Accroître ou réduire ? L'administration des États successeurs de l'URSS : un point de vue historique comparatiste sur le niveau des effectifs

Abstract

His quantitative study suggests that a large central administration was a missing element of modernity in this part of the world. Aggregate totals and ratios of central government administrators, soldiers and police in relation to the population in the Tsarist Empire and the USSR are compared with those from selected western European national states and empires. From 1897 to 1991, Russian ruled Eurasia had fewer administrators per capita than European national states but more troops and administrators than European colonies. Only in the 1930s did the Red Army become the largest military force per capita in the world. And only after the 1920s did today's Russian Federation begin to have more administrators per capita than non-Russian territories in the Tsarist and Soviet empires. Whereas, compared to Great Russia, non-Russian regions had quite variable per capita distributions of police and troops before and after 1917, Great Russia (unlike other imperial centers) apparently did not have more police or administrators than its peripheral possessions prior to the 1930s. Given the government's relatively small size, it seems unreasonable to suggest, for all post-Soviet countries, staffing reductions only suitable for advanced industrial societies. Furthermore, policies perhaps suitable for the Russian Federation should not automatically be considered appropriate for the newly independent non-Russian states.