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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 1 of 3

Latin America through Soviet Eyes
  • The Evolution of Soviet Perceptions during the Brezhnev Era 1964–1982
  • Ilya Prizel
  • Published online:
    05 February 2012
    Print publication:
    26 April 1990
  • Latin America through Soviet Eyes provides an original and comprehensive assessment of changing Soviet perceptions of politics in Latin America during the Brezhnev years. Dr Prizel surveys the views of Soviet academics and journalists as well as of politicians on three main areas. He explores the changing Soviet perceptions of Latin America's domestic politics including the Church, the military and national liberation movements; he examines the role of Latin America in global politics and the way in which the USA has influenced regional events, and he discusses the emerging Soviet-Latin American relationship. Case studies of Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina provide a framework for understanding changing Soviet perceptions in the context of the domestic dynamics of specific individual countries. This book is based on a wealth of Russian, Spanish and English language sources. Soviet academic journals, newspapers, communist party journals and the numerous books published by the Institute of Latin America of the Academy of Sciences in the USSR provide the Soviet view of Latin America and this is examined against a background of regional perceptions expressed in Spanish-American material.

Public Opinion and Political Change in Poland, 1980–1982
  • David Stewart Mason
  • Published online:
    05 February 2012
    Print publication:
    24 October 1985
  • This book draws on public opinion surveys conducted in Poland during the Solidarity era to examine popular attitudes on fundamental issues of political power and on the dramatic political events of 1980–1982. These surveys, unprecedented for a communist regime, offer a unique portrait of the values and attitudes of a population in a society undergoing profound social, economic and political change. The study focuses on the citizens, who are often overlooked in studies of communist systems. As such, it provides a fresh look at the Solidarity experience from the public's point of view. It details the sources of support and opposition for the regime, the Solidarity leadership, and the policies of each. For example, support for Solidarity declined during 1981, but it remained strong, and there was little popular support for the hardline measures employed by the regime.

Women in the Soviet Countryside
  • Women's Roles in Rural Development in the Soviet Union
  • Susan Bridger
  • Published online:
    05 January 2012
    Print publication:
    17 December 1987
  • Research on women's roles in rural development has found that women's contribution to the rural economy is commonly underestimated and that women may find it difficult to benefit from the development process. Within this context, this book looks at the Soviet experience of development as reflected in the lives of rural women. It attempts to analyse the gains made and the problems still faced by rural women in a country where development policies have been accompanied by a formal commitment to sexual equality. In its introduction, the book briefly outlines the impact on rural women of social, economic and political change in the countryside from the revolution to 1960. It then goes on to examine in depth changes in the role and status of women in the Soviet countryside.

Lenin's Government
  • Sovnarkom 1917-1922
  • T. H. Rigby
  • Published online:
    05 November 2011
    Print publication:
    17 May 1979
  • When Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 they sought to scrap the existing structures of government and substitute new ones based on Marxist principles. This book attempts a detailed account of their efforts to create a socialist 'cabinet' (Sovnarkom), to elaborate effective machinery and methods of operation, and to use it to govern the country. It examines what kind of people were appointed to Sovnarkom and who chose them. It shows how elements of the pre-revolutionary system of government were taken over along with former ministerial officials. Sovnarkom was headed by Lenin and this helped to ensure its early pre-dominance. Nonetheless it was gradually overshadowed by the Party Central Committee and Politburo, and the book seeks to explain why this happened and why Lenin's efforts to reverse the process failed. The book throws important light on the origins of the Soviet system of government.

Materials for a Balance of the Soviet National Economy, 1928–1930
  • S. G. Wheatcroft, R. W. Davies
  • Foreword by Richard Stone
  • Published online:
    26 October 2011
    Print publication:
    19 December 1985
  • This book contains a full translation of a major but little-known Soviet work on Soviet national income accounts for a crucial stage in the social and economic transformation of the Soviet economy from 1928 to 1930. These were years of mass collectivisation and the launching of the Soviet industrialisation drive. The USSR was perhaps unique in having a well-developed statistical service able to record the detailed changes in economic relationships that were taking place at this time. The translation is accompanied by three introductory articles which explain the structure and contents of these materials, what new light these materials throw on the development of the Soviet economy in this period and describe the significance of these materials for the history of Soviet statistics and planning. Amongst other questions this evidence casts some doubt on recent attempts to show that Soviet industrialisation resulted in a change in the net flow of goods between industry and agriculture, in favour of agriculture. It also shows that considerable attempts were made by some influential statisticians and planners in the early 1930s to analyse the relationship between different branches and sectors of the economy. In a foreword Professor Sir Richard Stone sets the achievement of the construction of these materials in the context of the history of Western works on national income accounts.

Soviet Trade Unions
  • Their Development in the 1970s
  • Blair A. Ruble
  • Published online:
    07 October 2011
    Print publication:
    30 September 1981
  • This book, first published in 1981, represents a systematic attempt to describe and analyse the evolution of Soviet trade union organisations. It examines union activities both at the national level and on the shop floor. The main focus is on the development and workings of the Soviet trade unions, but their history throughout the Soviet period is also covered. Soviet trade unions were an important component in Stalin's system of rigid control over workers. Beginning with Khrushchev, party leaders sought to dismantle a system rooted in terror while seeking alternative ways to ensure compliance with civil authority. Yet no such way has been found to establish a sense of trust between managers and workers as a basis for such compliance. The question then arises of whose interest Soviet trade union organisations serve - that of the state or that of the workers? In analysing these relationships - especially the relationship between production concerns and worker welfare - Soviet Trade Unions focuses on the nature of change and continuity in Soviet labour relations.

Soviet Book Publishing Policy
  • Gregory Walker
  • Published online:
    07 October 2011
    Print publication:
    18 May 1978
  • This book first published in 1978 provides a broad and comprehensive view of the Soviet book publishing industry based on extensive use of Soviet sources and on visits and interviews conducted in the Soviet Union. Book publishing is examined both as a manufacturing and distributing industry enmeshed in the machinery of central planning, and as a disseminator of ideas influenced and controlled by the organs of government, the Communist Party and the censorship. A 'policy approach' is used to study the operations and management of the vast Soviet publishing industry, examining the complex pressures which affect its administration and the impact those pressures have on books published in the USSR. The powers of the Communist Party, government ministries and the censorship over the publishing houses are analysed. The perspective of the book is wide enough to take in questions about the place of the author in the publishing process and the role played by printing and book-selling. Attention is paid to the special problems in publishing different types of books: fiction, textbooks, scientific works, mass political literature and so on.

Socialism and Democracy in Czechoslovakia
  • 1945-1948
  • M. R. Myant
  • Published online:
    07 October 2011
    Print publication:
    03 September 1981
  • This book is about the political, social and economic changes in Czechoslovakia in the years 1945– 1948. In 1945 the 'national revolution' established the Communist Party as the dominant force within a coalition government. The leading Communists then evolved the idea of a specific Czechoslovak road to socialism that could bypass the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. By analysing in detail the revolutionary events and the society that emerged from them, the book demonstrates that there was a real possibility of developing a distinct model of socialism containing a plurality of parties and a sizeable private sector. Such thinking, however, was effectively ended in February 1948, when the Communist Party established a monopoly of power. The fundamental causes of this change in the party's strategy are to be found, it is argued, in the international situation. The February events were of international significance as they confirmed the division of Europe into two blocs. The concluding chapter shows how important they were for the subsequent development of Czechoslovak society.

The Modernization of Soviet Industrial Management
  • Socioeconomic Development and the Search for Viability
  • William J. Conyngham
  • Published online:
    07 October 2011
    Print publication:
    30 September 1982
  • This book first published in 1982 considers the problems of efficiently managing large enterprises which are common to both the West and to the Soviet Union. The growth in management science in the West has been paralleled in the Soviet Union in the years since Khrushchev's fall. Professor Conyngham provides a comprehensive discussion of the efforts in the Soviet Union to develop techniques of scientific management that are consistent with the requirements of communist ideology and a planned economy.The opening chapter outlines the reforms of Soviet industrial management during the post-Khrushchev era and, in particular, indicates the role that increased decentralization has played in the developing importance of management science. Conyngham then concentrates on the generation of management theory and its application to the existing economic system. Topics covered include the emergence of systems analysis as the basic approach to management reform, the application of mathematical models and computers to decision making, and the introduction of economic and behavioural methods of management control. The last part of the book deals with the impact of functional rationalization on the structure of the existing system and the ministerial reforms of the 1970s.

The Agrarian Policy of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party
  • From its Origins through the Revolution of 1905–1907
  • Maureen Perrie
  • Published online:
    07 October 2011
    Print publication:
    27 January 1977
  • The Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) party gained an overall majority in the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly, which was dissolved by the Bolsheviks in January 1918. The SRs derived the bulk of their electoral support from the peasantry, and the gulf between the predominantly urban Bolshevik party and the rural masses was to create immense problems for the Soviet government in the 1920s, culminating in the horrors of forced collectivization. The SRs offered an alternative vision of the Russian peasant's path to socialism. They were closer to the peasantry than any other revolutionary party, and more aware of the problems involved in implementing a socialist transformation of Russian agriculture. In this study the author traces the development of SR agrarian policy in the party's formative years, from the period of disillusionment which followed the failure of the Populist 'movement to the people' of the 1870s, through the revolutionary years 1905–7, to the subsequent reaction under Stolypin.

The Socialist Corporation and Technocratic Power
  • The Polish United Workers' Party, Industrial Organisation and Workforce Control 1958–80
  • Jean Woodall
  • Published online:
    07 October 2011
    Print publication:
    25 November 1982
  • In this book Dr Woodall analyses the political implications of the pursuit of industrial growth for the authority of the Polish United Workers' Party. She argues that political constraints on the available options for economic reform have encouraged a policy of merger of industrial enterprises into large `corporate' units since 1958. Although they are only a shadow of their Western counterparts, these socialist corporations' nevertheless pose considerable problems for the role of a Marxist-Leninist party in industry. While this does not manifest itself in the emergence of a clearly identifiable 'technocratic' class of managers challenging the legitimacy of the Party, it does involve difficulties caused by an increasingly 'technicist' ethos of industrial management which eschews the possibility of meaningful workforce participation. Dr Woodall thus shows how the over-zealous pursuit of industrial integration and concentration in the 1970s was, despite attempts by the Polish United Workers' Party to reformulate its 'leading role', one of the major factors contributing to the industrial unrest which brought about the fall of the Gierek leadership in 1980.

The Soviet Study of International Relations
  • Allen Lynch
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    08 October 1987
  • 'Dr Lynch's book is an insightful and incisive examination of Soviet theories and concepts of international politics and foreign policy. Not only does he provide a concise exposition of the orthodox Marxist, Leninist and Stalinist foundations of Soviet thinking on international affairs, but he also examines the important departures from that orthodoxy under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. More important, however, he focuses on the intellectual ferment which characterized the infrastructure of the Soviet foreign policy establishment during the past twenty years … His elegantly written words and powerful expository style enable us to understand better both Soviet thinking and Soviet behaviour in international affairs.'Vernon Aspaturian, Chair of the Shulman Prize Committee, 1987

The Precarious Truce
  • Anglo-Soviet Relations 1924–27
  • Gabriel Gorodetsky
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    03 March 1977
  • Lenin's death at the beginning of 1924 coincided with an exhaustive search by the USSR for a modus vivendi with the capitalist world. In laying the foundations of peaceful co-existence, priority was given to the cultivation of relations with Britain. This study examines the British government's various responses to the Soviet overtures. The scope of the work ranges from Labour's de jure recognition of the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1924 to the Conservatives' severance of relations in May 1927. The bulk of the study is set against the background of rapidly deteriorating relations and traces the unsparing measures employed by the Russians to forestall an open breach. Equal attention is paid to the Soviet government's straightforward diplomatic moves and to activities under the auspices of Comintern and the Soviet trade unions which rallied support without regard to frontiers or international protocol. The main aim was to strengthen the security and economic recovery of the Soviet Union, but revolutionary aspirations remain on the agenda.

East-West Financial Relations
  • Current Problems and Future Prospects
  • Iliana Zloch-Christy
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 April 1991
  • In this book, Iliana Zloch-Christy analyses the problems of Eastern Europe's convertible currency external debt situation and its impact on the financing of East-West trade in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This book, published in 1991, is a continuation of Dr Zloch Christy's Debt Problems of Eastern Europe (1987) and is the first study of the complexities of East-West trade and finance in this period. The author addresses four main issues. First, she examines market-oriented reforms in Eastern Europe's economic system and the changes that took place in East-West political relations. Dr Zloch-Christy then assesses whether convertible currency debt problems are an inherent part of the economic development of Eastern Europe, and if the problems are region-wide, and she discusses the strategies adopted to deal with them. She continues by exploring the extent to which the problems which arose from indebtedness affected the financing of East-West trade. Finally, the author assesses medium- and long-term debt prospects at this time, both for Eastern Europe as a whole and for each country within the CMEA.

India and the Soviet Union
  • Trade and Technology Transfer
  • Santosh K. Mehrotra
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    25 January 1991
  • India was the Soviet Union's most important trading partner among the less developed countries (LDCs) and the largest recipient of Soviet aid to non-socialist LDCs. Similarly the Soviet Union is one of India's largest trade partners. In this 1991 book, Santosh Mehrotra presents a comprehensive study of this trading relationship and the transfer of technology from the Soviet Union. He begins by outlining Indian economic strategy since the 1950s and the role of Soviet and East European technical assistance. Part II examines Soviet technological transfer to India since 1955. The final chapters analyse Indo-Soviet trade in the 1970s and 1980s, covering payment arrangements and bilateral trading. The book is an exhaustive analysis of economic relations between an industrialised planned economy and a developing market economy. It will therefore become essential reading for students and specialists of development economics and international relations as well as for government and institutional economists in international trade and finance.

The Origins of Detente
  • The Genoa Conference and Soviet-Western Relations, 1921–1922
  • Stephen White
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    27 December 1985
  • The Genoa Conference of April-May 1922 saw the first serious and sustained attempt to negotiate a modus vivendi between the newly established Soviet government in Moscow and the western capitalist countries that surrounded it. Drawing upon a wide range of archival and other sources, many of them unfamiliar or previously unexplored for this purpose, this study traces the evolution of Soviet-Western relations from the Revolution up to the autumn of 1921, when the proposal for a conference first began to emerge, and then considers in more detail the course of preconference diplomacy and the proceedings of the conference itself, up to the early summer of 1922. In his final chapter Dr White argues that the failure to resolve East-West differences at Genoa was attributable to a variety of circumstances, but above all to a failure of political will.

The Warsaw Rising of 1944
  • Jan M. Ciechanowski
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    14 February 1974
  • Why did the Polish underground Home Army call for what proved to be a suicidal uprising? Why did they decide that their poorly armed troops should alone liberate Warsaw shortly before the Soviet entry into the capital? Why were the approaching Russians not informed? Why did the Red Army fail to take Warsaw in the first days of August 1944 as both Stalin and Bor-Kornorowski had anticipated? Dr Ciechanowski examines in detail the political, diplomatic, ideological and military background of the Rising and the events and decisions which immediately preceded it. He traces in turn: the main aspects of Polish politics, strategy and diplomacy during the whole of the Second World War. It is based primarily on unpublished Polish contemporary documents and on interviews with highly placed participants in, and witnesses of, the Warsaw Rising. It provides a definitive account of why the Rising took place and is an extremely important contribution to the history of the Second World War.

The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union
  • The Role of Local Party Organs in Economic Management
  • Peter Rutland
  • Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    12 November 1992
  • In this 1992 book Professor Peter Rutland analyses the role played by regional and local organs of the Soviet Communist Party in economic management from 1970 to 1990. Using a range of political and economic journals, newspapers and academic publications, he examines interventions in the construction industry, energy, transport, consumer goods and agriculture. Rutland argues that party interventions hindered rather than assisted the search for efficiency in the Soviet economy, and repeated attempts to introduce more economically rational management methods failed to alter these traditional patterns of party intervention. He further demonstrates how as the Soviet economy matured and grew more complex over the last three decades, party interventions became increasingly out of tune with the needs of the economy. Yet even the calls for radical reform of the economy since 1985 were not accompanied by any decisive changes in this pattern of party intervention; this, argues Peter Rutland, casts serious doubts on the political feasibility of economic reform in a Soviet-type system.

Accounting for War
  • Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940–1945
  • Mark Harrison
  • Published online:
    08 June 2010
    Print publication:
    03 October 1996
  • In this book Mark Harrison rebuilds and analyses the Soviet economy's wartime statistical record, examining its prewar size and composition, and wartime changes in GNP, employment, the defence burden, and the role of foreign aid. Complementing classic long-run growth studies, the book compares the Soviet experience with that of other great powers. It emphasises the severity of current costs and capital losses arising from the war, which had a negative effect on GNP that persisted well after the end of the war. The results are based on a comprehensive analysis of hitherto closed official documents, shedding light on the dimensions of the Soviet war effort, the comparative economics of the war, and its long-term impact on the Soviet economy.

The Collapse of a Single-Party System
  • The Disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
  • Graeme Gill
  • Published online:
    12 May 2010
    Print publication:
    13 October 1994
  • In this 1994 book Graeme Gill traces the disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. Based principally on the contemporary Soviet press, the book to follows the debates in the party over the implications of Gorbachev's reforms and how the party should respond to them. It is an in-depth analysis of the institutional dynamics of a party under pressure. When it came under challenge and it could no longer use the weapon of suppression, the party was unable to mount a serious defence of its position and role. Confronted from the top by Gorbachev's call to reform itself and by his changes to the political arena, and from the bottom by new political forces taking advantage of that arena, the party's unity collapsed and with it any sense of purpose or possibility of survival.

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