Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Physicists
Languages : en
Pages : 174
Book Description
Reminiscences about Academician Lev Artsimovich
Author: Reminiscences about Academician Ley Artsimovich
Author: Russia and the Idea of the West
Author: Robert D. EnglishPublisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231110594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
In most analyses of the Cold War's end the ideological aspects of Gorbachev's "new thinking" are treated largely as incidental to the broader considerations of power. English demonstrates that Gorbachev's foreign policy was the result of an intellectual revolution. He analyzes the rise of a liberal policy-academic elite and its impact on the Cold War's end.
The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy
Author: Metta SpencerPublisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 073914474X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347
Book Description
In The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy, Metta Spencer recounts the political and military changes that have occurred in Russia up to mid-2010. Using hundreds of interviews she conducted with officials, dissidents, and liberal intellectuals, she describes the various groups, forces, and individuals that worked to liberalize the totalitarian Soviet Union and its fellow nations behind the Iron Curtain, and which ultimately brought about the dissolution of those repressive governments. Spencer identifies four political orientations to describe Soviet society: 'Sheep,' ordinary citizens who accepted the undemocratic regime they lived in without challenging it; 'Dinosaurs,' hard-line Communist officials; 'Termites,' including Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisers and government; and 'Barking Dogs,' a few hundred dissidents who made 'a lot of noise' protesting, hoping to awaken a grass-roots demand for democracy. The strange rivalry between the Termites and Barking Dogs would ultimately doom perestroika. Spencer's research dispels the widely-held perception that US President Ronald Reagan 'won' the Cold War by standing firm until the Soviet Union 'blinked first.' There are vitally important lessons to be learned from the Soviet period, about how to assist citizens of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes around the world. The irony is that transnational civil society organizations, major sources of the progress in Soviet Russia, are still needed today in authoritarian Russia, under Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, for totalitarianism remains a potential social trap. In The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy, Metta Spencer suggests new ways of building urgently-needed social capital in today's Russia, where democracy has yet to flourish.
Essays of a Soviet Scientists
Author: Vitaliĭ Iosifovich GolʹdanskiĭPublisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781563964541
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
The essays, articles, and interviews that make up Essays of a Soviet Scientist offer a revealing portrait of Vitalii Gol'danskii and his generation. Here are Gol'danskii's reminiscences of his extraordinary scientific mentors and colleagues, his reflections on science's obligations to humanity, his writings on the arts and the media, his courageous and passionate arguments against nuclear weapons, and his warnings about the resurgence of anti-Semitism in today's Russia. Through the compassionate, authoritative perspective of Vitalii Gol'danskii, we find in the life of a man and a nation many lessons for us all. The role of science and the scientist in society...the oppressive influence of authoritarianism on a nation's intelligentsia...scientific integrity versus political expedience...the endurance of a people riding the great emotional pendulum of history...Essays of a Soviet Scientist has much to say about these and other crucial matters.
Unarmed Forces
Author: Matthew EvangelistaPublisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501724002
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Book Description
Throughout the Cold War, people worldwide feared that the U.S. and Soviet governments could not prevent a nuclear showdown. Citizens from both East-bloc and Western countries, among them prominent scientists and physicians, formed networks to promote ideas and policies that would lessen this danger. Two of their organizations—the Pugwash movement and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War—won Nobel Peace Prizes. Still, many observers believe that their influence was negligible and that the Reagan administration deserves sole credit for ending the Cold War. The first book to explore the impact these activists had on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, Unarmed Forces demonstrates the importance of their efforts on behalf of arms control and disarmament.Matthew Evangelista examines the work of transnational peace movements throughout the Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev eras and into the first years of Boris Yeltsin's leadership. Drawing on extensive research in Russian archives and on interviews with Russian and Western activists and policymakers, he investigates the sources of Soviet policy on nuclear testing, strategic defense, and conventional forces. Evangelista concludes that transnational actors at times played a crucial role in influencing Soviet policy—specifically in encouraging moderate as opposed to hard-line responses—for they supplied both information and ideas to that closed society. Evangelista's findings challenge widely accepted views about the peaceful resolution of the Cold War. By revealing the connection between a state's domestic structure and its susceptibility to the influence of transnational groups, Unarmed Forces will also stimulate thinking about the broader issue of how government policy is shaped.
Memoirs
Author: Andrei D. SakharovPublisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 832
Book Description
The memoirs of the Soviet physicist and Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident who, at enormous personal cost, laid the foundations for the profound political changes sweeping the Soviet Union to this day. 32 pages of black-and-white photos. First time in paperback.
From Dissent to Diplomacy: The Pugwash Project During the 1960s Cold War
Author: Alison KraftPublisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303112135X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
This book provides new and critical perspectives on the internal development of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (the PCSWA; Pugwash) and its role in international nuclear diplomacy during the 1960s Cold War. Conceived by western scientists dissenting from their own government’s position on nuclear weapons, the conferences brought together elite scientists from across the East-West divide to work towards nuclear disarmament and for peace. The analysis follows two lines. First, the book charts the emergence during the conferences of a distinctive form of technopolitical communication that was crucial to the role of Pugwash in Informal cross-bloc dialogue about disarmament. This enabled Pugwash to realize its paradoxical vision of working both with and against governments to promote disarmament and was key to its role as both a forum for and actor within the realm of informal diplomacy. It is argued that Pugwash scientists formed the vanguard of what came in the 1960s to be called Track II diplomacy. The relevance of the contemporary concept of Science Diplomacy for Pugwash is discussed. The second analytical focus of the book centers on the internal dynamics of the international Pugwash organization. It is argued that informal modes of working and a code of confidentiality accorded the leadership enormous power and autonomy: this small network of senior figures was able to control the Pugwash agenda and priorities, and to launch diplomatic initiatives beyond the conferences. However, by 1967, competing interests were fueling tensions and instability within Pugwash as it struggled for coherence and direction amid with the political challenges posed by the Vietnam War and European security. This crisis manifest the limits of the Pugwash project and placed its future in doubt.
Science, (Anti-)Communism and Diplomacy
Author: Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004340173
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
This book explores how Pugwash scientists established a role in conflict moderation, what held this project together and how state actors in East and West perceived their efforts, complicating existing narratives about “Pugwash” and challenging notions about the naivety of scientists.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 80
Book Description
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.