"Substate Dictatorship" by Yoram Gorlizki

Substate Dictatorship Networks, Loyalty, and Institutional Change in the Soviet Union Yoram Gorlizki, Oleg Khlevniuk

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Series:: Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian Regimes
Format:: Hardback
Publication date:: 08 Sep 2020
ISBN:: 9780300230819
Imprint:: Yale University Press
Dimensions:: 464 pages: 235 x 156mm
Illustrations:: 33 b-w illus.
Sales territories:: World

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An essential exploration of how authoritarian regimes operate at the local level

How do local leaders govern in a large dictatorship? What resources do they draw on? Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk examine these questions by looking at one of the most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century. Starting in the early years after the Second World War and taking the story through to the 1970s, they chart the strategies of Soviet regional leaders, paying particular attention to the forging and evolution of local trust networks.

Yoram Gorlizki is professor of politics at the University of Manchester. Oleg Khlevniuk is professor of history at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russian Federation) and the author of Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator.

“This is a pathbreaking study of how the Soviet political system worked in the postwar era. Gorlizki and Khlevniuk have once again demonstrated their absolute mastery of the political history of the Soviet Union.”—Alan Barenberg, author of Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta

“Remarkable. The authors integrate contemporary political science and political theory in their analysis of vast historical material.”—Arturas Rozenas, New York University

“A major contribution to the study of Soviet history and a must read for anyone interested in the rise, functioning, and demise of dictatorial and authoritarian regimes worldwide. A timely contribution indeed!”—Serhii Plokhy, Harvard University

“No dictator rules alone. To understand Russia from Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev to the regime’s decline, collapse, and dissolution, Gorlizki and Khlevniuk argue, is to appreciate the many dictatorships that were the Soviet Union. This important book marshals the best that history and social science have to offer to elucidate the anatomy of the Soviet dictatorship.”—Milan Svolik, Yale University

“Increasingly, people speak of the Kremlin, Moscow, and Russia interchangeably. This book is a reminder as to why it is essential to disaggregate Moscow from the regions and to focus on the workings of bureaucracy rather than the head of state. This meticulous, archive-based research results in one of the best accounts on networks and nomenklatura in the Soviet Union. Its findings on cooptation, coordination, control and camouflage at the subnational level remain relevant for understanding Russia today.”—Alena Ledeneva, UCL, founder of the Global Informality Project