Untitled Document

YORK UNIVERSITY
Department of Political Science
POLS 3500.03A
THE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNISM
IN RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE
Fall 2003
Monday, 11:30 – 14:30
Instructor: Sergei Plekhanov
Office: 383 York Lanes
Phone numbers: (416) 736-5156, (416) 736-2100, ext. 46013
email: splekhan@yorku.ca, website: http://www.yorku.ca/splekhan/
Office hours: Thursdays, 12:30 - 14:30, and by appointment

This course explores one of the twentieth century’s defining political phenomena: the attempt to create a systemic alternative to global capitalism.

Emerging out of the Russian revolution of 1917, the communist (state socialist) regime was established in the former Russian Empire in what its leaders saw as just the first act of a worldwide revolution against capitalism. By the early 1950s, Russian Communists were in charge of the second most powerful state in the world, the Soviet Union, locked in a global political, ideological and military competition with the West in what came to be known as the Cold War. After World War II, communist regimes were established throughout Eastern Europe, as well as in China, North Korea, and, later on, in Cuba and Vietnam. Many Third World countries adopted elements of the Soviet model as part of their attempts to catch up with the West.

By the 1970s, the Soviet model of state socialism increasingly revealed itself as ill-suited for the needs of modern social development. The suppression of political and economic freedoms, the inefficiency of the bureaucratically-run economy, and the crushing burden of militarism deprived the Soviet and East European communist regimes of the ability to adapt to global changes, while US-led Western capitalism projected the image of progress, prosperity and democracy. The communist regimes tried to reform themselves with partial and temporary successes, until in 1989-1991, the system collapsed in a series of democratic revolutions. However, the legacy of communism is still very much in presence in the 21st century. In Asia and Cuba, communist regimes still exist and apparently have not exhausted their capacity for adaptation. Meanwhile, the failures of attempts to build viable liberal-capitalist systems in Russia and most other post-communist countries have generated a nostalgia for elements of state socialism among many of their citizens. Thus, the communist phenomenon remains a topic of acute political and scholarly interest.

Through a series of lectures, readings, classroom discussions, and written assignments, we will study the life-cycle of the communist system in Russia and Eastern Europe, seeking to understand why it came into existence, what kept it going for much of the twentieth century, why it collapsed, and what lessons can be drawn from that historical experience.

Three books are recommended as required readings. The list of additional books at the end of this syllabus is a basic bibliography on Russian and East European politics of the Communist period, from which students can select the readings needed for the preparation of their written and oral assignments. Books marked with an asterisk are on reserve for this course at Scott Library. The specialized PCSP (Post-Communist Studies Programme) Library is also available to students at the R.B. Byers Memorial Library, Centre for International and Security Studies, 3d floor, York Lanes.

Class report or short essay - 20%
Research paper - 40%
Take-home exam - 30%
Participation – 10%

# The short essay should not be longer than 8 pages, double-spaced.
# The length limit for the research paper is 16 pages, double-spaced.
# Topics for written assignments should be chosen, with the instructor’s approval, by September 29. See the list of suggested topics below.
# The deadline for submitting the short essay is November 3, for the research paper, December 1.
# There are 21 slots in the course schedule for class reports, beginning with the September 15 class. Report topics are listed in this syllabus. Volunteers, please sign up.
# The take-home exam will be distributed during the last class, on December 2. The exam requirement is to write a short essay in response to the exam question. The due date for the exam is December 9.

Sept. 15
WHY RUSSIA? Development of capitalism and the emergence of the socialist project. Patterns of East European and Russian history. The Russian state and its crisis. 1917: The fall of the Romanov Empire.
Topic for class report:
Review of the book “A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia”.

Readings:
Zeman, Chapters 1-5
Suny, Chapters 1 and 2
Berend, Preface
Additional:
Lerner, A History of Socialism and Comminism, Chapters 1-5 (5)
Lacqueur, The Fate of the Revolution, Chapters 3 and 4 (2)
Figes, The People’s Tragedy, Chapter 11 (3)

Sept. 22
THE BIRTH OF THE SOVIET STATE. The failure of Russian liberalism. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. The Bolsheviks and the Soviets. The October 1917 uprising. The Civil War and the evolution of the Bolshevik dictatorship. Waiting for world revolution. The issue of nationalism in the Russian revolution.
Topics for class reports:
The role of the peasantry in the Revolution and the Civil War.
Foreign military intervention in Russia.

Readings:
Zeman, Chapter 6
Suny, Chapters 3 and 4
Additional:
Lincoln, Red Victory (3)
Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (3)

Sept.29
THE NEP. The end of the Civil War and the crisis of the Soviet regime. The switch to the NEP and its results. Socialism in one country. The formation of the Soviet Union. Political struggles in the Communist Party. Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, and the rise of Stalin. NEP society. Culture wars.
Topics for class reports:
Left-wing opposition to NEP.
Soviet nationality policies in the 1920s.

Readings:
Suny, chapters 5-8
Additional:
Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience, Chapters 4 and 5 (2)
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, Chapters 4 and 5 (5)
Fitzpatrick, Rabinowitz, and Stites, Soviet Society Under NEP (3)

October 6 and 13 (No classes held on these days; class material is to be studied at home)
EASTERN EUROPE BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS. Eastern Europe’s successor states. The politics of nationalism and the threat of communism. The defeat of democracy. Nazi Germany’s expansion in Eastern Europe.

Readings:
Zeman, Chapters 7-9
Additional:
Rothschild, Return to Diversity, Chapter 1 (1)
Wandycz, The Price of Freedom, Chapter 7 (1)
Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe, Chapter 3 (1)

October 20
STALINISM TAKES HOLD. The rise of Stalin. The end of NEP: why? Stalin's plan for "construction of socialism". Collectivization and industrialization. The Great Terror. Enforcement of Stalinist orthodoxy in ideology and culture. The personality cult.
Topics for class reports:
The social base of Stalinism.
Stalinism and fascism: similarities and differences.

Readings:
Suny, Chapters 9-12
Zeman, Chapter 10
Additional:
Ward, Stalin’s Russia, Chapters 2-5 (4)
Shearer, Industry, State and Society in Stalin’s Russia, Chapters 6-8 (4)
Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience, Chapters 2 and 3 (2)

October 27
STALINISM AND WAR. The Great Patriotic War and its impact on the Soviet economy and society. The Soviet Union’s political gains from World War II. The Cold War and the consolidation of Soviet totalitarianism. Late Stalinism.
Topics for class reports:
Did World War 2 vindicate Stalinism?
Interpretations of Stalinism

Readings:
Suny, Chapters 13-16
Zeman, Chapters 11-14
Additional:
Ward, Stalin’s Russia, Chapter 6 (4)
Lacqueur, The Fate of the Revolution, Chapter 5 (2)
Boffa, The Stalin Phenomenon, Chapters 1-9 (4)

November 3
EASTERN EUROPE UNDER STALIN. The political consequences of World War II for Eastern Europe. The partition of Europe. The communist takeover: external and internal factors. The cases of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
Topics for class reports:
The communist takeover of Czechoslovakia
Tito’s Challenge to Stalin

Readings:
Zeman, Chapters 14-18
Berend, Chapters 1 and 2
Additional:
Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe, Chapter 2 (1)
Rothschild, Return to Diversity, Chapters 3 and 4 (1)
Ulam, The Communists, Chapters 1-3 (5)

November 10
STATE SOCIALISM AFTER STALIN. State socialism in comparative perspective. The command economy. The party-state bureaucracy. The key role of the secret police. Changes in the USSR and Eastern Europe after Stalin's death. The conservative restoration of the late 1960s. Brezhnev’s Russia.
Topics for class reports:
Nomenklatura: the communist ruling class
The shadow economy in the USSR

Readings:
Suny, Chapters 17-19
Zeman, Chapter 19
Additional:
Rothschild, Chapters 5 and 6 (1)
Djilas, The New Class (5)
Voslensky, Nomenklatura (5)
Simis, The USSR: The Corrupt Society (6)

November 17
MOVEMENTS FOR REFORM. Market socialism. The Yugoslav model. “The Prague spring” of 1968. “Goulash socialism” in Hungary. Poland’s Solidarity. Post-Mao economic reforms in China. Common features of reforms under state socialism.
Topics for class reports:
“The Prague Spring” of 1968
Poland: the challenge of Solidarity

Readings:
Zeman, Chapter 20
Berend, Chapters 3-5
Additional:
Lane, Chapter 5 (1)
“From Stalinism to Pluralism”, Part IV (1)
Pipes, The Communists (5)

November 24
GORBACHEV AND PERESTROIKA. Why Gorbachev? The aims and ideology of Gorbachev's reforms. New Political Thinking in foreign policy. Glasnost. Economic and political liberalization: why both had to happen. Societal responses to perestroika. The rise of independent politics.
Topics for class reports:
Gorbachev, Reagan, and the end of the Cold War.
The social and political forces behind perestroika.

Readings:
Suny, Chapter 20
Additional:
Hough, Democratization and Revolution in the USSR, chs.1-3 (8)
Kotkin, Armageddon Averted, Chapters 1-4 (8)
Gorbachev, Perestroika (8)
Gorbachev, Memoirs (8)

December 1
THE EAST EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1989. The role of internal and external forces. Why did Moscow give up its control? The chain of events: from Polish roundtable talks to the overthrow of Ceausescu.
Topics for class reports:
The reunification of Germany.
The civil war in Yugoslavia.

Readings:
Zeman, Chapters 21 and 22
Berend, Chapters 6 and 7
Additional:
White, After Gorbachev, chs. 5,7
Crnobrnja, The Yugoslav Drama, Parts II and III
“The Collapse of Communism”

December 2
COLLAPSE OF THE USSR. The failure of Gorbachev's economic reforms. The rise of nationalism and centrifugal pressures on the Soviet state. Political and social polarization. The rise of independent politics. 1990-1991: the democratic revolution in the USSR. Causes and consequences of the fall of Soviet communism.
Topics for class reports:
The Yeltsin phenomenon.

Readings:
Suny, Chapter 21
Zeman, Chapter 21 and 22
Additional:
Kotkin, Chapters 5-7 (8)
Ticktin, Origins of the Crisis in the USSR (8)
Lane, The Rise and Fall of State Socialism, Chapter 9 (1)
Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, Chapter 13 (5)
Skidelsky, The Road from Serfdom, Chapters 5 and 6 (5)

1. February and October: key differences between the two 1917 revolutions in Russia.
2. Relations between the Soviets and the Bolshevik Party in 1917.
3. The gains of the Soviet peasantry under NEP.
4. Stalin’s concept of socialism.
5. The Soviet industrialization drive: accomplishments and costs.
6. Sources of ethnic tensions in Eastern Europe between the two world wars.
7. The influence of Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.
8. Stalin’s policies towards the Russian Orthodox Church: from suppression to alliance.
9. Manifestations of Stalin’s personality cult.
10. Opposition to Stalinism in Soviet society.
11. The Communist takeover in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s (select a country).
12. Yugoslavia’s conflict with the USSR.
13. Restoration of Communist Party control over the Soviet secret police after Stalin’s death.
14. Why did Khrushchev expose Stalin’s crimes?
15. The cultural “thaw” in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s.
16. The meaning of “communism” in Soviet ideology in the 1960s.
17. The Hungarian revolution of 1956: liberalism, nationalism, or reform communism?
18. Why did the Soviet leaders decide to occupy Czechoslovakia in 1968?
19. Andrei Sakharov’s challenge to Soviet power.
20. The KGB war against Soviet dissent in the 1970s.
21. The issue of Jewish emigration in Soviet politics in the 1970s.
22. The impact of the Afghan war on Soviet society.
23. The social base of the Solidarity movement in Poland.
24. The role of nationalism and economics in the breakup of Yugoslavia.
25. Gorbachev’s struggle with hardliners.
26. Gorbachev’s “Sinatra Doctrine”.
27. Gorbachev’s views on the role of the market under socialism.
28. The fall of communist rule in Eastern Europe (select a country).

B. The Research Paper

1. Russian communism in the light of Russian political traditions.
2. Lenin's theory of the proletarian revolution and its implementation.
3. The impact of the Civil War on the Bolshevik ideology and practice.
4. The NEP controversy: was there a chance for a different Soviet model?
5. The costs and achievements of the Stalinist model of state socialism.
6. Transformation of communist ideology under Stalin.
7. Stalin's personality cult as a political-cultural phenomenon.
8. Causes of the collapse of democracy in Eastern Europe between the world wars.
9. East European nationalism as the maker and breaker of states.
10. East European Communists as a force for national independence.
11. Social changes in Eastern Europe after World War II.
12. Soviet bureaucracy without Stalin: interests, ideology, instruments of power.
13. Soviet economic reforms from Khrushchev to Gorbachev.
14. The culture of dissent: sources of political opposition in the USSR, 1960s-1980s.
15. The ends and means of Gorbachev's perestroika.
16. The impact of the Cold War on the Soviet political system.
17. Nationalism as a force for the demise of the Soviet system.
18. The causes of the collapse of the Soviet system.
19. Comparisons between state socialist reforms in Russia and China.
20. Russia's radical democrats: social base, views, political strategies.
21. The role of Soviet nomenklatura in the overthrow of the Soviet system.
22. Could the Soviet system have been saved?
23. The political role of the Catholic Church in Communist Poland.
24. “Socialism with a human face”: the ideology of the 1968 reforms in Czechoslovakia.
25. Comparative study in state collapse: USSR and Yugoslavia.
26. The political uses of anti-Semitism in the USSR.
27. The role and status of women under state socialism.
28. The concept of market socialism: is it viable?
29. The role of intellectuals in the demise of state socialism.
30. The Soviet military-industrial complex: the core of state power, the source of state decay.

(Books marked with an asterisk are on reserve at Scott Library. All required books are available at the York University Bookstore)

Berend, Ivan. Central and Eastern Europe, 1944-1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. Cambridge University Press, 1996

Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviet Experiment. Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States. Oxford University Press, 1998

Zeman, Z.A.B. The Making and Breaking of Communist Europe. Basil Blackwell, 1991 (York University Bookstore Course Kit for POLS 3500 3.0A)

Billington, James. The Icon and the Axe. An Interpretive History of Russian Culture. Vintage Books, 1970

Chubarov, Alexander. The Fragile Empire. A History of Imperial Russia. Continuum, 1999

Danilov, Alexander et al. The History of Russia. The Twentieth Century. The Heron Press, 1996

Fowkes, Ben. The Rise and Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. St.Martin’s Press, 1993

*“From Stalinism to Pluralism. A Documentary history of Eastern Europe Since 1945”. Ed. by Gale Stokes. Oxford University Press, 1996

*Gooding, John. Rulers and Subjects. Government and People in Russia 1801-1991. Arnold, 1996

*Roskin, Michael. The Rebirth of Eastern Europe. 3d Edition. Prentice Hall, 1997

*Rothschild, Joseph and Nancy Wingfield. Return to Diversity. A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II. Oxford University Press, 2000

Shanin, Theodore. Russia As A “Developing Society”. Yale University Press, 1985

Swain, Geoffrey and Nigel. Eastern Europe Since 1945. St.Martin’s Press, 1993

Ulam, Adam. Russia's Failed Revolutions. From the Decembrists to the Dissidents. L.: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1981

Walicki, Andrzej. A History of Russian Thought From the Enlightenment to Marxism. Stanford University Press, 1979

*Wandycz, Piotr. The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present. Routledge, 1993

*Cohen, Stephen. Rethinking the Soviet Experience. Oxford University Press, 1985

Kort. Michael. The Soviet Colossus. The Rise and Fall of the USSR. M.E.Sharpe, 1992

*Malia, Martin. The Soviet Tragedy. A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991. Free Press, 1994

*Laqueur, Walter. The Fate of the Revolution. Interpretations of Soviet History from 1917 to the Present. Collier, 1987

Lewin, Moshe. The Making of the Soviet System. Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia. Pantheon Books, 1985

Lewin, Moshe. Russia/USSR/Russia. The Drive and Drift of A Superstate. NY: The New Press, 1995

“Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev: Voices of Bolshevism”. Ed. by Robert McNeal. Prentice Hall, 1963

Ponton, Geoffrey. The Soviet Era. Soviet Politics from Lenin to Yeltsin. Blackwell, 1994

Resnick, Stephen and Richard Wolff. Class Theory and History. Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. Routledge, 2002

Roeder, Philip. Red Sunset. The Failure of Soviet Politics. Princeton University Press, 1993

Bonnell, Victoria. The Russian Worker. Life and Labour under the Tsarist Regime. University of California Press, 1983

Figes, Orlando. A People’s Tragedy. A History of the Russian Revolution. Viking Press, 1996

*Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution, 1917-1932. Oxford University Press, 1982

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Richard Stites (eds.). Russia in the Era of NEP. Indiana University Press, 1991

Kingston-Mann, Esther. Lenin and the Problem of Marxist Peasant Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1983

Kingston-Mann, Esther and Timothy Mixter (ed.). Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921. Princeton University Press, 1991

Lincoln, Bruce. Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War. Da Capo Press, 1999

Luxemburg, Rosa. The Russian Revolution, and Leninism or Marxism? University of Michigan Press, 1962

“A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia. The Autobiography of S.I.Kanatchikov”, translated and edited by Reginald Zelnik. Stanford University Press, 1986

Rogger, Hans. Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution: 1881-1917, 11th ed.. Longman Group (1997).

Rosenberg, William G. Bolshevik Visions. First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia. Parts 1 and 2. University of Michigan Press, 1990

Shanin, Theodore. Russia, 1905-07: Revolution As A Moment of Truth. The Roots of Otherness: Russia's Turn of the Century, Volume 2. Yale University Press, 1985

Ulam, Adam. The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political history of the Triumph of Communism in Russia. Harvard University Press, 1997

“The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (Annals of Communism)”, ed. by Richard Pipes. Yale University Press, 1999

Volkogonov, Dmitri. Trotsky. The Eternal Revolutionary. The Free Press, 1996

Brooks, Jeffrey. Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War. Princeton University Press, 2000

*Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror. A Reassessment. Oxford University Press, 1990

Getty, Arch. Origins of the Great Purges. The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. Cambridge University Press, 1988

Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. Columbia University Press, 1989

Rapoport, Louis. Stalin’s War Against the Jews. The Doctors’ Plot and the Soviet Solution. The Free Press, 1990

Shearer, David. Industry, State, and Society in Stalin’s Russia, 1926-1934. Cornell University Press, 1996

Stites, Richard (ed.). Culture and Entertainment in Wartime RussiaIndiana University Press, 1995

Trotsky, Leon. The Revolution Betrayed. What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Pathfinder Press, 1972

Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. L.:Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1991

Claudin, Fernando. The Communist Movement. From Comintern to Cominform. Penguin Books, 1975

Courtois, Stephane et al. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999

*Djilas, Milovan. The New Class. An Analysis of the Communist System. Harvest Books, 1982

Fried, Albert and Ronald Sanders. Socialist Thought. A Documentary History. Anchor Books, 1964

Haimson, Leopold. The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism. Beacon Press, 1966

*Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century: 1914-1991. London: Abacus, 1995

*Lerner, Warren. A History of Socialism and Communism in Modern Times. Theorists, Activists, and Humanists. 2nd Ed. Prentice Hall, 1994

Silber, Irwin. Socialism: What Went Wrong? An Inquiry into the Theoretical and Historical Sources of the Socialist Crisis. Pluto Press, 1994

*Skidelsky, Robert. The Road From Serfdom. The Economic and Political Consequences of the End of Communism. Penguin Books, 1995
Smith, Gordon. Soviet Politics. Struggling with Change. 2nd ed. St.Martin's Press, 1992

“The God That Failed”. Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, and Louis Fischer describe their journeys into Communism and their disillusioned return. Ed. By Richard Crossman. Bantam Books, 1965

*Ulam, Adam. The Communists. The Story of Power and Lost Illusions, 1948-1991. Scribner’s, 1992

*Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton University Press, 1996

Von Laue, Theodor H. Why Lenin? Why Stalin? Why Gorbachev? (3d ed.). HarperCollins, 1993

Yakovlev, Alexander. The Fate of Marxism in Russia. Yale University Press, 1993

Yoder, Amos. Communism in Transition. The End of the Soviet Empires. Taylor and Francis, 1993

Amalrik, Andrei. Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? Harper and Row, 1970

Andrew, Christopher and Gordievsky, Oleg. The KGB: The Inside Story. Harper, 1990

Arbatov, Georgi. The System. An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics. Random House, 1992

Colton, Timothy and Gustafson, Thane. Soldiers and the Soviet State. Civil-Military Relations from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. Princeton University Press, 1990

Cook, Linda. The Soviet Social Contract and Why It Failed. Harvard University Press, 1993

Feschbach, Murray and Friendly, Alfred. Ecocide in the USSR. Basic Books, 1992

Goldman, Marshall. USSR in Crisis. The Failure of an Economic System. Norton, 1983

Gzovski, Vladimir. Church and State Behind the Iron Curtain: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Greenwood Press, 1973

Knight, Amy. The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union. Allen and Unwin, 1988

*Millar, James R.(ed.). Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens. Cambridge University Press, 1987

Mitchell, Judson. Getting to the Top in the USSR. Hoover Institution Press, 1990

Ramet, Pedro. Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies. Duke University Press, 1990

Scanlan, James (ed.) Technology, Culture, and Development. The Experience of the Soviet Model. M.E.Sharpe, 1992

Shelley, Louise. Policing Soviet Society: The Evolution of State Control. Routledge, 1996

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. The GULAG Archipelago, 1918-1956. Harper and Row, 1974

Szymanski, Albert. Is the Red Flag Flying? The Political Economy of the Soviet Union Today. Zed Press, 1979

Timofeev, Lev. Russia’s Secret Rulers. How the Government and Criminal Mafia Exercise Their Power. Lfred Knopf, 1992

Tucker, Robert C. Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia. From Lenin to Gorbachev. Norton, 1987

Tumarkin, Nina. Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia. Harvard University Press, 1983

Zaslavsky, Victor. The Neo-Stalinist State. Class, Ethnicity and Consensus in Soviet Society. M.E.Sharpe, 1994

*Carrere d'Encausse, Helene. The End of the Soviet Empire. The Triumph of Nations. Basic Books, 1993

Carter, Stephen. Russian Nationalism: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. St.Martin's Press, 1990

De Tunguy, Anne (ed.). The Fall of the Sovist Empire. Columbia U.Press, 1997

Glenny, Misha. The Fall of Yugoslavia. The Third Balkan War. Penguin Books, 1993

Khazanov, Anatoly. After the USSR. Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997

Laqueur, Walter. Black Hundred. The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia. HarperCollins, 1993

McDaniel, Timothy. The Agony of the Russian Idea. Princeton University Press, 1996

“The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society”. Ed. by Lubomyr Hajda and Mark Beissinger. Westview Press, 1990

“The Soviet Nationality Reader: The Disintegration in Context”. Ed. by R.Denber. Westview Press, 1992

Suny, Ronald. The Revenge of the Past. Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford University Press, 1993

Aslund, Anders. Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform. Cornell University Press, 1991.

Boldin, Valery. Ten Years That Shook the World. The Gorbachev Era as Witnessed by His Chief of Staff. Basic Books, 1994

*“The Breakup of the Soviet Union: Opposing Viewpoints”. Greenhaven Press, 1994

Crnobrnja, Mihailo. The Yugoslav Drama. McGill-Queens University Press, 1996

Crouch, Martin. Revolution and Evolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Politics. Simon and Schuster, 1989

Dallin, Alexander and Gail Lapidus (ed.). The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse. Westview Press, 1995

Daniels, Robert V. Gorbachev and the End of the Communist Revolution. Routledge, 1993

Dunlop, John B. The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton University Press, 1993

Fowkes, Ben. The Disintegration of the Soviet Union. St.Martin’s Press, 1997

*Gorbachev, Mikhail. Perestroika. New Thinking for Our Country and the World. NY: Harper and Row, 1987

Gorbachev, Mikhail, and Zdenek Mlynar. Conversations with Gorbachev: on Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism. Columbia University Press, 2002

*Hewett, Ed. Reforming the Soviet Economy. Equality Versus Efficiency. Brookings Institution Press, 1988

Hixson, Walter. Witness to Disintegration. Provincial Life in the Last Year of the USSR. University Press of New England, 1993

Hosking, Geoffrey, Aves, Jonathan, and Duncan, Peter. The Road to Post-Communism. Independent Political Movements in the Soviet Union, 1985-1991. L.:Pinter, 1992

*Hough, Jerry F. Democratization and Revolution in the USSR. 1985-1991. Brookings Institution Press, 1997

Jowitt, Kenneth. New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction. University of California Press, 1992

Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted. The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000. Oxford University Press, 2001

Miller, John. Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power. St.Martin's Press, 1993

Moskoff, William. Hard Times: Impoverishment and Protest in the Perestroika Years. The Soviet Union 1985-1991. M.E.Sharpe, 1993

Nielsen, Niels. Revolutions in Eastern Europe: The Religious Roots. Orbis Books, 1991

*Nolan, Peter. China's Rise, Russia's Fall. Politics, Economics and Planning in the Transition from Socialism. St.Martin's Press, 1995

“Rethinking the Soviet Collapse. Sovietology, the Death of Communism, and the New Russia”. Ed. By Michael Cox. Wellington House, 1998

Sharlet, Robert. Soviet Constitutional Crisis. From De-Stalinization to Disintegration. M.E.Sharpe, 1992

*Tarasulo, Isaac (ed.). Perils of Perestroika. Viewpoints from the Soviet Press. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1992

“The Collapse of Communism”. By the Correspondents of the New York Times. Times Books, 1990

*Ticktin, Hillel. Origins of the Crisis in the USSR. Essays on the Political Economy of a Disintegrating System. M.E.Sharpe, 1992

Yanov, Alexander. The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000. Basil Blackwell, 1987

Yegorov, Vladimir. Out of A Dead End Into the Unknown. Notes on Gorbachev's Perestroika. Chi.: Edition Q, Inc., 1993

Zaslavskaya, Tatyana. The Second Socialist Revolution. An Alternative Soviet Strategy. L.:Tauris, 1990