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Decolonization in the Former Soviet Borderlands: Politics in Search of Principles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Gregory W. Gleason  and
Susan J. Buck
Gregory W. Gleason
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
Susan J. Buck
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
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Extract

Marx is reputed to have said that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory.” Seventy-odd years of Soviet theorizing have left little useful practical theory behind, as demonstrated by the transformations currently taking place in Russia's borderlands. As the Soviet Union crumbles, the successor states face a unique and troubling situation. For over 70 years, their administrative structures have been centralized; their economies, transportation and communications systems, and the physical infrastructure all controlled from Moscow under a coherent ideological regime. The successor states find themselves adrift ideologically and administratively, but the centralized physical infrastructure remains.

How are these states to design new administrative structures? How are they to cope with the utter failure of their theoretical principles? How may they cooperate in the use of the physical systems while establishing their political independence? Soviet administrative theory—the “scientific theory of socialism” as it was called—has been unable to provide even the most basic guidance for the process, and western administrative theory is not equipped to address the special problems of the new states. The insights of the neo-institutionalists can provide guidelines for these urgent problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 522 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1993

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