apparatchik

Noun

apparatchik (plural apparatchiks or apparatchiki)

1. (historical) A member of the Soviet apparat; a Communist bureaucrat or agent.
   • Whether conservatively toeing their Marx or boldly advocating such heretical Western-style reforms as the primacy of profits, every important planner, apparatchik and economist in Russia is caught up in Communism's greatest debate since Stalin set backward Russia on its cruel-but successful-forced...1965 February 12, “Russia: Borrowing from the Capitalists”, in Time, volume 85, →ISSN, archived from the original on 10 Mar 2009
   • In these dire conditions the ambitious Serbo-Croatian Communist Party apparatchik Slobodan Milošević played the national card in Kosovo.2007, Elizabeth Roberts, Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OL, page 34
2. (broadly) A blindly loyal bureaucrat.
   • Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch. […] He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding...2007 April 20, “Gonzales v. Gonzales”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   • He's so outspoken, so little the Labour apparatchik, that Prime Minister Brown decides he can't send this voluble critic of Iraq invasion to sit at a UN occasion alongside George W Bush.2011 February 27, Peter Preston, “The Unfinished Global Revolution by Mark Malloch Brown – review”, in The Observer, →ISSN