Setting the context for the crisis that has fragmented the former USSR, this reader presents key essays by notable Western scholars who have shaped the debates within the field of Soviet nationality studies. Focusing first on the historical development of the Soviet multiethnic state, the discussions then turn to specific problem areas, including federalism, elites, economy, language policy, an…
This book, an analysis of Gorbachev's brand of Soviet socialist democracy, tells the story of his attempt to revive the soviets and, through them, the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union is changing, and its future is uncertain. For seventy years the country has been controlled by the Communist party. No organized opposition was allowed, and during most of that period the party tolerated no alternative philosophy to Marxism-Leninism, the official ideology.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, liberal democracy was supposed to fill the void left by Soviet Communism. Poland and Czechoslovakia made the best of reforms, but the citizens of the "Evil Empire" itself saw little of the promised freedom, and more of the same old despots and corruption. Recently, a second wave of reforms Serbia in 2000, Georgia …
This book neither pretends nor seeks to be a "definitive" investigation of the media of mass communication in the Soviet Union. The complexity of the Soviet communication system is such that a really exhaustive study of the techniques and institutions utilized for propaganda and agitation would have to be several times the length of the present work. At the same time, it should be recognized th…
Memoirs is one of the most important documents to come out of the Soviet Union, not only from a political point of view but because of the remarkable insight it gives into Gromyko's Russia.
A little corner of freedom sheds new light on Soviet politics, revealing how a Russian nationalist movement used the protective umbra of environmentalism to become a cultural and political force, and how ordinary citizens used it to launch the first mass protests at the dawn of glasnost.
This topical volume analyzes the rapidly changing Soviet military and the effects changes are having both within the Soviet Union and beyond its borders. Weighing internal and foreign policy considerations, the contributors examine divergent views on military reform held by civilian and military leaders, review Soviet nuclear and conventional forces and arms control policy, and assess the broad…
It is a book which exemplifies and expresses the deep agonies, the desperate yearning of the Soviet orbit's disillusioned intelligentsia for intellectual freedom, for personal dignity, for true social and economic progress; for a way out of the morass of false theories, bureaucratic ties and cruel exploitation. One of the great political documents of our time-perhaps the most important in its f…
It is not my purpose in this memoir to instill feelings of hostility in Americans toward the Soviet people, or to complicate in any way efforts to promote peace. The world has enought madmen trying to do that.