Russia's Revolution from Above, 1985-2000
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A01=Gordon Hahn
apparat
Author_Gordon Hahn
authoritarian legacy
Category=JPH
Category=JPWQ
Category=NHD
Category=NHTV
Cc Apparat
Cc Plenum
Cc Secretariat
civil society development
cpsu
CPSU Cc
CPSU Congress
CPSU Member
CPSU Organization
Draft Union Treaty
Dual Sovereignty
elite-driven change
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_society-politics
Gorbachev's Turn
Gorbachev’s Turn
Gordon M. Hahn
Novo Ogarevo
partocratic
Partocratic Regime
party
Party Apparat
political institutional breakdown
post-Soviet transformation
regime
Regime Softliners
Regime Split
republics
RSFSR State
RSFSR Supreme Soviet
RSFSR Territory
soviet
Soviet Party State
Soviet regime collapse analysis
split
state-society relations
supreme
Supreme Soviet
Transition Pact
union
Union Treaty
USSR Cpd
USSR Supreme Soviet
XXVIII Congress
Product details
- ISBN 9780765800497
- Weight: 975g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 Dec 2001
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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The fall of the Soviet communist regime in 1991 offers a challenging contrast to other instances of democratic transition and change in the last decades of the twentieth century. The 1991 revolution was neither a peaceful revolution from below as occurred in Czechoslovakia nor a negotiated transition to democracy like those in Poland, Hungary, or Latin America. It was not primarily the result of social modernization, the rise of a new middle class, or of national liberation movements in the non-Russian union republics. Instead, as Gordon Hahn argues, the Russian transformation was a bureaucrat-led, state-based revolution managed by a group of Communist Party functionaries who won control over the Russian Republic (RSFSR) in the mid-1990s.Hahn describes how opportunistic Party and state officials, led by Boris Yeltsin, defected from the Gorbachev camp and proceeded in 1990-91 to dismantle the institutions that bound state and party. These revolutionaries from above seized control of political, economic, natural and human resources, and then separated the party apparatus from state institutions on Russian Republic territory. With the failed August 1991 hard-line coup, Yeltsin banned the Communist Party and decreed that all Union state organs, including the KGB and military were under RSFSR control. In Hahn's account, this mode of revolutionary change from above explains the troubled development of democracy in Russia and the former Soviet republics.Hahn shows how limited mobilization of the masses stunted the development of civil societies and the formation of political parties and trade unions with real grass roots. The result is a weak society unable to nudge the state to concentrate on institutional reforms society needs for the development of a free polity and economy. Russia's Revolution from Above goes far in correcting the historical record and reconceptualizing the Soviet transformation. It should be read by historians, economists, political scientists, and Russia area scholars.
Gordon M. Hahn is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California.
