Seven Years that Changed the World Perestroika in Perspective
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, where he taught for thirty-four years, following seven years as a Lecturer in Politics at Glasgow University. Professor Brown was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991 and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. In 2005 he was awarded the CMG in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 'for services to UK-Russian relations and to the study of political science and international affairs'. His book, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford University Press, 1996) won the W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize of the Political Studies Association of the UK for best political science book of the year and the Alec Nove Prize of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies. A Festschrift, edited by Alex Pravda, Leading Russia: Putin in Perspective. Essays in Honour of Archie Brown was published by Oxford University Press in 2005.Compelling...an excellent book,It is well-written, and researched with meticulous care.
Mike Bowker, Seer
...the book will encourage readers to revive their memories of the excitement of the Gorbachev years and to refine their own opinions on the man himself and his policies.
Paul Dukes History Today
There are few who can compete with Professor Brown in intensity of attention to Soviet politics and Soviet institutions, in nuanced approach, and in painstaking analysis
Lilia Shevtsova, Pro et Contra
Mikhail Gorbachev's most important biographer here passes judgement on the man and the process he unleashed ... The book's first part comprises four pieces written at the time of perestroika, which in retrospect were remarkably perceptive. In the years since, the mounting archival and memoir evidence - and Brown brings much of it to bear - has only strengthened his argument
Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs
'The real genius of the end of communism was Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. Archie Brown has been his closest and best commentator.'
Financial Times
'The bulk of the book is a necessary reminder of what Mr Gorbachev and perestroika achieved - even if inadvertently. For what, asks Mr Brown, did Mr Gorbachev sacrifice "the boundless authority, the unquestioning obedience, the orchestrated public adulation"? For freedom of speech, freedom of religion, competitive elections and a host of other accomplishments. The author rightly concludes that the "democratic shortcomings of post-Soviet Russia notwithstanding, the country that Gorbachev bequeathed to his successors was freer than at any time in Russian history".'
The Economist
Demonstrating his meticulous scholarship and painstaking research, Brown adapts to the Soviet scene the concept of "institutional amphibiousness", by which some parts of the state system can simultaneously work for functions and purposes contradictory to those of the state'
Times Literary Supplement
in the 1980s Brown had to field his share of brickbats from those who accused him of wishful thinking about the very existence of serious reformers inside the Soviet establishment. History proved him right, and his critics wrong. Now, as this volume shows, he has the Soviet archives on his side as well
Mary Dejevsky (The Times Moscow correspondent during perestroika), Oxford Today