BIURKO ALEKSANDRA POTIOMKINA JAKO WSPÓŁCZESNY OBRAZ ROSYJSKIEJ BIUROKRACJI

Abstract

The article is an attempt at presenting the picture of a contemporary Russian clerk based on Alexander Potyomkin’s book Desk (Стол). In the text, there is an outline of the history of Russian bureaucracy with the emphasis on the Soviet Union period, during which the clerical elite’s “nomenclature” deve-loped. The validity of the construction of the paper is based on the thesis that the sources of a contemporary bureaucracy are to be found in a previous epoch. Special attention is drawn to the continuously up-to-date system pathology which constitutes specific elements of bureaucracy in Russia, namely: corruption, nepotism, careerism.