apparatchik

Cuba’s government is still dominated by Raúl Castro, 94 years old, the younger brother of Fidel, while President Miguel Díaz-Canel, 65, an unpopular apparatchik, runs day-to-day affairs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 22, 2026

Like Ben Houchen on Teesside, Andy Street had campaigned as his own man, not a party apparatchik.

From BBC ● May 4, 2024

Foreign minister since 2004, he is not considered part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, and is sometimes dismissed by Kremlin scholars as more an apparatchik and mouthpiece than a policymaker.

From Washington Post ● May 19, 2022

“Zhang epitomized the image of the bland apparatchik that the party has worked hard to cultivate,” said Jude Blanchette, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

From New York Times ● Nov. 25, 2021

Park said he lost his position as head of taekwondo training in Pyongyang in 2002, after squabbling with a midlevel apparatchik who apparently snitched on him to higher-ups in the government.

From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden

In 2009, he sent an email to industry colleagues, attacking "the executive apparatchiki" who "feed off" the creativity of others "because they have none".

From The Guardian ● Apr. 11, 2013

Other apparatchiki, like Prague Party Boss Martin Vaculik, reduced themselves to apologetic jelly, went on TV to profess support of Dub?ek and to deny past errors.

From Time Magazine Archive

Either man could move to the top in the months ahead, but both will have to keep an eye on a handful of ambitious apparatchiki who were elevated to positions of new authority.

From Time Magazine Archive

This time it was to involve not only mid- level apparatchiki but higher cadre as well.

From Time Magazine Archive

Even the Komsomol hierarchy, a professional bureaucracy of some 100,000 apparatchiki, has been affected by Moscow's tightening of control.

From Time Magazine Archive

They need assistants — high-level apparatchiks and other agents for the day-to-day work of running the regime.

From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2026

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fired a senior official tasked with economic policy and condemned "incompetent" apparatchiks for delays in the opening of an important factory, state media said Tuesday.

From Barron's ● Jan. 20, 2026

In his social media appearances, Prigozhin offered a stark contrast to the straight-faced Kremlin apparatchiks, appearing in battlefield catacombs, the cockpit of an airborne military jet and Siberian penal colonies.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 21, 2023

The USSR’s politburo, the apex of political power in which decisions of real consequence were made, was staffed by aging apparatchiks who had spent their entire lives working within this system.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2020

Rockwell, Wilson and Stephen Merchant are hilarious as various Nazi apparatchiks.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 23, 2019