nomenklatura

American  

[noh-muhn-klah-toor-uh] / ˌnoʊ mən klɑˈtʊər ə /

noun

• nomenklaturas
  plural

1. a select list or class of people from which appointees for top-level government positions are drawn, especially from a Communist Party.

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nomenklatura British  

/ ˌnəʊmɛnkləˈtʃuːrə /

noun

1. (formerly, in the USSR and E Europe) a list of individuals drawn up by the Communist Party from which were selected candidates for vacant senior positions in the state, party, and other important organizations

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• nomenklaturas
  plural

Etymology

Origin of nomenklatura

First recorded in 1980–85, nomenklatura is from the Russian word nomenklatúra literally, nomenclature

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

nomenklatura nomenklaturas

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a new generation of leaders rose in the former republics, but Belarus remained under old Soviet nomenklatura rule even after independence.

From New York Times ● Mar. 30, 2022

Then their lives get consumed by their university love affair and, finally, by Gorbachev’s rise to the top through the ranks of party nomenklatura.

From New York Times ● Aug. 30, 2021

Volodymyr Chemerys, a former Lutsenko ally, said that Lutsenko represented a familiar archetype: the child of late-Soviet Communist nomenklatura, devoid of ideological belief, who thinks of power as a natural birthright.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 16, 2019

The nomenklatura capitalists, whose Vuitton bags and Rolex watches were suspiciously incommensurate with their official salaries, began to patronize native-born designers.

From The New Yorker ● Mar. 21, 2016

Subsistence was implicitly guaranteed by the kleptocracy that ruled them and, in principle, it was always possible to ignore the moral stench and join the nomenklatura, thereby developing instant upward mobility.

From After the Rain : how the West lost the East by Samuel Vaknin

Most freedom fighters are assimilated and digested by the very establishment they fought against or as the founders of new, privileged nomenklaturas.

From Terrorists and Freedom Fighters by Samuel Vaknin