You might also like

More about Elites in Transition

• Book details
• Synopsis
• Trending among others

You get 154 loyalty points

Book synopsis

"Who rules in Eastern Europe?" became a fundamental question for western researchers and other observers after communist regimes were established in the region, and it gained further importance as state socialism expanded into Central Europe after the Second World War. A political order which, according to Leninist theory of the state and to subsequent Stalinist political practice, was primarily a highly centralised and repressive power organisation, directed, as if it were natural, researchers attention towards the highest echelon of office holders in party and state. Extreme centralisation of power in these regimes was consequently linked to an elitist approach to analysing them from a distant viewpoint. It is one of the many paradoxes of state socialism, that a social and political order which presumptuously claimed to be the final destination of historical development and to be based on deterministic laws of social evolution, which claimed an egalitarian nature and denied the significance of the individual, was per ceived through the idiosyncrasies, rivalries and personal traits of its rulers. The largest part of these societies remained in grey obscurity, onlyoccasion ally revealing bits of valid information about a social life distant from the centres of power. It is debatable whether this top-headedness of western re search into communist societies created a completely distorted picture of re ality, however, it certainly contributed to an overestimation of the stability of these regimes, an underestimation of their factual diversity and a misjudge ment of the extent of conflicts and cleavages dividing them.

Book details

Book category Books in English Reference, information & interdisciplinary subjects Interdisciplinary studies Regional studies

• Full title: Elites in Transition
• Subtitle: Elite Research in Central and Eastern Europe
• Author: Ulrike Becker, Heinrich Best
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 250
• EAN: 9783810018441
• ISBN: 3810018449
• ID: 05341044
• Publisher: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
• Weight: 367 g
• Dimensions: 210 × 148 × 14 mm
• Date of publishing: 30. January 1997

Trending among others

---

---

---