ABSTRACT
This chapter is an investigation of the geographical dimension of central personnel policy in the USSR. About a thousand cases where Soviet officials were transferred from one province to another have been analyzed to see what light may be thrown on central policies and practices regarding regional specialization of officials. Exactly which posts are on the All-Union Central Committee nomenklatura and which on those of the republic Central Committees is a matter not yet sufficiently clarified. An attempt was made to let the sample be as representative a cross-section of such transfers as Soviet sources allow, with a minimum of exclusions imposed by the investigator. As regards occupation, no notice was taken of rank, promotion, or demotion, nor of task specialization, except that transfers within the armed forces and the KGB were excluded. For analytical purposes, Kazakhstan was divided into three ‘regions’: the republic ‘center’; Northeast Kazakhstan; and Southwest Kazakhstan.
