The problem with which this investigation is concerned addresses the question of the proper role of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union in the Soviet state. The political leadership has two alternatives in seeking a remedy to this civil-military question. They may either control the military establishment by granting strict professional autonomy or by integrating the armed forces into the civil structure.

This thesis focuses on the developments in the Soviet top-elite dynamics from 1981 to 1991. It claims that a careful examination of particular characteristics of the Soviet nomenklatura as a form of top-elite can give us important hints on how the intra-nomenklatura tensions that had been accumulating since its inception aggravated in the last decade of the USSR and contributed substantially to the Union&rsquo / s drive to the end. Hence, the main argument of this thesis is that when the Soviet top-elite lost its confidence on the elite-preserving capacity of Gorbachev, it started searching for alternatives, one of the most notable of which was the market economy option advocated by Boris Yeltsin at that time. This shift in the preferences of the Soviet nomenklatura played a considerable role in the dissolution process.