Political Rents, Promotion Incentives, and Support for a Non-Democratic Regime

republics. Although salary constituted only a part of the total remuneration of a party
bureaucrat, it is quite likely that fringe benefits varied with salaries. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that illicit incomes of corrupt officials might also have been significant. However, no
reliable data are available on the extent of corruption.

No precise information is available on party bureaucrats’ tenures. The period of Nikita
Khrushchev’s leadership was characterized by relatively high rates of job mobility within the
bureaucracy, especially until 1961 when the last of Stalin’s lieutenants were ousted from the
Central Committee.

Territorial structure data are available from published sources (Narodnoe khoziaistvo
SSSR) for 1956-1968 (as well as later years) for every republic in the sample.

Demographic and economic data are available from published sources, mostly from
annual statistical compilations (Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR). Series of interest include labor
force,²⁷ nominal wages, retail sales, various indicators of public consumption, indices of
industrial output, and annual investment in the economy. Capital stock data are not available.
All nine republics in the sample are relatively small and internally homogenous. The largest
republics are Uzbekistan and Belarus (population around 8 million each, in 1959); the
smallest republic is Estonia (just below 1 million).

3.3. Reconstruction of missing data

Testing the model requires data on the number of paid party positions (the number of
bosses) and their salaries for each republic for each year. Complete cross-tabulations of this

²⁷ Labor force practically equaled employment in the USSR. Published labor force data do not include
employed in largely subsistence collective farms, around one fifth of the total working age population.

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