Table of Contents

1. Understanding the Soviet Collapse 2. The Phase of Crisis: The General Problem in the USSR 3. Streamlining the Party Apparat: Party-State Relations 4. Failure of Becoming a ‘Political Party’: Party Elections and Party Unity 5. Financial Crisis and Commercial Activities 6. Party and Security Organs in the August Attempted Coup 7. Some Conclusions. Appendix 1: On the Nomenklatura System and Nomenklatura as a Social Class. Appendix 2: The Mechanism of Budget Formation

About the Author

Atsushi Ogushi is JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University, Japan. His main research interests are Soviet and Russian politics, and his articles have appeared in The Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, among others.

Reviews

'the most important reason for regarding this as a study of the first importance is the novelty of its argument, based on a close and careful examination of the primary sources' - Slavonica, November 2008'The great strength of this work is the research. Ogushi has accumulated a vast array of material, some of it original, to support his analysis. Much of this material will be of great use to subsequent scholars who analyse the intricate details of the Soviet collapse' - Seth Unmack, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies