Communism and its Collapse (The Making of the Contemporary World) - Softcover

White, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415171806 ISBN 13: 9780415171809

Publisher: Routledge, 2000

Synopsis

Ranging from the Russian revolution of 1917 to the collapse of Eastern Europe in the 1980s this study examines Communist rule. By focusing primarily on the USSR and Eastern Europe Stephen White covers the major topics and issues affecting these countries, including:
* communism as a doctrine
* the evolution of Communist rule
* the challenges to Soviet authority in Hungary and Yugoslavia
* the emerging economic fragility of the 1960s
* the complex process of collapse in the 1980s.

Any student or scholar of European history will find this an essential addition to their reading list.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen White Professor of Politics at the University of Glasgow. His many published works include The Bolshevik Poster (Yale, 1988), After Gorbachev (Cambridge, 1994), Russia’s New Politics (Cambridge, 2000) and, with Evan Mawdsley, The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev (Oxford, 2000).

From the Back Cover

What was communism?

And why did it collapse?

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a turning point in the twentieth century. The revolutions that swept through the USSR and Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s marked another turning point. Communism and its Collapse surveys the course of communism and addresses the many intriguing questions that the experience of communism has generated.

Focusing particularly on the USSR and Eastern Europe, this book examines the development of communist rule in historical and analytical terms and includes discussion of:
-- communism as a doctrine
-- the evolution of communist rule
-- the challenges to Soviet authority that came from Yugoslavia and Hungary and how communism was developed in Czechoslovakia and Poland
-- the complex processes bringing an end to communist rule in the 1980s
-- rival historiographical interpretations of the whole mechanism of change.

Communism and its Collapse is an essential introduction to the study of this crucial element of twentieth-century history.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415171806
• ISBN 13: 9780415171809
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112