Party penetration of Soviet institutions jumped sharply within a single year

Evidence

Deutscher, op. cit., pp. 255–256, sums up Stalin’s report to the Twelfth Party Congress about the work of the personnel department during his first year in the General Secretariat: “The year before only 27 per cent of the regional leaders of the trade unions were members of the party. At present 57 per cent of them were Communists. The percentage of Communists in the management of co-operatives had risen from 5 to 50 per cent; and in the commanding staffs of the armed forces from 16 to 24. The same happened in all other institutions which Stalin described as the ‘transmission belts’ connecting the party with the people.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2726

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘transmission belts’ concept — Stalin’s term for the institutions (unions, co-ops, military) through which the party connected to the people.
• XREF: The ‘transmission belts’ mechanism complements Gramscian hegemony ideas — both describe how ruling power flows into civil institutions.