The Dynamics of Soviet Politics

by Paul Cocks (Editor), Robert V Daniels (Editor), Nancy Whittier Heer (Editor)

Overview

The Dynamics of Soviet Politics is the result of reflective and thorough research into the centers of a system whose inner debates are not open to public discussion and review, a system which tolerates no public opposition parties, no prying congressional committees, and no investigative journalists to ferret out secrets. The expert authors offer an inside view of the workings of this closed system a view rarely found elsewhere in discussions of Soviet affairs. Their work, building as it does on the achievements of Soviet studies over the last thirty years, is firmly rooted in established knowledge and covers sufficient new ground to enable future studies of Soviet politics and social practices to move ahead unencumbered by stereotypes, sensationalism, or mystification.

Among the subjects included are: attitudes toward leadership and a general discussion of the uses of political history; the dramatic cycles of officially permitted dissent; the legitimacy of leadership within a system that has no constitutional provision for succession; the gradual adoption of Western-inspired administrative procedures and "systems management"; a study of group competition, and bureaucratic bargaining; Khrushchev's virgin-lands experiment and its subsequent retrenchment; the apolitical values of adolescents; the problems of integrating Central Asia into the Soviet system; a history of peaceful coexistence and its current importance in Soviet foreign policy priorities, and, finally, an overview of Soviet government as an extension of prerevolutionary oligarchy, with an emphasis on adaptation to political change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674594784
Publisher:	Harvard
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Series:	Russian Research Center Studies Series , #76
Edition description:	Reprint 2014 ed.
Pages:	427
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Cocks Paul :

Paul Cocks is with the Hoover InstitutionDaniels Robert V. :

Robert V. Daniels is Professor of History, Emeritus, University of Vermont.Heer Nancy Whittier :

Nancy Whittier Heer teaches Political Science and has been Provost of Wheaton College.

Table of Contents

I. Problems And Perspectives

1. Do We Know All There Is to Know about the USSR?

Adam B. Ulam

II. Political Leadership and Power

2. Political Leadership in Soviet Historiography: Cult or Collective?

Nancy Whittier Heer

3. Permitted Dissent in the Decade after Stalin: Criticism and Protest in Novy mir, 1955-1964

Dina Spechler

4. Toward a Theory of Soviet Leadership Maintenance

Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone

5. Office Holding and Elite Status: The Central Committee of the CPSU

Robert V. Daniels

6. The Problem of Succession

John H. Hodgson

7. Party "Saturation" in the Soviet Union

Jerry F. Hough

III. The Policy Process: Administration and Control

8. The Scientific-Technical Revolution and the Soviet Administrative Debate

Robert F. Miller

9. The Policy Process and Bureaucratic Politics

Paul Cocks

10. The Virgin Lands since Khrushchev: Choices and Decisions in Soviet Policy Making

Richard M. Mills

IV. Political Development and Social Change

11. Socialism and Modernity: Education, Industrialization, and Social Change in the USSR

Gail Warshofsky Lapidus

12. Values and Aspirations of Soviet Youth

Ruth W. Mouly

13. Modernization, Generations, and the Uzbek Soviet Intelligensia

Donald S. Carlisle

14. Modernization and National Policy in Soviet Central Asia: Problems and Prospects

Gregory J. Massell

V. Continuity and Change in Foreign Policy

15. Peaceful Coexistence: From Heresy to Orthodoxy

Paul Marantz

16. Global Power Relationships in the Seventies: The View from the Kremlin

Robert H. Donaldson

VI. Some Reflections

17. Soviet Politics: From the Future to the Past?

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Notes

Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

In between these stimulating essays [by Adam Ulam and Zbigniew Brzezinski] we find articles tracing the historical evolution of concepts, fields, and policies...and a second group of articles offering close analyses of narrower aspects of Soviet policy (party membership, Virgin Lands, youth, succession and leadership, and so forth). The essays are generally of superior quality, and this anthology will be of considerable interest and use to both students and scholars.

This substantial volume was written and compiled by former students of the late Merle Fainsod, and is dedicated to his memory. The range of approaches to Soviet politics embodied in this collection do indeed reflect Fainsod's own approach: a combination of eclecticism, common sense, attention to history, assiduous compilation of data, and a willingness to entertain behavioral strategies in certain limited areas where they offer hope of meaningful insights...[This volume contains] examples of the cutting edge of new research.

From the Publisher

In between these stimulating essays [by Adam Ulam and Zbigniew Brzezinski] we find articles tracing the historical evolution of concepts, fields, and policies...and a second group of articles offering close analyses of narrower aspects of Soviet policy (party membership, Virgin Lands, youth, succession and leadership, and so forth). The essays are generally of superior quality, and this anthology will be of considerable interest and use to both students and scholars.

Slavic Review

This substantial volume was written and compiled by former students of the late Merle Fainsod, and is dedicated to his memory. The range of approaches to Soviet politics embodied in this collection do indeed reflect Fainsod's own approach: a combination of eclecticism, common sense, attention to history, assiduous compilation of data, and a willingness to entertain behavioral strategies in certain limited areas where they offer hope of meaningful insights...[This volume contains] examples of the cutting edge of new research.

Russian Review

In between these stimulating essays [by Adam Ulam and Zbigniew Brzezinski] we find articles tracing the historical evolution of concepts, fields, and policies...and a second group of articles offering close analyses of narrower aspects of Soviet policy (party membership, Virgin Lands, youth, succession and leadership, and so forth). The essays are generally of superior quality, and this anthology will be of considerable interest and use to both students and scholars.

Slavic Review - Zvi Gitelman

This substantial volume was written and compiled by former students of the late Merle Fainsod, and is dedicated to his memory. The range of approaches to Soviet politics embodied in this collection do indeed reflect Fainsod's own approach: a combination of eclecticism, common sense, attention to history, assiduous compilation of data, and a willingness to entertain behavioral strategies in certain limited areas where they offer hope of meaningful insights...[This volume contains] examples of the cutting edge of new research.

Russian Review - Robert J. Osborn