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(now historical) A list of bureaucratic posts in government and industry in the former Soviet Union (or other communist countries), filled by those appointed by the Party.
(collective) The people on such lists; (by extension), any privileged class, a social or political elite.
2007 October 13, Will Hutton, “Will China's next leader be its Gorbachev?”, in The Observer, →ISSN:
[Gorbachev] did not champion perestroika and glasnost alone; much of the nomenklatura had decided that the Soviet economic and social model was dysfunctional, corrupt and endemically inefficient and had to change.
2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, published 2012, page 764:
Communism envisioned […] an Authority Ranking of political control (in theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat; in practice, a nomenklatura of commissars under a charismatic dictator).
2023, Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, Public Affairs, →ISBN:
During the long rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982), the nomenklatura had cemented their power in the system.
(uncountable,derogatory,historical,politics)nomenklatura(list of bureaucratic posts in government and industry in the former Soviet Union (or other communist countries), filled by those appointed by the Party)