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Soviet Politics and After: Old and New Concepts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2011
Abstract
The totalitarian model remained the best analytic concept for studying Soviet politics because it offered clear empirical referents, provided a yardstick for measuring change, and could be adapted to explain the nature of change. Alternative models emphasizing pluralism encouraged the impression that “political development” was occurring rather than the ”political decay” that led to the Soviet Union's collapse. The study of the successor states must now be brought within a more general approach to comparative political analysis. Yet the totalitarian model retains utility for understanding the legacies those states still confront.
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References
1 Rigby, , “Traditional, Market, and Organizational Societies and the USSR,” World Politics 16 (July 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar This excellent essay still offers useful ways of looking at Soviet politics.
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