scholarly journals Sergey Rumyancev, Ускользающая современность: постсоветская модернизация Азербайджана / Vanishing Modernity: The Post-Soviet Modernization of Azerbaijan

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 136-147

The article focuses on the debates situation of post-soviet modernization and transformation of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani economy failed to become a market economy, and remains instead predominantly based on the extraction and sale of oil and natural gas. Cities are being ruralised instead of the urbanization of rural areas. In its turn, industrialization ended together with the Soviet Union. A more or less tangible individualization and fragmentation of social life are not part of the history of post-Soviet Azerbaijan either. The political and economic systems of Azerbaijan are an imitation of a modern state. It is an example of a simulacrum state and a total imitation of modern political institutions and relations. In other words: The political regime in Azerbaijan is a complex of imitative practices, relations and “institutional camouflages” that enable a broad international presentation of Azerbaijan, effectively privatized by a small group of people, as a modern state that exists in reality.

Author(s):  
A. James McAdams

This book is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. The book argues that the rise and fall of communism can be understood only by taking into account the origins and evolution of this compelling idea. It shows how the leaders of parties in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and North Korea adapted the original ideas of revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to profoundly different social and cultural settings. The book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand world communism and the captivating idea that gave it life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2020) ◽  
pp. 140-149
Author(s):  
Alexander V. Shekh ◽  

The attempt to remove from power in August 1991, M.S. Gorbachev actually marked the end of the history of the Soviet Union. The August events forced the peoples of the republics of the USSR to unite around republican elites who defended the achievements of perestroika. The socio-political situation in the Murmansk region in August 1991 is considered on the material of the regional press.It reflects a specific feature of those events in the region. Despite the differences in the positions of different groups of the population, in General, electoral support for the legitimate authorities was reflected. The highest degree of tension in the labor collectives of the region fell on the morning of August 21. The political elite of the region took a wait-and-see attitude. The Soviet authorities in one of the militarized regions of the country managed to prevent clashes, not to give reasons to the top leadership to enter troops in localities, and to declarea state of emergency in the region.


Author(s):  
Mikhail Mints ◽  

This review article deals with a collection of essays published in «Europe-Asia Studies», vol. 71, N 6 (2019), the authors of which are analyzing Stalinism as a specific exemplar of state-building. Their research is based on various concepts of modern social sciences, especially on the theory of the developmental state. The authors show the new opportunities provided by such an approach and suggest the main directions of further study of the political history of the USSR from this point of view.


2020 ◽  
pp. 309-322
Author(s):  
Fei Haiting

The mechanism of causality between the breakdown of political regime and the disintegration of a state is an important topic in political science. The dissolution of the Soviet Union is a typical example. The aim of perestroika was the transformation of the political regime by renewing the top elite and inclusion of mass groups in the system of government. The initiators of the reform planned to achieve their goals through the general reconstruction of relations between the CPSU and the Soviet state, the redistribution of power from the party elite to the Soviet one concentrated in the Councils of People’s Deputies at various levels. In practice, the implementation of two reforms at once (distancing the party from the authorities and optimizing governance) led to the split of the entire political elite. The struggle of opposing elite groups for dominance led to the paralysis of state power, the loss of control over what was happening in the country. As a result, the interests of elite groups began to prevail over the national interests and ultimately led to the destruction of the state. Thus the authorsubstantiates the thesis that the destabilization of a regime as a result of the inter-elite struggle leads to the destruction of a state. The problem of elite renewal and consolidation and the transfer powers from the party elite to the state one becomes important.


Literary, cultural and art newspaper of an independent Republic of Kazakhstan – ‘Kazakh literature’ was a judge of justice and truth, and a preacher of national power having the trouble in its eighty five years of history. The edition had a mission to build and develop social concept leading the culture of the nation for the purpose of the country. It has been a part of history of the country being the source of political and social life of the nation. Many problems of the country had been solved by courtesy of the newspaper which couldn’t be ignored. During the Soviet Union the paper supported the mission of the nation in spite of Communist party which was cruel and violent. Because of it, the editors of the edition were precarious between fifties and eighties. Almost all the leaders of the newspaper were well-known writers, poets, publicists and personalities who showed them to be the real sons of their nation. During all periods of its history, the national edition united around itself and brought up ardent publicists, and with the power of a sharp word they fought for the bright future of their native land, for the fulfillment of the nation’s cherished desires. Therefore, from the mid-1950s to the 1980s, its editors-in-chief did not stay long in their post.


Author(s):  
T. Pshenychnyi

Ukrainian Church History is a great field for scientific research. The 20th century was a kind of test for the survival and self-determination of Ukrainian churches. Through the spread of general pressure on the Ukrainian national movement, a repression mechanism was introduced against the Institute of the Church as an integral part of the social life of Ukrainian people in the Soviet Union. A characteristic feature of the anti-church campaign in the Ukrainian SSR was the introduction of a “new” model of social relations, built on the principles of atheism and godlessness. The only legal national church until March 1946, which opposed this path, was the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In the second half of the 20th century its clergy, while in an unlawful position in the USSR, remained in the center of the Ukrainian resistance movement against the Soviet system. The article presents the modern view of domestic and foreign scholars on the history of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the second half of the 20th century. On the basis of a broad historiographic base, an attempt was made to show the place of the UGCC in the Ukrainian national movement, its influence on the democratization of social processes in the second half of the 1980s, and others. Thanks to the works of foreign historians, the relevance of church issues in the study of socio-political processes in the USSR is shown. According to some scholars, ignoring this it is impossible to understand the phenomenon of the national movement itself, including in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR.


Author(s):  
Barbara Ann Chotiner

Soviet politics under Mikhail S. Gorbachev became the arena for wide-ranging institutional and policy change across a broad spectrum of issue areas. These alterations were supported and opposed by sometimes unpredictable coalitions; victories were engineered using novel as well as familiar techniques. As a consequence, there has often been a tendency to treat the political scene in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from March 1985 through August 1991 as almost sui generis. In many respects, the period of Gorbachev's General Secretaryship of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) has been treated as the antithesis of the political regime during the so-called "era of stagnation" under Leonid I. Brezhnev.


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