The class that never ruled the Soviet Union: on Party members of working-class origin

[Die Neue Zeit]

I won't go into political debates regarding Soviet workers in relation to the Soviet state past the thread title, but I thought of dedicating a thread to those major Party members who had a working-class background, regardless of political controversies, among whom were:

Sergei Medvedev, Gavril Myasnikov, Yan Rudzutak, Alexander Shliapnikov, and Mikhail Tomsky

Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich, Sergei Kirov, Stanislav Kosior, and Kliment Voroshilov

Yekaterina Furtseva, Andrei Kirilenko, Alexei Kosygin, Pyotr Masherov, Kirill Mazurov, Arvid Pelshe, Nikolai Podgorny, Nikolai Tikhonov, and Dmitri Ustinov

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I don't understand the purpose of the thread? What counts is the relationship of a class to the means of production. Some Soviet leaders were brought in from the working class does not mean this class ran things.

There was the famous "Lenin levy": after Lenin died in which Stalin increased the size of the Party. This doesn't mean the class ruled as a class of and for itself.

You are leading up to something though.....

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrade, I just wanted to salute those Party leaders of working-class background, even if other forces hostile to working-class rule were at work. BTW, I didn't mention either Brezhnev or Yezhov so as not to spark controversy by stretching the political limits, even if both did indeed have working-class backgrounds. ;)

[Astarte]

http://paulbrazeau.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/khrushchev_shoe1-300x217.jpg

[Die Neue Zeit]

Khrushchev came from a peasant background, no? :confused:

[Astarte]

did they own land though, or were they tenets? http://books.google.com/books?id=8n7zYmshBNgC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=khrushchev+family+owned+land&source=bl&ots=P8KHLw8l_z&sig=R6IBB_c8X9zI5ilwLw7JjjSUA4A&hl=en&ei=5VDPTfaYBonu0gGEvtyQDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=khrushchev%20family%20owned%20land&f=false because if they owned no land, i may dare say they were "rural proletarians".

Plus, Khrushchev himself worked as a brick layer, and in a factory, as a railway man, as a miner ... all proletarian jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushev#Early_years

[Jose Gracchus]

Individual background has nothing to do with class politics in of itself.

[Red Future]

Stalin??

[Sasha]

My grandparents where workingclass peasants and printers, my parents middle class psychologists, I'm an former garbage man turned bouncer atempting to become an artist/art teacher.
Does any of this say anything worthwhile about my politics?

[Commissar Rykov]

My grandparents where workingclass peasants and printers, my parents middle class psychologists, I'm an former garbage man turned bouncer atempting to become an artist/art teacher.
Does any of this say anything worthwhile about my politics?

You are the most Bourgeois Garbage Man ever!;)