Download Free Soviet Leadership Since Stalin Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Soviet Leadership Since Stalin and write the review.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which the structure and process of Soviet politics have been transformed since Stalin's death, and particularly during the years of the Brezhnev regime. In explaining the Soviet Union's political stability, the author analyzes the Soviet combination of harsh authoritarian rule with political flexibility in the treatment of its citizens, and he describes the social processes that contribute to this stability. He also analyzes the Soviet perception of the current international situation and discusses trends in Soviet foreign policy, including the imbalance between military power on the one hand and political, economic, ideological, and cultural resources on the other. Professor Bialer explains the Soviet concept of détente and explores the difference between Soviet and American perceptions of this process. A major part of the work is devoted to an examination of the imminent succession of the Soviet leadership. The book gives a profile of the new generation of potential leaders and identifies the characteristics that make them different form those whom they will replace. The Soviet leadership, while embroiled in its succession struggle, will have to make difficult decisions concerning the allocation of national resources and overall changes in management, planning, and incentives. Professor Bialer concludes by analyzing the kinds of economic reform that could make the problems manageable and the conditions under which the new Soviet leadership will need to institute reforms.
Russian revolution - The Iron Curtain.
I have been working on this book since leaving Russia in April of 1972. It was my wish to write this book in English, and there were what seemed to me to be serious reasons for doing so. In recent years there has appeared a wealth of literature, in Russian, about Russia. As a rule, this literature has been published outside the USSR by authors who still live in the Soviet Union or who have only recently left it. A fair amount of important literature is being translated into English, but I believe it will be read main ly by specialists in Russian studies, or by those who have a great interest in the subject already. The majority of Russian authors write, of course, for the Russian reader or for an imagined Western public. It is my feeling that Russian authors have serious difficulties in understanding the men tality of Westerners, and that there still exists a gap between the visions of Russians and non-Russians. I have made my humble attempt to bridge ~his gap and I will be happy if I am even partly successful. The Russian world is indeed fascinating. Many people who visit Russia for a few days or weeks find it a country full of historical charm, fantastic architecture and infinite mystery. For many inside the country, especial ly for those in conflict with the Soviet authorities.
*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading For 30 years, much of the West looked on with disdain as the Bolsheviks took power in Russia and created and consolidated the Soviet Union. As bad as Vladimir Lenin seemed in the early 20th century, Joseph Stalin was so much worse that Churchill later remarked of Lenin, "Their worst misfortune was his birth... their next worst his death." Before World War II, Stalin consolidated his position by frequently purging party leaders (most famously Leon Trotsky) and Red Army leaders, executing hundreds of thousands of people at the least. And in one of history's greatest textbook examples of the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Stalin's Soviet Union allied with Britain and the United States to defeat Hitler in Europe during World War II. Stalin ruled with an iron fist for nearly 30 years before his death in 1953, which may or may not have been murder, just as Stalin was preparing to conduct another purge. With his death, Soviet strongman and long-time Stalinist Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), who had managed to stay a step ahead of Stalin's purges if only because he participated in them, became the Soviet premier. Personal histrionics aside, Khrushchev meant business when dealing with the West, especially the United States and its young president, John F. Kennedy. After sensing weakness and a lack of fortitude in Kennedy, Khrushchev made his most audacious and ultimately costly decision by attempting to place nuclear warheads at advanced, offensive bases located in Cuba, right off the American mainland. As it turned out, the Cuban Missile Crisis would show the Kennedy Administration's resolve, force Khrushchev to back down, and ultimately sow the seeds of Khrushchev's fall from power. By the time he died in 1971, he had been declared a non-citizen of the nation he had ruled for nearly 20 years. Leonid Brezhnev became First Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union in late 1964 after a plot to oust Khrushchev. Little is remembered in the public imagination about Brezhnev in comparison to Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Lenin, or Joseph Stalin, despite the fact Brezhnev ruled the USSR from 1964-1982, longer than any Soviet leader other than Stalin. In fact, he held power during a tumultuous era that changed the world in remarkable ways, and that era has been favorably remembered by many former Soviet citizens. It marked a period of relative calm and even prosperity after the destruction of World War II and the tensions brought about by Khrushchev. Foremost amongst Brezhnev's achievements would be the détente period in the early 1970s, when the Soviets and Americans came to a number of agreements that reduced Cold War pressures and the alarming threat of nuclear war. Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen as the new General Secretary at the relatively youg age of 54 in March 1985. Gorbachev hoped to build the Soviet economy to relieve the persistent shortages of consumer goods it faced, which were caused by enormous military spending of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev tried to introduce some economic reforms, but they were blocked by communist hardliners. Gorbachev then came to the belief that the Soviet economy could not improved without political reform as well. In comparison with other Soviet leaders, Gorbachev was leader of the USSR for a relatively short period, but the changes that took place under his leadership were monumental, including some that were intended and others that were unforeseen. Gorbachev oversaw the end of the Cold War and the peaceful transition away from communism in Central and Eastern Europe, and he ended the war in Afghanistan and many other proxy conflicts in the developing world. Gorbachev improved relations with the West and developed enough trust with President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush to decommission thousands of nuclear weapons.
In this, the third volume of collected essays by one of the most eminent students of East and West Europe, Walter Laqueur reveals a particularly deft touch at weaving the cultural and the political into a seamless whole. His familiarity with Soviet life and the Russian language gives him a unique insider's position in examining the Soviet Union and its remarkable changes in the decade of the 1980s. In chapters on glasnost and its limits to the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the reader is given a careful perspective on continuities as well as discontinuities in Soviet politics. And in studies of Nikolai Skoblin, Julian Semynov-with whom his western counterpart, John Le Carre is compared in a fine coupling-we are given a sense of the darker side of things Soviet. Soviet Realities reveals Laqueur's appreciation of the painful dialectic inherent in the grand sweet of Soviet life: underneath the faade of an imposed monolith are the continuing struggles between Left and Right, reformers and renegades, terrorists and legalists. And in his opening chapter, the author links these disparate strands together in a modest and self-critical appraisal. This is a volume deserving of an audience far beyond "Kremlinologists" or specialists in foreign affairs. In its sense of the Soviet whole, it will be of interest to all citizens concerned with the present and future of Soviet-American relations. Walter Laqueur is chairman of the International Research Council of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and also co-director of the Wiener Library of Contemporary History in London. He is the author of almost twenty books and ten times that number of serious articles. They cover major themes of our times: terrorism, political movements, ideological trends, and cultural forms. He is, in short, a unique figure.
In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Stephen F. Cohen cuts through Cold War stereotypes of the Soviet Union to arrive at fresh interpretations of that country's traumatic history and its present-day political realities. Cohen's lucidly written, revisionist analysis reopens an array of major historical questions. As he probes Soviet history, society, and politics, Cohen demonstrates how this country has remained stable during its long journey from revolution to conservatism. It the process, he suggests more enlightened approaches to American/Soviet relations. Based on the author's many years of study and research, including numerous visits to the USSR, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the state of world affairs today.
Surveys the history of the Soviet Union through the exploits and achievements of the seven men who were its leaders from 1917 to 1991; Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Following his great trilogy of biographies of the giants who dominated the history of the Soviet Union - Stalin (1991), Lenin (1994) and Trotsky (1996) - Dmitri Volkogonov delves deeper into the Soviet archives to produce new character evaluations and political assessments of the seven leaders who ruled the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991. A former general in the Soviet Army's propaganda department, Director of the Institute for Military History, and Defence Adviser to President Yeltsin from 1991 to his death from cancer in December 1995, Dmitri Volkogonov had unrivalled access to Soviet military archives, Communist Party documents and secret presidential files. Basing his new book on these inside sources, he has continued his pioneering work of revealing the truth behind the activities of the world's most secretive political leaders. He throws new light on: Lenin's paranoia about foreigners in Russia; his creation of a privileged system for top Party members; Stalin's repression of the nationalities and his singular conduct of foreign policy; the origins and conduct of the Korean War; Khrushchev's relationship with the odious secret service chief Beria; Brezhnev's vanity and stupidity; the Afghan War; Poland and Solidarity; Soviet bureaucracy; Gorbachev's Leninism and role in history.