This work provides an in-depth case-study of decision-making in the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. It focuses on the development of rail transport policy, upon which the entire economy as well as the country's defence were so crucially dependent. It analyses the role of institutional lobbies in shaping policy, and sheds new light on the Stakhanovite movement, and analyses for the first time the impact of the Great Purges on the railways. The work provides a critical examination of the adequacy of existing conceptualisations of the Stalinist state.

This book analyzes the development of the Stalinist state of the 1930s from the perspective of the changing nature of center-local relations. It examines the trend toward greater central state control over the formation and implementation of economic policy and the shift toward increased state repression through a series of archive-based case studies of the center's interactions with its republican and regional bodies. The book provides the basis for a new conceptualization of the Stalinist state.

This is the first book in English to explore the relationship between Stalin's ideas and methods, and the practices advocated by Machiavelli and those associated with 'Machiavellian' politics. It advances the concept of 'revolutionary Machiavellism' as a way of understanding a particular strand of revolutionary thought from the Jacobins through to Leninism and Stalinism. By providing a wide-ranging survey of European political thought in the Nineteenth - and early Twentieth-century, E. A. Rees locates the Bolshevik tradition within the wider European tradition.

This collection of essays offers a captivating reading on how East-Central Europe was transformed into the 'Other' Europe. It is the first attempt to systematically explore the sovietization process in Central and Eastern Europe after the Second World War. Sovietization is generally understood in the book as a process with a dual dimension: it was in part an imperial project whereby the Soviet system was exported to the region, but it was also an attempt by the governments of the "people's democracies" to adopt a Soviet way of life (self-sovietization). Sovietization was a process dictated by...

This book presents an in-depth analysis of the proceedings of the XXVIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It explores the struggle for power between radicals, reformers and conservatives, focusing on the debate on political reform, the role of the Party, Soviet history, economic restructuring, the nationalities question and foreign policy. It makes a contribution to the study of the history of the Soviet Communist Party, and provides insights into the ideological debate raging within the Party regarding the future of perestroika.

Iron Lazar is the first English-language biography of Lazar Kaganovich, one of Stalinist Russia s leading deputies. With its focus on the political and personal relations of the Stalin group, this groundbreaking text offers a previously inaccessible insight into Kaganovich s role in shaping policy during the Stalinist era.

The study begins by examining Kaganovich s early political career and his ascent to power a feat achieved via a distinguished role in the Civil War, which led to his elevation into the party Secretariat in Moscow. By 1930 he, Stalin and Molotov effectively...

This work provides an in-depth case-study of decision-making in the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. It focuses on the development of rail transport policy, upon which the entire economy as well as the country's defence were so crucially dependent. It analyses the role of institutional lobbies in shaping policy, and sheds new light on the Stakhanovite movement, and analyses for the first time the impact of the Great Purges on the railways. The work provides a critical examination of the adequacy of existing conceptualisations of the Stalinist state.

This work presents eleven studies in the field of Russian/Soviet economic and social history, which have been specially commissioned as a tribute to Professor R.W. Davies. Each chapter highlights a particular area of controversy, and illuminates the process of policy formation in this critical period of Soviet development. Together they provide an overview of the period 1917-1953.

A detailed examination of economic policy-making in the USSR during the period of the Second Five-Year Plan (1933-1937). The work examines the process by which the plan was formulated and implemented, through a series of detailed case-studies, based on archival material, examining the role of the Politburo, the Soviet government, Gosplan and the main economic commissariats. It examines the relationship between the conflicts within the economic commissariats and the unleashing of the Great Purges 1936-38. The work aims towards a new conceptualisation of the Stalinist state.