Book Reviews : Soviet Succession Struggles: Kremlinology and the Russian Question from Lenin to Gorbachev by Anthony D'Agostino. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. 274pp. £30.00. Eastern Europe, Gorbachev and Reform; The Great Challenge by Karen Dawisha. Cambridge University Press, 1988. 268pp., Hardback £22.50; Paperback £7.95
| Author | Nigel Clive |
| Date | 01 May 1989 |
| DOI | 10.1177/004711788900900519 |
| Published date | 01 May 1989 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
470
the
local
balance
of
power
had
shifted
very
much
in
Vietnam’s
favour,
they
had
some
reason
to
believe
that
the
Mekong
would
hardly
be
an
adequate
barrier
to
further
Vietnamese
expansion.
Realistically,
then,
the
Thais
relied
on
the
countervailing
power
of
China
although
this,
to
begin
with
at
any
rate,
was
anathema
to
Indonesia.
For
the
better
part
of
a
decade,
as
Leifer
points
out,
political
co-operation
in
ASEAN
has
focused
on
the
Kampuchean
issue.
In
the
past
year
or
so,
however,
whatever
alignment
there
was
seems
to
have
disappeared
as
the
Thais
have
begun
to
show
some
’remarkable
flexibility.
A
Thai
foreign
minister
has
appeared
in
Hanoi
for
the
first
time
in
more
than
a
dozen
years
and
the
conditions
on
which
Vietnam
leaves
Kampuchea
seem
to
have
narrowed
down
to
whether
there
whould
be
an
international
control
commission
or
an
international
peace-
keeping
force.
It
is
conceivable
that
Vietnamese
forces
will
have
left
Kampuchea
by
the
end
of
this
year.
It
is
possible
that
this
would
present
ASEAN
with
an
unprecedented
opportunity
to
demonstrate
a
practical
commitment
to
ZOPFAN.
Probably
it
will
claim
that
the
Vietnamese
withdrawal
is
a
result
of
ASEAN’s
performance
as
a
diplomatic
community.
On
the
other
hand
such
a
settlement
may
have
its
origins
in
the
logic
of Sino-
Soviet
rapprochement.
Which
might,
therefore,
leave
as
an
open
question
how
effective
ASEAN
has
been
in
determining
regional
affairs
or
whether
they
are
still
determined
to
a
very
large
extent
by
the
great
powers.
Incidentally,
after
apparently
losing
more
men
in
Kampuchea
than
the
Americans
lost
in
Vietnam,
one
feels
that
Vietnam
will
take
Kampuchea
seriously
and,
in
so
far
as
ASEAN
projects
itself
as
Kampuchea’s
spiritual
guardian,
it,
too,
might
have
an
important
role
to
play.
Aberdeen
University
ANTHONY
SHORT
Soviet
Succession
Struggles:
Kremlinology
and
the
Russian
Question
from
Lenin
to
Gorbachev
by
Anthony
D’Agostino.
London:
Unwin Hyman,
1988.
274pp.
£30.00.
Eastern
Europe,
Gorbachev
and
Reform;
The
Great
Challenge
by
Karen
Dawisha.
Cambridge
University
Press,
1988.
268pp., Hardback
£22.50;
Paperback
£7.95.
This
study
of
the
Soviet
succession
problem
by
the
Professor
of
History
at
San
Francisco
State
University
explores
both
’how
it
happened’
and
’how
it
was
told’.
Unsurprisingly,
these
two
did
not
always
coincide.
Anthony
D’Agostino’s
narrative
provides
a
valuable
commentary
on
the
fact
that
the
Soviet
Union
never
has
had,
and
still
does
not
have
any
legal
mechanism
for
leadership
succession.
This
was
part
of
Lenin’s
legacy.
In
conse-
quence,
the
death
or
removal
of
a
Soviet
leader
automatically
provokes
a
crisis
resulting
in
a
struggle
to
achieve
power
by
his
successor,
and
no
less
of
a
struggle
to
consolidate
his
hold
on
it.
The
main
concentration
of
this
analysis
of
Soviet
political
history,
which
draws
on
a
wide
spectrum
of
sources
(with
the
notable
exception
of
Leonard
Schapiro)
is
on
the
early
period,
extending
through
the
1920s
to
the
start
of
the
Second
World
War.
The
dilemma
of
the
early
Bolsheviks
lay
in
the
contradiction
of
ruling
a
backward
Russia,
while
attempting
to
spread
their
revolution
westwards
into
more
industrially
advanced
countries.
Some
seventy
years
later,
the
dilemma
has
manifested
itself
in
a
somewhat
similar
form,
as
Zbigniew
Brzezinski
outlined
in
a
lecture
to
the
Centre
for
Policy
Studies
in
early
1988,
which
showed
how
the
intellectual
communities
of
the
Soviet
empire
in
Poland,
Czechoslovakia
and
Hungary
class
themselves
as
culturally
superior
to
thier
masters
in
Moscow.
D’Agostino
makes
the
point
that
in
Soviet
politics,
the
positions
of leaders
are
always
adjustable,
so
long
as
they
remain
in
the
leadership.
It
is
only
on
their
being
removed
from
the
leadership
that
these
positions
tend
to
be
trans-
formed
into
matters
of
principle.
After
Lenin’s
death
in
1924,
Zinoviev
appeared
to
be
his
most
likely
successor.
As
head
of
the
Comintern
charged
with
extending
the
revolution
to
Western
Europe,
he
To continue reading
Request your trial