Serious stock-taking is in progress now among practitioners of whathas been called Sovietology, meaning studies of the Union of SovietSocialist Republics. The reason is that the field for the most part hadnot been expecting what happened in 1991: The USSR collapsed andwent out of existence as a unified state system governing a sixth ofthe world's territory, having allowed its East European empire tofree itself from Soviet dominance somewhat earlier.It might be said in defense of Sovietology that, by the beginningof the 1980s, it understood that economic and political crises werebrewing in the Soviet Union and its outer empire. But the field asa whole failed to grasp the full depth of the systemic crisis in SovietRussia and the destructive or self-destructive potentialities inherentin it. As the editors of this valuable volume write in the Introduction:"Sovietology was not prepared for perestroika and postcommunism.
The Scientific-Technological Revolution"" and Soviet Foreign Policy explains the effects of the worldwide scientific-technological revolution (STR) on Soviet foreign policy under ""the collective leadership"" of Leonid Brezhnev. Organized into five chapters, this book carefully examines Soviet views of the relationship of STR with political, economic, and military dimensions of ""peaceful coexistence"" and ""detente."" This text also evaluates the impact of scientific discoveries, technological innovations, foreign economic relations, strategic arms development, and instability in Third World countries. Some of the functions performed by Soviet perspectives on scientific-technical change and international politics are also reported.
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