The concept of elite as an instrument of the analysis of political regimes
The article proposes a number of theses which could be useful to historians in the analysis of political regimes using the concept of elite. The starting point of the research is the conceptual separation between the political and social elites, highlighting their specific characteristics. The main directions of the analysis of political elites stand out: the study of elites as a subject of power (the mechanism of political decision-making), the study of elites as a social group (socio-cultural and psychological characteristics that affect decision-making), the study of the mechanism of recruitment of the elite, which is one of the basic characteristics of any regime. The notion of the elite can act as an important component of the analysis of the regimes in the context of political participation and methods of implementation of power. Basing on these parameters, common interpretations of the political elite (nomenclatura) and the Soviet regime (totalitarianism) are treated as inadequate, distorting the real picture of the transformation of political systems in the process of modernization.