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Soviet Union [USSR] Preface
Soviet Union: A Country Study seeks to present factual
descriptions and objective interpretations of a broad range of
social, political, economic, and national security aspects of the
Soviet Union in the late 1980s. The authors synthesized information
from books, scholarly journals, official reports of governments and
international organizations, foreign and domestic newspapers, and
conference reports and proceedings.
This volume supersedes the Area Handbook for the Soviet
Union, first published in 1971. Throughout the 1970s and early
1980s, the Soviet Union was politically, economically, and socially
stagnant, according to many Western observers. After Mikhail S.
Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, however, unprecedented
events portending substantial change began to occur. To revitalize
the critically ailing economy, Gorbachev introduced
perestroika; to alter the political power structure, he
introduced demokratizatsiia; and to provide information
needed to implement both, he introduced glasnost'. These
three slogans represented evolving concepts rather than formal
programs with specific plans and time schedules. Information about
events occurring in the late 1980s came in such volume that many
observers were overwhelmed. The long-range impact of the events can
be realistically assessed only after careful analysis of accurate
and complete data and the perspective granted with the passage of
time. Meanwhile, the basic elements of the Soviet Union, such as
history, geography, social, economic, and military structures, as
described in this volume, can help readers understand the events as
they occur.
This volume covers the salient features of the Soviet Union in
nineteen chapters that attempt to provide balanced and
straightforward descriptions and analyses of the subject matter.
Readers wishing to obtain more information on subjects dealt with
in each chapter can refer to the bibliographic essay at the end of
the chapter. A complete Bibliography at the end of the book
provides additional sources of information and complete citations.
A Country Profile and a Chronology are also included as reference
aids. The Glossary furnishes succinct definitions of many
specialized terms used in the book. Measurements are given in the
metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist reader
unfamiliar with metric measurements (see
table 1, Appendix A).
Because confusion often arises with respect to the use of the
words socialism and communism, a note of caution is
in order concerning their use in this book. The Soviet Union and
other countries that people in the West generally refer to as
communist usually describe themselves as socialist,
making the claim that they are working toward communism, which Karl
Marx described as a more advanced historical stage than socialism.
In this book, socialist and socialism are generally
used in the sense of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Soviet socialism has little resemblance to the democratic
socialism of some West European countries. In this book,
communism means a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian
socialism and Marxism-Leninism, which is the official ideology of
the Soviet Union.
Readers specifically interested in information on the Russian
nationality and the Russian Orthodox Church should note that
information on these subjects is contained in a number of chapters.
Hence to avoid redundancy, the space devoted to these subjects in
the chapter on nationalities and religions (Chapter 4) is
proportionately less than that devoted to other nationalities and
religions. Readers are especially referred to Chapter 1, which is
primarily concerned with the history of the Russian nationality and
frequently refers to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Statistics derived from Soviet sources, especially those
dealing with the economy and transportation, have sometimes been
disputed by Western authorities. Such statistics, occasionally
containing unexplained discrepancies, have been used as the only
available alternative and have been identified as of Soviet origin.
Population statistics used in the book were based on the 1989
census. Because, however, complete results of that census had not
been released or fully analyzed at the time the book was being
written, some statistics were based on the 1979 census.
Transliteration of Russian names and terms generally follows
the Library of Congress transliteration system, but geographic
names follow the United States Board of Geographic Names
romanization system. Exceptions were made, however, if the name or
term was listed in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate
Dictionary. For example, Leon Trotsky was used instead of Lev
Trotskii and Moscow instead of Moskva. Most of the Russian terms
used in the book were not in Webster's and were therefore
transliterated and italicized as foreign words. Hence the term for
one administrative subdivision raion was transliterated and
italicized, but the term for another subdivision, oblast, listed in
Webster's was not. For most organizational names, English
translations--and if needed the acronym derived therefrom--were
used. If a transliterated organizational name or its acronym was
considered sufficiently well known, however, it was used. For
example, most readers will know that the acronym KGB stands for the
Soviet secret police and to use CSS (based on Committee for State
Security--a translation of the name that is transliterated Komitet
gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti) made little sense.
Data as of May 1989
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