Politics, Paradigms, and Intelligence Failures: Why So Few Predicted the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Why So Few Predicted the Collapse of the Soviet Union

by Seliktar,Ofira

• ISBN13: 9780765614643
• ISBN10: 0765614642
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-07-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	xi
Preface	xiii
Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Predicting Political Change	3	(8)
Theories of Political Change and Prediction of Change: Methodological Problems	11	(22)
Methodological Problems of Tracking Changes in a Collective Belief System	11	(2)
The Dimensions of a Collective Belief System: Existential Imperatives as Validity Claims	13	(3)
Changing the Collective Belief System: The Process of Delegitimation	16	(3)
Activating the Process of Delegitimation: Trigger Conditions of Change	19	(3)
The Durability of Legitimacy: Personal and Systemic Factors of Maintenance	22	(2)
Legitimacy of the Soviet Union: The Theory and Politics of a Concept	24	(6)
Rational Choice Theory and Soviet Legitimacy: Coercion and Preference Falsification	30	(3)
Oligarchic Petrification or Pluralistic Transformation: Paradigmatic Views of the Soviet Union in the 1970s	33	(25)
The Totalitarian Model: Oligarchic Petrification and Final Doom	34	(3)
The Revisionist Model: Pluralistic Transformation and Final Convergence	37	(10)
Revising the Revisionist View of the Soviet Union: Oligarchic Degeneration and Ideological Assertion in the Late Brezhnev Period	47	(11)
Paradigms and the Debate on Relations with the Soviet Union: Detente, New Internationalism, and Neoconservatism	58	(23)
The Realpolitik View of Detente: Securing American National Interests from a Declining Position of Power	58	(2)
The New Internationalist View of Detente: Superpowers Working Together for a Moral Universe	60	(3)
The Soviet View of Detente: Improving the ``Correlation of Forces''	63	(4)
The Neoconservative View of Detente: Outmaneuvering the United States	67	(9)
Afghanistan and the Triumph of Neoconservatism	76	(5)
The Reagan Administration and the Soviet Interregnum: Accelerating the Demise of the Communist Empire	81	(39)
The Neoconservative Paradigm in Action: The Administration's Blueprint for Delegitimizing the Soviet Union	81	(7)
The Brezhnev-Andropov Transition: The View from Moscow	88	(8)
The Brezhnev-Andropov Transition: The View from Washington	96	(6)
The Andropov-Chernenko Transition: The View from Moscow	102	(5)
The Andropov-Chernenko Transition: The View from Washington	107	(6)
The Chernenko-Gorbachev Transition: The View from Moscow	113	(3)
The Chernenko-Gorbachev Transition: The View from Washington	116	(4)
Acceleration: Tinkering Around the Edges, 1985--1986	120	(26)
Revisiting Communist Legitimacy: In Search of a New Formula	120	(10)
Domestic Reforms and Gorbachev's Foreign Policy: Clouding the Vision for a Global Class Struggle	130	(6)
Making Sense of Gorbachev: The Politics of the Predictive Process in Washington	136	(5)
The Revisionist Paradigm Vindicated? Gorbachev and the Reformability of the Soviet System	141	(5)
Perestroika: Systemic Change, 1987--1989	146	(26)
Experimenting with a New Legitimacy Formula: From Gramsci to ``Socialist Democracy'' and ``Socialist Market''	146	(5)
Gorbachev's Foreign Policy: The Architect of Imperial Shrinkage	151	(4)
Perestroika and the Overload of the Predictive Process in Washington	155	(4)
1989: The Year of Revolutionary Restructuring	159	(4)
The Bush Administration: Problems of Forecasting in a Revolutionary Whirlpool	163	(5)
Paradigmatic Reconfigurations: Changing the View of the Past as a Way to Predict the Future	168	(4)
The Unintended Consequences of Radical Transformation: Losing Control of the Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990--1991	172	(31)
Group Legitimacy and the Soviet ``Spring of Nations''	172	(2)
Economic Legitimacy and the Limits of Market Socialism	174	(3)
Rolling Back the Revolution: The Communist Backlash, the August Coup, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union	177	(11)
The Washington Watch: A Guide for the Perplexed	188	(9)
The Totalitarian Paradigm Vindicated? The Nonreformability of the Soviet System	197	(6)
Reflections on Predictive Failures	203	(23)
Paradigmatic Failure: Totalitarianism vs. Revisionism	203	(9)
Policy Level: Vanquishing vs. Coexisting	212	(2)
Intelligence Level: Advocacy vs. Objectivity	214	(5)
Postdiction: Who Won the Cold War, and the Collapse of Sovietology	219	(5)
Understanding the ``Great Unknown'': The Collapse of the Soviet Union and Predicting Political Change in the Future	224	(2)
References	226	(37)
Index	263	(19)
About the Author	282