Political Loyalty and Social Composition of a Military Elite: The Russian Officer Corps, 1861-1903.

摘要

A brief survey of political and social modernization literature indicates a widely shared belief in the validity of the correlation between the social composition of an officer corps and the loyalty of a military elite to the political regime. Put concisely, it is assumed that officers continue to identify, and more importantly defend, the interests of their original social group. Thus, in the process of modernization the military elite is increasingly recruited from the middle strata and serves as a defender of such social groups initially against the ancien regime and ultimately against the emerging sans-culottes. In view of the critical role played by the military in the politics of developing states, this theorem is of obvious importance. Yet, it is based on a limited data base, accumulated primarily from Latin American experiences, and is treated as a given rather than being tested for its validity. This study evaluates the applicability of the social composition theorem over time, which, together with tests for the universality of application, constitute the principal methods of strengthening or weakening a theory.