ABSTRACT
The military and the security police played important roles in Soviet politics, reflecting the insecurities of a power born in revolution with the explicit aim of revising the traditional system of international relations abroad and of destroying opposition at home. The judiciary played a smaller role than in liberal democratic states, with law always subordinated to political expediency. Under Lenin the party apparatus presided over the soviets but never really gained a hold over the secret police or the vast economic commissariats spawned by War Communist centralisation. Under Stalin the major coalition was the economic apparatus, the security police and the leadership principle. With Khrushchev the party once again dominated but its rule was tempered by an element of populism and headstrong leadership. Brezhnev’s rule saw the emergence of a broad coalition comprised of the party apparatus, the administrative bureaucracy, the economic ministries, the military and increasingly the security apparatus. During Andropov’s brief ascendancy the security apparatus was more prominent than at any time since the death of Stalin. Under Gorbachev the military’s influence waned and soviets and professional groups were encouraged within the context of revived political activism inspired by the leader. These shifts gave Soviet politics its dynamism and allowed each successive leader to stamp a period with his name. Throughout, however, Soviet society was unable to establish direct legal or political restraints on the exercise of power.
