apparatchik

plural apparatchiks · plural apparatchiki

1. historicalA member of the Soviet apparat; a Communist bureaucrat or agent.First known use 20th c.

   In these dire conditions the ambitious Serbo-Croatian Communist Party apparatchik Slobodan Milošević played the national card in Kosovo.

   2007, Elizabeth Roberts, Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OL, page 34

   1 more example

   Whether conservatively toeing their Marx or boldly advocating such heretical Western-style reforms as the primacy of profits, every important planner, apparatchik and economist in Russia is caught up in Communism's greatest debate since Stalin set backward Russia on its cruel-but successful-forced march into the 20th century industrial world.

   1965 February 12, “Russia: Borrowing from the Capitalists”, in Time, volume 85, →ISSN, archived from the original on 10 Mar 2009

2. broadlyA blindly loyal bureaucrat.First known use 20th c.

   He's so outspoken, so little the Labour apparatchik, that Prime Minister Brown decides he can't send this voluble critic of Iraq invasion to sit at a UN occasion alongside George W Bush.

   2011 February 27, Peter Preston, “The Unfinished Global Revolution by Mark Malloch Brown – review”, in The Observer, →ISSN

   2 more examples

   Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch. […] He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding apparatchik.

   2007 April 20, “Gonzales v. Gonzales”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   “Does France, a founder member of the EU, really want to be the country that sends the biggest battalion of far-right apparatchiks to the European parliament?” [Gabriel] Attal asked.

   2024 June 7, Angelique Chrisafis, quoting Gabriel Attal, “‘You can feel a shift’: will the French be lured by Le Pen?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN