Politics And The Soviet Union
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union stood as the world's most formidable ideological and political counterweight to Western liberal democracy — and yet its internal mechanisms remained stubbornly opaque to outside observers. Politics and the Soviet Union by Mary McAuley cuts through that opacity with scholarly precision, presenting a rigorous and accessible account of how Soviet political institutions functioned, how power was exercised and contested, and how the Communist Party maintained its grip on one of history's most ambitious experiments in socialist governance. McAuley charts the structures of Soviet authority — from the Politburo down to regional party organs — while detailing the interplay between ideology, bureaucracy, and the everyday realities of life under a one-party state. McAuley writes with the measured authority of a seasoned political scientist, grounding her analysis in careful empirical research while never losing sight of the broader historical currents at work. The book stands as a significant contribution to the literature on comparative communist politics, offering frameworks that remain relevant for understanding authoritarian governance well beyond the Soviet context. Her prose is lucid and precise, making complex institutional structures comprehensible without sacrificing intellectual depth. For anyone seeking to understand how a superpower governed itself from within — and why that system ultimately proved unsustainable — this volume poses questions that still demand answers.
Author: Mary Mcauley
Format: Paperback
Genre: Politics & law
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union stood as the world's most formidable ideological and political counterweight to Western liberal democracy — and yet its internal mechanisms remained stubbornly opaque to outside observers. Politics and the Soviet Union by Mary McAuley cuts through that opacity with scholarly precision, presenting a rigorous and accessible account of how Soviet political institutions functioned, how power was exercised and contested, and how the Communist Party maintained its grip on one of history's most ambitious experiments in socialist governance. McAuley charts the structures of Soviet authority — from the Politburo down to regional party organs — while detailing the interplay between ideology, bureaucracy, and the everyday realities of life under a one-party state. McAuley writes with the measured authority of a seasoned political scientist, grounding her analysis in careful empirical research while never losing sight of the broader historical currents at work. The book stands as a significant contribution to the literature on comparative communist politics, offering frameworks that remain relevant for understanding authoritarian governance well beyond the Soviet context. Her prose is lucid and precise, making complex institutional structures comprehensible without sacrificing intellectual depth. For anyone seeking to understand how a superpower governed itself from within — and why that system ultimately proved unsustainable — this volume poses questions that still demand answers.