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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 2 of 3

Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900–1914
  • The Last Argument of Tsarism
  • Peter Gatrell
  • Published online:
    07 May 2010
    Print publication:
    10 March 1994
  • This book provides an economic historian's perspective on major questions that confront all students of Russian history: how stable were the economic and administrative structures of late-imperial Russia, and how well prepared was Russia for war in 1914? The decade following the Russo-Japanese War witnessed profound changes in the political system and in the industrial economy. The regime faced challenges to its authority from industrialists, caught in the throes of recession, and from parliamentary critics of tsarist administration. Peter Gatrell provides a comprehensive account of the attempts made by government and business to confront these challenges, examining the organisation and performance of a key industry and showing how decisions were reached about the allocation of resources, and the far-reaching consequences these decisions entailed.

Women, the State and Revolution
  • Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936
  • Wendy Z. Goldman
  • Published online:
    26 March 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 1993
  • When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they believed that under socialism the family would 'wither away.' They envisioned a society in which communal dining halls, daycare centres, and public laundries would replace the unpaid labour of women in the home. Yet by 1936 legislation designed to liberate women from their legal and economic dependence had given way to increasingly conservative solutions aimed at strengthening traditional family ties and women's reproductive role. This book explains the reversal, focusing on how women, peasants, and orphans responded to Bolshevik attempts to remake the family, and how their opinions and experiences in turn were used by the state to meet its own needs.

Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923–1934
  • George O. Liber
  • Published online:
    03 February 2010
    Print publication:
    30 July 1992
  • In the early 1920s the Bolsheviks, who were overwhelmingly urban, proletarian, and Russian, believed that rapid industrialization would dissolve the non-Russian national identities and create a solid base of support for the new political order. By the end of the decade, however, the social changes initiated by rapid economic development strengthened national assertiveness. This book analyzes the precarious relationship between Soviet legitimacy-building and the consequences of rapid industrial development in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the most populous non-Russian republic in the USSR, during the 1920s and 1930s. The author shows how the interplay between industrialization, urbanization, and Soviet preferential policies produced a modern, urban Ukrainian identity. This, he argues, explains why the Stalinist leadership changed its course on the nationality question in the 1930s and gave precedence to the Russians in the USSR.

Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization
  • The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations 1953–1964
  • Donald Filtzer
  • Published online:
    29 January 2010
    Print publication:
    01 October 1992
  • This 1992 book is a comprehensive study of the position of Soviet industrial workers during the Khrushchev period. Dr Filtzer examines the main features of labour policy, shop-floor relations between workers and managers, and the position of women workers. He argues that the main concern of labour policy was to remotivate an industrial population left demoralized by the Stalinist terror. This 'de-Stalinization' had to be carried out without undermining the power and property relations on which the Stalinist system had been built. The author convincingly demonstrates how labour policy was thus limited to superficial gestures of liberalization and tinkering with incentive schemes. Rather than achieving any lasting effects, the Khrushchev period saw the consolidation of a long-term decline into economic stagnation. The labour problems under Khrushchev are shown to be the same as those which confronted Mikhail Gorbachev and his ill-fated perestroika, thus helping to explain the failures of Gorbachev's policies.

The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa
  • The Diplomacy of Intervention and Disengagement
  • Robert G. Patman
  • Published online:
    29 January 2010
    Print publication:
    29 June 1990
  • This is an attempt to address the paradoxes of Soviet behaviour in the Horn of Africa. Dr Patman, editor of the journal Third World in Soviet Perspective, traces the impact of history, superpower relationships and competition on Soviet perceptions and motives. Dr Patman provides a careful historical background to the recent conflicts and shows how the Soviet Union and its East European partners dramatically switched from being close allies of Somalia to allies of Ethiopia and then intervened in the Ethiopian-Somali war of 1977–8 to ensure the military defeat of their former ally. However, he does not confine himself simply to retrospective analysis. He also assesses the Soviet experience in the region in the period since 1978, and considers in particular the impact of Gorbachev's thinking and the new diplomacy. The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa provides the most detailed examination yet of Soviet policy.

From Embargo to Ostpolitik
  • The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955–1980
  • Angela E. Stent
  • Published online:
    14 January 2010
    Print publication:
    29 January 1982
  • Professor Stent examines the development of Soviet-West German relations from both the Russian and German sides using extensive Soviet and West German sources. Hers is the first book in English to cover these topics. She has used a wide variety of materials including documents from the Kennedy administration and interviews with German government officials and business leaders.

Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920
  • The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community
  • Tadeusz Swietochowski
  • Published online:
    12 January 2010
    Print publication:
    29 March 1985
  • Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920 describes the rise of national identity among the Azerbaijanis - the Turkic-speaking Muslims of Russia's borderland with Iran - at the opening of the twentieth century. The principal focus is on the period from the Russian Revolution of 1905, when the Azerbaijanis began to articulate their national aspirations, until the establishment of the Soviet Azerbaijani Republic in 1920. The central theme of the book is the emergence of ideas, and then actions, that would create a new collective identity among the Muslims - a sense of nationality.

Investment and Property Rights in Yugoslavia
  • The Long Transition to a Market Economy
  • Milica Uvalic
  • Published online:
    11 January 2010
    Print publication:
    31 July 1992
  • This book was first published in 1992. For decades Yugoslavia had been developing its own model of socialism based on workers' self-management and the increasing use of the market mechanism. As a result, many scholars view the Yugoslav economy differently from other socialist systems. In this book, Dr Milica Uvalic demonstrates how some of the fundamental features of the Yugoslav economy have remained similar to those characterising other socialist economies. Dr Uvalic focuses on theoretical and empirical issues related to investment in Yugoslavia since 1965. She examines investment policies, sources of finance, macroeconomic performance, enterprise incentives, and current property reforms in relation to Western theory on investment behaviour in the labour-managed firm and Kornai's theory on socialist economies. In line with Kornai's theory, the author argues that investment reforms have not led to substantially changed enterprise behaviour, which illustrates the limited results to be expected from partial reforms in a socialist economy. The fundamental problems in Yugoslavia are thus generic to socialist economic systems, rather that the specific characteristic of self-management.

Red Petrograd
  • Revolution in the Factories, 1917–1918
  • S. A. Smith
  • Published online:
    11 January 2010
    Print publication:
    19 May 1983
  • This book explores the impact of the 1917 Revolution on factory life in the Russian capital. It traces the attempts of workers to take control of their working lives from the February Revolution through to June 1918, when the Bolsheviks nationalised industry. Although not primarily concerned with the political developments of the Revolution, the book demonstrates that the sphere of industrial production was a crucial arena of political as well as economic conflict. Having discussed the structure and composition of the factory workforce in Petrograd prior to 1917 and the wages and conditions of workers under the old regime, Dr Smith shows how workers saw the overthrow of the autocracy as a signal to democratise factory life and to improve their lot. After examining the creation and activities of the factory committees, he analyses the relationship of different groups of workers to the new labour movement, and assesses the extent to which it functioned democratically.

The Foreign Policy of the GDR in Africa
  • Gareth M. Winrow
  • Published online:
    11 January 2010
    Print publication:
    29 November 1990
  • In this 1990 book Gareth Winrow provides a comprehensive account in English of East German foreign policy towards Africa since the early 1950s. He challenges the view of the GDR's role in Africa as solely that of a proxy for the Soviet Union. Instead, as he convincingly argues, East German foreign policy in general, and in Africa in particular, should be understood as a strategy both for closer ties with the Soviet Union and for international recognition and legitimacy. The author explores the development of GDR relations with Africa and shows how they remain of particular significance as a means of discrediting the West German presence and supporting Soviet interests. The Foreign Policy of the GDR in Africa is based on an extensive use of official East German texts and statistics. It will be of interest to specialists and students of Soviet and East European studies, with special reference to the GDR, North–South relationships, superpower competition and the politics of development.

The History of Poland Since 1863
  • Edited by R. F. Leslie
  • Published online:
    26 December 2009
    Print publication:
    02 October 1980
  • This is an account of the evolution of Poland from conditions of subjection to its reconstruction in 1918, development in the years between the two World Wars, and reorganisation after 1945. It begins at a time when Poland was still suffering from the legacy of the eighteenth-century Partitions and burdened with problems of sizeable ethnic minorities, inadequate agrarian reforms and sluggish industrial development sustained by foreign capital. It traces the history through to independence and then to the transformation of the country in the last thirty years. Although many of the problems of the past have now disappeared, industrialisation, the structure of peasant agriculture, and political association with the Soviet Union present the Polish People's Republic with difficulties that have yet to be resolved. Substantial achievements in an ethnically homogeneous state must be set against substantial discontents. This history provides the English-speaking reader with a scholarly synthesis based mainly on literature in Polish and other East European languages. It will be essential reading for historians of Eastern Europe and for those interested in modern Polish society.

National Identity and Foreign Policy
  • Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine
  • Ilya Prizel
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    13 August 1998
  • This book is based on the premise that the foreign policy of any country is heavily influenced by a society's evolving notions of itself. Applying his analysis to Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, the author argues that national identity is an ever-changing concept, influenced by internal and external events, and by the manipulation of a polity's collective memory. The interaction of the narrative of a society and its foreign policy is therefore paramount. This is especially the case in East-Central Europe, where political institutions are weak, and social coherence remains subject to the vagaries of the concept of nationhood. Ilya Prizel's study will be of interest to students of nationalism, as well as of foreign policy and politics in East-Central Europe.

Soviet Policy towards South Asia since 1970
  • Linda Racioppi
  • Published online:
    15 December 2009
    Print publication:
    07 April 1994
  • This book seeks to understand the evolution of Soviet policy towards the countries of South Asia, the regional constraints and policy opportunities which influenced the policy process in Moscow, and the relationship between Soviet perceptions and policy objectives. The author divides Soviet foreign policy into three aspects: a perceptual aspect in which assessment of the regional and international environment occurs; a formulative aspect in which aims and strategies are developed; and an implementation aspect. The book analyses Soviet policy objectives and instruments in distinct historical phases: 1970–1978, which covers the Indo-Pakistani War and bilateral relations; 1979–1985, which covers the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and and its impact on regional politics; and 1985 to the present which examines the Gorbachev era and the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Collective Farms which Work?
  • Nigel Swain
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    13 June 1985
  • This book analyses Hungarian collectivization from a sociological perspective. Rather than consider Eastern European societies in the light of social stratification and social mobility surveys, it takes as its point of departure the commitment of Eastern European societies to industrialization within the constraints of a socialist economy and, by examining social change from the viewpoint of labour and those who control it, places the focus more strongly than has traditionally been the case on the production of social wealth, and the relations which circumscribe it, rather than on the ways in which wealth is distributed and consumed.

Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921–1934
  • Sheila Fitzpatrick
  • Published online:
    11 November 2009
    Print publication:
    20 September 1979
  • This is a history of Soviet education policy 1921–34 that places special emphasis upon the theme of social mobility through education. One of the hitherto untold stories of Soviet history is the making of the 'Brezhnev generation', a cohort of young workers and Communists sent to higher education during the First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932) and subsequently catapulted into leadership positions in the wake of the Great Purge of 1937/38. A focal point of this book is the educational policies which not only produced the 'Brezhnev generation', but also linked Stalin's regime with the massive upward mobility of the industrializing 1930s. The book is the first comprehensive history of Soviet education in the 1920s and early 1930s, and provides a sequel to the author's highly praised Commissariat of Enlightenment. In this, as in the earlier study, the author has used Soviet archival sources not previously available to Western scholars.

An Algebra of Soviet Power
  • Elite Circulation in the Belorussian Republic 1966–86
  • Michael E. Urban
  • Published online:
    09 November 2009
    Print publication:
    23 November 1989
  • Control of office has long been regarded as the key element in understanding power and policy in the Soviet system. What, however, accounts for the control of office and how are individuals recruited into positions of power and responsibility? In An Algebra of Soviet Power, Michael Urban adopts a fresh approach and introduces into the field of political elite studies the sociological technique of vacancy chain analysis. This treats the movements of actors as sequences of complex inter-relations that are structured by the properties and powers of the personnel system rather than by the consequences of individual intentions or characteristics. This algebraic method is applied to a large body of career data of officials from the Soviet Republic of Belorussia for the period 1966–86. The author documents how, despite the formal systems of nomenklatura - central control over personnel placement - the flow of individuals through the hierarchy of offices in Belorussia has not been influenced by any coordinating policy issuing from Moscow or Minsk. Instead regionalism has played an important, and patronage the decisive, role in the system.

Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement
  • Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories
  • Catherine Andreyev
  • Published online:
    04 November 2009
    Print publication:
    29 January 1987
  • Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement deals with the attempt by Soviet citizens to create a Russian anti-Stalinist liberation movement during the Second World War. These Soviet citizens were mainly prisoners-of-war, forced labourers or part of the population of the occupied territories of the USSR. The Liberation Movement was encouraged by German officers who disagreed with Nazi policy towards the USSR, as their experience showed that treating the population as 'subhumans' (Untermensch) merely increased resistance to Nazi occupation. Throughout the development of the Liberation Movement there existed a divergence of aims between the Russian members who wished to form an army and a political movement which would effect change within the USSR, and its German supporters who merely wished to alter the type of propaganda directed towards the population of the USSR. Catherine Andreyev provides an account of the evolution of the Russian Liberation Movement and examines the motivation of the titular leader of the movement, Lieutenant-General Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov. The main focus of the book is the ideology of the Liberation Movement, the importance of which lies in the fact that it represented the first grass-roots opposition movement within the Soviet Union since the end of the Civil War in 1922. The programme of the Movement reflects issues which would have been raised by citizens in the 1930s had they been free to do so. Catherine Andreyev examines influences on the programme, and the ideas expressed are placed within the context of the pre-war Soviet and Russian émigré society.

The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 1948–1967
  • Yaacov Ro'i
  • Published online:
    31 October 2009
    Print publication:
    14 March 1991
  • In this important 1991 study of Soviet Jewry, Yaacov Ro'i examines the cultural, social, political and international context of the movement for emigration, from the establishment of the state of Israel to the outbreak of the Six Day War. A discussion of the lives of Soviet Jews, based upon oral testimony, shows how Jewish self-awareness arose as a product of the Holocaust, of the founding of the State of Israel, and of popular antisemitism and Soviet policy, and how local groups developed in clandestine conditions to sustain Jewish cultural interests. The author also analyses the campaign conducted in the West on behalf of Soviet Jewish rights as a whole and emigration in particular. By 1967 Soviet Jewish efforts to maintain even a minimal Jewish existence seemed doomed to constant frustration, and most nationalistically minded Jews accepted that the only way of fulfilling their aspirations was to emigrate to Israel.

Stalin, Siberia and the Crisis of the New Economic Policy
  • James Hughes
  • Published online:
    30 October 2009
    Print publication:
    26 July 1991
  • This 1991 book makes an important contribution to the evaluation of the origins of Stalinism. Although it is widely acknowledged by Western scholars that the Soviet grain crisis of 1927–8 and Stalin's Siberian tour of January 1928 were crucial factors in the decision to abandon the New Economic Policy (NEP) and return to a more ideologically rigid policy of collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, studies have hitherto concentrated on the role of leading personalities and 'high politics'. In this book, Dr James Hughes presents an in depth examination of the crisis of the NEP from the regional perspective of Siberia and analyses the events and pressures 'from below', at the grassroots level of Soviet society. Using publications of the Siberian party and statistical investigations of the countryside, Dr Hughes offers insights into several largely uncharted features of the Soviet system in these years.

Soviet Planning in Peace and War, 1938–1945
  • Mark Harrison
  • Published online:
    29 October 2009
    Print publication:
    29 August 1985
  • This book is about the impact of war on the Soviet system of economic planning and management between 1938 and 1945. What was the dynamic of change in the prewar Soviet economic system? How well was the Soviet economy prepared for war? What kind of war followed the German invasion of 1941, and what costs did it inflict on the Soviet Union? How did the Soviet economy measure up to wartime requirements, and what changes in economic organisation resulted? What lessons were laid down for the postwar Soviet approach to both peaceful and warlike tasks?

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