist parties.

Theoretical approaches

Due to the negative valence of the Apparatschikbegriffs theoretical treatises on its semantic content are rare. Also rare are treatises on the ontogeny of apparatchik. A first experiment took Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1963 and Samuel P. Huntington, who faced the professional functionary of the Soviet apparatchik American " Cincinnatus ." Are characteristic here for the strongly after the Russian Revolution of 1917, growing number of apparatchiks that they - as well as the Cincinnatus - while likely to have specialized knowledge in a policy area, but primarily generalists are, which are also geographically mobile need to the instructions to follow the party elite. Also apparatchiks are often used even without professional training in various subject areas. The constant change of subject areas is contrary to the habit of the apparatchiks, the - command is characterized mainly oriented - unlike that of the rule-oriented technocrats.

Unlike Party officials in Western democracies, the most entertained second careers in one or more professions, missing the apparatchik any professional second pillar: His career can advance only within the party bureaucracy. In addition, qualifications for party careers have been professionally formalized and assigned in specific curricula in party schools in the Soviet Union and its satellite states.

Apparatchik form a enggestrickte, clear dogmatically indoctrinated, professional community in which there are strict hierarchies and which goal is controlling the affairs of state in the rule. In the Soviet Union there were indications that a technical training is advantageous in order to obtain access to the circles of apparatchik. The strongest incentive for a Apparatschikkarriere is the increase in power. To ensure this, an adherence to the requirements of hierarchically related to a apparatchiks and the driving of subordinates recommended. The success of the apparatchiks is valued according hardly economically, but is measured primarily on the technical implementation of the tasks given to him, which he did not meaningfulness to question. The career of the apparatchiks depends only on the assessment made by his superiors; usually he finds no support in the general public, making him a second time from Cincinnatus, whose biggest assets are his votes, different. Concomitantly apparatchik rising through political loyalty rather than expertise. Although they are miteingebunden in the party ideology in the wake of this, but not even follow a strict ideology as opposed to, for example, professional revolutionaries such as Leon Trotsky, regardless of the prevailing in the apparatus.

These properties have made it possible apparatchik often rise to the top bureaucratic systems; archetypal example again in the Soviet Union. Prominent examples of such careers make Stalin, Khrushchev, Walter Ulbricht, Leonid Brezhnev and Konstantin Chernenko.

Mass media use

The term apparatchik was covered by the mass media in order to identify a person from this system, the (at least apparently) adheres to all requirements of his superiors, which depends on the current line of the political leadership and it is understood, by servility and anticipatory to make obedience popular and indispensable as possible to his superiors.

Here, the term attributed more negative traits in the mass media, which play no role in the research discourse. So Christopher Hitchens sees as double standards of morality as central to the ethics of apparatchiks.