OLIGARCHY: THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT
The article deals with the genesis and evolution of the concept ‘oligarchy’. It ap-peared in ancient Greece and meant both ‘the rule of the few’ and ‘the rule of the rich’. In the late modern period, especially after Robert Michels formulated the ‘iron law of oligarchy’, those meanings were divided: it became possible to speak of ‘financial oligarchy’ (the rule of the rich) and oligarchy as a rule of the few (not necessarily connected with wealth). In the latter sense, the term ‘oligarchy’ was used by the communist opposition to criticize the highest party-state leadership in the Soviet Russia and the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. Western sociologists and political scientists, partly acknowledging the correctness of the ‘iron law of oligarchy’, at the same time actively seek and find counterexamples, which, in their opinion, turn the ‘iron law’ into an ‘aluminum tendency’ and abolish the fa-tal character of oligarchization. The growth of wealth and inequality in the world over the past decades has drawn attention to the political aspects of oligarchy. Contemporary studies of the oligarchy reunite both meanings of the concept ‘oli-garchy’, highlight such aspects of oligarchy as property defense and income de-fense, and express concern about the negative influence of oligarchy on democrat-ic institutions.