Governing the Soviet Union's National Republics

Governing the Soviet Union's National Republics PDF

Author: Saulius Grybkauskas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-29

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0429749295

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Second Secretary of the Central Committee of a Soviet republic does not sound a very important position, but as this book shows it was an extremely important role, one that helped hold the Soviet Union together and helped to keep it going for so long. The key was that Second Secretaries were both members of a Soviet republic’s ruling body and at the same time members of the All-Union ruling elite - they were often characterised as Moscow’s governor generals. This book examines how the position of Second Secretary was established by Khrushchev in the 1950s, explores how it took on increasingly important political functions representing Moscow’s interests in the republics and the republics’ interests in Moscow, and discusses how the conflicts, inherent in the role, developed. The book also provides biographical details of the people who held the position and argues that the role was extremely effective in managing what could otherwise have been very difficult relationships between centre and periphery.

Governing the Soviet Union's National Republics

Governing the Soviet Union's National Republics PDF

Author: Saulius Grybkauskas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-29

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0429749287

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Second Secretary of the Central Committee of a Soviet republic does not sound a very important position, but as this book shows it was an extremely important role, one that helped hold the Soviet Union together and helped to keep it going for so long. The key was that Second Secretaries were both members of a Soviet republic’s ruling body and at the same time members of the All-Union ruling elite - they were often characterised as Moscow’s governor generals. This book examines how the position of Second Secretary was established by Khrushchev in the 1950s, explores how it took on increasingly important political functions representing Moscow’s interests in the republics and the republics’ interests in Moscow, and discusses how the conflicts, inherent in the role, developed. The book also provides biographical details of the people who held the position and argues that the role was extremely effective in managing what could otherwise have been very difficult relationships between centre and periphery.

Nested Nationalism

Nested Nationalism PDF

Author: Krista A. Goff

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-01-15

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1501753282

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Nested Nationalism is a study of the politics and practices of managing national minority identifications, rights, and communities in the Soviet Union and the personal and political consequences of such efforts. Titular nationalities that had republics named after them in the USSR were comparatively privileged within the boundaries of "their" republics, but they still often chafed both at Moscow's influence over republican affairs and at broader Russian hegemony across the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, members of nontitular communities frequently complained that nationalist republican leaders sought to build titular nations on the back of minority assimilation and erasure. Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research conducted in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Moscow, Krista A. Goff argues that Soviet nationality policies produced recursive, nested relationships between majority and minority nationalisms and national identifications in the USSR. Goff pays particular attention to how these asymmetries of power played out in minority communities, following them from Azerbaijan to Georgia, Dagestan, and Iran in pursuit of the national ideas, identifications, and histories that were layered across internal and international borders. What mechanisms supported cultural development and minority identifications in communities subjected to assimilationist politics? How did separatist movements coalesce among nontitular minority activists? And how does this historicization help us to understand the tenuous space occupied by minorities in nationalizing states across contemporary Eurasia? Ranging from the early days of Soviet power to post-Soviet ethnic conflicts, Nested Nationalism explains how Soviet-era experiences and policies continue to shape interethnic relationships and expectations today.

Moscow and the Non-Russian Republics in the Soviet Union

Moscow and the Non-Russian Republics in the Soviet Union PDF

Author: Li Bennich-Björkman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-13

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1000516210

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This book examines what came to determine the local power and character of the Communist party-state at the level of the national non-Russian republics. It discusses how, although the Soviet Union looked centralised and monolithic to outsiders, local party-states formed their own fiefdoms and had very considerable influence over many policies areas within their republics. It argues that local party-states were shaped by two decisive relationships - to the central Communist party in Moscow and to local constituencies, especially to the local intelligentsia and the creative professions who constituted the local party-states’ biggest potential adversaries. It shows how local party-states negotiated stability and their own survival, and contends that the effects of "Sovietisation" continue to be felt in the independent states which succeeded the republics, particularly in the field of the relationship with Moscow, which remains of immense importance to these countries.

How the Soviet Union is Governed

How the Soviet Union is Governed PDF

Author: Jerry F. Hough

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 9780674410305

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This is a new and thorough revision of a recognized classic whose first edition was hailed as the most authoritative account in English of the governing of the Soviet Union. Now, with historical material rearranged in chronological order, and with seven new chapters covering most of the last fifteen years, this edition brings the Soviet Union fully into the light of modern history and political science. The purposes of Fainsod's earlier editions were threefold: to explain the techniques used by the Bolsheviks and Stalin to gain control of the Russian political system; to describe the methods they employed to maintain command; and to speculate upon the likelihood oftheir continued control in the future. This new edition increases very substantially the attention paid to another aspect of the political process--how policy is formed, how the Soviet Union is governed. Whenever possible, Mr. Hough attempts to analyze the alignments and interrelationships between Soviet policy institutions. Moreover, he constantly moves beyond a description of these institutions to probe the way they work. Two chapters are devoted to the questions of individual political participation. Other chapters examine the internal organization of institutions and explore the ways in which the backgrounds of their officials influence their policy positions and alliances. The picture that emerges is an unprecedented account of the distribution of power in the Soviet Union.

Collapse

Collapse PDF

Author: Vladislav M. Zubok

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 0300262442

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A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.

Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union

Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union PDF

Author: Roman Szporluk

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2020-02-24

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 0817995439

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This book chronicles the final two decades in the history of the Soviet Union and presents a story that is often lost in the standard interpretations of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Although there were numerous reasons for the collapse of communism, it did not happen—as it may have seemed to some—overnight. Indeed, says Roman Szporluk, the root causes go back even earlier than 1917. To understand why the USSR broke up the way it did, it is necessary to understand the relationship between the two most important nations of the USSR—Russia and Ukraine—during the Soviet period and before, as well as the parallel but interrelated processes of nation formation in both states. Szporluk details a number of often-overlooked factors leading to the USSR's fall: how the processes of Russian identity formation were not completed by the time of the communist takeover in 1917, the unification of Ukraine in 1939–1945, and the Soviet period failing to find a resolution of the question of Russian-Ukrainian relations. The present-day conflict in the Caucasus, he asserts, is a sign that the problems of Russian identity remain.

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