An essential exploration of how authoritarian regimes operate at the local level How do local leaders govern in a large dictatorship? What resources do they draw on? Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk examine these questions by looking at one of the most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century. Starting in the early years after the Second World War and taking the story through to the 1970s, they chart the strategies of Soviet regional leaders, paying particular attention to the forging and evolution of local trust networks.

This book is devoted to the phenomenon of removal of people declared "public enemies" from group photographs in Stalin’s Russia. The book is based on long-term empirical research in Russian archives and includes 57 photographs that are exceptional in terms of historical interest: all these images bear traces of editing in the form of various marks, such as blacking-out, excisions or scratches. The illustrative materials also include a group of photographs with inscriptions left by officers of Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD. To approach this extensive visual material, Denis Skopin draws on a wealth of Stalin-era written sources: memoirs, diaries and official documents. He argues that this kind of political iconoclasm cannot be confused with censorship nor vandalism. The practice in question is more harrowing and morally twisted, for in most cases the photos were defaced by those who were part of victim’s intimate circle: his/her colleagues, friends or even close family members. The book will be of interest to scholars working in history of photography, art history, visual culture, Russian studies and Russian history and politics.

The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secret police, the Soviet state had seemingly unprecedented capabilities based on its near monopoly of productive capital, monolithic authority, and secretive decision making. But behind the scenes, Soviet secrecy was double-edged: it raised transaction costs, incentivized indecision, compromised the effectiveness of government officials, eroded citizens' trust in institutions and in each other, and led to a secretive society and an uninformed elite. The result is what this book calls the secrecy/capacity tradeoff: a bargain in which the Soviet state accepted the reduction of state capacity as the cost of ensuring its own survival. This book is the first comprehensive, analytical, multi-faceted history of Soviet secrecy in the English language. Harrison combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to evaluate the impact of secrecy on Soviet state capacity from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Based on multiple years of research in once-secret Soviet-era archives, this book addresses two gaps in history and social science: one the core role of secrecy in building and stabilizing the communist states of the twentieth century; the other the corrosive effects of secrecy on the capabilities of authoritarian states.

If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, what is wrong with the design of the systems that govern Britain? And how have they resulted in failures in housing, privatisation, outsourcing, education and healthcare? In How Did Britain Come to This? Gwyn Bevan examines a century of varieties of systemic failures in the British state. The book begins and ends by showing how systems of governance explain scandals in NHS hospitals, and the failures and successes of the UK and Germany in responding to Covid-19 before and after vaccines became available. The book compares geographical fault lines and inequalities in Britain with those that have developed in other European countries and argues that the causes of Britain’s entrenched inequalities are consequences of shifts in systems of governance over the past century. Clement Attlee’s postwar government aimed to remedy the failings of the prewar minimal state, while Margaret Thatcher’s governments in the 1980s in turn sought to remedy the failings of Attlee’s planned state by developing the marketised state, which morphed into the financialised state we see today. This analysis highlights the urgent need for a new political settlement of an enabling state that tackles current systemic weaknesses from market failures and over-centralisation. This book offers an accessible, analytic account of government failures of the past century, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to make an informed contribution to what an innovative, capable state might look like in a post-pandemic world.

The tenth edition of this go-to textbook covers contemporary Russian politics and its fundamental principles. It discusses established topics such as executive leadership, parties and elections as well as newer issues of national identity, protest, and Russia and Greater Eurasia. Taking a bottom-up approach, Developments in Russian Politics analyses the political system in which Putin's influence can be understood and covers frequently overlooked topics like the informal economy, climate change, and gender. The book is organized around the informal politics of hybrid regimes and authoritarianism and accounts for how Russian history impacts contemporary politics in counterintuitive ways, addressing notions of hybrid warfare, disinformation, and election meddling. The chapters have a modular quality, and are designed to correspond to course teaching. Compiled by an international team of specialists and offering key questions, further reading suggestions and a list of up-to-date repositories of video material, the edition will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students from across the world. Key features - Offers critical discussion of contemporary issues in Russian politics - Written by an international team of leading experts - All chapters thoroughly revised for coverage of newer developments in national identity, protest, and Russia and Greater Eurasia

How might political opposition shape regime outcomes over time in an authoritarian system? Most studies on political opposition in authoritarian contexts tend to focus on the agency of the regime over and above that of the political opposition. Using Albert Hirschman’s framework of exit, voice and loyalty, this book examines the case of Kazakhstani opposition agency over 30 years to explore the extent to which political opposition in Kazakhstan has shaped the dynamics of authoritarian regime development in the country. What the analysis reveals is that in Kazakhstan the regime has tended to treat formal institutional political opposition as neither a credible nor non-credible threat. Consequently, the Kazakhstani regime has always responded to opposition exit and voice with sanctions and institutional adaption which strengthened the regime in the short to medium term, but left them exposed to spontaneous, grassroots non-institutional opposition in the longer term. This spontaneous grassroots opposition emerged in Kazakhstan as a series of ‘shocks’ crystalised in the 2011 events in Zhanaozen, the 2016 land protests, the 2019 election protests and the events of ‘qandy qantar’ (bloody January) in 2022. What this book illustrates is how authoritarian regimes which treat opposition threats ambiguously are likely to end up in a continuous state of instability because the feedback provided by opposition agency disappears leaving the regime susceptible to spontaneous opposition.

This second edition of the highly respected Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics and Society both provides a broad overview of the area and highlights cutting-edge research into the country. Through balanced theoretical and empirical investigation, each chapter examines both the Russian experience and the existing literature, identifies and exemplifies research trends, and highlights the richness of experience, history, and continued challenges inherent to this enduringly fascinating and shifting polity. Politically, economically, and socially, Russia has one of the most interesting development trajectories of any major country. This Handbook answers questions about democratic transition, the relationship between the market and democracy, stability and authoritarian politics, the development of civil society, the role of crime and corruption, the development of a market economy, and Russia’s likely place in the emerging new world order. Providing a comprehensive resource for scholars, students, and policy makers alike, this book is an essential contribution to the study of Russian studies/politics, Eastern European studies/politics, and International Relations.

Ukraine and Russia are today at opposite points of the political spectrum: Despite 300 years of contact with Russian authoritarian politics, Ukraine's post-independence period has been characterised by pluralism. To explain why and how Ukraine's and Russia's paths diverged, this monograph investigates the century-long and Soviet origins of regionalism in Ukraine, which the author argues are at the foundation of the modern Ukrainian institutional system. Drawing on unused archival material, the book re-examines the relationship between Moscow, Kyiv, and the Ukrainian regions in the period from spring 1917 to summer 1994 to demonstrate how interlinked political and economic incentives and constraints determined the opportunities and institutional interests of both the Ukrainian leadership and those of the Ukrainian regions, and how this institutional framework affected in turn the dynamic of the relationship between the central leadership in Moscow, the Ukrainian leadership, and the regions. The result - weak central authority and pronounced regionalism - was Ukraine's Soviet legacy, and the established power of regional clans made (post-Soviet) Ukrainian politics resistant to Russian?style authoritarianism, even when the Soviet centralised party-state system collapsed. This innovative and wide-ranging approach to the history of economic management highlights the importance of considering long-term historical trends for understanding both the complicated nature of Soviet institutions and their varied and contested legacies across post-Soviet space.

By placing the party grassroots at the centre of its focus, Building Socialism presents an original account of the formative first two decades of the Soviet system. Assembled in a large network of primary party organisations (PPO), the Bolshevik rank-and-file was an army of activists made up of ordinary people. While far removed from the levers of power, they were nevertheless charged with promoting the Party's programme of revolutionary social transformation in their workplaces, neighbourhoods, and households. Their regular meetings, conferences and campaigns have generated a voluminous source base. This rich material provides a unique view of the practical manifestation of the Party's revolutionary mission and forms the basis of this insightful new narrative of how the Soviet republic functioned in the period from the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921 to its invasion by Nazi Germany in 1941.

This book explores the attitudes, opinions and life experiences of first and second generation intra-state immigrants who are convinced and committed Basque nationalists. Based on in-depth interviews with activists, it challenges many of the assumptions often made about Basque nationalism as an exemplary case of ethnic nationalism in the exclusive sense. Focusing on activists’ migration history, their experiences of social and political inclusion and exclusion, their national and regional identities, their political identities and their experiences of political activism, the author explores the role of origins, identity and life experience in activists’ willingness to engage with Basque nationalism. As such, Intra-State Immigrants as Sub-State Nationalists will appeal to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in migration, national identities and nationalist movements.