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As Chapter 1 argued, a key element in the party press was criticism of lower-level party leaders and their performance of the functions assigned to them. Throughout most of the Soviet period such criticism was not threatening to party leaders because of its routinised nature. Certainly individuals criticised specifically could experience setbacks to their careers, but as a corporate group party leaders were generally not threatened by this discourse. This could change if the discourse changed, with the criticism being jolted out of its routinised forms and escalated to new levels in a sustained fashion. If maintained over time, this could herald a central campaign against lowerlevel leaders as a group with potentially serious consequences for them, as in the early to mid-1930s.1 In the post-Stalin period, such campaigns occurred on two major occasions, under Khrushchev and under Gorbachev, although the latter was actually set in motion by Andropov.

I have three discrete roles. I am a member of the Nobel’s board of management, reporting to the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of Nobel’s Explosives, which is part of ICI Explosives which, in turn, is one of ICI’s seven international businesses. It is headquartered in Toronto where our CEO is. The Nobel’s Explosives Company has suffered quite seriously in the last few years with the contraction in the European explosives business and the recession.