ABSTRACT
Western scholars have put forward three explanations of policy grouping in Soviet politics: groupings as factions, tendencies, and policy complexes. As far as the West Siberian energy coalition is concerned, there is no evidence that it was a factional grouping. The Party leader himself announced two consecutive energy development programmes for the fast exploitation of West Siberian oil and gas resources. In other words, the pro-West Siberians owed their success to intervention by the top leader. In the pro-West Siberians case, functional specialization and stabilization of personnel were characteristic features of Soviet cadre policy during the Brezhnev period. The nature of the pro-West Siberian energy coalition, all evidence considered, would seem to lie somewhere between that of "tendency" grouping and policy "complex." The pro-West Siberian case indicates that the interests represented in the Soviet policy process during the Brezhnev period were based less on factional and more on institutional lines.
