Nomenklatura

[7] Individuals with a nomenklatura background have continued to dominate economic and political life in Russia since the end of the Cold War.

Vladimir Lenin wrote that appointments were to take the following criteria into account: reliability, political attitude, qualifications, and administrative ability.

According to American Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer, after Leonid Brezhnev's accession to power in October 1964, the party considerably expanded its appointment authority.

However, in the late 1980s, some official statements indicated that the party intended to reduce its appointment authority, particularly in the area of economic management, in line with Mikhail Gorbachev's reform efforts.

The basic list (osnovnoi spisok) detailed positions in the political, administrative, economic, military, cultural, and educational bureaucracies that the committee and its department had responsibility for filling.

Yugoslav politician Milovan Đilas, a critic of Stalin, wrote of the nomenklatura as the "new class" in his book The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, and he claimed that it was seen by ordinary citizens as a bureaucratic elite that enjoyed special privileges and had supplanted the earlier wealthy capitalist elites.

"[15] For China, it is not just the party that nomenklatura has control over but "the government, judicial system, schools, and universities, enterprises, research establishments, religious organizations, museums, libraries, hospitals"[16] are all things that fall under the domain as well.

The aim of this reform was to redistribute power to the lower levels and to make personnel management more efficient.