"In this first full-length biography of Alexander Bogdanov, James D. White traces the intellectual development of this key socialist thinker, situating his ideas in the context of the Russian revolutionary movement. He examines the part Bogdanov played in the origins of Bolshevism, his role in...

"The theory of the "enabling condition" explains how favorable political conditions can facilitate economic upgrade. Through a case study comparison involving five single party, authoritarian regimes, it concludes that China's unfavorable political situation augurs ill for its ambitions to build...

"Yakov Feygin argues that Soviet decline owes much to internal tensions over economic reform. Focused on socioeconomic competition with the West, Khrushchev and his successors sought to build a consumer society but had only Stalinist institutions of mass mobilization to work with, resulting in...

The Soviet ruling elite, the nomenklatura, used both cooption and political repression to encourage loyalty to the communist regime. Loyalty was critical both in defusing internal opposition to the rule of the nomenklatura and in either deterring or defeating foreign enemies of the Soviet Union....