Nomenklatura

[Gorbachev] did not champion perestroika and glasnost alone; much of the nomenklatura had decided that the Soviet economic and social model was dysfunctional, corrupt and endemically inefficient and had to change.

Communism envisioned […] an Authority Ranking of political control (in theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat; in practice, a nomenklatura of commissars under a charismatic dictator).

During the long rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982), the nomenklatura had cemented their power in the system.