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A monograph series (now discontinued) published under the auspices of Cambridge University Press and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES), presenting substantial and original research on the economics, politics, sociology and modern history of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe.

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58 results in Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies

Page 3 of 3

Poland's Protracted Transition
  • Institutional Change and Economic Growth, 1970–1994
  • Kazimierz Z. Poznanski
  • Published online:
    29 October 2009
    Print publication:
    13 February 1997
  • In this book, first published in 1997, Kazimierz Z. Poznanski offers an integrated study of institutional change in the Polish economy since 1971. He examines the economic peak of the communist phase, the decline of the system, and the post-communist transition since 1989. Taking his analytical framework from evolutionary economics, he provides a complete re-evaluation of conventional views of communist economies and the post-communist transition. The book presents the communist economy as subject to major changes, particularly due to political pressures, and interprets its economic difficulties as related to underlying political decay. The economic 'shock therapy' of 1990 is seen as very much a continuation of earlier trends and pressures, which has led to probably an even deeper, though brief, economic collapse. This book will be of interest to economists and political scientists concerned with institutional transitions, as well as to students of East European and post-Soviet studies.

Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation
  • Richard B. Day
  • Published online:
    25 October 2009
    Print publication:
    07 June 1973
  • A highly original and controversial examination of events in Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1927 in which Professor Day challenges both the standard Trotskyite and Stalinist interpretations of the period. At the same time he rejects the traditional emphasis on Trotsky's concept of Permanent Revolution and argues that a Marxist theorist is essential. Professor Day concentrates upon the economic implications of revolutionary Russia's isolation from Europe. How to build socialism - in a backward, war-ravaged society, without aid from the West: this problem lay behind many of the most important political conflicts of Soviet Russia's formative years.

The Economic Organization of War Communism 1918–1921
  • Silvana Malle
  • Published online:
    16 October 2009
    Print publication:
    21 November 1985
  • This book examines the origins, development and reasons for change of the first Soviet economic system. Programmes are compared with outcomes and theory with practice in the fields of nationalization, workers' control and management, money and planning, industrial organization and food procurement. The organization of military supply and industry is examined separately, to emphasize that the initial approach to economic organization was affected not only by external events, but also by ideology, class struggle and social pressures. The economic and social analysis, which lay behind policy-making, was often distorted by prejudice, and the economic system, which emerged was the result of efforts to replace market relations by administrative measures. Unexpected and unwanted outcomes induced some leaders to rethink initial policies, while others continued to adhere to rigid programmes, even after the conclusion of civil war.

From Ostpolitik to Reunification
  • West German-Soviet Political Relations since 1974
  • Avril Pittman
  • Published online:
    12 October 2009
    Print publication:
    30 July 1992
  • With the signing of the Moscow Treaty in 1970, West German-Soviet relations came to the forefront of world politics. Two decades later, the historic opening of the Berlin Wall and German reunification once again focused world attention on the Federal Republic's relations with the USSR. This book explores the development of this relationship from the perspective of West Germany. Dr Avril Pittman outlines the main events after the Second World War and then focuses on four issues central to this relationship in the 1970s and early 1980s. She explores family reunification and emigration rights for ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union; the central role of Berlin and the reasons why the city persisted as a serious bilateral problem; the triangular relations between West Germany, the Soviet Union and East Germany; and the significance of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan which led to a sharp deterioration in East-West relations.

The Bolsheviks and the Red Army 1918–1921
  • Francesco Benvenuti
  • Translated by Christopher Woodall
  • Published online:
    03 October 2009
    Print publication:
    28 October 1988
  • The emergence of the military agency of the Soviet state is a crucial but neglected aspect of inter-war Soviet history, and in this pioneering study Francesco Benvenuti provides a detailed analysis of the politics (as opposed to the operational activities) of the Red Army during the Civil War. Several historians have suggested that the roots of Stalinism may be found in the Bolshevik experience during the Civil War, and Benvenuti shows that the military opposition inside the party was much stronger than conventionally supposed: Trotsky's subsequent political weakness owed much to his ruthless pursuit of military goals not always in direct harmony with party interests, as did his technocratic attempts to extend the role of specialist advisers at the expense of party officials.

Patronage and Politics in the USSR
  • John P. Willerton
  • Published online:
    30 September 2009
    Print publication:
    12 December 1991
  • How do Soviet politicians rise to power? How are national and regional regimes formed? How are conflicting political interests brought together as policies are developed in the Soviet Union? In Patronage and Politics in the USSR, first published in 1991, Professor John Willerton offers major insights into the patronage networks that have dominated elite mobility, regime formation, and governance in the Soviet Union during the past twenty-five years. Using the biographical and career details of over two thousand national leaders and regional officials in Azerbaijan and Lithuania, John Willerton traces the patron-client relations underlying recruitment, mobility, and policymaking. He explores the strategies of power consolidation and coalition building used by Soviet chief executives since 1964 as well as the institutional links and policy outcomes that have resulted from network politics. The author also assesses the manner and extent to which leaders in politically stable and less stable settings, spanning different national cultural contexts, have relied upon patronage networks to consolidate power and to govern. Finally, Professor Willerton explores how, in a period of dramatic change, patron-client networks may have given way to institutionalised interest groups and political parties.

Poland's Journalists
  • Professionalism and Politics
  • Jane Leftwich Curry
  • Published online:
    30 September 2009
    Print publication:
    22 February 1990
  • Originally published in 1990, Polish Journalists: Professionalism and Politics is a study of how, in the face of constant political instructions and restrictions, Polish journalists act as independent forces in their society. Based on a survey of Polish journalists and interviews carried out with working journalists and editors before and after the Solidarity era, as well as published and unpublished studies, documents, and discussions, the book examines how individuals who go into journalism come to think of themselves as journalists, create a strong community of fellow professionals, and work publicly and privately to protect their own interests and serve their own goal of being the 'watchdogs and advocates for a better society'. In doing this, the book answers questions of how groups come to be independent critical forces lobbying for their own interests and influencing broader public policy when the ideology denies their existence.

Britain and Poland 1939–1943
  • The Betrayed Ally
  • Anita J. Prazmowska
  • Published online:
    29 September 2009
    Print publication:
    23 March 1995
  • Poland was a problematic issue for the Big Powers throughout the Second World War. For Britain, Poland was a major stumbling block in British-Soviet relations as Polish-Soviet territorial disputes clashed with the needs of the British-Soviet-United States alliance. As the Polish government-in-exile attempted to obtain a guarantee of British support, and many thousands of Polish troops fought for the British cause, the perception grew that the Churchill government had a debt to pay. Ultimately, however, it was a debt which Britain could not discharge because of its dependence on Soviet participation in the war. In this book Anita Prazmowska looks at British policies from the point of view of wartime strategy, relating this to Polish government expectations and policies. She describes a tragic situation where Polish soldiers were trapped between the grandiose and unrealistic plans of their government and the harsh realities of a war which they fought with no prospect of a satisfactory outcome for them or their country.

Kronstadt 1917–1921
  • The Fate of a Soviet Democracy
  • Israel Getzler
  • Published online:
    29 September 2009
    Print publication:
    17 February 1983
  • This is the first major study of revolutionary Kronstadt to span the period from February 1917 to the uprising of March 1921. It focuses attention on Kronstadt's forgotten golden age, between March 1917 and July 1918, when Soviet power and democracy flourished there. Professor Getzler argues that the Kronstadters' 'Third Revolution' of March 1921 was a desperate attempt at a restoration of that Soviet democracy which they believed had been taken from them by Bolshevik 'commissarocracy'. Pointing to continuity in personnel, ideology and institutions linking the 1917–18 Kronstadt experiment in Soviet democracy with the March 1921 uprising, the author sees that continuity reflected in the Kronstadt tragedy's central figure, the long-haired, dreamy-eyed student Anatolii Lamanov. Chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet in 1917 and chief editor of its Izvestiia, Lamanov became the ideologist of the 1921 uprising and was soon after executed as a 'counter-revolutionary'.

Origins of the Great Purges
  • The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938
  • John Archibald Getty
  • Published online:
    23 September 2009
    Print publication:
    26 April 1985
  • This is a study of the structure of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1930s. Based upon archival and published sources, the work describes the events in the Bolshevik Party leading up to the Great Purges of 1937–1938. Professor Getty concludes that the party bureaucracy was chaotic rather than totalitarian, and that local officials had relative autonomy within a considerably fragmented political system. The Moscow leadership, of which Stalin was the most authoritarian actor, reacted to social and political processes as much as instigating them. Because of disputes, confusion, and inefficiency, they often promoted contradictory policies. Avoiding the usual concentration on Stalin's personality, the author puts forward the controversial hypothesis that the Great Purges occurred not as the end product of a careful Stalin plan, but rather as the bloody but ad hoc result of Moscow's incremental attempts to centralise political power.

Professionals, Power and Solidarity in Poland
  • A Critical Sociology of Soviet-Type Society
  • Michael D. Kennedy
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    14 February 1991
  • The Solidarity movement of the early 1980s not only triggered a transformation in Polish society, it forced a fundamental reconsideration of the nature of socialism throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Seen as one of the most important social movements of the twentieth century, Michael Kennedy develops a theoretical conception of Soviet-type societies by analysing Solidarity's significance. He explains the background to the nature of the conflict between Solidarity and the authorities and considers the implications of Solidarity's struggle for the theory of the Soviet-type system's reproduction and transformation. Then, the internal constitution of Solidarity in terms of gender and, in particular, cross-class alliances is examined, which is followed by the implications of his analysis both for understanding perestroika in the Soviet Union and more generally for reformulating a critical sociology of Soviet-type societies.

The Jews of the Soviet Union
  • The History of a National Minority
  • Benjamin Pinkus
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    25 November 1988
  • This is a comprehensive and topical history of the Jews in the Soviet Union and is based on firsthand documentary evidence and the application of a pioneering research method into the fate of national minorities. Within a four-part chronological framework, Professor Pinkus examines not only the legal-political status of the Jews, and their reciprocal relationship with the Soviet majority, but also the impact of internal economic, demographic and social processes upon the religious, educational and cultural life of Soviet Jewry. A second layer of analysis describes in depth the complex linkages between the Jews of the Soviet Union, the Jews in other diasporas and the state of Israel itself. The Jews of the Soviet Union marks a major contribution to the historiography and social analysis of its subject and provides a worthy companion to Professor Pinkus's acclaimed documentary study The Soviet Union and the Jews 1948–1967.

The Liberation Movement in Russia 1900–1905
  • Shmuel Galai
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    25 January 1973
  • Historians of the Russian Revolution naturally tend to concentrate their attention upon the Bolshevik 'victors' and on the Mensheyiks - ideologically the closest of their rivals, - and to neglect other political movements. For the Russian Liberals at least, Dr Galai redresses this imbalance. This book traces the nineteenth-century origins of the Liberation Movement (also known as the Liberal Movement), the social and historical conditions which led to its formation in the first years of the twentieth century, its policies, influence, initial success and ultimate failure. Against the background of the political and social crisis culminating in the 1905 Revolution, Dr Galai traces the stages by which the Liberation Movement became supreme among the forces of opposition but ultimately was defeated and disintegrated. It failed to fulfil its aim of replacing Tsarist autocracy by a constitutional-democratic regime and to demonstrate effectively that there was an alternative to the extremes of Tsarism and Bolshevism.

Ideology in a Socialist State
  • Poland 1956–1983
  • Raymond Taras
  • Published online:
    21 September 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 1984
  • Ideology in a Socialist State describes the changes in the ideology of Poland's rulers from the October events of 1956 to the lifting of martial law in 1983. Ideology has been one of the most debated and equivocal concepts in social science, yet this is one of the first attempts to examine it in a systematic, longitudinal and empirical way. Dr Taras analyses how central principles of Marxism-Leninism (the leading role of the party, party influence on trade unions, the church, culture and science) were interpreted by Poland's political leaders. Ideological change, he suggests, represents the chief means adopted by, the regime to respond to a postwar cycle of crises. The rulers' ideology is also linked to political developments in other socialist states (the 1968 Czech reform movement, Soviet doctrinal shifts). Taras concludes that as a result of both external and internal factors, ideology in Poland underwent a combination of transformations, innovations and reification that has produced a new hybrid and highly unstable ideology - Leninist Marxism of People's Poland. This puts the tumultuous Polish events of 1981–3 into historical perspective and focuses on the response of the party leadership to the challenge of Solidarity, and of martial law.

Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939
  • Anita J. Prazmowska
  • Published online:
    18 September 2009
    Print publication:
    23 July 1987
  • This book offers a revisionist interpretation of British foreign policy towards Poland and the role of the Anglo-Polish relationship during the period March-September 1939. It challenges and questions hitherto held views on the British determination to defend Poland and oppose German expansion eastwards. It includes a study of foreign policy, economic policy and military planning. This book is a major contribution to our knowledge of the outbreak of the war because it contains a unique and original study of the role of the Poles in British proposals for an eastern front and the Polish perception of their relationship with Germany. Finally the inconclusive nature of British approaches to the Soviet Union and the Rumanian government are put into the context of the abortive proposal for an eastern front against Germany.

East Germany and Detente
  • Building Authority after the Wall
  • A. James McAdams
  • Published online:
    17 September 2009
    Print publication:
    19 December 1985
  • The emergence of East Germany as one of Europe's most vocal advocates of East-West détente in the 1980s represented a remarkable political transformation. Prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, East Germany had been amongst the most intransigent proponents of the Cold War, largely because of the perceived threat to the domestic authority of its own leadership. Renewed exposure, however, prompted that leadership to regard good relations with the West as integral rather than inimical to its own pursuit of legitimacy. Of interest not only to scholars of communist politics but to all students of East-West affairs, Professor McAdams' study demonstrates both the changing historical significance of the idea of detente, and the way in which non-superpower states can take initially adverse circumstances and turn them into instances of opportunity.

The Origins of the Stalinist Political System
  • Graeme Gill
  • Published online:
    11 September 2009
    Print publication:
    28 September 1990
  • The Origins of the Stalinist Political System offers new and challenging perspectives on Soviet political development from October 1917 until the outbreak of war in June 1941. Explanations of the emergence of a Stalinist political system have hitherto concentrated upon either impersonal factors, such as economic backwardness and the process of bureaucratisation, or Stalin the political actor and the intricacies of elite conflict. Graeme Gill examines the relationship between institutional structures and the conventions, which are created to shape the activities of individuals and considers centre/periphery relations. He divides this period into four sequential but distinct political systems and examines how the patterns of these relationships shaped the course of development to 1941. This book incorporates a great deal of new material. It will become essential reading for specialists in, and students of Soviet history with special reference to politics under Stalin, the 1920s and the 1930s.

Modernising Lenin's Russia
  • Economic Reconstruction, Foreign Trade and the Railways
  • Anthony Heywood
  • Published online:
    14 August 2009
    Print publication:
    19 August 1999
  • In this book Anthony Heywood reassesses Bolshevik attitudes towards economic modernization and foreign economic relations during the early Soviet period. Based on hitherto unused Russian and Western archives, he examines an extraordinary decision made in March 1920 to import vast quantities of railway equipment. The book argues that under War Communism and the NEP railway modernization was vital to a strategy of rapid economic modernization, and provides the first detailed case study of the government's import policy. Following the histories of the principal contracts, it analyses Soviet foreign trade as a means to tackle domestic economic challenges. This book provides readers with a new perspective on Soviet economic development, and reveals the scale of Bolshevik business dealings with the capitalist West immediately after the Revolution.

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