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: 9780765614650
• ISBN10: 0765614650
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781317462439
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2004-09-30
• Publisher: Routledge
• More Book Details

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Predicting Political Change

Theories of Political Change and Prediction of Change: Methodological Problems

Methodological Problems of Tracking Changes in a Collective Belief System

The Dimensions of a Collective Belief System: Existential Imperatives as Validity Claims

Changing the Collective Belief System: The Process of Delegitimation

Activating the Process of Delegitimation: Trigger Conditions of Change

The Durability of Legitimacy: Personal and Systemic Factors of Maintenance

Legitimacy of the Soviet Union: The Theory and Politics of a Concept

Rational Choice Theory and Soviet Legitimacy: Coercion and Preference Falsification

Oligarchic Petrification or Pluralistic Transformation: Paradigmatic Views of the Soviet Union in the 1970s

The Totalitarian Model: Oligarchic Petrification and Final Doom

The Revisionist Model: Pluralistic Transformation and Final Convergence

Revising the Revisionist View of the Soviet Union: Oligarchic Degeneration and Ideological Assertion in the Late Brezhnev Period

Paradigms and the Debate on Relations with the Soviet Union: Detente, New Internationalism, and Neoconservatism

Realpolitik View of Detente: Securing American National Interests from a Declining Position of Power

The New Internationalist View of Detente: Superpowers Working Together for a Moral Universe

The Soviet View of Detente: Improving the "Correlation of Forces"

The Neoconservative View of Detente: Outmaneuvering the United States

Afghanistan and the Triumph of Neoconservatism

The Reagan Administration and the Soviet Interregnum: Accelerating the Demise of the Communist Empire

The Neoconservative Paradigm in Action: The Administration's Blueprint for Delegitimizing the Soviet Union

The Brezhnev-Andropov Transition: The View from Moscow

The Brezhnev-Andropov Transition: The View from Washington

The Andropov-Chernenko Transition: The View from Moscow

The Andropov-Chernenko Transition: The View from Washington

The Chernenko-Gorbachev Transition: The View from Moscow

The Chernenko-Gorbachev Transition: The View from Washington

Acceleration: Tinkering Around the Edges, 1985-1986

Revisiting Communist Legitimacy: In Search of a New Formula

Domestic Reforms and Gorbachev's Foreign Policy: Clouding the Vision for a Global Class Struggle

Making Sense of Gorbachev: The Politics of the Predictive Process in Washington

The Revisionist Paradigm Vindicated? Gorbachev and the Reformability of the Soviet System

Perestroika: Systemic Change, 1987-1989

Experimenting with a New Legitimacy Formula: From Gramsci to "Socialist Democracy" and "Socialist Market"

Gorbachev's Foreign Policy: The Architect of Imperial Shrinkage

Perestroika and Overload of the Predictive Process in Washington

1989: The Year of Revolutionary Restructuring

The Bush Administration: The Problems of Forecasting in a Revolutionary Whirlpool

Paradigmatic Reconfigurations: Changing the View of the Past as a Way to Predict the Future

The Unintended Consequences of Radical Transformation: Losing Control of the Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990-1991

Group Legitimacy and the Soviet "Spring of Nations"

Economic Legitimacy and the Limits of Market Socialism

Rolling Back the Revolution: The Communist Backlash, the August Coup, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

The Washington Watch: A Guide for the Perplexed

The Totalitarian Paradigm Vindicated? The Nonreformability of the Soviet System

Reflections on Predictive Failures

Paradigmatic Failure: Totalitarianism vs. Revisionism

Policy Level: Vanquishing vs. Coexisting

Intelligence Level: Advocacy vs. Objectivity

Postdiction, Who Won the Cold War, and the Collapse of Sovietology

Understanding the "Great Unknown": The Collapse of the Soviet Union and Predicting Political Change in the Future

References

Index

About the Author

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