RUSSIAN RESEARCH CENTER STUDIES
Cover: Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis, from Harvard University PressCover: Moscow in E-DITION

Russian Research Center Studies 88

Moscow

Governing the Socialist Metropolis

Product Details

E-DITION

$65.00 • £54.95 • €60.00

ISBN 9780674283725

Publication Date: 01/03/1996

939 pages

41 maps, 64 halftones, 11 line illustrations

Belknap Press

Russian Research Center Studies

World

Available from De Gruyter »

Media Requests:

Related Subjects

Harvard University Press has partnered with De Gruyter to make available for sale worldwide virtually all in-copyright HUP books that had become unavailable since their original publication. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. More about the E-ditions Program »

Once the hub of the tsarist state, later Brezhnev’s “model Communist city”—home of the Kremlin, Red Square, and St. Basil’s Cathedral—Moscow is for many the quintessence of everything Russian. Timothy Colton’s sweeping biography of this city at the center of Soviet life reveals what such a position has meant to Moscow and ultimately to Russia itself.

Linchpin of the Soviet system and exemplar of its ideology, Moscow was nonetheless instrumental in the Soviet Union’s demise. It was in this metropolis of nine million people that Boris Yeltsin, during two frustrating years as the city’s party boss, began his move away from Communist orthodoxy. Colton charts the general course of events that led to this move, tracing the political and social developments that have given the city its modern character. He shows how the monolith of Soviet power broke down in the process of metropolitan governance, where the constraints of censorship and party oversight could not keep up with proliferating points of view, haphazard integration, and recurrent deviation from approved rules and goals. Everything that goes into making a city—from town planning, housing, and retail services to environmental and architectural concerns—figures in Colton’s account of what makes Moscow unique. He shows us how these aspects of the city’s organization, and the actions of leaders and elite groups within them, coordinated or conflicted with the overall power structure and policy imperatives of the Soviet Union. Against this background, Colton explores the growth of the anti-Communist revolution in Moscow politics, as well as fledgling attempts to establish democratic institutions and a market economy.

As it answers persistent questions about Soviet political history, this lavishly illustrated volume may also point the way to understanding Russia’s future.

Awards & Accolades

  • 1995 Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division Best New Book in Government and Political Science

Share This

The Economics of Creative Destruction: New Research on Themes from Aghion and Howitt, edited by Ufuk Akcigit and John Van Reenen, with a Foreword by Emmanuel Macron, from Harvard University Press

Recent News

Black lives matter. Black voices matter. A statement from HUP »

From Our Blog

Jacket: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, by Peter Wilson, from Harvard University Press

A Lesson in German Military History with Peter Wilson

In his landmark book Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, acclaimed historian Peter H. Wilson offers a masterful reappraisal of German militarism and warfighting over the last five centuries, leading to the rise of Prussia and the world wars. Below, Wilson answers our questions about this complex history,