Author: S. Neil MacFarlane
Publisher: Kingston, Ont. : Centre for International Relations, Queen's University
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Author: Yegor Gaidar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0815731159
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
"My goal is to show the reader that the Soviet political and economic system was unstable by its very nature. It was just a question of when and how it would collapse...." —From the Introduction to Collapse of an Empire The Soviet Union was an empire in many senses of the word—a vast mix of far-flung regions and accidental citizens by way of conquest or annexation. Typical of such empires, it was built on shaky foundations. That instability made its demise inevitable, asserts Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister of Russia and architect of the "shock therapy" economic reforms of the 1990s. Yet a growing desire to return to the glory days of empire is pushing today's Russia backward into many of the same traps that made the Soviet Union untenable. In this important new book, Gaidar clearly illustrates why Russian nostalgia for empire is dangerous and ill-fated: "Dreams of returning to another era are illusory. Attempts to do so will lead to defeat." Gaidar uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why swimming against this tide of history would be a huge mistake. The USSR sowed the seeds of its own economic destruction, and Gaidar worries that Russia is repeating some of those mistakes. Once again, for example, the nation is putting too many eggs into one basket, leaving the nation vulnerable to fluctuations in the energy market. The Soviets had used revenues from energy sales to prop up struggling sectors such as agriculture, which was so thoroughly ravaged by hyperindustrialization that the Soviet Union became a net importer of food. When oil prices dropped in the 1980s, that revenue stream diminished, and dependent sectors suffered heavily. Although strategies requiring austerity or sacrifice can be politically difficult, Russia needs to prepare for such downturns and restrain spending during prosperous times. Collapse of an Empire shows why it is imperative to fix the roof before it starts to rain, and why so

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 18

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Author: James A. Nathan
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312097257
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited provides a comprehensive overview of the new materials recently released by the Soviet Union, United States, and Cuba. The authors have all had a major role in bringing to light either significant reevaluations of the crisis, or in some cases, truly startling challenges to the conventional wisdom surrounding much of the crisis. This important collection, edited by a long-time student of the crisis, is a coherent, original, and up-to-date work that bears on a moment when the world, for good cause, held its breath in fear that the morning might bring the apocalypse.

Author: Oliver O'Donovan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521538992
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Leading political theologian Oliver O'Donovan takes a fresh look at some traditional moral arguments about war. Christians differ widely on this issue. The book re-examines questions of contemporary urgency, including the use of biological and nuclear weapons, military intervention, economic sanctions, and the role of the UN. It opens with a challenging dedication to the new Archbishop of Canterbury and proceeds to shed light on vital topics with which that Archbishop and others will be very directly engaged. It should be read by anyone concerned with the ethics of warfare.

Author: Daniel Yergin
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9780140121773
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Drawing on once-secret archives and private papers, Daniel Yergin documents this transformation of the American viewpoint and analyzes how the Cold War policy came about.

Author: Sanford R. Lieberman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000305708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The demise of any empire provides an occasion for fresh examination of longaccepted "truths" about its history and its intrinsic nature: What set this particular empire apart from others? Why did it develop in the way that it did? Could events have taken a different path? What legacies has the empire left to its heirs? In this volume, eminent scholars reflect on the unique and central features of the Soviet empire during its period of consolidation in Europe and speculate on the long-term effects of its collapse. They reconsider subjects that have absorbed Adam Ulam's attention in his own work—the ideologies of central planning, of totalitarianism and state terror at home, and of intervention abroad—and explore their impact on the people who lived under Soviet power at its apogee. They also analyze the unraveling of the system on the domestic scene, in elite and grassroots politics, and in the international arena. Concluding chapters focus on the configuration of new domestic and foreign policies and on prospects for security and cooperation in the region.

Author: Norman A. Graebner
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Chronicles the evolution of the political relationship between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and that relationship's role in ending the Cold War.

Author: John Arch Getty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521335706
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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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.

Author: Edward A. Lynch
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438439490
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Central America was the final place where U.S. and Soviet proxy forces faced off against one another in armed conflict. In The Cold War’s Last Battlefield, Edward A. Lynch blends his own first-hand experiences as a member of the Reagan Central America policy team with interviews of policy makers and exhaustive study of primary source materials, including once-secret government documents, in order to recount these largely forgotten events and how they fit within Reagan’s broader foreign policy goals. Lynch’s compelling narrative reveals a president who was willing to risk both influence and image to aggressively confront Soviet expansion in the region. He also demonstrates how the internal debates between competing sides of the Reagan administration were really an argument about the basic thrust of U.S. foreign policy, and that they anticipated, to a remarkable degree, policy discussions following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.