Russia's bitter path to modernity
Subtitle: a history of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras
By: Alexander Chubarov.
Contributors: Chubarov, Alexander.
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2001
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 318
Subjects: Soviet Union -- History.; Russia (Federation) -- History -- 1991-
Description: Will it follow the model of the Western capitalist democracies, as those who applied the economic shock therapy of the early 90s hoped, or will it chose its own distinct path of development? In this history of Russia from 1917 to the present, Alexander Chubarov teases out certain themes developed in his previous book on tsarist Russia (The Fragile Empire). One of the key factors to Russia's distinctiveness is its halfway location in the center of the Eurasian landmass. This lends an inevitability to the traditional cultural schism between Westernizing reformers and Slavophiles. Neither approach, says Chubarov, will work on its own. Chubarov offers "a balanced view, abstaining from narrow, ideologically biased assessments," and examines the triumphs (yes) and failures of Russia's Soviet development "within Russia's own cultural and historical context." Without ever minimizing the brutalities of the Soviet period-the state terror, the collectivizations, the labor camps, the deportations of whole peoples-Chubarov demonstrates much continuity between tsarist and Soviet Russia, with the latter often repeating the former's mistakes. Russia, says Chubarov, cannot turn its back on its Soviet experience. Far from being a blind alley or "aberrant phase," the Soviet period was an organic part of Russia history and "was largely successful in turning Russia and most of the other Soviet republics into modern states"
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [285]-310) and index.
Continues: The fragile empire : a history of Imperial Russia.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Preface 1; title: Introduction 5; title: Part One: The Background19; title: 1. "Old Regime" Russia21; title: Geopolitical Evolution of the Russian State 21; title: Paradoxes of Tsarist Russia 23; title: 2. Political Culture 31; title: "Too Asiatic for the Europeans and too; title: European for the Asians" 32; title: Egalitarianism and Communalism 34; title: "Orthodoxy-Autocracy-Nationality" 36; title: Russian Contemporary Political Culture 38; title: 3. Soviet Ideology 41; title: Main Tenets of Classical Marxism 41; title: Marxism-Leninism 44; title: Marxism versus Human Nature 45; title: 4. The Soviet Political System50; title: Dictatorship of the Proletariat 50; title: "All Power to the Soviets!" 51; title: The Party of a New Type 52; title: The "Party-State" 54; title: The Nomenklatura 58; title: 5. Soviet Nationalities61; title: The "Red Federated Empire" 61; title: Sorting out the "Nationalities Question" 65; title: 6. Serfdom-Capitalism-Socialism72; title: Russia's Early Experience with Capitalism 72; title: Tsarist Industrialization 74; title: The Command Economy 76; title: Part Two: The Socialist Experiment81; title: 7. The Beginnings of the Socialist Transformation83; title: Consolidating One-Party Dictatorship 83; title: Civil War and War Communism: 1918-20 84; title: New Economic Policy: 1921-28 89; title: 8. "Great Leap" to Socialism92; title: The Rise of Stalin 92; title: The Industrialization Debate: 1925-28 94; title: Collectivization of Agriculture 97; title: 9. Stalinism101; title: Industrialization 101; title: Five-Year Plans 103; title: Characteristics of Stalinism 106; title: 10. From World War to Cold War111; title: The Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact 111; title: The Great Patriotic War: 1941-45 115; title: Turning the Tide 119; title: Stalinism versus Fascism 122; title: The Onset of the Cold War 125; title: 11. Khrushchev and De-Stalinization130; title: Stalin's Legacy 130; title: The "Secret" Speech 133; title: "Khrushchevism" 138; title: 12. Brezhnev's "Mature" Socialism 143; title: Advent of Brezhnev 143; title: Roots of Stagnation 145; title: The Soviet Decline 147; title: 13. Cracks in the Soviet Monolith151; title: Models of Soviet/Russian Power 151; title: The Rise of Cultural and Academic Pluralism 154; title: Dissidence 159; title: Totalitarianism with Corporatist and Pluralist Subsystems 163; title: Part Three: From Reform Socialism to Deformed Capitalism167; title: 14. The Command Economy in Crisis169; title: Internal and External Pressures for Economic Reform 169; title: Gorbachev's Perestroika 171; title: Perestroika's Economic Strategies and Their Results 174; title: 15. The Collapse of the Political System179; title: "Democratization" and "New Thinking" 179; title: The Course of Political Reform 181; title: Results of Political Reform 187; title: 16. Unraveling the Unitary State190; title: The Rise of Popular and Nationalist Movements 190; title: Key Factors in the USSR's Collapse 194; title: 17. Return to a Market Economy198; title: "Shock Therapy" and Its Consequences 198; title: Nomenklatura Privatization 203; title: "Crony Capitalism" 205; title: 18. Handicaps of Russia's Capitalist Transformation210; title: The Role of National Characteristics 210; title: The "Survival" Economy 214; title: 19. The Yeltsin Era219; title: "Democrator" 219; title: Parties and Elections 224; title: Yeltsin's Legacy 231; title: 20. Russia in Search of an Identity237; title: The Commonwealth of Independent States 237; title: Post-Soviet Geopolitics 239; title: Russian Federalism 243; title: The Chechen Problem 246; title: 21. Prospects for the New Century254; title: Who Is Putin? 254; title: Recentralizing the State 259; title: "Deprivatizing" the State 263; title: "Controlled" Democracy 269; title: Notes 277; title: Selected Bibliography of English-Language Sources285; title: Selected Bibliography of Russian-Language Sources302; title: Index 311.