Is Russia Reformable?: Change and Resistance from Stalin to Gorbachev

by Robert V. Daniels

Overview

History is always full of surprises as it unfolds before us. The Soviet Union, for decades a seemingly frozen monolith of totalitarian rigidity and paranoid bellicosity, suddenly finds itself under a leader in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev who calls for "radical restructuring," openness," and even a "revolution." Outsiders justly wonder if this means a new era of reform, or whether the nature of the Soviet system and its historical roots makes real change impossible. This book is based on a series of articles that the author wrote during the first two years after Gorbachev assumed the Soviet leadership in March 1985.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367003326
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/18/2018
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

ROBERT V. DANIELS is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Vermont and past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. His most recent books are The End of the Communist Revolution (1993) and Trotsky, Stalin, and Socialism (1991).

Table of Contents

Preface — Barriers to Change — The Foundations of Stalinism — Lenin, Stalin, and the Military Model of Socialism — Stalinism and Russian Political Culture — Bases for Reform — The Intelligentsia and the Failure of Reform: Khrushchev — The Political System and the Generational Revolution — The Intelligentsia and the Success of Reform: From Brezhnev to Gorbachev — The Revolutionary Legacy