The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy: Background articles

The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy, by Metta Spencer, published by Lexington Books

This page features short articles (by the author or by other academics/observers), including outtakes from the published manuscript; scanned newspaper and journal articles from the early 1980s onwards; travel itineraries; a timeline; and so forth.

List of acronyms and organizations

Here we present a glossary of terms, acronyms, and names used in the book and on this website.

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Talk to guests at book launch, Toronto, 23 January 2011

 
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When Gorbachev came to power, there were about 270 million Soviet citizens, over 90 percent of whom conformed to the demands of the state without complaining. I will...

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Typologies: Barking Dogs and Termites

These tables appear in, and are referred to throughout, the book. An intermediate typology, describing the situation at the end of the Soviet Union in 1989-91, is described but is too complex to plot on a table.

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Hard Reforms and the Invisible Coup

Soviet citizenry became increasingly antagonistic to their leader, even as he was winning a Nobel prize for peace.
Deleted draft chapter from The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy (1996)

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The Surge of the Eighties

… the nuclear arms race had not stopped in 1963 after all.
Deleted draft chapter from The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy (1996)

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Five Surges of the World Peace Movement

The Semantics of “Peace” and “Struggle”.
Deleted draft chapter from The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy (1996)

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Dissent or a New Age? Two Ways of Rejecting Authority

During the 1970s and ’80s, Soviets surpassed the West in their fascination for apolitical “new age” theories, positive thinking schemes, magical healing techniques, and spiritualism.
Deleted draft chapter from The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy (1996)

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Refrozen Culture

To what extent was cultural life after Stalin deformed by political “thought-police” — or conversely, to what extent were the artists of the day generating plays, poems, paintings, and cinemas that actually reflected their own world view?
Deleted draft chapter from The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy (1996)

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Prisoners of the Mind: Public Opinion and Totalitarianism

One legacy of totalitarianism is the widespread belief that a leader does not derive his power from the population.
Deleted draft chapter from The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy (1996)

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The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy, by Metta Spencer, published by Lexington Books
mspencer@web.net