A political commentator discusses the rise and fall of Mikhail Gorbachev, revealing Gorbachev as a reluctant reformer, who did nothing to counter the nation's overindulgence of heavy industry.

Perestroika was acclaimed in the west but brought empty shelves in the east. Why Perestroika Failed argues that this was inevitable because it was not based on a sound understanding of market and political processes. Even if the perestroika programme had been carried out to the full it would have failed to bring about the structural changes necessa

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals—and a young boy—whose lives intersect in Paris in this "feel-good escape” (The New York Times). Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and—she's a curious filly—wanders all the way to the City of Light. She's dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather nears, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley's beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom.

As the Soviet Union dissolved, so did the visions of past and future that informed Soviet culture. With Dystopia left behind and Utopia forsaken, where do the writers, artists, and critics who once inhabited them stand? In an "advancing present," answers editor Thomas Lahusen. Just what that present might be--in literature and film, criticism and theory, philosophy and psychoanalysis, and in the politics that somehow speaks to all of these--is the subject of this collection of essays. Leading scholars from the former Soviet Union and the West gather here to consider the fate of the people and institutions that constituted Soviet culture. Whether the speculative glance goes back (to czarist Russia or Soviet Freudianism, to the history of aesthetics or the sociology of cinema in the 1930s) or forward (to the "market Stalinism" one writer predicts or the "open text of history" another advocates), a sense of immediacy, or history-in-the-making animates this volume. Will social and cultural institutions now develop organically, the authors ask, or is the society faced with the prospect of even more radical reforms? Does the present rupture mark the real moment of Russia's encounter with modernity? The options explored by literary historians, film scholars, novelists, and political scientists make this book a heady tour of cultural possibilities. An expanded version of a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (Spring 1991), with seven new essays, Late Soviet Culture will stimulate scholar and general reader alike. Contributors. Katerina Clark, Paul Debreczeny, Evgeny Dobrenko, Mikhail Epstein, Renata Galtseva, Helena Goscilo, Michael Holquist, Boris Kagarlitsky, Mikhail Kuraev, Thomas Lahusen, Valery Leibin, Sidney Monas, Valery Podoroga, Donald Raleigh, Irina Rodnyanskaya, Maya Turovskaya

A rigorously argued and lively interpretation of the transformation of the Soviet system, written by a leading authority on Soviet politics. This thoroughly researched book draws on new archival sources and puts perestroika in fresh perspective.

For half a century the Soviet economy was inefficient but stable. In the late 1980s, to the surprise of nearly everyone, it suddenly collapsed. Why did this happen? And what role did Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's economic reforms play in the country's dissolution? In this groundbreaking study, Chris Miller shows that Gorbachev and his allies tried to learn from the great success story of transitions from socialism to capitalism, Deng Xiaoping's China. Why, then, were efforts to revitalize Soviet socialism so much less successful than in China? Making use of never-before-studied documents from the Soviet politburo and other archives, Miller argues that the difference between the Soviet Union and China--and the ultimate cause of the Soviet collapse--was not economics but politics. The Soviet government was divided by bitter conflict, and Gorbachev, the ostensible Soviet autocrat, was unable to outmaneuver the interest groups that were threatened by his economic reforms. Miller's analysis settles long-standing debates about the politics and economics of perestroika, transforming our understanding of the causes of the Soviet Union's rapid demise.

Countless studies have assessed the dramatic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, but their analysis of the impact on European communism has focused overwhelmingly on the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations. This ambitious collection takes a much broader view, reconstructing and evaluating the historical trajectories of glasnost and perestroika on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Moving beyond domestic politics and foreign relations narrowly defined, the research gathered here constitutes a transnational survey of these reforms’ collective impact, showing how they were variably received and implemented, and how they shaped the prospects for “proletarian internationalism” in diverse political contexts.

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction The definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev. "Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world’s two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system’s gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America’s arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev’s unique character that, by Gorbachev’s own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.

An examination of the movement that has turned the discipline of political science upside down This superb volume describes the events and ramifications of a revolt within the political science discipline that began in 2000 with a disgruntled e-mail message signed by one “Mr. Perestroika.” The message went to seventeen recipients who quickly forwarded it to others, and soon the Perestroika revolt became a major movement calling for change in the American political science community. What is the Perestroika movement? Why did it occur? What has it accomplished? What remains to be done? Most important, what does it tell us about the nature of political science, about methodological pluralism and diversity, about the process of publishing scholarly work, and about graduate education in the field? The contributors to the book—thoughtful political scientists who offer a variety of perspectives—set the Perestroika movement in historical and comparative contexts. They address many topics related to heart of the debate—a desire for tolerance of methodological diversity—and assess the changes that have come in the wake of Perestroika. For political scientists and their graduate students, and for those interested in the history or sociology of Social Sciences, this volume is essential reading.