ABSTRACT
Serious stock-taking is in progress now among practitioners of whathas been called Sovietology, meaning studies of the Union of SovietSocialist Republics. The reason is that the field for the most part hadnot been expecting what happened in 1991: The USSR collapsed andwent out of existence as a unified state system governing a sixth ofthe world's territory, having allowed its East European empire tofree itself from Soviet dominance somewhat earlier.It might be said in defense of Sovietology that, by the beginningof the 1980s, it understood that economic and political crises werebrewing in the Soviet Union and its outer empire. But the field asa whole failed to grasp the full depth of the systemic crisis in SovietRussia and the destructive or self-destructive potentialities inherentin it. As the editors of this valuable volume write in the Introduction:"Sovietology was not prepared for perestroika and postcommunism."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part One|23 pages
Introduction
part Two|178 pages
Methodology and Lessons from the Past
part Three|166 pages
Empirical Theory and Understanding the Present
chapter 11|33 pages
Soviet Reform and the End of the Cold War
chapter 16|8 pages
Approaches to the Study of Soviet Nationalities Politics
part Four|17 pages
Conclusion