Research Catalog

Burying Lenin : the revolution in Soviet ideology and foreign policy

Title: Burying Lenin : the revolution in Soviet ideology and foreign policy / Steven Kull.
Author: Kull, Steven.
Publication: Boulder : Westview Press, 1992.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	DK288 .K85 1992	Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 219 pages; 24 cm

Summary

For decades U.S. foreign policy was focused on battling the menace of Soviet communism. Now, seemingly overnight, the implacable foe has collapsed. Its foremost symbol, the image of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, has been publicly disgraced, and the slogan "Lenin lives!" has given way to calls for the removal and burial of the corpse that has lain on display in its Red Square mausoleum for more than half a century. How did these extraordinary events come about? Usually such swift and radical change is accompanied by violent upheaval. In this book, political psychologist Steven Kull argues that only a revolution in the thinking of the country's top leaders can explain the rapidity and relative peacefulness of the recent Soviet political transformation. Kull's analysis, based on probing interviews with members of the policymaking elites as well as on a careful reading of the public record, reveals the painful process by which these Soviets came to realize and accept the failure of Leninist ideology. More significantly, Kull shows how Soviet leaders have had a series of key insights in recent years that gradually have been forged into a new ideology. Dubbed "new thinking," this ideology offers a complex and coherent worldview that is still insufficiently understood in the West and yet holds great import for the world's future. Kull also traces other streams of post-Leninist thought in the minds of the Soviet elite--some of them still oriented toward competition with the West. He assesses the influence that these diverse, conflicting ideas are exerting on current post-Soviet foreign policy and behavior and describes the new challenges they present to Western nations.

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-205) and index.

ISBN

0813315018
9780813315010
081331500X
9780813315003

LCCN

91045077

OCLC

ocm25009188
25009188
SCSB-1952407

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library