Author: Verena Fritz
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155211124
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
Looks at the process of state-building in Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia from a political economy and institutional perspective. Weak and distorted state capacity has come to be widely recognized as a key obstacle to successful transformation—including economic modernization and growth as well as the consolidation of democracy. However, so far little systematic research has been carried out on state capacity per se and on how to explain its development. The book provides new insights in considering the evolution of Ukraine since 1992, offering an in-depth view of institutional development in crucial areas and thus tracing the process of state-building. It draws comparisons with developments in Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia (based on field research). To capture the process of state-building empirically, focuses on the extraction and expenditure systems which are a central pillar of state capacity and also a central link between citizens and the state. The book also sheds light on how Ukraine’s potential ‘second transition’ currently under way will have an impact on its institutional system.
Author: Yuri Slezkine
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400888174
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1128
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Book Description
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
Author: Thomas F. Remington
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822977044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Remington profiles the Bolshevik project of social transformation and political centralization known as War Communism. He argues that the effort to institute a centrally planned and administered economy shaped the ideology of the regime, the relations between the regime and the working class, and the character of state power.
Author: Valerie Sperling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429981589
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Has the Russian state managed to lay the institutional groundwork for long-term stability and democratic governance? In Building the Russian State , Valerie Sperling assemblies a group of cutting-edge scholars to critically assess the crises in Russia's transitional institutions. Part I of the book shows that Russia's political elites are less focused on serving public interests than on enriching themselves, and examines how these elites are ruling Russia. Part II focuses on the growth of organized crime, the decay of the military, the precariousness of the Russian Federation, the weakness of the labor movement, the corruption of the courts, the challenges facing international reformers, and the authoritarianism of the super-presidential political system. By focusing on the challenges, failures, and occasional successes of the Russian political system, this volume offers upper-level undergraduates and other scholars valuable insight into post-Soviet politics, state-building, and transitions to democracy.
Author: Gordon B. Smith
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9780765602763
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
The challenge of a new democracy, the author argues, is the creation of effective and authoritative political institutions. Focusing on Yeltsin's Russia, this book examines this question with reference to democratization, national identity, legal reform and other issues.
Author: Pal Kolsto
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429966776
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The dissolution of the Soviet Union has provided scholars with tremendously rich material for the study of comparative nation building. Not since the decolonization of Africa in the 1960s have so many new states been established in one stroke in one region. The post-Soviet states, moreover, have all the necessary prerequisites for fruitful comparison: a number of similarities, but also significant differences in terms of size, culture, and recent history. In order to survive in the long run, modern states normally must have a population that possesses some sense of unity. Its citizens must adhere to some common values and common allegiance towards the same state institutions and symbols. This does not means that all inhabitants must necessarily share the same culture, but they should at least regard themselves as members of the same nation. Strategies to foster this kind of common nationhood in a population are usually referred to as 'nation building'. After a decade of post-Soviet nation building certain patterns are emerging, and not always the most obvious ones. Some states seem to manage well against high odds, while others appear to be disintegrating or sinking slowly into oblivion. To a remarkable degree the former Soviet republics have chosen different models for their nation building. This book examines the preconditions for these endeavors, the goals the state leaders are aiming at, and the means they employ to reach them. }
Author: Katherine Zubovich
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691202729
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
"An in-depth history of the Stalinist skyscraper"--
Author: Victor Taki
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 963386383X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
One of the goals of Russia’s Eastern policy was to turn Moldavia and Wallachia, the two Romanian principalities north of the Danube, from Ottoman vassals into a controllable buffer zone and a springboard for future military operations against Constantinople. Russia on the Danube describes the divergent interests and uneasy cooperation between the Russian officials and the Moldavian and Wallachian nobility in a key period between 1812 and 1834. Victor Taki’s meticulous examination of the plans and memoranda composed by Russian administrators and the Romanian elite underlines the crucial consequences of this encounter. The Moldavian and Wallachian nobility used the Russian-Ottoman rivalry in order to preserve and expand their traditional autonomy. The comprehensive institutional reforms born out of their interaction with the tsar’s officials consolidated territorial statehood on the lower Danube, providing the building blocks of a nation state. The main conclusion of the book is that although Russian policy was driven by self-interest, and despite the Russophobia among a great part of the Romanian intellectuals, this turbulent period significantly contributed to the emergence, several decades later, of modern Romania.
Author: Brian D. Taylor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139496441
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
This book argues that Putin's strategy for rebuilding the state was fundamentally flawed. Taylor demonstrates that a disregard for the way state officials behave toward citizens - state quality - had a negative impact on what the state could do - state capacity. Focusing on those organizations that control state coercion, what Russians call the 'power ministries', Taylor shows that many of the weaknesses of the Russian state that existed under Boris Yeltsin persisted under Putin. Drawing on extensive field research and interviews, as well as a wide range of comparative data, the book reveals the practices and norms that guide the behavior of Russian power ministry officials (the so-called siloviki), especially law enforcement personnel. By examining siloviki behavior from the Kremlin down to the street level, State Building in Putin's Russia uncovers the who, where and how of Russian state building after communism.
Author: Brian D. Taylor
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781139010122
Category : Duress (Law)
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
"Building a strong Russian state was the central goal of Vladimir Putin's presidency. This book argues that Putin's strategy for rebuilding the state was fundamentally flawed. Taylor demonstrates that a disregard for the way state officials behave toward citizens--state quality--had a negative impact on what the state could do--state capacity. Focusing on those organizations that control state coercion, what Russians call the "power ministries," Taylor shows that many of the weaknesses of the Russian state that existed under Boris Yeltsin persisted under Putin. Drawing on extensive field research and interviews, as well as a wide range of comparative data, the book reveals the practices and norms that guide the behavior of Russian power ministry officials (the so-called siloviki), especially law enforcement personnel. By examining siloviki behavior from the Kremlin down to the street level, State building in Putin's Russia uncovers the who, where, and how of Russian state building after communism"--Provided by publisher.
