Confiscated Power: How Soviet Russia Really Works

by Hélène Carrère d'Encausse

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060390093
• ISBN13: 9780060390099
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 401 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The party, only the party

Political analysis of the now defunct USSR, in particular the Brezjnev period: all the power lay in the hands of the highly centralized communist party: no political parties, no market, no autonomous organizations in the social and cultural fields.The most importants jobs were occupied by Russians.The top was a coherent team, that recognised the aspirations of the nomenklatura.The population knew that mass revolts were nearly impossible and that the party had the military power to crush them. On the other hand, the party made it perfectly clear that the unpredictable atrocities of the Stalin era would not come back.It showed the satellite states that no foreign power would support effectively their nationalist ambitions.The opening to the West gave new oxygen to a faltering economy and permitted to import much needed technology, while on the other hand the party continued to help their sister parties all over the world.As always, a perceptive and thorough investigation of a political system by the author who correctly predicted that the USSR would fall apart, if the power of the communist party would be broken.A must or historians and for those interested in the history of the USSR and Russia.