The Soviet CenturyVerso, 17 févr. 2005 - 416 pages The USSR may no longer exist, but its history remains highly relevant—perhaps today more so than ever. Yet it is a history which for a long time proved impossible to write, not simply due to the lack of accessible documentation, but also because it lay at the heart of an ideological confrontation which obscured the reality of the Soviet regime. In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin traces this history in all its complexity, drawing widely upon archive material previously unavailable. Highlighting key factors such as demography, economics, culture and political repression, Lewin guides us through the inner workings of a system which is still barely understood. In the process he overturns widely held beliefs about the USSR’s leaders, the State-Party system and the Soviet bureaucracy, the “tentacled octopus” which held the real power. Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century takes in all the continuities and ruptures that led, via a complex route, from the founding revolution of October 1917 to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship and the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years. |
Table des matières
THE ADMINISTRATORS BRUISED BUT THRIVING | 215 |
SOME LEADERS | 234 |
KOSYGIN AND ANDROPOV | 246 |
LENINS TIME AND WORLDS | 269 |
BACKWARDNESS AND RELAPSE | 290 |
MODERNITY WITH A TWIST | 308 |
URBANIZATION SUCCESSES AND FAILURES | 315 |
LABOUR FORCE AND DEMOGRAPHY A CONUNDRUM | 332 |
| 96 | |
| 104 | |
THE CAMPS AND THE INDUSTRIAL EMPIRE OF THE NKVD | 111 |
ENDGAME | 125 |
AN AGRARIAN DESPOTISM? | 141 |
E PUR SI MUOVE | 151 |
THE KGB AND THE POLITICAL OPPOSITION | 176 |
THE AVALANCHE OF URBANIZATION | 200 |
THE BUREAUCRATIC MAZE | 340 |
TELLING THE LIGHT FROM THE SHADE? | 359 |
WHAT WAS THE SOVIET SYSTEM? | 376 |
Glossary of Russian Terms | 389 |
Appendices | 393 |
Note on Sources and References | 403 |
Index | 405 |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Expressions et termes fréquents
activity administrative agencies Andropov apparatchiks became birth rates Bolsheviks Brezhnev bureaucratic cadres camps cent Central Committee changes chekists Commissariat complex Council of Ministers country's countryside crimes criminal critical cultural democratic documents economic employees enterprises especially fact factors figures force general-secretary Gosplan Gossnab Gulag head ideological industrial institutions internal Khrushchev kolkhoz Kosygin kulaks labour leaders leadership Lenin Mensheviks Mikoyan military million ministries Molotov Moscow NKVD nomenklatura officials organization Orgburo party apparatus party members party's peasants phenomenon Politburo Politburo members political population position prisoners problem production Prosecutor purges reality reform regime regime's regions repression republics responsible revolution revolutionary RGAE role roubles rural Russia sector sentences shadow economy situation social socialist Soviet system Soviet Union Stalin Stalinist supply Supreme Soviet task term towns Trotsky Tsarist urban USSR whole workers
Fréquemment cités
Page 327 - by the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations of the Academy of Sciences of the
Page 167 - the absence of proof to the contrary, there is no reason to suppose that they were
Page 153 - the MGB (Ministry of State Security) and the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs)
Page 33 - In this context, it is worth reflecting for a moment on the
Page 301 - and privileges between those at the top and those at the bottom.
Page 153 - session of the Central Committee plenum, the Council of Ministers and the