Bulletin n. 1-2/2014
November 2014
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • nglishRobert David, Svyatetsa Ekaterina (Kate)
    Soviet elites and European integration: from Stalin to Gorbachev
    in European History Quarterly , Volume 44, No. 2, April ,  2014 ,  219-233
    This article argues that, like the liberalising “Great Reforms” of Russia in the mid-19th century, Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika of the late 20th century was propelled as much by reformist intellectuals' Europe-inspired visions of a more humane society as it was by military-economic crisis. Over the post-Stalin decades, a new policy-academic elite – economists, philosophers, scientists and writers – viewed in the apparent success of East European reforms a model of “socialism with a human face” for their country's eventual reintegration into a “common European home.” Yet their understanding of European integration was too superficial, and their appreciation of communist hard-liners' resistance too belated, to carry their reforms to successful completion. This article also holds that Russian reformers' naiveté was compounded by Western leaders' selfishness and short-sightedness. The latter clung to Cold War beliefs that the Soviet system could not produce a genuine reformist movement. When Gorbachev came to power, his perestroika was considered merely a “ruse,” its ideas of “new thinking” ridiculed, and ultimately only the “shock therapy” of Boris Yeltsin merited significant Western aid despite its broad incompetence and vast corruption. The combined Western-Russian failures in 1990s efforts toward rapid marketisation and integration proved even more damaging than those of the 1980s due to their broad discrediting of Western liberal democracy.
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