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Power and Ownership under a Dictatorship: Early Forms of Nomenklatura Privatization in Stalin's USSR
Existing research claims that the final transformation of many Soviet party and state officials into a class of owners and entrepreneurs occurred at the turn of the 1980s - 1990s. However, this privatization explosion’s prerequisites and gradual development have been poorly studied. Based on new archival documents, this report examines the phenomena that can be considered early forms of nomenclature privatization. Specifically, it discusses legal nomenclature privileges in the distribution of state property and the illegal appropriation of state resources by officials. In some cases, these forms of ownership transformed into what can be called nomenclature entrepreneurship. An essential condition for such activity was nomenclature judicial immunity: the relative legal invulnerability of officials who violated the laws on state property.