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Author: Mark R. Beissinger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2002-02-04
Total Pages: 524
ISBN-13: 9780521001489
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis 2002 study examines the process of the disintegration of the Soviet state.
Author: Mark R. Beissinger
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1988
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 9780674794900
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow does the excessive bureaucratization of central planning affect politics in communist countries? Mark Beissinger suggests an answer through this history of the Soviet Scientific Management movement and its contemporary descendants, raising at the same time broader questions about the political consequences of economic systems. Beissinger traces the rise and decline of administrative strategies throughout Soviet history, focusing on the roles of managerial technique and disciplinary coercion. He argues that over-bureaucratization leads to a succession of national crises of effectiveness, which political leaders use to challenge the power of entrenched elites and to consolidate their rule. It also encourages leaders to resort to radical administrative strategies--technocratic utopias, mass mobilization, and discipline campaigns--and gives rise to a cycling syndrome, as similar problems and solutions reappear over time. Beissinger gives a new perspective and interpretation of Soviet history through the prism of organizational theory. He also provides a comprehensive history of the Soviet rationalization movement from Lenin to Gorbachev that describes the recurring attractions and tensions between politicians and management experts, as well as the reception accorded Western management techniques in the Soviet factory and management-training classroom. Beissinger uses a number of unusual sources: the personal archive of Aleksei Gastev, the foremost Soviet Taylorist of the 1920s; published Soviet archival documents; unpublished Soviet government documents and dissertations on management science and executive training; interviews with Soviet management scientists; and the author's personal observations of managers attending a three-month executive training program in the Soviet Union. Beissinger's skillful handling of this singular material will attract the attention of political scientists, historians, and economists, especially those working in Soviet studies.
Author: Mark Beissinger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2014-07-07
Total Pages: 259
ISBN-13: 1107054176
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book takes stock of arguments about the historical legacies of communism that have become common within the study of Russia and East Europe more than two decades after communism's demise and elaborates an empirical approach to the study of historical legacies revolving around relationships and mechanisms rather than correlation and outward similarities. Eleven essays by a distinguished group of scholars assess whether post-communist developments in specific areas continue to be shaped by the experience of communism or, alternatively, by fundamental divergences produced before or after communism. Chapters deal with the variable impact of the communist experience on post-communist societies in such areas as regime trajectories and democratic political values; patterns of regional and sectoral economic development; property ownership within the energy sector; the functioning of the executive branch of government, the police, and courts; the relationship of religion to the state; government language policies; and informal relationships and practices.
Author: Veljko Vujačić
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-03-26
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 1107074088
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines the role of Russian and Serbian nationalism in dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1991.
Author: Larry Diamond
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2010-09-15
Total Pages: 341
ISBN-13: 0801897769
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIf democracy means anything, it means robust debates. Over the years, the pages of the Journal have certainly seen their share of lively and illuminating scholarly disagreements. As a service to students and teachers who wish to deepen their understanding of the questions and controversies that surround contemporary democratization, the Journal has now brought together a series of exchanges on the topic. --
Author: Edward W. Walker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 9780742524538
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn December 1991, the Soviet Union passed into history as a legal entity, breaking apart into15 successor states. This clear and convincing book explains why. Walker argues against much of the conventional wisdom and scholarly literature on the breakup, which emphasizes what he calls the 'demand side' of the problem, or the role of nationalist mobilization and the rise of separatist aspirations in the USSR's union republics. He points out that support for dissolution was limited to a handful of republics that included only a small portion of the Soviet population. Instead, the author highlights the critical role played by the USSR's ethno-federal system, as well as the normative claims and legitimizing myths of Soviet nationality policy. These institutions and myths empowered the anti-union opposition even in those union republics where they had limited support, and they help account for the highly ineffective strategy that Gorbachev adopted to overcome the USSR's 'nationality crisis.' Walker also shows how confusion over the meaning of some of the key terms of Soviet political discourse during perestroika-particularly 'sovereignty' but also 'union, ' 'federation, ' 'confederation, ' and 'independence'-contributed to a 'fog of war' that helped bring about the full disintegration of the USSR, an outcome that surprisingly few desir
Author: Mark Beissinger
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Published: 2002-01-24
Total Pages: 538
ISBN-13: 9781930365087
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe contributors not only study state breakdown but compare the consequences of post-communism with those of post-colonialism.
Author: Mark R. Beissinger
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-04-12
Total Pages: 592
ISBN-13: 0691224757
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow and why cities have become the predominant sites for revolutionary upheavals in the contemporary world Examining the changing character of revolution around the world, The Revolutionary City focuses on the impact that the concentration of people, power, and wealth in cities exercises on revolutionary processes and outcomes. Once predominantly an urban and armed affair, revolutions in the twentieth century migrated to the countryside, as revolutionaries searched for safety from government repression and discovered the peasantry as a revolutionary force. But at the end of the twentieth century, as urban centers grew, revolution returned to the city—accompanied by a new urban civic repertoire espousing the containment of predatory government and relying on visibility and the power of numbers rather than arms. Using original data on revolutionary episodes since 1900, public opinion surveys, and engaging examples from around the world, Mark Beissinger explores the causes and consequences of the urbanization of revolution in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Beissinger examines the compact nature of urban revolutions, as well as their rampant information problems and heightened uncertainty. He investigates the struggle for control over public space, why revolutionary contention has grown more pacified over time, and how revolutions involving the rapid assembly of hundreds of thousands in central urban spaces lead to diverse, ad hoc coalitions that have difficulty producing substantive change. The Revolutionary City provides a new understanding of how revolutions happen and what they might look like in the future.
Author: Mark Lawrence Schrad
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-02-05
Total Pages: 514
ISBN-13: 0199389470
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRussia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians' genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a series of historical investigations stretching from Ivan the Terrible through Vladimir Putin, Vodka Politics presents the secret history of the Russian state itself-a history that is drenched in liquor. Scrutinizing (rather than dismissing) the role of alcohol in Russian politics yields a more nuanced understanding of Russian history itself: from palace intrigues under the tsars to the drunken antics of Soviet and post-Soviet leadership, vodka is there in abundance. Beyond vivid anecdotes, Schrad scours original documents and archival evidence to answer provocative historical questions. How have Russia's rulers used alcohol to solidify their autocratic rule? What role did alcohol play in tsarist coups? Was Nicholas II's ill-fated prohibition a catalyst for the Bolshevik Revolution? Could the Soviet Union have become a world power without liquor? How did vodka politics contribute to the collapse of both communism and public health in the 1990s? How can the Kremlin overcome vodka's hurdles to produce greater social well-being, prosperity, and democracy into the future? Viewing Russian history through the bottom of the vodka bottle helps us to understand why the "liquor question" remains important to Russian high politics even today-almost a century after the issue had been put to bed in most every other modern state. Indeed, recognizing and confronting vodka's devastating political legacies may be the greatest political challenge for this generation of Russia's leadership, as well as the next.
Author: Dmitry P. Gorenburg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2003-05-05
Total Pages: 312
ISBN-13: 1107320321
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explains how state institutions affect ethnic mobilization. It focuses on how ethno-nationalist movements emerge on the political arena, develop organizational structures, frame demands, and attract followers. It does so in the context of examining the widespread surge of nationalist sentiment that occurred through the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It shows that even during this period of institutional upheaval, pre-existing ethnic institutions affected the tactics of the movement leaders. It challenges the widely held perception that governing elites can kindle latent ethnic grievances virtually at will to maintain power. It argues that nationalist leaders can't always mobilize widespread popular support and that their success in doing so depends on the extent to which ethnicity is institutionalized by state structures. It shifts the study of ethnic mobilization from the whys of its emergence to the hows of its development as a political force.
