Change in the Soviet Political System: Limits and Likelihoods

1984 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 502-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Byrnes
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political System ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Centralized Control ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Control Change ◽  
Economic Slowdown ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Military

The Soviet Union confronts grave needs for reform because it achieved impressive progress upon old foundations, struggles with a systemic economic slowdown, faces fundamental social and spiritual infrastructured problems, wrestles with a costly overextended empire, and must adapt to the age of knowledge that challenges its centralized control. Soviet leaders recognize the need to restructure the economic and political system, but they consider innovation an ideologically unacceptable hazard to its values, and its control. Change would threaten the primacy of the military share of economic resources, the high priority foreign policy receives to provide legitimacy, and control of Eastern Europe. Only corrections and minor repairs in the economy are likely in a system that lacks a reform mechanism.

The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 3)

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political System ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
External Context ◽  
Final Segment ◽  
Extended Analysis ◽  
The Impact

This is the concluding part of a three-part article that discusses the transformation of Soviet-East European relations in the late 1980s and the impact of the sweeping changes in Eastern Europe on the Soviet Union. This final segment is divided into two main parts: First, it provides an extended analysis of the bitter public debate that erupted in the Soviet Union in 1990 and 1991 about the “loss” of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The debate roiled the Soviet political system and fueled the hardline backlash against Mikhail Gorbachev. Second, this part of the article offers a concluding section that highlights the theoretical implications of the article as a whole. The article, as the conclusion shows, sheds light on recent literature concerning the diffusion of political innovations and the external context of democratization and political change.

scholarly journals MILITARY PERSONNEL AND REPRESSION OF THE 1930s

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-14
Author(s):  
Maxim V. Evstratov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
First Year ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Internal Policy ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Military ◽  
Further Development

The article examines the issue of carrying out Stalinist repressions against the officers of the late 1930s. Separate problematic plots associated with repressions in relation to the command and control and political composition of the Red Army are highlighted. Mass repressions began in the early 1930s. thanks to falsified charges related to the Viasna case. Based on special research literature, the article reveals the reasons and consequences of the peak of repressions against the military, which fell on the period of the disclosure of the so-called «military conspiracy» in 1937. The background of the conspiracy itself was connected with the fact that around J.V. Stalin there were two large opposing forces, consisting of eminent military men, who had different views on the further development of the army. As a result, the «leader» supported KE Voroshilov’s group, and MN Tukhachevsky’s associates were repressed. The article notes that about 40 thousand people from among the commanders suffered from the repressions of 1937-1938. In 1939, by order of JV Stalin, the mass coverage of repression was suspended, as a result, 11,178 people were reinstated in the army. Any interrelated events inevitably have a cause-and-effect relationship. Many historians, discussing the failures of the Soviet Union in the first year of the Great Patriotic War, come to the conclusion that the professionally formed army, which led to successes during the Civil War, was largely destroyed by the internal policy of the state, which was directly related to the repression of the end 1930s. The massive repressions carried out against the commanding and commanding personnel in the pre-war years inflicted great losses on the Red Army. Events of the 1930s became the main reason for personnel problems in the Red Army, which entailed tragic consequences during the Great Patriotic War.

scholarly journals Polish Peculiarities? Military Loyalty During the 1980-1981 Solidarity Crisis

1999 ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Elizabeth P. Coughlan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Military

On December 13, 1981, the Polish military under the leadership of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law, effectively ending sixteen months of popular protest and bargaining between the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) and the independent trade union Solidarity. In the West, and particularly in the United States, martial law was interpreted as the Polish military declaring war on its own people on the orders of the Soviet Union. It was assumed and repeatedly asserted that the military was loyal to the Communist Party and to the Soviet high command, that they were little more than communists in uniform.  Such an assertion, however, leaves one hard pressed to explain the acquiescence of the militaries across Eastern Europe to the changes of 1989 and the ability of those militaries to adapt to noncommunist regimes to the point of being willing and even eager to join NATO.

Swimming Against the Tide: Implications for Cuba of Soviet and Eastern European Reforms in Foreign Economic Relations

1991 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge F. Perez-Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political System ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Central Planning ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World

Since mid-1989, remarkable political and economic changes have occurred in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Although the countries differ with regard to the scope, speed, and sequence of these changes, in the economic arena the objective is, in all cases, to abandon traditional central planning and replace it with a market economy. An integral component of these efforts to establish markets is the reform of foreign economic relations and greater involvement in the world economy.While a tide of political and economic change has swept the East, Cuba has adamantly held on to a one-party political system and to orthodox central planning.

The Socio-Cultural Process in the USSR in 1950-1980

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
Igor Asmarov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Creative Thought ◽  
Cultural Process ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Military

These four decades gave the USSR new discoveries in the sphere of cultural creativity and the growth of the military and economic power of the country, including the Soviet Union republics of the USSR. The social and cultural process in the USSR in 1950-1980 proceeded under the strong influence of ideology and the ideological and political conjuncture. Nevertheless, creative thought in the sphere of culture and art in the USSR was alive and even fruitfully developed. The peculiarities of the culture of the USSR of this period consisted in the struggle of the government against deviations from the “tasks of social construction”. The pressure and control from the party were so great that they oppressed the freedom of artists and science. Mass discussions in various branches of science of this time had a negative effect on their participants. The development of culture in the 1960-80s was extremely controversial. Despite the fact that the funds for the development of culture constantly increased, the achievements in culture did not correspond to the financial costs. During this period, the leadership of the USSR began to pay great attention to public education and science.

United States Policy Towards Eastern Europe: Before and After Helsinki

1975 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Byrnes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Control

The signing in Helsinki of the agreement on security and cooperation in Europe has led to bitter criticism of President Ford and of the policy under which the United States drifted into recognizing Soviet acquisition of 114,000 square miles of Finnish, Polish, German, Czechoslovak, and Romanian territory, apparently sanctified as well Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and recognized the “permanent” division of Europe. In return for endorsing these Soviet conquests, the Western states received some vague promises that the Soviet Union and the East European states would take a “positive and humanitarian attitude” towards applications from their citizens to rejoin their families in the West, would “facilitate the improvement of the dissemination” of publications from other countries, would provide three weeks' notice of large military maneuvers within 156 miles of frontiers, and assured that every European state would be free from “external influence.” All these phrases seem small recompense for such great concessions and from two years of negotiation by 492 diplomats, especially when hope in Western Europe in particular had been high for an end to jamming, censorship, and control over travel. Critics noted in particular that the formal summit agreement awarded the Soviet Union prizes it had sought since 1954, while the parallel discussion of reducing military forces in Eastern and Western Europe, in which the Soviet Union and its associates maintain immense superiorities, has long been stalled. Indeed, now that the West no longer has the lever of the Geneva talks, it has little pressure to persuade the Soviet Union to discuss mutual balanced force reductions. Many now fear that the Soviet Union will press instead for a collective security agreement, which would have no meaning, but which would totally demolish NATO, while leaving the Soviets on the commanding military heights in Eastern Europe.

The Political Economy of the Brezhnev Era: The Rise and Fall of Corporatism

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Bunce
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Power ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Test Ban ◽  
The Military ◽  
East West

When Leonid Brezhnev came to power in 1964, the Soviet empire consisted of Cuba and six reliable satellites in Eastern Europe, the bloc was dominated politically and economically by the Soviet Union, and East–West interactions were kept to a minimum. Soviet military capabilities at this time, moreover, were clearly inferior to the military power of the West. And while East–West relations were testy, they had improved in the aftermath of the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

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