In this book, an assortment of regional specialists in military relations are gathered together to comment on the current state of the military in various Eastern bloc states. The book focuses on the relationship between the military, politics, and society in these new and burgeoning democracies.

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

This book examines how civil-military relations have been transformed in Russia, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991. It shows how these countries have worked to reform their obsolete armed forces, and bring them into line with the new economic and strategic realities of the post-Cold War world, with new bureaucratic structures in which civilians play the key policy-making roles, and with strengthened democratic political institutions which have the right to oversee the armed forces.

This book looks at the militaries of the late-Soviet and post-Soviet republics. Beginning with the end of the Soviet era, it recognises that the successor states did not spring from nowhere, but inherited a legacy that influenced all that followed. The book discusses how politicians control the instruments that are the manifestation of the state’s monopoly on violence, and how society views and supports the military. By taking a bottom up empirical approach that examines the personnel, leaders, organisations and institutions, and their outlook and attitudes, the book presents a comprehensive picture of the armed forces, showing how the armed forces are very significantly shaped by the surrounding political and social environment. The book goes on to examine the armed forces in action, and highlights that to truly understand the militaries, studies need to go beyond looking at the static structures.

Analyzes the military from a broad interdisciplinary basis in the social sciences, filling the gap in the market Contains an international cast of scholars from the fields of military sociology and social sciences Will appeal to scholars of military sociology, conflict resolution, peace studies, military history, security studies and professionals in NGOs and military colleges

This volume provides an introduction to the history of the Soviet armed forces from 1917 to 1991. The authors highlight the many facets of the Cold War, including the rise of the Soviet Navy after the Great Patriotic War and the collapse of the Soviet Union which marks its twentieth anniversary in 2011.

With the collapse of the Cold War following the Eastern European revolutions and the ongoing democratization of the Soviet republics, optimism about peace has transformed the international political climate. Incidents such as the Gulf War, however, have tempered this optimism and cast doubts on the prospects for demilitarization. In this book, Martin Shaw examines some of the developments that lie behind the recent momentous changes and argues that, despite the Gulf War and other regional wars, militarism is in decisive retreat. Writing from a broadly sociological perspective, Shaw examines the roles of war and military institutions in human society and the ways in which preoccupation with war has affected domestic, regional, and international politics in the twentieth century. In doing so, he asks: When does the post-war era end? How have nuclear weapons altered the perception of war by society? What is the relationship between industrialism and militarism? The author contends that, despite the militarism of some Third World countries, societies in the advanced industrial world (especially in Europe) have been undergoing a profound demilitarization. These societies have become politically insulated from war preparation, have recognized the effect of social movements on inter-state relations, and are experiencing a "revolution of rising expectations." Offering evidence of "post-military citizenship," Shaw describes the increasing resistance to military conscription throughout the Western world, the replacement of blind obedience with demands for accountability in Eastern bloc countries, and the simultaneous rise of nationalism and communitarianism among Common Market members. And, in light of the collapse of Stalinist militarism in Europe and the USSR, Shaw suggests some of the changes that face Soviet society.

After the Cold War came to an end, European countries in both East and West faced the common question of how their military organizations and those of their neighbors would respond to shifts in international relations affecting their economies, their perception of globalized threats, and cross-national security management. It is undisputed, for example, that in well-developed democratic societies, the challenge to the legitimacy of the military in society, the decreasing subjective apprehension of threat, and growing opposition to systems of universal conscription have been linked to gains in wealth and living standards. This volume seeks, by empirically measuring social indicators, to assess the current state of civil-military relations in a number of countries in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Russia) as well as the state of relations in several of their Western European counterparts (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands). The country studies describe and analyze the differing positions of the military in their specific national settings.