ABSTRACT
Like the contemporary American city, Soviet urban institutions in all probability mask an underlying communications community with its own internal logic and rules of functioning. Studies of Soviet city politics that focus on institutional distributions of power, elite profiles, forms of citizen participation, or the dynamic of bureaucratic politics therefore can capture only selected segments of the picture. Whether one is interested in allocations of consumer services, budgetary decisions, or the outcomes of legislation designed to place greater powers into the hands of local authorities, the final resolution of these issues – and the implementation of decisions taken – depends heavily on these informal contacts and spontaneous communications networks that seem to crop up among policy officials everywhere.
