The end of the cold war and the causes of Soviet collapse

"In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to power in the USSR. In selecting a young reformer to the position of general secretary, the politburo had recognised the pressing need to revitalise the Soviet Union. To this end, the leadership imposed a series of reforms aimed at reinvigorating the Soviet economy and society, of which the shifts in foreign policy were the most radical and wide-ranging. Yet, the culmination of the reform process was not Soviet reinvigoration, but the rapid collapse of the USSR. The End of the Cold War and the Causes of Soviet Collapse examines the role played by this foreign policy reform process in the breakdown of Soviet power. Nick Bisley uses a historical sociological theory of the state to analyse the influence of foreign policy alongside the other domestic factors which shaped the development, functioning and failure of the Soviet state.
He concludes that the international confrontation was an important structural element of Soviet state rule and that the end of the confrontation contributed to the destabilisation of the state in the late 1980s. Moreover, he shows that international factors are fundamental to the functioning of modern states and that international and domestic orders shape one another in vital ways."--BOOK JACKET.

Adoption and rejection : re-appraising the Soviet influence on townscape formation in Indochina

The Soviet socialist form of urban development was implanted in countries that came under the Soviet Union's influence in the Cold War period, including Vietnam,. Laos and post-Pol Pot Cambodia. These environmental impacts were not only out of tune with traditional cultural patterns when first built, but also now add to the hurdles of urban readjstment facing these countries as they struggle to prepare themselves for reintegratioin into the twenty-first century world.

The soviet occupation of Germany: hunger, mass violence and the struggle for peace, 1945-1947

This is a major new account of the Soviet occupation of postwar Germany and the beginning of the Cold War. Dr Filip Slaveski shows how in the immediate aftermath of war the Red Army command struggled to contain the violence of soldiers against German civilians and, at the same time, feed and rebuild the country. This task was then assumed by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG) which was established to impose order on this chaos. Its attempt, however, intensified the battle for resources and power among competing occupation organs, especially SVAG and the army, which spilled over from threats and sabotage into fighting and shootouts in the streets. At times, such conflicts threatened to paralyse occupation governance, leaving armed troops, liberated POWs and slave labourers free to roam. SVAG's successes in reducing the violence and reconstructing eastern Germany were a remarkable achievement in the chaotic aftermath of war.

Violence and xenophobia as means of social control in times of collapse: the soviet occupation of post-war Germany, 1945-1947

This article explores an overlooked aspect of the Soviet occupation of post-war Germany, namely, the influence of wartime violence on German behavioural patterns during the post-war period. Whilst many historians have noted that violent Soviet conduct in Germany merely encouraged the intensification of existing anti-Soviet attitudes therein, few have attempted to thoroughly investigate its influence on German behaviour. The conclusions made by those few historians who have done so are unsupported by the Soviet archival evidence drawn upon in the article. Using this evidence, the article highlights the tentative links between the violent repression of an occupation force and the muted responses of its subjects. It concludes that the nature of the repression and of the broader occupation landscape in which it developed, was integral in ensuring that the characteristically docile behaviour of the German population toward the Soviet occupier continued unabated throughout much of the occupation period.

Hanoi, Vietnam : representing power in and of the nation

Hanoi, like most capital cities, performs functions at three levels. It is home to its residents and provides local level services for them. But it also has a role as a city for all citizens of the Vietnamese state, performing capital city functions across the entire national territory as well as beyond national borders. Hanoi is especially interesting because of the uneasy way in which it has been forced to share power internally with Ho Chi Minh City in the south—Hanoi maintaining political and cultural sway but its rival becoming stronger in economic and demographic terms. Externally, it has struggled for recognition, having been regarded as capital of a weak political state open to the interventions of the Chinese, French, Americans and the Soviet Union. This paper argues that Hanoi's double vulnerability has made its rulers acutely aware of the need to demonstrate the city's power as a capital city—or at least to give the semblance of power—through urban planning and architectural design, the building of heroic monuments and the naming of city features after key historic events and people. Major events and projects have become an important way in which the Vietnamese government has sought to strengthen Hanoi's place—and hence its own—in the national consciousness. The regime also continues to push on with efforts to make a future Hanoi dominant both within the Vietnamese urban hierarchy and as the country's undisputed international metropolis.

Career in writing : Judah Waten and the cultural politics of a literary career

This thesis examines the literary career of Judah Waten (1911-1985) in order to focus on a series of issues in Australian cultural history and theory. The concept of the career is theorised as a means of bringing together the textual and institutional dimensions of writing and being a writer in a specific cultural economy. The guiding question of the argument which re-emerges in different ways in each chapter is: in what ways was it possible to write and to be a writer in a given time and place? Waten's career as a Russian-born, Jewish, Australian nationalist, communist and realist writer across the middle years of this century is, for the purposes of the argument, at once usefully exemplary and usefully marginal in relation to the literary establishment. His texts provide the central focus for individual chapters; at the same time each chapter considers a specific historical moment and a specific set of issues for Australian cultural history, and is to this extent self-contained. Recent work in narrative theory, literary sociology and Australian literary and cultural studies is brought together to revise accepted readings of Waten's texts and career, and to address significant absences or problems in Australian cultural history. The sequence of issues shaping Waten's career in writing is argued in terms of the following conjunctions of theoretical and historical categories: proletarianism, modernity and theories of the avant-garde; the "e;migrant"e; writer and minority literatures; realism, political purpose and narrative self-situation; communism, nationalism and literary practice in the cold war; utopianism and the "e;literary witness"e; narrative of the Soviet Union; assimilationism, multicultural theory and the "e;non-Anglo-Celtic"e; writer; theories of autobiographical writing, and autobiography in Waten's career. The purpose of the thesis is not to discover a single key to Waten's writing across the oeuvre but rather to plot the specific occasions of this writing in the context of the structure of a career and the cultural institutions within which it was formed.

Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War : interpretations and implications for international relations theory

By arguing that international relations scholarship fails to explain adequately the end of the Cold War because it gives insufficient consideration to the role performed by Mikhail Gorbachev, the thesis makes a case for the systematic examination of the part played by individual political actors in international affairs.

Razing Red Square

Razing Red Square is novel set in Moscow and Leningrad during the Glasnost period just prior to the fall of the Berlin wall. It analyses paradigm shifts in world politics. This novel according to the accompanying exegesis is able, albeit fictionally, to document this time faithfully and poignantly.

The Menzies Government and the grand alliance during 1939

This article is a study of the Australian government's exchanges with the Chamberlain government over the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a Grand Alliance between the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union during 1939. Robert Menzies and Stanley Bruce carefully weighed the arguments for and against before deciding to support the proposal for an Alliance. Yet there was considerable ambivalence about their support as evidenced by Bruce's panicky response to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In its own very small and distant way the Menzies government contributed to the inertia that marked the British Empire's failure to secure a Grand Alliance in 1939.

Looking to Sweden in order to reconstruct Australia

The most prominent interest in the 'Swedish model' in Australian political history came after a high-level union delegation visit in 1986 produced a major report titled Australia Reconstructed, which had the nominal endorsement of the Labor Government then in office. However, at this very time, the characteristics of the Swedish policy approach which were most admired by the visiting Australian unionists were undergoing important changes, to which they paid little attention but which critics from the Right strongly emphasized in response.

The Australian labour movement interest in Sweden in the 1980s had some distinctive features. It focused on manufacturing industry and skills training policy, reflecting priorities of the main participating unionists. It was also particularly concerned with industrial democracy and work design, as a result of important earlier links between Swedish, Norwegian and Australian industrial relations scholars and practitioners which were forged from the late 1960s. Increased interest in Sweden partly arose from the search for a new political vision by particular elements of the Australian Left following their disillusionment with the Soviet Union after the 1968 Prague Spring.

This article presents the results of interviews with participants and extensive archival research to provide new information and perspective on Scandinavian influences on the Australian labour movement; and the political background of the main people involved.

It also analyzes how discussion of the 'Swedish model' receded in Australia following the economic setbacks of the early 1990s amid a perception that 'the model' had collapsed, but how policy interest in the continuing evident achievements of Sweden and the other Nordic nations has gradually re-emerged in Australia since then, though in a somewhat different way to before.

Barry Hindess and the critique of democracy

In the wake of the collapse of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union, liberal democracy was triumphantly celebrated as the ‘‘end of history.’’ Against this backdrop, Hindess wrote a number of critical essays launching his intellectual critique of liberal democracy. His approach was primarily conceptual, highlighting the problems and weaknesses of the conceptualization of democracy and democratization. This article reviews and offers a brief assessment of the key arguments made in Hindess’ writings on democracy and democratization. In particular, it attempts to summarize the methodological steps through which Hindess engages conceptual critique. While offering an appreciation of Hindess’analysis, insight, and intellectual integrity, it also addresses some difficulties in his arguments.

Institutional environment, innovation capacity and firm performance in Russia

Purpose – Following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1992, Russia undertook major institutional and market-oriented reforms to enhance the competitive advantage of domestic enterprises. Although Russia has experienced rapid growth over the last two decades, the extent to which institutions in Russia impact on firm innovation and performance remains poorly understood due to a lack of research on the subject. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on the competitiveness of Russian firms by focussing specifically on the extent to which the state of the regulatory quality, rule of law, and corruption affect the innovation capacity and performance of firms in Russia.

Design/methodology/approach – The study uses structural equation modelling and data from a large-scale firm level survey (n=787) of firms in Russia undertaken by the World Bank in 2009. It investigates the direct and indirect perceptions of respondents of the effects the current institutional environment has on the innovation capacity and performance of their respective organisations.

Findings – The results show that regulatory quality, rule of law and corruption have strong direct and negative impacts on both the innovation capacity and performance of firms, and that innovation capacity strongly mediates the effects of institutions on firm performance. The results suggest that the current state of the regulatory quality, rule of law and corruption in Russia inhibit firm innovation and their resulting performance.

Research limitations/implications – The findings should be interpreted with caution to the extent that the study is limited to only three elements of the formal institutional environment and does not take into consideration the role of informal institutions. These two limitations present avenues for future research.

Originality/value – The study is one of the first to provide empirical evidence based on a large-scale survey of the extent to which formal institutions inhibit innovation and firm performance in Russia, and provides valuable guidance to business policy-makers in Russia on possible avenues for enhancing the overall competitiveness of Russian firms.