The Soviet Legacy

(Hardback)

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Description

In this book, the author aims to accomplish two major goals - to provide an analytical, blow-by-blow account of the collapse of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership, and to explore the legacy left by the experiment in communism by the Soviet Union. Roy Laird concludes that the burden of that legacy is so great that for many years - probably for generations - authoritarian systems, perhaps disguised as democracies, will prevail in the newly independent republics, and that the economies of the republics will continue to deteriorate before they get better.

Reviews

"Laird's perceptive analysis offers both a unique and largely ignored perspective on the success and ultimate faliure of perestroika and an extensive examination of the role of Soviet and post-Soviet public opinion in shaping the new order."-Donald R. Kelley Professor of Political Science University of Arkansas Senior Research Fellow of the Fulbright Institute of International Relations

Author Bio

ROY D. LAIRD is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Russian and East European Studies, at the University of Kansas. Most of the fifteen books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored, edited or co-edited have dealt with Soviet and East European domestic affairs, especially agricultural and peasant affairs. He organized the first International Conference on Soviet and East European Agriculture, which was held at the University of Kansas in 1962. His most recent book, with Betty A. Laird, is A Soviet Lexicon: Important Terms, Concepts, and Phrases.