__NOTOC__ An apparatchik (; russian: аппара́тчик ) was a full-time, professional

functionary An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their s ...

of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union " Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspape ...

or the Soviet government ''apparat'' ( аппарат, apparatus), someone who held any position of bureaucratic or

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studi ...

responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management called

nomenklatura The ''nomenklatura'' ( rus, номенклату́ра, p=nəmʲɪnklɐˈturə, a=ru-номенклатура.ogg; from la, nomenclatura) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key admin ...

. James Billington describes an apparatchik as "a man not of grand plans, but of a hundred carefully executed details." The term is often considered derogatory, with negative

connotation A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation. A connotation is frequently described as either positive ...

s in terms of the quality, competence, and attitude of a person thus described. Members of the apparat (apparatchiks or apparatchiki) were frequently transferred between different areas of responsibility, usually with little or no actual training for their new areas of responsibility. Thus, the term apparatchik, or "agent of the apparatus" was usually the best possible description of the person's profession and occupation. Not all apparatchiks held lifelong positions. Many only entered such positions in middle age. They were known to receive various benefits including free holiday vouchers, free meals and accommodation. Today ''apparatchik'' is also used in contexts other than that of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

or communist countries. According to

Collins English Dictionary The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. The edition of the dictionary in 1979 with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, wa ...

the word can mean "an official or bureaucrat in any organization". According to Douglas Harper's '' Online Etymology Dictionary'', the term was also used in the meaning "Communist agent or spy", originating in the writings of

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...

, c. 1941.

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*{{cite web , url=http://bobshea.net/empire_of_the_rising_scum.html , title=Empire of the Rising Scum , first=Robert , last=Shea , author-link=Robert Shea , date=1990 , website=BobShea.net * Management occupations Russian words and phrases Soviet phraseology

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