The emergence of East Germany as one of Europe's most vocal advocates of East-West detente in the 1980s represented a remarkable political transformation. Prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, East Germany had been amongst the most intransigent proponents of the Cold War, largely because of the perceived threat to the domestic authority of its own leadership. Renewed exposure, however, prompted that leadership to regard good relations with the West as integral rather than inimical to its own pursuit of legitimacy. Of interest not only to scholars of communist politics but to all...

In this original and authoritative study of international economic relations, Laszlo Csaba examines economic reforms and economic developments within Eastern Europe. He explores intra-regional cooperation and international trade, evaluating the changes within the system created by the standards and requirements of the world economy, and pays particular attention to Soviet-East European relations. The author addresses many key issues of the economic system. These include price formation in intra-CMEA trade; the impact of the settlement on transferable ruble accounts on intra-CMEA prices and...

The control of office has long been regarded as the key to understanding power and policy in the Soviet system. What, however, accounts for this control of office? Numerous conventional studies have addressed this question by focusing on the individuals who make up the Soviet elite at one time or another. This book adopts a different perspective by treating the personnel system itself as a set of power relations that govern the mobility of the individuals within it. Using the Belorussian Republic as the site of the investigation, the author analyzes the movements of individuals as sequences...

This is the first study to analyze the problems of Eastern Europe's convertible currency external debt situation and its impact on the financing of East-West trade in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dr. Zloch-Christy addresses four main issues. First, she examines the recent reforms in Eastern Europe's economic political relations. Secondly, she assesses whether convertible currency debt problems are an inherent part of the economic development of Eastern Europe and if the problems are regionwide, and she discusses the strategies adopted for dealing with them. The author then explores the...

This book explores the development of relations between West Germany and the Soviet Union. Avril Pittman examines from a West German perspective four issues central to this relationship in the 1970s and early 1980s. She looks at the position of ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union; the central role of Berlin; the triangular relationship among West Germany, the Soviet Union and East Germany; and the effects of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. In her concluding chapter, the author outlines the historic opening of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany and assesses the...

British-Polish relations during the Second World War were dogged by the fact that Polish demands on the Soviet Union threatened Soviet relations with Britain and the United States, and Soviet participation in the war. In this book Anita Prazmowska relates British policies and war-time strategy to Polish expectations and policies. She describes a tragic situation where Polish soldiers were trapped between the unrealistic plans of their government and the harsh realities of a war that they fought for Britain with no prospect of a satisfactory outcome for them or their country.

This book traces the evolution of Soviet thinking about South Asia and the Third World from 1970 to the present, and examines how Soviet policy objectives changed during that period. The author offers a unique view of Soviet policy toward a region of particularly unstable states, and addresses all the political, military and economic issues involved, the regional constraints and policy opportunities that influenced the policy process in Moscow, and the relationship between Soviet perceptions and policy objectives.

Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika is a comprehensive analysis of the role of labor policy in the development and ultimate collapse of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Filtzer argues that initially perestroika was designed to modernize the Soviet economy while keeping the existing political and property relations of society intact, requiring a thorough restructuring of the labor process within Soviet industry. He contends that the collapse of the USSR has brought the solution to this problem no nearer, and that post-Soviet capitalism is rooted in...

In this book Anthony Heywood reassesses Bolshevik attitudes toward economic modernization and foreign economic relations during the early Soviet period. Based on hitherto unused Russian and Western archives, the book examines an extraordinary decision made in March 1920 to import vast quantities of railway equipment in order to achieve rapid economic modernization. This is the first detailed case study of the government's import policy, and provides readers with a new perspective on Soviet economic development, revealing the scale of Bolshevik business dealings with the capitalist West...

This book analyzes the precarious relationship between Soviet legitimacy building and the consequences of rapid industrial development in the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic during the 1920s and 1930s. George Liber traces the impact of rapid urban growth on the implementation of Soviet preferential policies, korenizatsiia. He shows how the interplay among industrialization, urbanization and korenizatsiia produced a modern, urban Ukranian identity, and he argues that this explains why the Stalinist leadership changed its course on the nationality question in the 1930s.