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.

• Part 1


• 1: Introduction


• Part 2


• 2: Gorbachev: New Man in the Kremlin


• 3: The First Phase of Soviet Reform, 1985-86


• 4: Fundamental Political Change, 1987-89


• 5: Reconstructing the Soviet Political System


• Part 3


• 6: Institutional Amphibiousness or Civil Society? The Origins and Development of Perestroika


• 7: The Dismantling of the System and the Disintegration of the State


• 8: Transnational Influences in the Transition from Communism


• 9: Ending the Cold War


• 10: Gorbachev and His Era in Perspective


• Index

A rigorously argued and lively interpretation of the transformation of the Soviet system, written by a leading authority on Soviet politics. This thoroughly researched book draws on new archival sources and puts perestroika in fresh perspective.