Soviet rule functioned by combining elite patronage with blocking rivals’ popular appeals

Evidence

Such a system could operate effectively under two conditions: first, that regional leaders receive powerful support from the center and, second, that their local rivals have no means or hope of appealing for popular backing. Those conditions held most of the time from the 1930s to the early 1980s. The system survived. … Yet the system’s strength also proved to be its downfall. Gorbachev and collaborators actively promoted opening of political discussion, reduced military involvement in political control, tolerated alternatives to the Communist connecting structure, and made gestures toward truly contested elections. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1240

Categorization

• DEFINE: Provides a working definition of the two conditions that make a coercion/patronage regime stable — useful precision Tilly reaches through the case.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1240
• XREF: connects to: Absorbing rival elites into the ruling bloc decapitates and neutralizes opposition; States rule subject groups by allying with their internal elites; Closed recruitment selecting for ideological loyalty produced hidebound elites unable to adapt — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 216

Broader Connections

• Absorbing rival elites into the ruling bloc decapitates and neutralizes opposition #expands (0.88)
• States rule subject groups by allying with their internal elites #corroborates (0.78)
• Closed recruitment selecting for ideological loyalty produced hidebound elites unable to adapt #complicates (0.72) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 216