Russia's Unfinished Revolution

Russia's Unfinished Revolution
Author: Michael McFaul
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2001-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801439001

For centuries, dictators ruled Russia. Tsars and Communist Party chiefs were in charge for so long some analysts claimed Russians had a cultural predisposition for authoritarian leaders. Yet, as a result of reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, new political institutions have emerged that now require election of political leaders and rule by constitutional procedures. Michael McFaul—described by the New York Times as "one of the leading Russia experts in the United States"—traces Russia's tumultuous political history from Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985 through the 1999 resignation of Boris Yeltsin in favor of Vladimir Putin. McFaul divides his account of the post-Soviet country into three periods: the Gorbachev era (1985-1991), the First Russian Republic (1991–1993), and the Second Russian Republic (1993–present). The first two were, he believes, failures—failed institutional emergence or failed transitions to democracy. By contrast, new democratic institutions did emerge in the third era, though not the institutions of a liberal democracy. McFaul contends that any explanation for Russia's successes in shifting to democracy must also account for its failures. The Russian/Soviet case, he says, reveals the importance of forging social pacts; the efforts of Russian elites to form alliances failed, leading to two violent confrontations and a protracted transition from communism to democracy. McFaul spent a great deal of time in Moscow in the 1990s and witnessed firsthand many of the events he describes. This experience, combined with frequent visits since and unparalleled access to senior Russian policymakers and politicians, has resulted in an astonishingly well-informed account. Russia's Unfinished Revolution is a comprehensive history of Russia during this crucial period.

Russia's Unfinished Revolution

Russia's Unfinished Revolution
Author: Michael McFaul
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801488146

For centuries, dictators ruled Russia. Tsars and Communist Party chiefs were in charge for so long some analysts claimed Russians had a cultural predisposition for authoritarian leaders. Yet, as a result of reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, new political institutions have emerged that now require election of political leaders and rule by constitutional procedures. Michael McFaul—described by the New York Times as "one of the leading Russia experts in the United States"—traces Russia's tumultuous political history from Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985 through the 1999 resignation of Boris Yeltsin in favor of Vladimir Putin. McFaul divides his account of the post-Soviet country into three periods: the Gorbachev era (1985-1991), the First Russian Republic (1991–1993), and the Second Russian Republic (1993–present). The first two were, he believes, failures—failed institutional emergence or failed transitions to democracy. By contrast, new democratic institutions did emerge in the third era, though not the institutions of a liberal democracy. McFaul contends that any explanation for Russia's successes in shifting to democracy must also account for its failures. The Russian/Soviet case, he says, reveals the importance of forging social pacts; the efforts of Russian elites to form alliances failed, leading to two violent confrontations and a protracted transition from communism to democracy. McFaul spent a great deal of time in Moscow in the 1990s and witnessed firsthand many of the events he describes. This experience, combined with frequent visits since and unparalleled access to senior Russian policymakers and politicians, has resulted in an astonishingly well-informed account. Russia's Unfinished Revolution is a comprehensive history of Russia during this crucial period.

Russia's Unfinished Revolution

Russia's Unfinished Revolution
Author: Michael A. McFaul
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2015-05-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801456967

For centuries, dictators ruled Russia. Tsars and Communist Party chiefs were in charge for so long some analysts claimed Russians had a cultural predisposition for authoritarian leaders. Yet, as a result of reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, new political institutions have emerged that now require election of political leaders and rule by constitutional procedures. Michael McFaul traces Russia's tumultuous political history from Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985 through the 1999 resignation of Boris Yeltsin in favor of Vladimir Putin. McFaul divides his account of the post-Soviet country into three periods: the Gorbachev era (1985-1991), the First Russian Republic (1991-1993), and the Second Russian Republic (1993-present). The first two were, he believes, failures—failed institutional emergence or failed transitions to democracy. By contrast, new democratic institutions did emerge in the third era, though not the institutions of a liberal democracy. McFaul contends that any explanation for Russia's successes in shifting to democracy must also account for its failures. The Russian/Soviet case, he says, reveals the importance of forging social pacts; the efforts of Russian elites to form alliances failed, leading to two violent confrontations and a protracted transition from communism to democracy. McFaul spent a great deal of time in Moscow in the 1990s and witnessed firsthand many of the events he describes. This experience, combined with frequent visits since and unparalleled access to senior Russian policymakers and politicians, has resulted in an astonishingly well-informed account. Russia's Unfinished Revolution is a comprehensive history of Russia during this crucial period.

Unfinished Revolution

Unfinished Revolution
Author: Kenneth E. Morris
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2010-06-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1569767564

Together with his brother Humberto, Daniel Ortega Saavedra masterminded the only victorious Latin American revolution since Fidel Castro's in Cuba. Following the triumphant 1979 Nicaraguan revolution, Ortega was named coordinator of the governing junta, and then in 1984 was elected president by a landslide in the country's first free presidential election. The future was full of promise. Yet the United States was soon training, equipping, and financing a counterrevolutionary force inside Nicaragua while sabotaging its crippled economy. The result was a decade-long civil war. By 1990, Nicaraguans dutifully voted Ortega out and the preferred candidate of the United States in. And Nicaraguans grew poorer and sicker. Then, in 2006, Daniel Ortega was reelected president. He was still defiantly left-wing and deeply committed to reclaiming the lost promise of the Revolution. Only time will tell if he succeeds, but he has positioned himself as an ally of Castro and Hugo Ch&ávez, while life for many Nicaraguans is finally improving. Unfinished Revolution is the first full-length biography of Daniel Ortega in any language. Drawing from a wealth of untapped sources, it tells the story of Nicaragua's continuing struggle for liberation through the prism of the Revolution's most emblematic yet enigmatic hero.

The Truth of the Russian Revolution

The Truth of the Russian Revolution
Author: Konstantin Ivanovich Globachev
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2017-04-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438464649

Bronze Medalist, 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the World History Category Gold Winner, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the History category Major General Konstantin Ivanovich Globachev was chief of the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police, in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) in the two years preceding the 1917 Russian Revolution. This book presents his memoirs—translated in English for the first time—interposed with those of his wife, Sofia Nikolaevna Globacheva. The general's writings, which he titled The Truth of the Russian Revolution, provide a front-row view of Tsar Nicholas II's final years, the revolution, and its tumultuous aftermath. Globachev describes the political intrigue and corruption in the capital and details his office's surveillance over radical activists and the mysterious Rasputin. His wife takes a more personal approach, depicting her tenacity in the struggle to keep her family intact and the family's flight to freedom. Her descriptions vividly portray the privileges and relationships of the noble class that collapsed with the empire. Translator Vladimir G. Marinich includes biographical information, illustrations, a glossary, and a timeline to contextualize this valuable primary source on a key period in Russian history.

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Total Pages: 535
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ISBN: 0544716248

Havel

Havel
Author: David Gilbreath Barton
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0822987422

Václav Havel (1936–2011), the famous Czech dissident, intellectual, and playwright, was there when half a million people came to Wenceslas Square to demand an end to Communism in 1989. Many came to hear him call for a free Czechoslovakia, for democratic elections, and for a return to Europe. The demonstrators roared when he spoke. “Havel to the castle,” they chanted— meaning Havel for president. And a few weeks later, Havel became a most unusual president. He was sometimes misunderstood and not always popular, but by the time of his death in 2011, the world recognized Havel as one of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century. In this intimate and sweeping portrayal of Havel, David Gilbreath Barton reveals the eccentricities of the last president of Czechoslovakia, and the first president of the Czech Republic.

The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution
Author: Walter Rodney
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2018-07-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786635321

A never-before published history of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and its post-colonial legacy, woven together from lecture excerpts by the renowned Pan-African revolutionary socialist theorist In his short life, Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the foremost thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Wherever he was, Rodney was a lightning rod for working-class Black Power organizing. His deportation sparked Jamaica’s Rodney Riots in 1968, and his scholarship trained a generation how to approach politics on an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding the Working People’s Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney was assassinated. Walter Rodney’s The Russian Revolution collects surviving texts from a series of lectures he delivered at the University of Dar es Salaam, an intellectual hub of the independent Third World. It had been his intention to work these into a book, a goal completed posthumously with the editorial aid of Robin D.G. Kelley and Jesse Benjamin. Moving across the historiography of the long Russian Revolution with clarity and insight, Rodney transcends the ideological fault lines of the Cold War. Surveying a broad range of subjects—the Narodniks, social democracy, the October Revolution, civil war, and the challenges of Stalinism—Rodney articulates a distinct viewpoint from the Third World, one that grounds revolutionary theory and history with the people in motion.

Armageddon Averted

Armageddon Averted
Author: Stephen Kotkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2008-12-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199743843

Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue--bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse--this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years. Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted--that the world's largest police state, with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper. Throughout the book, Kotkin also paints vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he offers a fascinating picture of Gorbachev, describing this virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer as "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"--and more or less going along with it. At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self-interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution." Acclaim for the First Edition: "The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape." --The New Yorker "A triumph of the art of contemporary history. In fewer than 200 pagesKotkin elucidates the implosion of the Soviet empire--the most important and startling series of international events of the past fifty years--and clearly spells out why, thanks almost entirely to the 'principal restraint' of the Soviet leadership, that collapse didn't result in a cataclysmic war, as all experts had long forecasted." -The Atlantic Monthly "Concise and persuasive The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage." --The New York Review of Books