Drawing upon extensive archival and other original sources, Soviet Power and the Countryside offers a new approach to understanding the political dynamics that led to the collapse of the Soviet order. A detailed analysis of the design, implementation and collapse of Soviet policy toward the countryside is used to explore the implications of a broadening of participation in the policy process from the 1960s. Neil J. Melvin argues that the new knowledge about rural society created as a result of this process provided the basis for a fundamental change in the nature of power relations in the Soviet order, leading to the decay and eventual collapse of policy making institutions.

NEIL J. MELVIN is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Political and International Studies at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Russians Beyond Russia, Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road and co-editor of Nations Abroad: Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union.