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This collection brings together an interdisciplinary array of scholars of late socialism in the U.S.S.R. and challenges the dominant narrative of stagnation during the Brezhnev era. It demonstrates that the political and intellectual class remained ideologically committed, recognized systemic challenges, and embarked on a creative search for solutions.
Leonid Brezhnev was leader of the Soviet Union for almost two decades when it was at the height of its powers. This book is a long overdue reappraisal of Brezhnev the man and the system over which he ruled. By incorporating much of the new material available in Russian, it challenges the received wisdom about the Brezhnev years, and provides a fascinating insight into the life and times of one of the twentieth century's most neglected political leaders.
This volume contributes to a growing reevaluation of the Brezhnev era, helping to shape a new historiography that gives us a much richer and more nuanced picture of the time period than the stagnation paradigm usually assigned to the era. The essays provide a multifaceted prism that reveals a dynamic society with a political and intellectual class that remained committed to the ideological foundations of the state, recognized the challenges that the system faced, and embarked on a creative search for solutions. The chapters focus on developments in politics, society, and culture, as well as the state’s attempts to lead and initiate change, which are mostly glossed over in the stagnation narrative. The volume challenges the assumption that the period as a whole was characterized by rampant cynicism and a decline of faith in the socialist creed and instead points to the persistence of popular engagement with the socialist ideology and the power it continued to wield within the Soviet Union.
When the United States and the Soviet Union signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks accords in 1972 it was generally seen as the point at which the USSR achieved parity with the United States. Less than twenty years later the Soviet Union had collapsed, confounding experts who never expected it to happen during their lifetimes. In From Washington to Moscow veteran US Foreign Service officer Louis Sell traces the history of US–Soviet relations between 1972 and 1991 and explains why the Cold War came to an abrupt end. Drawing heavily on archival sources and memoirs—many in Russian—as well as his own experiences, Sell vividly describes events from the perspectives of American and Soviet participants. He attributes the USSR's fall not to one specific cause but to a combination of the Soviet system's inherent weaknesses, mistakes by Mikhail Gorbachev, and challenges by Ronald Reagan and other US leaders. He shows how the USSR's rapid and humiliating collapse and the inability of the West and Russia to find a way to cooperate respectfully and collegially helped set the foundation for Vladimir Putin’s rise.
Jeff Sahadeo reveals the complex and fascinating stories of migrant populations in Leningrad and Moscow. Voices from the Soviet Edge focuses on the hundreds of thousands of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, and others who arrived toward the end of the Soviet era, seeking opportunity at the privileged heart of the USSR. Through the extensive oral histories Sahadeo has collected, he shows how the energy of these migrants, denigrated as "Blacks" by some Russians, transformed their families' lives and created inter-republican networks, altering society and community in both the center and the periphery of life in the "two capitals." Voices from the Soviet Edge connects Leningrad and Moscow to transnational trends of core-periphery movement and marks them as global cities. In examining Soviet concepts such as "friendship of peoples" alongside ethnic and national differences, Sahadeo shows how those ideas became racialized but could also be deployed to advance migrant aspirations. He exposes the Brezhnev era as a time of dynamism and opportunity, and Leningrad and Moscow not as isolated outposts of privilege but at the heart of any number of systems that linked the disparate regions of the USSR into a whole. In the 1980s, as the Soviet Union crumbled, migration increased. These later migrants were the forbears of contemporary Muslims from former Soviet spaces who now confront significant discrimination in European Russia. As Sahadeo demonstrates, the two cities benefited from 1980s' migration but also became communities where racism and exclusion coexisted with citizenship and Soviet identity.
In December 2001, a new Russian law laying the basis for the peaceful territorial expansion of the Russian Federation went into effect. The entire country of Belarus-as well as parts of Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine-are the most likely candidates to join Russia. Should this largely ethnically-based expansion occur, Russia would grow by more than 20 million people, and the resultant rise in Russian nationalism might encourage further Russian territorial ambitions-especially those directed at Ukraine. Even if Russian expansion stops with all, or part, of these territories, however, it could breathe new life into the ethnically based border problems of other countries. Co-published with the American Foreign Policy Council.
This book presents the ups and downs of the Soviet-Turkish relations during World War II and immediately after it. Hasanli draws on declassified archive documents from the United States, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan to recreate a true picture of the time when the 'Turkish crisis' of the Cold War broke out. It explains why and how the friendly relations between the USSR and Turkey escalated into enmity, led to the increased confrontation between these two countries, and ended up with Turkey's entry into NATO. Hasanli uses recently-released Soviet archive documents to shed light on some dark points of the Cold War era and the relations between the Soviets and the West. Apart from bringing in an original point of view regarding starting of the Cold War, the book reveals some secret sides of the Soviet domestic and foreign policies. The book convincingly demonstrates how Soviet political technologists led by Josef Stalin distorted the picture of a friendly and peaceful country_Turkey_into the image of an enemy in the minds of millions of Soviet citizens.
The Cold War was a unique international conflict partly because Josef Stalin sought socialist transformation of other countries rather than simply the traditional objectives. This intriguing book, based on recently accessible Soviet primary sources, is the first to explain the emergence of the Cold War and its development in Stalin's lifetime from the perspective of Soviet policy-making. The book pays particular attention to the often-neglected "societal" dimension of Soviet foreign policy as a crucial element of the genesis and development of the Cold War. It is also the first to put German postwar development into the context of Soviet Cold War policy. Stalin vainly tried to mobilize the Germans with slogans of national unity and then to discredit the West among the Germans by forcing the surrender of Berlin. Further attempts to prevail deadlocked him into a confrontation with the newly united Western powers. Comparing Stalin's internal statements with Soviet actions, Gerhard Wettig draws original conclusions about Stalin's meta-plans for the regions of Germany and Eastern Europe. This fascinating look at Soviet politics during the Cold War provides readers with new insights into Stalin's willingness to initiate crisis with the West while still avoiding military conflict.
Author : Simo Mikkonen Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG Page : 322 pages File Size : 11,81 MB Release : 2018-12-17 Category : History ISBN : 3110573164
Despite increasing scholarship on the cultural Cold War, focus has been persistently been fixed on superpowers and their actions, missing the important role played by individuals and organizations all over Europe during the Cold War years.This volume focuses on cultural diplomacy and artistic interaction between Eastern and Western Europe after 1945. It aims at providing an essentially European point of view on the cultural Cold War, providing fresh insight into little known connections and cooperation in different artistic fields. Chapters of the volume address photography and architecture, popular as well as classical music, theatre and film, and fine arts. By examining different actors ranging from individuals to organizations such as universities, the volume brings new perspective on the mechanisms and workings of the cultural Cold War. Finally, the volume estimates the pertinence of the Cold War and its influence in post-1991 world.The volume offers an overview on the role culture played in international politics, as well as its role in the Cold War more generally, through interesting examples and case studies.