nomenklatura

plural nomenklaturas · alternative nomenclatura

1. A list of bureaucratic posts in government and industry in the former Soviet Union and other communist countries, filled by those appointed by the Party.First known use 20th c.
2. collectiveThe people on such lists; (by extension), any privileged class, a social or political elite.First known use 20th c.

   During the long rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982), the nomenklatura had cemented their power in the system.

   2023, Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, Public Affairs, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   [Gorbachev] did not champion perestroika and glasnost alone; much of the nomenklatura had decided that the Soviet economic and social model was dysfunctional, corrupt and endemically inefficient and had to change.

   2007 October 13, Will Hutton, “Will China's next leader be its Gorbachev?”, in The Observer, →ISSN, archived from the original on 09 Jan 2025

   Communism envisioned […] an Authority Ranking of political control (in theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat; in practice, a nomenklatura of commissars under a charismatic dictator).

   2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, published 2012, page 764