The elimination of the Communist Party at the beginning of the 1990s foreshadowed a new path to power in post-communist Russia.¹ In the first years after the Soviet collapse, it appeared that patterns of political elite recruitment in Russia might parallel those found in many democratic countries, where parliament and private business serve as training grounds for those assuming leading executive posts. By the beginning of the Putin era, however, it was clear that careers in state administration — rather than elective politics or private industry — had become both the dominant path to political power and an important training ground for business elites.² This is not, of course, just a Russian pattern. As Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman observed, "although most countries of the Third World today have organizations labeled "legislatures", "parties", and "bureaucracies", in few of these systems is power actually divided between elected politicians and career administrators".³