David Glantz examines the Soviet study of war, the re-emergence of the operation level and its connection with deep battle, the evolution of the Soviet theory of operations in depth before 1941, and its refinement and application in the European theatre and the Far East between 1941 and 1945.

    In August 1989, a new, independent organization of young Soviet writers hosted the first international conference for avant-garde writers to be held in the USSR since the Russian Revolution. "Summer School--Language, Poetry, Consciousness" was a grassroots attempt to harvest the fruits of glasnost, bringing together poets and scholars from Siberia to San Diego. Attending were four American writers, Michael Davidson, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten. Leningrad is their collaborative account of this extraordinary trip. A collection of poetic essays, it is a commentary on the intellectual revelations that result when post-glasnot Soviet and American intellectuals meet face to face. Some misunderstandings that arise are funny: one Russian asks the Americans if the Manson family is a TV show; some are surprising: when asked if she would like feminist literature from the states, a Russian woman requests the complete poems of Jim Morrison. While each group found inspiration in the other's avant-garde tradition, they had different definitions of what avant-garde was. American writers were testing their ideals of Western Marxism; the Marxists they had admired idealized American bourgeois democracy. Intellectually challenging, this collection is an unusual twist on the meeting of minds from across oceans.

    The book identifies a significant tradition within Soviet Marxism that has produced powerful theories exploring the origins of meaning and value, the relation of thought and language, and the nature of the self. The tradition is presented through the work of Evald Ilyenkov (1924-79), the thinker who did the most to rejuvenate Soviet philosophy after its suppression under Stalin. Professor Bakhurst sets Ilyenkov's contribution against the background of the bitter debates that divided Soviet philosophers in the 1920s, the sociohistorical psychology of Vygotsky, the controversies over Lenin's legacy, and the philosophy of Stalinism. He traces Ilyenkov's tense relationship with the Soviet philosophical establishment and his passionate polemics with Soviet opponents. This book offers a unique insight into the world of Soviet philosophy, the place of politics within it, and its prospects in the age of glasnost and perestroika.

    Smolansky examines the history of the relationship between these two countries during the past twenty years and attempts to dispel the misconception that the Soviet Union has enjoyed undue influence over Iraq.Drawing on ten years of research in Western, Arab, and Soviet sources, Smolansky analyzes the complex issues at the center of Soviet-Iraqi relations from 1968 through 1988, including the nationalization of the oil industry, the Kurdish question, the Iraqi Communist Party, the affairs of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, and, ultimately, the war between Iraq and Iran.Smolansky concludes that Iraq has never been under the dominant influence of Moscow, nor has it even been a loyal Soviet ally. In fact, Iraq has managed to reap major benefits from the relationship without losing its autonomy or sacrificing its major interests. The author discusses the Soviet Union and Iraq within the larger framework of the nature of influence relationships between great and small powers.

    Political degeneration, operative from 1956 onwards, set off a process of progressive subversion of the economic foundations of socialism.The first part begins with a reappraisal of Prague Spring of 1968, distant harbinger of the velvet revolution. It goes on to describe the complete restoration of capitalism, in which act one was played by Poland and Hungary. The victory of peaceful counter-revolution in the latter country leads us to look again at class struggle and repression in Hungary in the years 1945-1953 and then during and after the armed uprising in Budapest in 1956. The violent political confrontation which shook Rumania at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 allows a thorough insight into the mechanisms of class struggle under socialism.The second part deals with the collapse in the Soviet Union. At the end of 1989 one conclusion was acceptable: two years of glasnost had brought the Soviet Union to the edge of the abyss. In the name of anti-Stalinism, all socialist ideas were scrapped and the name of universal values, conservative ideology made its comeback. At the precise moment when bourgeois nationalism was breaking out and threatening the Soviet Union with disintegration, the country came closer to the West and, as proof of its good intentions, orchestrated a series of conservative coups in Eastern Europe.