ABSTRACT

A comparison of recruitment patterns among the Russian Soviet Federated Republic (RSFSR) and Ukrainian provincial party secretaries over the past two decades demonstrates an implicit ethnic component to the personnel weapon that has previously been overlooked. Rather, the Ukrainian and RSFSR party elites have ethnically been mirror images of one another. The number of Ukrainians in the RSFSR party apparatus reached its height in the early 1970s, largely due to the impact of patronage politics at the all-union level—;; an influx of ethnic Ukrainians with career ties to Leonid Brezhnev and Andrei Kirilenko. At the same time, Russian ethnic representation in the provincial party elite of the Ukraine had declined slightly while Petro Shelest' was at the peak of his powers. By 1980, in fact, ethnic Russians comprised only four percent of the Ukrainian provincial party elite. As with ethnic background, the educational experiences of obkom first secretaries in the Ukraine and the RSFSR have varied considerably over time.