DOCSLIB.ORG

H-Diplo Roundtable, Vol. XX

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
H-Diplo Roundtable, Vol. XX 2018 H-Diplo Roundtable Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse @HDiplo Roundtable and Web Production Editor: George Fujii Introduction by Vladislav Zubok Roundtable Review Volume XX, No. 1 (2018) 4 September 2018 William Taubman. Gorbachev. His Life and Times. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2017. ISBN: 978-0-393-64701-3 (hardcover, $39.95); 978-0-393-35620-5 (paperback, $24.95). URL: http://www.tiny.cc/Roundtable-XX-1 Contents Introduction by Vladislav M. Zubok, London School of Economics and Political Science ..... 2 Review by Alex Pravda, University of Oxford ......................................................................................... 6 Review by Sergey Radchenko, Cardiff University ................................................................................. 9 Review by Ronald Grigor Suny, University of Michigan ...................................................................12 Review by James Graham Wilson, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State ............17 Author’s Response by William Taubman, Amherst College, Emeritus ........................................20 © 2018 The Authors. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License. H-Diplo Roundtable Review, Vol. XX, No. 1 (2018) Introduction by Vladislav M. Zubok, London School of Economics and Political Science illiam Taubman’s book on Mikhail Gorbachev is not just another biography. It is the culmination of this scholar’s life-long efforts to understand Soviet history. All of the reviewers concur in their W superlative assessments of the book. Alex Pravda and James Wilson call it the best, most detailed and comprehensive book about Gorbachev ever written. Ronald Suny believes it is “an even better book” than Taubman’s Pulitzer prize-winning biography of Nikita Khrushchev.1 And Sergei Radchenko describes “a beautiful narrative that draws the reader in, informs, fascinates, excites, surprises on occasion…” Naturally, the unity breaks down when the reviewers deal with Gorbachev’s agency and meaning for history. The enormity of change, domestic and international, that Gorbachev’s policies produced guarantee that debates about alternatives and options, missed opportunities and false hopes will continue in the future, depending on—or perhaps independently of—new sources and revelations. Taubman’s book is written for a broader audience and is above all about the life of a man, his wife, and his life-path. Yet it is not one of many bios of politicos from cradle to retirement. Dealing with a major living historical figure whom one admires (Taubman never conceals his admiration for Gorbachev) required tact, empathy, open-mindedness, and a certain sense of humility, in addition to methodological mastery. The book also tackles a question that preceded and survived Soviet history: zigzags of Russian society between hope and tragedy, liberalisation and despotic authoritarianism. The historian’s personal engagement with this subject has always been deeper than his interest in Soviet geopolitical exploits. Taubman’s ancestors had escaped tragedy by emigrating from the imperial Pale of Settlement before the Russian revolution. In the mid-1960s, a young student of history from Harvard, Taubman spent a year at the Moscow University at the time of hopeful reformist ferment and published his first book about it. In August 1968 Soviet forces invaded Czechoslovakia and crushed ‘the Prague Spring’; a conservative reaction set on that lasted for fifteen years. After a stint in the Cold War history in the 1970s, Taubman returned to his main interest. His familiarity with the Moscow liberal-minded intelligentsia contributed to his liberal bias. His magisterial biography of Khrushchev was a tribute to the ‘people of the 1960s,’ many of whom had become his friends. As Taubman worked on Khrushchev’s book, Gorbachev raised the hope of peaceful change to previously unimaginable heights, only to trigger a tragedy, this time not one of despotism and terror, but of socio-economic collapse, ethnic violence, and criminal lawlessness. Taubman’s Gorbachev sums up the scholar’s life-long intellectual quest. The reviews in this roundtable present a good mix of perspectives and views. Alex Pravda inquires as to what made Gorbachev “a transformational leader,” and finds in Taubman’s book a paradoxical, if not entirely new, answer: disdain for preconceived, detailed plans and actionable policies; overconfidence and a highly personalised way of making crucial decisions; and moral values, including the rejection of force. This is a bit a faint praise: what kind of a transformational leadership owes more to flaws and misjudgements than to perspicacity and political will? Ronald Suny spots other clues in the chapters about Gorbachev’s earlier life. Gorbachev had grown up in a loving, and divided family; one of his grandfathers was against collectivisation, another was for it. This had increased his penchant for consensus politics, reluctance to side with ‘radicals’ against ‘conservatives’, and desire to end the perennial ‘civil war’ that had riven Russian society. Suny also highlights how Gorbachev’s “improbable career formed by a socialist affirmative action program” made him adhere to the socialist project to the end, while rejecting the Stalinist system. Both reviewers admire 1 William Taubman, Khrushchev, The Man and His Era (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003). H-Diplo Roundtable Review, Vol. XX, No. 1 (2018) Taubman’s Gorbachev, but from different perspectives. For Pravda, Gorbachev deserves admiration for letting communism in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union go to its grave without violence. For Suny, he is “a decent, moral man,” who rightfully sought to build a social democracy in Russia, but stumbled because of “personal flaws, most importantly over-confidence, even arrogance.” Suny also finds that Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika was betrayed “by many of his comrades, by the Soviet intelligentsia, and by the Great Power allies.” While Pravda and Suny inquire, two other reviewers engage the book on a more polemical level. James Graham Wilson takes issue with the book’s claim that the George H. W. Bush Administration could have made a difference in the drama of perestroika, had it provided an early active support to Gorbachev. He also refuses to give weight to the contemporary debate about the Western ‘broken pledge’ to Gorbachev not to extend NATO eastward. Taubman’s reply at the end of this roundtable demonstrates that he supports Gorbachev’s foreign policy vision with more conviction than his domestic reforms. At the same time, the polemics leave a big question in the air: could the U.S.-led West have indeed granted Gorbachev—and the Soviet Union—more time and chances for evolutionary reformation, instead of letting ‘the Soviet empire’ dissolve. One can fancy how many scholars, not to mention those from the Baltics and Ukraine, would vehemently dispute this point. Taubman seems to find this question legitimate, and I side with him on this point. Radchenko’s review takes a revisionist stance on Taubman’s main conclusion: Gorbachev is a tragic hero who deserves to be admired. His scepticism reflects a prevalent ex-Soviet opinion about Gorbachev but also invites reconsideration of the familiar debate about ‘democracy vs. an iron hand.’ Taubman and three reviewers have no doubt that Gorbachev’s goal of building democracy (or social democracy) in the late Soviet Union was both moral and practical. The problem, in Taubman’s conclusion, was with the “raw material”: it would take Russian society much more time to arrive to this destination than Gorbachev had imagined. For Radchenko, however, it is hard to accept Taubman’s conclusion without hard questioning. Considering the long and tragic history of revolution, reform, and despotism in Russia and the Soviet Union, how could any realist leader have expected a quick democratic transition? Perhaps a future debate about a flawed leader vs, a flawed society should be less constrained by liberal-democratic teleology. In a choice between the ‘Chinese road’ of Deng Xiaoping and ‘the Czech reforms’ of 1968, Gorbachev’s heart clearly was with the latter. The main factor in his decision seems to have been his personality, his unwillingness to be a strong authoritarian and to use force (Taubman, 217-218). In Gorbachev’s adviser Anatoly Chernyaev’s diary and Politburo minutes, Gorbachev constantly fretted about madness of Moscow intelligentsia, who flooded the streets with demands of immediate ‘freedom’ and direct forms of democracy. Yet at a deeper cultural level Gorbachev seemed to be sympathetic to this madness. His other personal predilections caused him to misjudge the main challenges to perestroika. He saw the old authoritarian state and party structures as his main opponent and wanted to weaken and balance against it. At the same time, he seemed not to realise that his improvised liberalisation, economic and political, generated new monsters that destroyed Soviet economy and governability. Taubman takes Gorbachev’s side in his epic battle against Boris Yeltsin, the main destroyer of the Soviet Union. So did all the reviewers. I also agree: Yeltsin’s neoliberal turn, applauded by many in the United States, destroyed the fragile democracy in Russia and paved the way for its return to authoritarianism. But would a post-coup Gorbachev have been preferable than his radical, power-grabbing successor? Last chapters of Taubman’s book about Gorbachev’s ‘anti-career’ after his forced resignation in December
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Historical Legacy for Contemporary Russian Foreign Policy
    CHAPTER 1 The Historical Legacy for Contemporary Russian Foreign Policy o other country in the world is a global power simply by virtue of geogra- N phy.1 The growth of Russia from an isolated, backward East Slavic principal- ity into a continental Eurasian empire meant that Russian foreign policy had to engage with many of the world’s principal centers of power. A Russian official trying to chart the country’s foreign policy in the 18th century, for instance, would have to be concerned simultaneously about the position and actions of the Manchu Empire in China, the Persian and Ottoman Empires (and their respec- tive vassals and subordinate allies), as well as all of the Great Powers in Europe, including Austria, Prussia, France, Britain, Holland, and Sweden. This geographic reality laid the basis for a Russian tradition of a “multivector” foreign policy, with leaders, at different points, emphasizing the importance of rela- tions with different parts of the world. For instance, during the 17th century, fully half of the departments of the Posolskii Prikaz—the Ambassadors’ Office—of the Muscovite state dealt with Russia’s neighbors to the south and east; in the next cen- tury, three out of the four departments of the College of International Affairs (the successor agency in the imperial government) covered different regions of Europe.2 Russian history thus bequeaths to the current government a variety of options in terms of how to frame the country’s international orientation. To some extent, the choices open to Russia today are rooted in the legacies of past decisions.
    [Show full text]
  • Carnegie Results: the National Security Archive
    RESULTS SPRING 2014 The National Security Archive Putting Freedom of Information into Action CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK RESULTS Welcome to The National Security Archive: Putting Freedom of Information into Action, a digitally enhanced edition of Carnegie Results available exclusively through The Carnegie Press app. To learn about this app’s exciting new features, see our How to Use guide. Please check the app often to download the latest Carnegie Press publications. You’ll find an array of editions from Carnegie Results, which looks in depth at a specific initiative we’ve funded, to the Carnegie Reporter, for news items on our current grantees, to special challenge papers and reports that are dedicated to cutting- edge thinking. Go to Table of Contents How to Use or THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE The National Security Archive Putting Freedom of Information into Action 1 Introduction 4 Putting FOIA to Work 12 Disclosure in the Digital Age 15 Post-Cold War Partners Masthead COVER United States Department of Defense photo. (See page 6.) All images courtesy of The National Security Archive ©2014 Carnegie Corporation of New York. All rights in photographs, illustrations, artworks and other graphic TABLE OF CONTENTS materials are reserved to Carnegie Corporation of New York and/or the copyright holders (licensors). Digital image by Svetlana Savranskaya Introduction pilled secrets make great headlines. Stories appear daily about activists and whistleblowers risking all to expose S government cover-ups, ratcheting up suspicion and damaging public trust—something the National Security Administration (NSA) does little to counter. To many, headline generators such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seem less like disrupters than heroes, their revelations just the latest proof of government’s penchant for concealment.
    [Show full text]
  • The Transformation of Practices of Soviet Speechwriters from the Brezhnev Era to the Early Perestroika Period
    Speechwriting als Beruf: The Transformation of Practices of Soviet Speechwriters from the Brezhnev Era to the Early Perestroika Period By Yana Kitaeva Submitted to Central European University Department of History In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts Supervisor: Alexander Astrov Second Reader: Marsha Siefert CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2019 Copyright Notice Copyright in the text of this thesis rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author. CEU eTD Collection ii Abstract The aim of this thesis is to offer a new perspective within the field of Soviet Subjectivity through the concept of the kollektiv proposed by Oleg Kharkhordin and applied to the case study of Soviet Secretary General‘s speechwriters from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. Namely, I examine the transformations in speechwriting practices of the kollektiv in the 1970s and 1980s. The kollektiv underwent a process of routinization in the early Brezhnev era, establishing a system of collective writing intended merely to transmit Party directives. This routine, which the contemporaries had described as numbing and uninspiring, had completely changed under Gorbachev. Practically, the routine of the speechwriting had become the continuous process of the creation of new ideas under the supervision of the Secretary General in the mid-1980s.
    [Show full text]
  • H-Diplo Roundtable, Vol. XI, No. 16
    2010 H-Diplo Roundtable Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse H-Diplo Roundtable Review Roundtable Web/Production Editor: George Fujii www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables Assistant Web/Production Editor: John Vurpillat Volume XI, No. 16 (2010) 24 February 2010 Mary Elise Sarotte. 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-691-14306-4 (cloth, $29.95, £20.95). Stable URL: http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-XI-16.pdf Contents Introduction by Thomas Maddux, California State University, Northridge.............................. 2 Review by Meena Bose, Hofstra University .............................................................................. 7 Review by Hope M. Harrison, George Washington University ............................................... 10 Review by James Sheehan, Stanford University ..................................................................... 13 Review by William Wohlforth, Dartmouth College ................................................................ 16 Author’s Response by Mary Elise Sarotte, University of Southern California ........................ 20 Copyright © 2010 H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for non-profit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author(s), web location, date of publication, H-Diplo, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses, contact the H-Diplo editorial staff at [email protected].
    [Show full text]
  • The Representation of American Visual Art in the USSR During the Cold War (1950S to the Late 1960S) by Kirill Chunikhin
    The Representation of American Visual Art in the USSR during the Cold War (1950s to the late 1960s) by Kirill Chunikhin a Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History and Theory of Arts Approved Dissertation Committee _______________________________ Prof. Dr. Isabel Wünsche Jacobs University, Bremen Prof. Dr. Corinna Unger European University Institute, Florence Prof. Dr. Roman Grigoryev The State Hermitage, St. Petersburg Date of Defense: June 30, 2016 Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. vii Statutory Declaration (on Authorship of a Dissertation) ........................................... ix List of Figures ............................................................................................................ x List of Attachments ................................................................................................. xiv Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 PART I. THE SOVIET APPROACH: MAKING AMERICAN ART ANTI- AMERICAN………………………………………………………………………………..11 Chapter 1. Introduction to the Totalitarian Art Discourse: Politics and Aesthetics in the Soviet Union ......................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Envisioning Détente: the Johnson Administration And
    simon miles Envisioning De´tente: The Johnson Administration and the October 1964 Khrushchev Ouster* On October 14, 1964, Leonid Brezhnev, Aleksei Kosygin, and Nikolai Podgornii deposed Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1 (CPSU) Nikita Khrushchev in a palace coup. Unthinkable during Stalin’s regime, this bloodless ouster exemplified the new phase in the Cold War to which Downloaded from 2 Khrushchev himself had contributed. Outside the Soviet Union, the incorporation of West Germany into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the successful conclusion of the Cuban and Berlin crises, and the Limited Test Ban Treaty demonstrate that the Cold War had become a competition between two essentially status quo, risk-averse powers over the course of Khrushchev’s http://dh.oxfordjournals.org/ 3 time in office. Lyndon Johnson’s presidency is not remembered as a moment that ushered in a new era of U.S.-Soviet rapprochement; Johnson’s legacy is bound up in the United States’ war in Vietnam. But, the Johnson administration’s response to the change in Soviet leadership, aswellasthepredictionsmade by its constituent organs regarding the future of U.S.-Soviet relations, led to increased stability. Washington and Moscow both accepted and sought to preserve this new reality. Soviet and U.S. leaders viewed their counterparts pragmatically. Emotional and ideological oppos- ition to the other’s way of life did not preclude reducing tensions, nor did it stop by Simon Miles on August 16, 2016 * I wish to thank Frank Gavin, Mark Lawrence, Jeremi Suri, Scott Wolford, Susan Colbourn, and the anonymous reviewers at Diplomatic History for their comments and suggestions.
    [Show full text]
  • Cold War in the Caucasus: Notes and Documents from a Conference by Svetlana Savranskaya and Vladislav Zubok
    COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN, ISSUE 14/15 CONFERENCE REPORTS, RESEARCH NOTES AND ARCHIVE UPDATES Cold War in the Caucasus: Notes and Documents from a Conference By Svetlana Savranskaya and Vladislav Zubok n the summer of 1999 the National Security Archive at the Iranian Azerbaijan in 1945-1946. The archives of the Central George Washington University, in cooperation with the Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan contain a ICold War International History Project (CWIHP), launched detailed and apparently complete set of documentation on a new initiative, “Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in the the implementation of Stalin’s plans to extend Soviet influ- Cold War.” The main goal of the project was to explore the ence and to acquire oil in northern Iran. The documents dem- archives in Tbilisi, Yerevan, and Baku to determine to what onstrate how Stalin worked to achieve his expansionist goals extent Cold War era documents, including materials still clas- by exploiting the nationalist feelings of Azeris living on both sified in the central archives in Moscow, would be accessible sides of the Soviet-Iranian border.2 there. The Caucasus Initiative also aimed at bringing schol- Throughout the Soviet occupation of Iran (1941-1946), ars from these three republics into the larger international as Hasanli’s research shows, there was an unresolved ambi- network of Cold War scholars and at incorporating the re- guity, perhaps even tension, between Stalin’s strategic goals sults of the regional scholars’ research into the wider canvas in Iran and the Azeris’ nationalist agenda. First Secretary of of historiography of Cold War and Soviet history.
    [Show full text]
  • 2003 Annual Report
    The National Security Archive The George Washington University Phone: 202/994-7000 Gelman Library, Suite 701 Fax: 202/994-7005 2130 H Street, N.W. [email protected] Washington, D.C. 20037 www.nsarchive.org Annual Report for 2003 The following statistics provide a performance index of the Archive’s success in 2003: Freedom of Information and declassification requests filed – 1,268 Freedom of Information and declassification appeals filed – 386 Pages of classified U.S. government documents released as the result of Archive requests – 62,696 These included such newsmaking revelations as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s “green light” in 1976 to the Argentine death squads, special envoy Donald Rumsfeld’s instructions for his friendly 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein, and the 33 occasions between 1996 and 2001 when the U.S. government unsuccessfully pressed the Taliban to expel Usama bin Laden from Afghanistan. Pages of declassified documents delivered to publisher of reference collections – 34,553 1- U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, Part I: 1954-1968, 2,479 documents, 13,675 pages; and 2- U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, Part II: 1968-1975, 1,576 documents, 20,878 pages. (Ann Arbor, Michigan: ProQuest Information & Learning/Chadwyck-Healey, 2004) Books published by Archive staff and fellows - 4 1- The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, by Peter Kornbluh (New York: The New Press, 2003, 551 pp.) 2- Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby, by John Prados (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 380 pp.) 3- Konfrontationsmuster des Kalten Krieges 1946-1956.
    [Show full text]
  • Professor Vladislav Zubok - Academic Staff - Who's Who - Departmen
    Professor Vladislav Zubok - Academic Staff - Who's Who - Departmen... http://www.lse.ac.uk/internationalHistory/whosWho/academicStaff/zu... Professor Vladislav Zubok Professor of International History Other Titles: Undergraduate Programme Director Research Interests: Cold War; 20th-Century Russia Room : EAS.E410 Tel : +44 (0)20 7955 5370 Email : [email protected] About Teaching & Supervision Publications Vladislav Zubok is professor of international history, with expertise on the Cold War, the Soviet Union, Stalinism, and Russia’s intellectual history in the 20th century. His most recent books are A Failed Empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007) and Zhivago’s Children: the Last Russian Intelligentsia (2009). Professor Zubok was born and educated in Moscow. He studied for his undergraduate degree at the Moscow State University and studied for his PhD at the Institute for the USA and Canada in Moscow. In 1994 he became a fellow at the National Security Archive, non-government organization at the University of George Washington. He continued his academic career in the United States as a visiting professor at Amherst College, Ohio University, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan, and in 2004 became a tenured professor at Temple University. His books earned the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Marshall Shulman Prize of the American Association for Advancement of Slavic Studies. Professor Zubok received numerous grants from the McArthur Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, and recently from the Yeltsin foundation and the Russkii Mir foundation. Aside from academic work, Professor Zubok organized a number of international archival and educational projects in Russia, Ukraine, and South Caucasus.
    [Show full text]
  • Open up the Documents, Let the Games Continue
    Vladislav Zubok, Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. xv + 282 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-674-45531-3. Reviewed by Thomas R. Maddux Published on H-Diplo (July, 1999) Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov Zubok and Pleshakov came of age in the Sovi‐ have written the most influential book to date us‐ et Union after the Soviet intervention in Czecho‐ ing recently available Soviet documents on Soviet slovakia in 1968 and graduated from Moscow Cold War policies under Joseph Stalin and Nikita State University in the early 1980s. They joined Khrushchev. Zubok has become quite familiar to the elite Institute of U.S. and Canada Studies Americans as a personable, regular commentator which they describe as a "pragmatic and infinitely on the "Postscript" sections of the CNN "Cold War" cynical think tank [that] gave us a good grasp of program during which he offered perceptive and Soviet policy- making" (p. xi). After Mikhail Gor‐ judicious observations. As a Senior Fellow at the bachev arrived in 1985 and initiated glasnost, National Security Archive at George Washington Zubok and Pleshakov turned to a study of Soviet University, and active participant in the Cold War policy, moving from innocuous documents on fur‐ International History Project, Zubok has been at niture styles in Soviet embassies to significant the center of the opening and publication of Sovi‐ documents from the Soviet embassies and foreign et Cold War documents and emerging reinterpre‐ ministry to the International Department of the tations of not only Soviet leaders and policies but Central Committee and Politburo.
    [Show full text]
  • THE RUSSIANS International History and the History of the US in the World
    Ambassador William C. Battle Symposium PARTICIPANTS BIOS Hal Brands is Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Serhii Plokhii is the Mykhailo S. Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced History and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at International Studies. Harvard University. Derek Chollet is the executive vice president and senior advisor Eugene Rumer is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of Studies, National Defense University, Washington DC. the United States. Svetlana Savranskaya is a research fellow at The George Washington Frank Costigliola is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University’s National Security Archive where she directs its cooperative University of Connecticut, where he teaches US Foreign Relations. projects with Russian archives and institutes. Eric Edelman is a former US ambassador and senior fellow and Marc Selverstone is an associate professor in presidential studies at Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the Miller Center. the Miller Center and chair of the Presidential Recordings Program. Nicole Hemmer is an assistant professor in presidential studies at Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership the Miller Center. She is the author of Messengers of the Right: in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. in the department of history and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. William Hitchcock is the Randolph P. Compton Professor of History Strobe Talbott is the president of the Brookings Institution.
    [Show full text]
  • Reforming the Cold War State: Economic Thought, Internationalization, and the Politics of Soviet Reform, 1955-1985
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Reforming The Cold War State: Economic Thought, Internationalization, And The Politics Of Soviet Reform, 1955-1985. Yakov Feygin Feygin University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Economic History Commons, and the European History Commons Recommended Citation Feygin, Yakov Feygin, "Reforming The Cold War State: Economic Thought, Internationalization, And The Politics Of Soviet Reform, 1955-1985." (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2277. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2277 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2277 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Reforming The Cold War State: Economic Thought, Internationalization, And The Politics Of Soviet Reform, 1955-1985. Abstract This dissertation explains how, as the USSR’s narrative of the Cold War shifted from the military-industrial competition envisioned by Stalin to Khrushchev’s “peaceful socioeconomic competition of the two systems,” economics began to tackle the challenge of transforming the Soviet economy from one focused on mobilization and production to one that could deliver well-being and abundance. Soviet economics changed from a field that only justified the state’s actions to a “science” whose practitioners could use their “expertise” to propose and critique domestic government policy. This opening
    [Show full text]