Search results for ""Author Alexander Motyl""

How must Sovietology change as a result of the Soviet Union's collapse? Motyl and his colleagues suggest that the first step in reorientation of the field must involve recognizing the non-Russians and their republics as central to both Soviet politics and to the post-Soviet reality. The authors, all leading Sovietologists, illustrate how nationality interacted with and shaped ideology, law, elite recruitment, political repression, modernization, participation, political economy, and class. Each of the articles traces the relationship between nationality and aspects of the Soviet system up to the collapse of the USSR and the emergence in its stead of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The contributors not only provide a coherent interpretation of the demise of Soviet Communism, but they also sugest what dangers and opportunities lie in store for the Soviet Union's successor states.

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In this concise, provocative, and trenchant book, Alexander J. Motyl argues that social scientists must pay more rigorous attention to the formulation of concepts, as they provide the basis for clear thinking, good research, and intelligent formulation of theories. Before even contemplating the question of whether or not theories "fit the facts" and explain what they purport to explain, it behooves us to ask whether or not theories make sense conceptually. Focusing his "conceptual explorations" on three phenomena-revolutions, nations and nationalism, and empires-Motyl challenges the sloppy thinking that so often surrounds these three interrelated concepts, and moves our understanding of them-and their implications for both theory and practice-toward greater precision.

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-- Slavic Review

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