apparatchiks

An apparatchik was a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Soviet government apparat, someone who held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management called nomenklatura. James Billington describes an apparatchik as "a man not of grand plans, but of a hundred carefully executed details." The term is often considered derogatory, with negative connotations in terms of the quality, competence, and attitude of a person thus described.