Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change by Robert Strayer

Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change by Robert Strayer

Taking the Soviet collapse - the most cataclysmic event of the recent past - as a case study, this text engages students in the exercise of historical analysis, interpretation and explanation. In exploring the question posed by the title, the author introduces and applies such organizing concepts as great power conflict, imperial decline, revolution, ethnic conflict, colonialism, economic development, totalitarian ideology, and transition to democracy in a most accessible way. Questions and controversies, and extracts from documentary and literary sources, anchor the text at key points. This book is intended for use in history and political science courses on the Soviet Union or more generally on the 20th century.

ROBERT W. STRAYER comes to the writing of this text with wide experience in the world history enterprise. With a Ph.D. in European and African history from the University of Wisconsin, he has taught world history at many levels, beginning with a two-year stint in high school history instruction in Ethiopia with the Peace Corps. Most of his academic career was spent at SUNY College at Brockport, where he taught world history as well as African and Soviet history for three decades and received both the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and a similar award for Excellence in Scholarship. In 1998, he was a visiting professor of world history at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Since moving to California in 2002, he has taught world history at the University of California, Santa Cruz; California State University, Monterey Bay; and Cabrillo College. World history has been the primary intellectual focus of his career, during which he has served as a teacher, scholar, textbook author, consultant, and member of the Executive Committee of the World History Association.

Among his publications are works in African history, including Kenya: Focus on Nationalism (1975) and The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa (1978). More recently, he developed a specialty in Soviet history and wrote Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? (1998) and The Communist Experiment (2007), comparing the experience of the Soviet Union with that of China. He was the senior author of an earlier world history textbook, The Making of the Modern World (1988; 1995), and has co-edited McGraw-Hill's Explorations in World History series. He has also published in a number of specialized journals, such as the Journal of World History.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780765600042
ISBN 10	0765600048
Title	Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change
Author	Robert Strayer
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Taylor & Francis Ltd
Year published	1998-04-30
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.