FORTHCOMING BOOKS

POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN CENTRAL ASIA AND AZERBAIDZHAN: SOURCES AND DOCUMENTS

Edited by Demian Vaisman and Aryeh Wasserman
A selection of annotated documents, including party platforms and declarations of the major political groupings in the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. The book covers primarily the period from 1991 to 1994, which can be characterized as the first stage in the formation of a pluralistic society in these emerging states. Two divergent trends of development can be identified from the sources: the first is a tendency toward the creation of independent states based on traditional models (for example, Turkmenistan); the other toward independent states with western-style democracies and pro-Russian orientation (for example, Kazakhstan and Kirgizia).

 
c400 pages 2003
0 7146 4838 8 cloth £35.00/$45.00
0 7146 4395 5 paper £17.50/$24.50

RUSSIA BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

Edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky 

A mere decade ago the collapse of the Soviet Empire was hailed by some in euphoric terms as the ‘end of history’. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the lifting of the ‘Iron Curtain’ and the withering away of Communist ideology had evoked tremendous hopes for a unified Europe – a region which now also encompassed the East, including a democratic and economically reformed Russia.

This volume of essays dwells on the challenge facing Russia in establishing its new identity, which will have a direct bearing on the course of its foreign policy in the future. The book unravels President Putin’s efforts to re-establish Russia’s position as a major power, attempting to reconcile Russia’s traditional national interests with the newly emerging social and political entity taking shape at home. The book’s analysis of Russia’s role in various conflict regions – the Balkans, Chechnya, the Middle East and China – demonstrates how this process is being affected by various constraints, particularly those imposed by the exigencies of a diffused ‘New World Order’, in which contradictory forces, such as globalization, regionalism and US unilateralism, seem to reign supreme, especially in light of the events of 11 September 2001.

 

c400 pages 2003
0 7146 4841 8 cloth £/$TBA
0 7146 4393 9 paper £/$TBA

CRIPPS IN MOSCOW: DIARY AND PRIVATE PAPERS

Edited by Maurice Shock and Gabriel Gorodetsky
The appointment of Sir Stafford Cripps as the British Ambassador in Moscow in May 1940 has puzzled both contemporaries and historians. A militant left-winger, Cripps was expelled from the Labour Party in June 1939 for advocating a united front against fascism. In 1942 he returned from Moscow, resting on the laurels of the Russian resistance, and received a seat in the War Cabinet. While Bevin and Attlee elaborated the future social policies of the Labour Government, Cripps laid the foundation for Labour's postwar foreign policy. The diary and papers reveal his visionary ideas, tempered by a sharply realistic approach deriving from his long career as one of Britain's leading lawyers, and follow his political transformation. The documents selected and annotated by Sir Maurice Shock, Cripps' official biographer, and Gabriel Gorodetsky, the author of Cripps' Mission to Moscow, include a diary, meticulously kept by Cripps while in Moscow and published here for the first time; letters to his daughters; his correspondence with his trusted friend in London, Sir Walter Monckton; and excerpts from the diary of his wife, Lady Cripps. Additional documents used are derived from the papers of Eden, Churchill, and the Foreign Office, as well as recently declassified documents from the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

 
c225 pages 2003
0 7146 4839 6 cloth £32.50/$42.50
0 7146 4396 3 paper £16.50/$22.50

DEMOCRACY AND PLURALISM IN THE MUSLIM REGIONS OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

Edited by Yaacov Ro’i

This book is devoted to the study and analysis of the prospects for democracy among the Muslim ethnicities of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), both those that acquired full independence and those remaining within the Russian Federation. Its purpose is to look at these nations’ traditions and present conduct in order to try to decide whether, being Muslim, they constitute a category unto themselves or whether their lot is simply characteristic of that of all the former Soviet peoples.

 The authors are in part Western academics and in part scholars from the Muslim countries and regions of the CIS. In this volume they analyze the politics of a region which, since 11 September 2001 and the formation of the US-led international coalition against the Taliban and al-Qaida, has become a major focus of global attention.

EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA, 1991-2001 

Edited by Ben Eklof,  Larry Holmes and Vera Kaplan

This volume consists of a collection of essays devoted to the study of the most recent educational reform in Russia. In his first decree Boris Yeltsin proclaimed education a top priority of state policy. Yet the economic decline which accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt a crippling blow to reformist aspirations, and to the existing school system itself. The public lost faith in school reform and by the mid-1990s a reaction had set in. Nevertheless, large-scale reforms have been effected in finance, structure, governance and curricula. At the same time, there has been a renewed and widespread appreciation for the positive aspects of the Soviet legacy in schooling.

 

Issues examined in the essays include: institutional continuity and change, practices and beliefs; governance; curricula (mainly history and literature); the status of teachers and education in the Russian diaspora. Special attention is paid to the discourse on national identity in the post-Soviet era, and to the overarching question of whether reform in education has fundamentally altered the system.