Crossword clues for apparatchik
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"Communist agent or spy," 1941, originally in writings of Arthur Koestler, from Russian, from apparat "political organization" (see apparat). Russian plural is apparatchiki.
Wiktionary
n. (context historical English) A member of the Soviet apparat; a Communist bureaucrat or agent. (from 20th c.)
Wikipedia
Apparatchik is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government "apparat" (apparatus) that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management called " Nomenklatura". James Billington describes one as "a man not of grand plans, but of a hundred carefully executed details." It is often considered a derogatory term, with negative connotations in terms of the quality, competence, and attitude of a person thus described.
Members of the "apparat" 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.
Today apparatchik is also used in contexts other than that of the Soviet Union or communist countries. According to Collins English Dictionary 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, c. 1941.
In Australia, the term is often used to describe people who have made their career as factional operatives and leaders in political parties, and who are therefore perceived to have little 'real-world' experience outside politics.
The term Apparatchik may refer to:
- Apparatchik, a functionary in the Soviet Union
- Apparatchik (fanzine), a fanzine
Apparatchik (APPAЯATCHIK), nicknamed Apak, was a tri-weekly science fiction fanzine by Andrew Hooper, Carl Juarez, and Victor Gonzalez. It was a nominee for the 1996 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine. The final, 80th, issue was dated June 20, 1997.
Usage examples of "apparatchik".
You are a child of a nation that has bowed beneath the indistinguishable tyrannies of czars, of Party apparatchiks, of elected kleptocrats and their Mafya henchmen.
Eighty-nine percent of these apparatchiks of the DNC recently voted for the Democrat Party.
He epitomized the petty-minded apparatchik, blindly following the Party line, the kind who had inflicted almost as much damage on President Armstrong as the urban predators themselves.
The apparatchik was wearing jeans and a thick mauve sweater, buckled sandals on bare feet.
It was almost too simple to be paranoid, almost simple enough for a professional paranoid like a security apparatchik to ignore, and it went like this: The ESA launch-site at Kourou in French Guiana had, a couple of years back, been the locus of a minor scandal, much played-up by the protectionist wing of the Party in Europe.
She was rather proud of the speech, delivered with all the cold conviction of a true apparatchik, able to call on untold occult powers to visit terrible consequences on the innocent.
Only PSP apparatchiks try to oppress people for saying what they think.
The PSP relics, their Constables and apparatchiks, banded together as the Blackshirts, went underground, and turned to ineffectual civil disobedience that petered out after a few years.
I was also disbarred from working in any State enterprise, and Social security was a joke, the PSP apparatchiks had taken it over, head to toe, by the time I was demobbed.
The old man had been a civil servant, one of the numberless apparatchiks who had been pushed out of the government bureaucracy in the name of perestroika and forced to find another job.
Russia has been back under the thumb of the apparatchiks for fifteen years now, its brief flirtation with anarchocapitalism replaced by Brezhnevite dirigisme and Putinesque puritanism, and it's no surprise that the wall's crumbling – but it looks like they haven't learned anything from the current woes afflicting the United States.
He had risen rapidly, despite the self-appointment of Saddam Hussein as President and the regular placement of Ba'ath Party apparatchiks in posts they were patently unqualified to fill.
Middle-aged teachers, muscular lorry drivers, wretched apparatchiks and feckless students wandered with expressions of recognition, as in I know you.