Controversies in Soviet Social Thought
Controversies in Soviet Social Thought

Author: Murray Yanowitch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07-22

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1315491753

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Over the past several years observers have become aware of what might be called the "expansionary logic" of the reform debate in the Soviet Union. Punctuated by periods of reaction and retreat, successive phases of reform momentum have brought to the fore ideas and proposals that only months before had been considered too radically unorthodox for prudent discussion. In this account, Murray Yanowitch traces the dynamic evolution of reform thinking and the emergence of liberal and social-democratic schools of thought on several pivotal issues. He shows how the contemporary debate over a recurrent theme - workplace democracy - escalated into demands for democratization of the society and political pluralism, and how similarly time-honoured discussions of the problem of economic inequality took unexpected turns, leading to reconsideration of notions of social justice, attacks on privilege, and, ultimately, demands for destatization and property reform. The cumulative impact of these developments, Yanowitch shows, has not only delegitimated the monopoly of the Communist party but has destroyed the sacral character of Marxism-Leninism itself.

Stalin's Genocides
Stalin's Genocides

Author: Norman M. Naimark

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-07-19

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1400836069

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The chilling story of Stalin’s crimes against humanity Between the early 1930s and his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin had more than a million of his own citizens executed. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, bloody massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin's henchmen. Stalin's Genocides is the chilling story of these crimes. The book puts forward the important argument that brutal mass killings under Stalin in the 1930s were indeed acts of genocide and that the Soviet dictator himself was behind them. Norman Naimark, one of our most respected authorities on the Soviet era, challenges the widely held notion that Stalin's crimes do not constitute genocide, which the United Nations defines as the premeditated killing of a group of people because of their race, religion, or inherent national qualities. In this gripping book, Naimark explains how Stalin became a pitiless mass killer. He looks at the most consequential and harrowing episodes of Stalin's systematic destruction of his own populace—the liquidation and repression of the so-called kulaks, the Ukrainian famine, the purge of nationalities, and the Great Terror—and examines them in light of other genocides in history. In addition, Naimark compares Stalin's crimes with those of the most notorious genocidal killer of them all, Adolf Hitler.

Soviet Politics
Soviet Politics

Author: Richard Sakwa

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-11-12

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1134909969

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Soviet Politics in Perspective is a new edition of Richard Sakwas successful textbook Soviet Politics: an introduction. Thoroughly revised and updated it builds on the previous editions comprehensive and accessible exploration of the Soviet system, from its rise in 1919 to its collapse in 1991. The book is divided into five parts, which focus on key aspects of Soviet politics. They are: * historical perspectives, beginning with the Tsarist regime on the eve of Revolution, the rise and development of Stalinism, through to the decline of the regime under Brezhnev and his successors and Gorbachev's attempts to revive the system * institutions of Government, such as the Communist Party, security apparatus, the military, the justice system, local government and participation * theoretical approaches to Soviet politics, including class and gender politics, the role of ideology and the shift from dissent to pluralism * key policy areas: the command economy and reform; nationality politics; and foreign and defence policy * an evaluation of Soviet rule, and reasons for its collapse. Providing key texts and bibliographies, this book offers the complete history and politics of the Soviet period in a single volume. It will be indispensable to students of Soviet and post-Soviet politics as well as the interested general reader.

Soviet Constitutional Crisis
Soviet Constitutional Crisis

Author: Robert Sharlet

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-16

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1315486474

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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.

A Short History Of Soviet Socialism
A Short History Of Soviet Socialism

Author: Mark Sandle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-16

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 113536639X

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Mark Sandle is Lecturer in Russian and East European History at De Montfort University.; This book is intended for undergraduate courses on 20th century Soviet history/the Cold War/European history/Soviet studies/History of political thought/Marxism-Leninism. The Left.

Winners and Losers on the Russian Road to Capitalism
Winners and Losers on the Russian Road to Capitalism

Author: Bertram Silverman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-10-25

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1315481111

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Aiming to explain many Russians' ambivalence to recent changes, this work examines the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of reform, its impact on the socioeconomic structure of the population, and the ways in which these changes violate social perceptions of equity and fairness.

When Ideas Fail
When Ideas Fail

Author: Joachim Zweynert

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-01

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1351363832

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In the history of Russian economic ideas, a peculiar mix of anthropocentrism and holism provided fertile breeding ground for patterns of thought that were in potential conflict with the market. These patterns, did not render the emergence of capitalism in Russia impossible. But they entailed a deep intellectual division between adherents and opponents of Russia’s capitalist transformation that made Russia’s social evolution unstable and vulnerable to external shocks. This study offers an ideational explanation of Russia’s relative failure to establish a functioning market economy and thus sets up a new and original perspective for discussion. In post-Soviet Russia, a clash between imported foreground ideas and deep domestic background ideas has led to an ideational division among the elite of the country. Within economic science, this led to the emergence of two thought collectives, (in the sense of Ludvik Fleck), with entirely different understandings of social reality. This ideational division translated into incoherent policy measures, the emergence of institutional hybrids and thus, all in all, into institutional instability. Empirically, the book is based on a systematic, qualitative analysis of the writings of Soviet/Russian economists between 1987 and 2012. This groundbreaking book makes an important contribution to Central Eastern and Eastern European area studies and to the current debate on ideas and institutions in the social sciences.

Brezhnev Reconsidered
Brezhnev Reconsidered

Author: E. Bacon

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2002-10-11

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0230501087

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Leonid Brezhnev was leader of the Soviet Union for almost two decades when it was at the height of its powers. This book is a long overdue reappraisal of Brezhnev the man and the system over which he ruled. By incorporating much of the new material available in Russian, it challenges the received wisdom about the Brezhnev years, and provides a fascinating insight into the life and times of one of the twentieth century's most neglected political leaders.