Author: Adam Mark ScheinmanPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
Awakening the Soviet Political Giant
Author: Adam Mark ScheinmanCollapse
Author: Vladislav M. ZubokPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300262442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468
Book Description
A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.
The Soviet Colossus
Author: Michael G. KortPublisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 0765628457
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 522
Book Description
The twentieth century was not kind to Russia. Despite its great potential and remarkable achievements, the country also bore the weight of two world wars, a revolution and civil war, totalitarian tyranny, famine and ecological destruction, economic ruin, and imperial decline. Will Russia ever be prosperous, peaceful, and free? Seeking clues in the past, Michael Kort revisits earlier turning points in Russia's history--from the fall of the old regime to the establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship and Stalinist totalitarianism; from the reforms and counter-reforms of Khrushchev and Brezhnev to the tumultuous years of change under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Which strands of Russia's past is their successor, Vladimir Putin, weaving into the fabric of the present, and which are being allowed to fade, for better or worse? This new edition of The Soviet Colossus brings the story up through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Distinctively readable, judicious, and focused on critical events and questions, it integrates new revelations about the Soviet past and ongoing debates about the Soviet regime as well as its successor. It is the ideal text for as one semester history course or background for a political science course.
Political Warfare
Author: Kerry K. GershaneckPublisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Political Warfare provides a well-researched and wide-ranging overview of the nature of the People's Republic of China (PRC) threat and the political warfare strategies, doctrines, and operational practices used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The author offers detailed and illuminating case studies of PRC political warfare operations designed to undermine Thailand, a U.S. treaty ally, and Taiwan, a close friend"--
The Soviet Colossus
Author: Michael KortPublisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9780765603968
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
The most readable history of twentieth century Russia, from tsarist times to the present -- now completely revised and updated to integrate new revelations and ongoing debates about the nature of the Soviet regime, and including coverage of the first decade of post-Soviet Russia.
The Awakening of a Sleeping Giant
Author: Thomas E. HacheyPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
The Power of Language and Rhetoric in Russian Political History
Author: Richard S. WortmanPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350040673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
This book examines the rhetorical force of certain key words in the discourses of Russian state, political thought, and literature. It shows how terms for cultured conduct (kul'turnost'), political affection (love, liubov', joy-radost' etc.), personhood (lichnost'), truth (pravda) and geographical integrity (tsel'nost') assumed almost sacral meaning. It considers how these terms took on a life of their own, imposing the designs of the Russian state and defining the hopes of educated society in the process. By exploring the usage of these words in a wide range of texts, Richard Wortman provides glimpses into the ideas and feelings of leading figures and thinkers in Russian history, from Peter the Great to Alexander Herzen and Nicholas Berdiaev, as well as writers like Mikhail Lermontov, Ivan Turgenev, and Fedor Dostoevsky, giving a sense of the intellectual and emotional universe they inhabited. The Power of Language and Rhetoric in Russian Political History provides both students and scholars with a specific focus through which to approach Russian culture and history. This book is essential reading for students of Russian government, thought, literature and political action.
Soviet Internationalism after Stalin
Author: Tobias RupprechtPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316381293
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
The Soviet Union is often presented as a largely isolated and idiosyncratic state. Soviet Internationalism after Stalin challenges this view by telling the story of Soviet and Latin American intellectuals, students, political figures and artists, and their encounters with the 'other' from the 1950s through the 1980s. In this first multi-archival study of Soviet relations with Latin America, Tobias Rupprecht reveals that, for people in the Second and Third Worlds, the Cold War meant not only confrontation with an ideological enemy but also increased interconnectedness with distant world regions. He shows that the Soviet Union looked quite different from a southern rather than a Western point of view and also charts the impact of the new internationalism on the Soviet Union itself in terms of popular perceptions of the USSR's place in the world and its political, scientific, intellectual and cultural reintegration into the global community.
The Superpower Space Race
Author: Robert REEVESPublisher: Springer
ISBN: 1489959866
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 443
Book Description
When the U.S.S.R. launched the first satellite into Earth orbit on October 4, 1957, a wave of fear and awe shook the world. In the heart of the Cold War, this first satellite was a threatening show of power and the decisive event that led to the infamous space rivalry between the U.S.S.R. and the United States. Launching missile after missile skyward, each superpower goaded its rival with impressive feats in space, each determined to prove to the world its technological superiority. As this engrossing work so clearly shows, it was in this pressure cooker of competition that each country achieved undreamed-of advances, stretching the boundaries of humankind's domain and giving us the first thrilling close-ups of the heavenly bodies in our solar system. The Space Age proved to be a rare instance in history, an era when two nations managed to call on their best and brightest to work single-mindedly toward a goal. Funded by millions of dollars and employing the talents of the top scientists and engineers from universities, the military, and, in the United States, the private sector, the space programs on each side of the Iron Curtain worked with determination and genius to build the incredible craft that would take us to the Moon and beyond. Robert Reeves, a respected historian of the Space Age and contributor to Astronomy, Amateur Astronomy, and Deep Sky Journal, describes the massive power and capabilities of these spaceships. Designed to overcome staggering obstacles, our spaceships accomplished what was once deemed impossible. Both the Soviets and the Americans succeeded in landing craft with amazing precision on the nearly airless surface of the Moon. American space probes touched down on the rocky surface of Mars, while the Soviets succeeded in building probes that could withstand the hellish heat and deadly pressure of the Venusian surface, transmitting photographs and readings that were inaccessible from Earth. Scientists today are still analyzing this invaluable information, deducing the story of our solar system by studying the craters on the Moon, the mysterious channels on Mars, and the nightmarish surface of Venus. Reeves illuminates the brilliant achievements and bitter tragedies of conquering the inner solar system. Fueled by pride and national honor, funded by politicians, and designed by the leading engineers of the world, each hard-earned mission was at once a political triumph for each nation and a scientific triumph for humankind. Reeves traces this most exciting history from its extraordinary genesis to the present and looks toward future cooperative ventures which will, with funding, luck, and united effort, yield knowledge and adventure beyond our wildest dreams.
Soviet Constitutional Crisis
Author: Robert S. SharletPublisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9781563240638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
Moving from the adoption of the "post-Stalin" Constitution of 1977 through its subsequent implementation under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko to the radical legal "restructuring" of the Gorbachev years, Robert Sharlet traces the gradual evolution of a nascent constitutionalism in the erstwhile USSR. Sharlet, a noted authority on Soviet law and constitutional development, demonstrates the gradual transformation of law from an instrument of Communist Party rule into the new "rules of the game" for nonauthoritarian political development. In effect, he argues, one of Gorbachev's most durable achievements may be his redefinition of Soviet politics into a legal idiom along with his relocation of policymaking from behind the closed doors of Party conclaves into the more open, emergent arena of constitutional government. In analyzing the politics of law from the Brezhnev era to the rise of Yeltsin, the author takes account of the "war of laws", the symbolic uses of the Soviet constitution, and even the fact that the leaders of the failed coup attempted to justify their seizure of power on constitutional grounds. Constitutionalism has sufficiently suffused Soviet public life, the book concludes, that most of the sovereign republics as successors to the former USSR, have begun designing their futures - to varying degrees - in constitutional forms.