The secret police formed the party’s true elite in Soviet Russia

Evidence

All reports show that in Soviet Russia the secret police must be regarded as the real elite formation of the party. Characteristic for this nature of the police is that since the early twenties NKVD agents were “not recruited on a voluntary basis,” but drawn from the ranks of the party. Furthermore, “the NKVD could not be chosen as a career” (see Beck and Godin, op. cit., p. 160). — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2777

Categorization

• XREF: The NKVD as designated elite and the party-state fusion gloss Arendt’s account of how terror institutionalizes itself — useful contrast to bureaucratic-rationality readings.