F. M. Burlatsky about Elite, Political Leadership and Experts

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the study of the phenomena of elite, political leadership, and political experts in the creative heritage of Fyodor Burlatsky (1927–2014). The subject of the study is Burlatsky’s approach to the elite and political leadership, as well as the role of experts in state and political decision-making. Modern domestic research of the phenomena of the elite and political leadership is based not only on studies of foreign political scientists, but also on the legacy of Soviet scientists. Appeal to the ideological and political heritage of Burlatsky allows us to show the results achieved in these areas. One of the first domestic researches of elites and political leadership was carried out in the early 1970s at the Institute for Specific Social Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Using the developments of Western political science and synthesizing them with the achievements of Soviet scientists, a group of researchers analyzed the dynamics of the evolution of different groups of the elites in Western Europe and the United States. The results of this study were published in the book written by Fyodor Burlatsky in collaboration with Alexander Galkin “Sociology. Policy. International relations” and were further developed in the generalizing work “The modern Leviathan: Essays on the political sociology of capitalism”. The study and analysis of the phenomena of the elite and leadership awakened Burlatsky’s research interest to the theoretical description of the phenomenon of political experts. In the 1950s–1960s Burlatsky worked as a political expert of Nikita Khrushchev and headed a team of consultants for Yuri Andropov. Burlatsky was the first in the Soviet science to raise the issue of the political role of experts and their impact on state and political decision-making. After conducting a historical-political and political-textual analysis of Burlatsky’s publications, the author concludes that Burlatsky developed an original approach to the phenomena of elite and political leadership which goes against the dominant interpretations of political science that bring value and moral issues beyond the scope of political analysis. In addition, Burlatsky formulated the original typological model of political experts based on his personal experience as an adviser and classified them to the appropriate types: a) “adviser-thinker”, b) “adviser-prophet”, and c) “adviser-intriguer”.