Jack Lew and the premature descent from heaven: A tale of the American nomenklatura

'As a reward for a quarter-century of patiently fulfilling their duties, career bureaucrats may expect a second career as . . . an executive of a large firm or bank. Their delayed rewards as amakudari ('descent from heaven') bureaucrats usually include at least a doubling of income and sometimes much influence and handsome fringe benefits.'

Karel van Wolferen
The Enigma of Japanese Power
1989

A clinical dissection of the Soviet system, in which a group of managers and bureaucrats . . . are engaged in ceaseless political maneuvering among themselves while maintaining total power, as a privileged class, over all the others.

John C. Campbell
Review of Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, by Michael Voslensky
Foreign Affairs
Winter 1984/85

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