Soviet Politics Research Articles

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Landmarks of Russian Architecture: A Photographic Survey, by William Craft Brumfield Die Kirchen und Klösters Moskaus: Ein landeskundliches Handbuch, by Sebastian Kempgen Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia, by Irina Paperno The Returns of History: Russian Nietzscheans after Modernity, by Dragan Kujundzic Marina Tsvetaeva: The Double Beat of Heaven and Hell, by Lily Feiler Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology, by Eric Naiman The Origins of the Old Rus' Weights and Monetary Systems: Two Studies in Western Eurasian Metrology and Numismatics in the Seventh to Eleventh Centuries, by Omeljan Pritsak Handelskontrolle “Derivation” Eindämmerung: Schwedische Moskaupolitik 1617–1661, by Stefan Troebst The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery, by James Cracraft The Tsars and the Jews: Reform, Reaction and Anti‐Semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772–1917, by Heinz‐Dietrich Löwe L'Islam de Russie: Conscience communautaire et autonomie politique chez les Tatars de la Volga et l'Oural, depuis le XVIIIe siècle, edited by Stéphane A. Dudoignon, Dämir Is'haqov and Räfyq Möhämmätshin Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861–1905, by Jeffrey Burds Pod vlast'iu ober‐prokurora: Gosudarstvo i tserkov' v epokhy Aleksandra III, by A. Iu Polunov Nicholas II: The Life and Reign of Russia's Last Monarch, by Robert D. Warth N. Kh. Bunge: Sud'ba reformatora, by Valerii Leonidovich Stepanov Diplomacy and Deception: The Secret History of Sino‐Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1917–1927, by Bruce Elleman Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier, by S. C. M. Paine Rossiiskaia emigratsiia v Kitae (1917–1924 gg.), by G. V. Melikhov Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village, by Glennys Young Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin, by Victoria E. Bonnell Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, edited by Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin, eds. La fabbrica del mito: Storia e politica nell'URSS staliniana, by Fabio Bettanin The Religious Policy of the Stalinist State: A Case Study: The Central Standing Commission on Religious Questions, 1929–1938, by Arto Luukkanen GULAG v sisteme totalitarnogo gosudarstva, by Galina Mikhailovna Ivanova Obshchestvennoe mnenie v Sovetskoi Rossii v 30‐e gody (Po materialam Severo‐zapada), by S. A. Shinkarchuk Flucht in die Verfolgung: Deutsche Emigranten im sowjetischen Exil, 1933 bis 1945, by Carola Tischler Golod v SSSR 1946–1947 godov: Proiskhozhdenie i posledstviia, by V. F. Zima Kremlin Capitalism: Privatizing the Russian Economy, by Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova, and Douglas Kruse Russia's Transformation: Snapshots of a Crumbling System, by Robert Vincent Daniels Gorbachev's Reforms: De‐Stalinization through Demilitarization, by Susanne Sternthal Russian Talk: Culture of Conversation during Perestroika, by Nancy Ries Beyond the Monolith: The Emergence of Regionalism in Post‐Soviet Russia, edited by Peter J. Stavrakis, Joan DeBardeleben, and Larry Black Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus, by Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal Russia's Politics of Uncertainty, by Mary McAuley

The Shattered Horizon How Ideology Mattered to Soviet Politics

This article argues that ideology was of key-importance to the Soviet system. The rules which governed Soviet ideological discourse did not only hold for the producers of ideology but also aimed at ‘filtering’ public communication. The respect people showed for an ideologically ‘filtered’ discourse counted as a sign of loyalty. In this way ideology constituted a central pillar of power. The article presents the results of an analysis of political texts dating from the Gorbachev era. It concludes that the Gorbachev reforms eroded the ‘communication filter’ because they changed the rules on which ideological discourse and thus power rested.

Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Stalin

Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Stalin

Russian Studies Without Russia

A distinguished American specialist on Soviet and Russian politics addresses the lessons of the seven years leading to Russia's crash of 1998 for how US scholars, journalists, and politicians have analyzed Russia under Yeltsin. Citing a wide range of academic and journalistic sources, including materials published from October 1998 to January 1999, the article surveys and criticizes the mainstream concepts employed for comprehending social, political, and economic life in that country. It proposes both an alternative vocabulary and different comparative references for explaining and predicting developmental trends in Russia.

The Russian Crisis: Beginning of the End or End of the Beginning?

A distinguished British specialist on Soviet and Russian politics analyzes failures in Yeltsin's Russia and the reasons many observers have failed to understand or anticipate them. The article analyses Westerners' use of the term, “reform,” and the impact of economic ideologies on perceptions. A discussion of the role of the state cites both Western and Russian political scientists and economists. The article ends with possible scenarios for the future.

The politics of identity: Ethnicity, minority and nationalism in Soviet Estonia

Identity has become one of the core concepts of political geography. This reflects the wide recognition of a post-structural conception of society and space, as well as the acknowledgement of the political character of identity. The present article focuses on the politics of identity, and discusses the politicized forms of identity as related to the Soviet state building policies and the Estonian spaces of resistance. It will be argued that neither identity nor the political demand in Soviet Estonia can be viewed in isolation from their historical and social contexts. Both Soviet state politics and the Estonian spaces of resistance reflected the prevailing conceptions of past and the contemporary political realities. This article examines those preconceptions of the political and territorial development in Soviet Estonia, and also illustrates the interdependent character of state politics and non-state activism. The first part of the article concentrates on the Soviet state building practices – the use of power, symbols, education – and the second part examines the various forms of non-state activism of Estonians.

The papers on foreign and international policy in the Russian archives [The Stalin years

Silvio Tons. The papers on foreign and international policy in the Russian archives: The Stalin years. This article reports a research experience in the Russian archives on several aspects of Stalin's foreign policy in the 1930s and 1940s. The opening of the Russian archives has been particularly selective in the field of foreign policy. Though an impressive process of declassification of archival materials has been undertaken, this not always results in the availability of documents and in the possibility to use finding aids. In particular, the Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, which is the main archive for the analysis of Soviet foreign policy , does not offer, on very relevant topics, the chance to carry out a complete research. The situation in the CPSU archives and the archives of Communist international organizations was more favourable for some time, but it has been increasingly worsening over the last two- three years. Quite probably, in the opening of archival documentation on Soviet Foreign Policy an extremely favourable cycle has developed and exhausted itself approximately in the years 1992-1996. However, the impact of archives on foreign policy history should not be underestimated. Though the documentation available does not always shed enough light onto the decision-making processes, the complexity and subtlety of our views become greater. The new materials greatly enrich our understanding of the connection between the Cold War and pre-war Soviet foreign policy, thus challenging the division traced by pre-1991 historical analysis. They also lead us to a more balanced picture of the external dimension of Stalinism in the post-war years. While the predominant image of Stalin's firm control of the political process is by and large confirmed, a complex and even contradictory character of Soviet politics can be seen. For example, the archival documents on the Cominform provide us with evidence of a deceptive political process, which shows a significant degree of ambiguity in policy-making.

Activist Academic: Lloyd Churchward as a Labour Intellectual

Lloyd Churchward, who died in 1998, was actively involved with the labour movement in various capacities for six decades. During this time he was a political activist and organiser, a member of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), a labour historian, and a scholar of Soviet politics. This article uses Churchward's political and intellectual Odyssey as a case study of the labour intellectual, understood as somebody who shaped the organisations and ideas of the labour movement. It looks at the role he played in various political organisations, and the interplay between that involvement and his professional development as a scholar of the labour movement and of Soviet politics. Intensive interviews with Churchward, together with his publications, are the principal sources for this article. On this basis, the article provides a profile of a labour intellectual whose professional and political life in the context of the Cold War was a meeting ground between the university and the alternative public institutions of the CPA.

Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin

Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin

On the Meaning of "Sovietology"

The article attempts to explicate the meaning of "Sovietology." It traces the origins of the term and discusses the uses to which it has been put in the scholarly literature. Two different meanings have been attached to the term. One reflects the understanding of Sovietology as the study of Soviet politics; the other views it as a "basket" of several, variously specified, disciplines in the social sciences and—less often—the humanities, distinguished by a common area orientation. The resultant ambiguity has blurred Sovietology's disciplinary identity. Now that the record of Western scholarship on the Soviet Union has become the subject of critical scrutiny and debate, it is especially important that the meaning of "Sovietology" be clearly stipulated.

The Collapse of the Soviet Military

In this text, a United States Army officer and scholar traces the rise and fall of the Soviet military, arguing that it had a far greater impact on Soviet politics and economic development than was perceived in the West. The author asserts that Gorbachev saw that shrinking the military and the military-industrial sector of the economy was essential for fully implementing perestroika and that his efforts to do this led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Odom enhances his account with interviews with key factors in the Soviet Union before, during and after the collapse. He describes the condition of the Soviet military during the mid-1980s and explains how it became what it was - its organizational structures, manpower policies, and military-industrial arrangements. He then moves to the events that led to its destruction, taking us to the most secret circles of Soviet policy making, as well as describing the public debates, factional struggles in the new parliament, and street combat as army units tried to repress the political forces unleashed by glasnost. Odom shows that just as the military was the ultimate source for the multinational Soviet state, the communist ideology justified the military's priority claim on the economy. When Gorbachev tried to shift resources from the military to the civilian sector to overcome economic stagnation, he had to revise the official ideology in order to justify removing the military from its central place. Paralyzed by corruption, mistrust and public disillusionment, the military was unable and unwilling to intervene against either Gorbachev's perestroika or Yeltsin's dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin

Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin

From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939-1941.

Part I: The Period of Soviet-German Partnership Part II: Operation Barbarossa: Political Preconditions, Strategic Planning and Military Consequences Part III: Politics and Experience of the War of Annihilation Part IV: Soviet Politics and War Strategy 1941 Part V: Germany and the Soviet Union in International Politics

Time and revolution: Marxism and the design of Soviet institutions

Stephen Hanson traces the influence of the Marxist conception of in Soviet politics from Lenin to Gorbachev. He argues that the history of Marxism and Leninism reveals an unsuccessful revolutionary effort to reorder the human relationship with and that this reorganization had a direct impact on the design of the central political, socioeconomic and cultural institutions of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991. According to Hanson, westerners tend to envision as both rational and inexorable. In a system in which time is money, the clock dominates workers. Marx, however, believed that communist workers would be freed of the artificial distinction between leisure and work time. As a result, they would be able to surpass capitalist production levels and ultimately control itself. Hanson reveals the distinctive imprint of this philosophy on the formation and development of Soviet institutions, arguing that the breakdown of Gorbachev's perestroika and the resulting collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrate the failure of the idea.

Sources, Methods, and Competing Perspectives on the End of the Cold War

The facts … are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean. … What the historian catches will depend partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use. It goes without saying that a decade of glasnost has been a boon to scholarship on Soviet politics and history, including diplomatic history. Although archival revelations have not, to date, supported any radically new interpretations of Soviet foreign policy, they have served to clarify important issues and strengthen one or another long-standing argument on the causes or consequences of the Cold War.2 Moreover, new documentary sources have contributed much to works that shed valuable light on precisely how the “Kremlin's Cold War” was waged.3 But the archival windfall brings potential pitfalls. And, as Carr's dictum serves to remind us, one of these is overreliance on the new sources, a temptation to view Politburo, Central Committee, or Foreign Ministry records as definitive in and of themselves. The temptation is understandable given that they offer access to what seems most important: the inner councils of a highly centralized, dictatorial system. But herein a danger lies, for so centralized and dictatorial was the Soviet system – fully autocratic under Josef Stalin – that the decision-making locus was not the Central Committee or Politburo, but Stalin's own mind. Also complicating the historian's task were Stalin's aversion to records of his deliberations and his pains to deflect responsibility and depict authority as lying elsewhere.4 Thus, the “black box” of early Cold War decision making is still only partially open, and only yields to judicious use of new documents in conjunction with memoirs, interviews, and other sources.

Rhetoric and rationality: A study of democratization in the Soviet Union

Can political actors use rational strategies for political conflict when established institutions are unavailable to structure political choices because the institutions are themselves among the contested issues? In Soviet politics from 1985 to 1991, cross-cutting cleavages placed in question the possibility of any stable outcome. We argue that a multi-dimensional issue space was reduced to a single dimension, along which Mikhail Gorbachev could temporarily occupy a median, by the interaction between Gorbachev's own rhetoric and rhetorical tactics used by leaders of his nomenklatura opposition, by Boris Yeltsin as the leader of the democratic opposition, and by single-issue groups called neformaly. The match between these four players' rhetorics and the four strategic options identified by a simple spatial model offers empirical evidence that rational strategies were available despite institutional flux.

A Disappearing Enemy: The Image of the United States in Soviet Political Cartoons

This article examines changes in the depiction of the United States in Soviet political cartoons from April 1985 through August 1990. It seeks to demonstrate that both qualitative and quantitative changes in the image of the United States were integrally related to changes in U.S./Soviet relations. Changes in the Soviet press were more a product of policy choices of the party and government than of press freedom associated with the policy of glasnost.

The Age of Anxiety: Security and Politics in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

The Age of Anxiety: Security and Politics in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

Culture, ideology and personality: Robert C. Tucker's analysis of stalinism and Soviet politics

Robert C. Tucker's contributions to Soviet studies have not only been various and fundamental, but also methodologically innovative. This essay seeks to make an overall assessment of Tucker's Sovietological work to date, concentrating mainly on questions of methodology and theory. It identifies three main themes of that work ‐culture, ideology and personality ‐ and seeks both to assess the theoretical and in several cases extra‐disciplinary foundations of each theme and to examine their mutual relationship. In both of these respects it argues that there are some unresolved difficulties in Tucker's approach, mainly having to do with explanatory scope.

The Emperor’s New Clothes Continuity of Soviet Political Culture in Contemporary Russia

The dominant ideology in Russia today is state nationalism, combining elements of Soviet communism with pre-Soviet Russian imperialism. Boris Yeltsin himself was never a democrat and responds to crises as would a Russian tsar or a communist commissar.