The End of the Cold War and the Causes of Soviet Collapse by Nick s> Bisley Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations by Richard K. s> Herrmann Richard N. Lebow (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 779 reiterate their approach which centres on the historical periodization of opposition duringthe variousstagesof the Communist system'sdevelopment. Each period in their view -resistance to the establishmentof Communist rule, social protest and political non-conformismin the early post-totalitarian period, human rights and 'Second Society' dissidence during state socialist stagnation and the formation of politicized counter-elites during Communism 's collapse had core features as well as a mixture of common systemicand nationally differentiatedtraits.They argue that the explanatory value of social movement theory is not just restrictedto Poland's case and the collapse of Communism elsewhere.For them it can be read much further back and is relevantbloc-wide 'in the explanationof dissidenceand opposition under conditions of authoritarianrule' (p. 26I). Overall, the volume works quite well as a middle level type of study. It is moderately successfulin identifyingand delimiting the subjectin the light of the wide range of divergentbloc wide national experiences. This symposium fallsbetween many theoreticaland empiricalstoolsbut it is partiallysuccessful in attemptingto pioneer a synthesisof an importanttopic. Department ofPolitics GEORGE SANFORD University ofBristol Bisley, Nick. 7he Endof theColdWarandtheCauses of SovietCollapse. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstokeand New York, 2004. viii + 209 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?45.00. Herrmann, Richard K. and Lebow, Richard N. (eds). Endingthe ColdWar: Interpretations, Causation, andtheStudy ofInternational Relations. New Visions in Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstokeand New York, 2004. viii + 248 pp. Notes. Indexes. ?5?.??. CONTRARY to what you might think from the titles of these two books, Nick Bisley'sis the one more concerned with InternationalRelations theory. Bisley attemptsto show the validity of historicalsociology in understandingthe end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet state. He extends the ideas of Michael Mann and Theda Skocpol to place particularstresson the changing nature of state power over time. As he says, most commentators were too ready to accept the statusquo during the Cold War and failed to appreciate the extent of change in the Soviet Union before its final collapsein December I99I. Bisley also makes the case for the inter-relationshipbetween the domestic and international.In particular,Bisley argues that the Cold War helped legitimize the Soviet state. The conflict with the West justified the one-party dictatorship,the militarizationof Soviet society, and the deprivationssuffered by the Soviet people. As Gorbachev introduced new political thinking in foreign policy and began to abandon the Cold War, the Soviet state was simultaneouslyde-legitimized.Thus, the decline of the Soviet Union did not lead to the end of the Cold War, as many suggest the two processeswere, in fact, too inextricablyinterlinkedfor that. The general argumentpresented here is convincing, and Nick Bisleyis rightto suggestthat commentatorshave paid too little attention to the impact of the internationalon the nature of 780 SEER, 84, 4, 2006 the Soviet state. The relative importance of the domestic and international, however, remains rather elusive in this account. Perhaps it is sufficient to acknowledge the inter-relationshipand leave it at that. Inevitably,in a book of this kind, the authoruses broad brushstrokesin his coverage of both the Soviet Union and the Cold War. On occasion, however, I felt this went a little too far. For example, in attempting to argue that the Soviet Union was a highly militarized society (with which I would not disagree ), Bisley writes that the country was at war for forty-nine out of the seventy-fouryears of its existence (p.62). But in citing the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War and Afghanistan,one was left wondering whether the US (or any other Western state, for that matter)had a record over a similar period that was much better. I also felt that his broader claims for historical sociology might have been strongerwithin a more comparative framework. Not only would the US make an interesting case study, but I was also left wondering if Communist China would support or undermine the central arguments here. In the period of detente in the I970s, China replaced the United States as Moscow's enemy number one. China allied itself with the US, and from 1978 proved that a Marxist-Leniniststate could reform itself sufficientlyto become the fastestgrowing economy in the world. Communist China survivedthe end of the Cold War well enough...