Every society has to delegate to its elite such responsibilities as governance, the mobilization of the population for developmental projects, and the orchestration of diverging interests of individuals and various social groups in the name of progress. Such are the fundamental functions of elites throughout various epochs.

Generally, an elite is a relatively small privileged group within a society, and the privileges are sustained by the work of the commonality. As a price, the society expects the elite to competently realize its specific functions. Quality of public service in return for privileges is the underlying concept of the treaties between societies and their elites. More often than not, such treaties are informal rather than written, but their contours can be discerned practically in all societies. The provision of services by the elite at the level adequate to the society's needs is a prerequisite for stability and public accord, while the extent of the elite's privileges should not overgrow the confines prescribed by the cultural norms shared by the majority of the population.

Inevitably, an elite exists as a particular social stratum, but the particularity is never absolute and there always have to be channels of communication and interchange between the elite and the rest of the population. To maintain public accord, the intensity of the two-way traffic must be sufficient to keep the elite aware of the society's needs and to ensure that the elite's decision-making takes them into account. Furthermore, the society should preserve the potential for control over its elite, and the informal treaty between them must include mechanisms of elite rotation which becomes necessary whenever the elite neglects its obligations, unduly uses its status to exploit the society, or puts the society's existence in jeopardy by absorbing too great a share of its gross product.

Importantly, elites tend to be inhomogeneous. From the functional standpoint, they can be subdivided into political, business, intellectual, and other types, while in terms of the place they occupy in political systems of societies elites are either ruling or oppositional. Both the ruling and the oppositional elites are in many cases fluid coalitions of various elite groups. Naturally, the key roles are played by the ruling elites as they exert the greatest influence over various aspects of lives of their societies.

If the population is discontent with the character of governance – that is, discontent with the way the elite is rendering its services – this does not necessarily mean that a revolution is the only solution on the horizon. Revolutions typically come with tremendous costs such as outbreaks of violence, economic disrepair, and plummeting living standards. After the change of the regime, it is natural to expect that upon strengthening its positions and gaining confidence in the future the new authority will make efforts aimed at reverting the life in the country to normality, but the risk persists that a new elite might be guided by evil intentions or lack competence. Therefore, whenever the society is dissatisfied with its rulers, it should – at least due to the sense of self-preservation – attempt to redirect the ruling elite by signaling its discontent and sending messages about the unacceptability of the current situation and the need to change course. Adequate authority must take such signals and messages seriously and – also in part for the sake of self-preservation – take measures to address the problems over which the society is concerned.

If for any reason the signals fail to reach the elite or it chooses to ignore them, the society's natural next step is to turn to the oppositional elites and to seek regime change. Such dynamics, of course, also carries certain risks – for example, there is a chance that the new leadership will lack governance experience and make mistakes in the process of gaining it. Therefore, the society should opt for taking such risks only in case the problems generated by its current elite outweigh the potential costs related to the regime change and attempts to influence the rulers are unsuccessful.

In some cases, however, the society's counter-elites are only nominally oppositional, make no real efforts to seize power, and readily embrace background roles, perhaps extracting material benefits from them while avoiding serious responsibility. Besides, sometimes the opposition is no more competent and no less selfish than the ruling elite, and, for example, replacing a president produces no satisfactory result. In other words, under certain circumstances the competition of elites does not translate into a mechanism of promoting public interest. Such are the cases when the elite irreversibly degenerates into a ruling clique simply trying to get an ever greater share of the pie without serving the people in any way.

Under such circumstances, what the society needs is to totally dislodge its elites, both ruling and oppositional, and to relaunch the elite-forming process. This is the type of situation known as revolutionary: the old elite is purged and the revolution propels a new one to power. The new elite does not crystallize literally out of nothing – by the time a revolutionary situation emerges the society always has groups and leaders representing the public demand for elite change and the requirements the new elite must satisfy. Such groups can be regarded as proto-elites as they do not have the elite status prior to the revolution but are the forerunners in the race over it after the regime change. Therefore, the replacement of elites is a fundamental phenomenon which encompasses much more than just regime change. And, of course, there is always a possibility that the new post-revolution elite would eventually evolve to the condition of its predecessors and that the development would thus breed a new pre-revolutionary situation.

No elite would openly deny that its existence is legitimized by the interests of the “public service” in the interests of the society and the country, but, regardless of ideology and economic system, every society is confronted by the threat of a mutation of its elite. The elite's interest to maintain its status and all the accompanying perks always leads it into temptation to evade public control and to internalize the elite-forming process. The society that has lost its grip on the elite and the elite-forming process has no defense against the elite's arbitrariness, as the unchecked appetites of the elite would be satisfied at the expense of public interests while the society's legitimate interests will be neglected. In every sense, a high price has to be paid for retrieving control over the elite.

Corrupting the elites of geopolitical opponents is an instrument routinely used in international politics. The US and the cosmopolitan forces currently taking over its global hegemony – the cast of informational and financial tycoons not rooted in any of the world's countries - are true masters of the craft. Corrupting and mind-controlling the Soviet elite contributed more than anything else to the triumph of the West over the USSR in the Cold War.

The Soviet elite was formed in the tense atmosphere of the epoch marked with ferocious class struggle, the demise of the Russian Empire, the intervention launched by 14 countries, the post-civil war economic recovery, the industrialization, World War II, and the reconstruction of the country's economy in its aftermath. External threats always – perhaps somewhat less after World War II - factored into the situations the Soviet elites had to deal with. The epic proportions of the civilizational transformation Russia endured in the XX century and the breakneck pace of the transitions created severe conditions for the elite-forming process in the country.

Every member of the elite under Stalin could easily end up paying with his life for failing to perform in the sphere he was in charge of. The rules of the epoch left no chance that irresponsibility would remain unpunished. At the same time, the process of picking for their competence and admitting them to the elite was organized on a broad scale in the USSR, and the social lift functioned throughout the Soviet era, though obviously with decreasing success after Stalin's death. Repressions were in fact the downside of the situation – they were justified as the instrument used to suppress the tendencies in the ranks of the elite that might lead to its defying the society's oversight. As noted above, such tendencies are inherent, and, condemning the repressions under Stalin one should keep in mind that quite possibly from the society's standpoint the harsh approach to eradicating the degradation of the elite is better than the gentle one.

Stalin is often praised for actively co-opting into the elite individuals from the commonality, but it should be realized that the inflow of new members to the elite has to be offset by the expulsion of others, as otherwise, in accord with the projections of structural demography, it can swell to socially unaffordable proportions. The expulsion from the elite awaited those whose individual or professional traits proved inadequate to the tasks it was intended to handle. In the context, the state had to decide what to do about those stripped of the elite status. Clearly, in most cases those were ambitious and well-connected people with strong awareness of belonging to a special group. Upset about the loss of their social status, they could hardly be expected to quietly integrate into the bulk of the society. Rather, they posed a potential threat with their presumed comeback plans. Sooner or later the regeneration of the country's elite was going to create a critical mass of former elite members which – especially under the circumstances of external intervention – could destabilize the USSR. Stalin's building a system of eliminating former members of the elite was a natural reaction to the threat.

Due to both the populist character of the Soviet regime and the Soviet Union's limited resources the material benefits available to the elite under Stalin used to be quite modest compared to what was within reach for elites in most other countries. Naturally, as anywhere else in the world, the living standards of the Soviet elite were superior to those of the rest of the population, but the gap did not leave a shocking impression. The standard set of a Soviet bureaucrat's privileges comprised a private apartment, a car, and a country house, plus access to better stores, medical care, etc, but this was nothing compared to what US or British officials – not to mention bankers or industrialists – had at their disposal. Stalin personally set the example of moderation in consumption, and, given that, a flashy lifestyle would have been inappropriate and even risky.

The US global project requires the formation of a global elite with members responsible not to their nations but exclusively to their club. The key objectives of the elite are the redistribution of the planet's resources in its own interests, the maximization of its own revenues, and the perpetuation of its own existence. In the framework of this model, the nations of the world are regarded as nothing more than a workforce which, on top of that, is available in clearly excessive and subject to future reduction numbers.

The integration of the immense and resource-rich territories of the former Soviet Union into the above project topped the West's list of priorities since the end of World War II. The key element of the plan was to induce a mutation of the Soviet elite, which was offered what any elite secretly dreams of and from what it was barred solely by the society's control.

First of all, it was offered the right to irresponsibility. As mentioned above, any administrator under Stalin was strictly accountable for his work, and failure to perform could be punished ruthlessly. The arrangement required the elite's total commitment to work and made the elite status only marginally enjoyable. Psychologically the Soviet elite conditioned by this experience was prepared to embrace the scheme that would guarantee it immunity from public control and absolve it from responsibility for the results of its work.

Secondly, the elite was offered a much greater share of the gross domestic product than ever before. Tired of the Stalin-era asceticism, the elite craved much greater material additions to its status. These days they are no longer limited to apartments and country houses – Russia's elite owns villas and palaces both in the country and abroad, private planes and yachts, as well as other assets and status symbols formerly available only to the elites in the world's wealthiest countries. There was a time in Russia when the Soviet regime drew heavy criticism for maintaining better stores and service networks for its bureaucrats, but now literally everything among the possessions of the post-Soviet elite including food, clothes, and accessories stresses its upscale status.

Thirdly, nowadays the elite status can be inherited. In the USSR, the elite faced serious limitations in passing the status from parents to children. No doubt, children from elite families were guaranteed education geared to produce leaders and entry to the avenue to political power. Nevertheless, after the initial stage their careers used to be wholly performance-driven, and they were not insulated from the hardships the rest of the society had to endure. Even Stalin's son Yakov Dzugashvili fought as an officer in World War II and became a POW. Stalin turned down the offer to exchange him for German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus who was captured by the Red Army. Moreover, Yakov's family lost the benefits the families of Red Army soldiers and officers were entitled to unless they were taken captive (the benefits were reinstated later when it was proved that he acted properly and died with dignity as the POW).

The solution of the inheritance problem offered to the elite in Russia was to give it a leading role in the privatization of formerly state property, thus giving its members a material base for the economic dominance in the society. Now a bureaucrat's discharge from the official post which entails the loss of rights to a state-owned country house, etc. does not ruin the individual's elite status as the posh lifestyle of the individual and his or her children can be sustained by privately owned assets.

As a result of the deal with the geopolitical opponents of the USSR, the post-Soviet elite exchanged Russia's geopolitics for the preservation and broadening of its own status.