Cadre bureaucracy and the intelligentsia

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Abstract
Analysis of the composition of the party‐state and the state party in Hungary, based on data relating to 6,000 leading personalities suggests that state socialism never reached the stage of class rule by the intelligentsia. The entry mechanism for the selection of senior personnel rested on a system of personal dependence, which allowed the state party to ensure implementation of central decisions at all levels. Although the elements of the party bureaucracy's recruitment policy were to be found also in the specialized bureaucracy, the criterion of professional competence acquired growing importance in the selection of special senior personnel for state, economic and other posts. During the 1970s and the 1980s there appeared groups which could be classed among the intellectual elite, chiefly in state and economic top positions and also in the central party apparatus. The data clearly testify to the professional preponderance of the higher echelons of the state machinery directed by the party leadership.

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