Stairway to Heaven (BOOK)

The authors provided the following provisions ^[2] :

• Power is the activity of power groups to use the resources of the organizations they control in order to seize other, even greater resources, and therefore even greater power. Resources - everything that allows you to control the behavior of people. This is not only money and material values, but also privileges, positions, information (with the exception of generally accessible information), access to influential people, etc., etc.
• Power is a battlefield between competing power groups. In most cases, power groups are built in a feudal way (through the medieval concepts of “vassal” (servant) and “overlord” (master)).
• A power group is a group of people connected by a relationship of personal devotion, and acting as a whole (all resources obtained by members of the group go to the group). ^[3] With the help of such an organization and mutual support, a power group can use all its resources and capabilities against other people and groups, which in most cases allows it to impose its will on them.

The following rules of power are formulated in the book ^[2] :

• Three general rules
  • They are torn to power by a gang. Loners are doomed ^[4] .
  • The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal. Each vassal has only one overlord. He takes the vassal oath to him. A suzerain can have many vassals. But vassals of vassals are not his personal vassals.
  • Omerta . "Silence is gold". Any leak of information about your group can be used against your group. In silence is power.
• Three Rules of Power for a Vassal
  • Obsession. The vassal, as a man of Power, must be ill with Power. About overlord, this is not even discussed. That is how the people of Power differ from other people.
  • Nothing personal. Inside vassals there is always competition for the overlord’s attitude. No relaxation, even among his own.
  • The overlord of my overlord is not my overlord. Relations over the head of a suzerain should always be controlled by the suzerain.
• Three Rules of Power for a Suzerain
  • Vassals work for the overlord, whose main job is the struggle for Power.
  • Trust vassals, but constantly check and provoke. Keep them constantly in good shape.
  • The king is played by a retinue. The more vassals (and vassals your vassals have) and the better your organization’s position, the stronger your power group.

In the theory of power described by the authors, the concept of “resource” plays a key role, control over which makes a person indispensable over other people. This may include the right to sign, knowledge of confidential information, getting to know the right people, property, etc. For example, if investors call developers every hour about “make the button green,” this is because the team controls the resource that investors need, so from the team is somewhat dependent. The authors combine the totality of such concepts under the word “resource” and on this basis they propose the following basic formula of power: power → resource → power . According to this formula, careerists for their success are engaged in increasing control over resources and thereby increase their status, which makes it possible to seize new resources ^[5] .

Initially, the book began to be written by Mikhail Khazin as an answer to his student Elena Izhitskaya ^{[c. 1]} to the question "how to make a career?", And this happened in 2003. Since she studied in Novosibirsk , and Mikhail was in Moscow , her question was asked in writing. By coincidence, the future author had time for an answer, and he was given a letter. After this event, a couple of years passed, and during the conversation between Mikhail and Scheglov, they came up with the idea to write, based on these materials and Sergey’s writing experience, a “60 pages” brochure. It was possible to restore the materials with the help of Elena within six months, and on this basis work began on the book ^{[8] [7]} .

According to Khazin, an understanding of the structure of power groups came to him when he was in the public service ^{[K. 2]} . When, despite the fact that society as a whole is complex, the power system is described in a simpler way, the concepts of which are the “power vertical” and “the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal ”. At the same time, a model was obtained that power on the basis of these concepts is a tree of relations of vassal relations. Moreover, according to the description of Khazin, there are elites that are organized by the tribal tribe. Mikhail Khazin considered that these provisions and their consequences have scientific novelty. At the same time, Sergei Shcheglov, after studying the sciences of power, said that regarding it in the book, the concept of power as a system of interaction between small organized groups (not individuals and not classes, as in other theories ^[7] ) is new. According to Mikhail’s comment, this could not be a revelation, since this is actually a statement “they are torn to power by a gang”, which his father taught him, and similar processes are described in many places, including in animals. In response to this, Shcheglov said that in spite of this, such models are not observed in the sciences of power, and therefore, this ^approach is new in this area ^{[K. 3] [8] [7]} .

The book was written in such a mode that at first one of the authors prepared a chapter, and then the second one “rewrote” it at its discretion, and as a result of several iterations, future fragments of the text appeared. Sergey took on the role of working out the literature, while the basic theory was verified by Mikhail. It took 4 years to write. The book itself is built in the format of dialogues, and the idea of ​​this approach, similar to the dialogues of Plato , belongs to Scheglov. The discussions involve the “theoretician”, “practitioner” and “reader”, but at the same time they are not associated with any persons ^[ K. ^{4] [8] [7]} .

The book was published by Ripol-Classic publishing house in March 2016 and initially its circulation amounted to 4000 copies ^[2] . Subsequently, as a result of reprints, about 30,000 copies were sold in the first year, and at the end of 2017 this number was about 40,000 . The book was published in three versions - basic, shortened (~ 200 pages) and gift. Six months after the first edition, the book also began to be sold in electronic form ^[8] .

According to the journalist of the publication “ Business Petersburg ” Sergey Knyazev, the book, positioned as a scientific work, “has a lot of gossip, jokes and other jokes of humor”, and for the popular publication the work is “too crammed with statistics, dates, proper names, details,” and accordingly the reader has to pay attention to the part to which he is more oriented. The observer praised the work itself as “a full-fledged sociological study, with a bibliography, with extensive footnotes (sometimes half a page), with a detailed review of the most important works” ^[1] .

According to a review of Realnoe Vremya by Albert Bikbov, the authors of the book in the topic are not pioneers on the subject of power, and the observer drew attention to the fact that there are a large number of links up to the "ancient times". Among all of them, Albert singled out the work of Machiavelli , Hobbes , John Locke , Wilfredo Pareto and others. At the same time, the critic noted that the authors also worked on the materials of one of the Western scholars on the modern theory of power, Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer . It was noted that the publication is distinguished by the fact that before it there was no practical and understandable literature (excluding fiction) on the described issue in Russian. At the end of the review, it was said that the book is “sensible” and is a potential Russian bestseller ^[2] .

Comments

Sources

• M.L. Khazin , S.I. Shcheglov . Stairway to Heaven. Dialogues about power, career and world elite (Russian) . - Moscow: Ripol Classic , 2019 .-- 624 p. - ISBN 978-5-386-09312-9 .