University Presses strive to publish titles of relevance, that advance scholarship and expand horizons. As a publisher of history, politics, and security studies, with a strong focus on Russia, Central Asia, and nuclear weapons, the Stanford University Press list is often starkly relevant to current affairs. The current war in Ukraine has revealed a broad lack of understanding of the region, its history, and its politics. It has also heightened concerns around authoritarianism, regional security, and the potential fragility of weapons treaties. Included here is a range of Stanford titles from the past decade that address various aspects of the current situation, ranging from studies of war in all its forms (Kaldor), Russian attitudes to religion and weapons (Adamsky), through to the development and fate of post-Soviet states (Kassenova).
The Bleeding Wound: The Soviet War in Afghanistan and the Collapse of the Soviet System »
"Yaacov Ro'i had the prescience to study the Soviet-Afghan War's effect on veterans and civilians at a time when most observers could only speculate about how the war would affect the USSR and the newly independent states. This book brings his original research into dialogue with new work and materials that have become available in intervening decades. An important and timely study that anyone interested in the region should read."
—Artemy Kalinovsky, Temple University
By the mid-1980s, public opinion in the USSR had begun to turn against Soviet involvement in Afghanistan: the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) had become a long, painful, and unwinnable conflict, one that Mikhail Gorbachev referred to as a "bleeding wound" in a 1986 speech. The eventual decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan created a devastating ripple effect within Soviet society that, this book argues, became a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In this comprehensive survey of the effects of the war on Soviet society and politics, Yaacov Ro'i analyzes the opinions of Soviet citizens on a host of issues connected with the war and documents the systemic change that would occur when Soviet leadership took public opinion into account. The war and the difficulties that the returning veterans faced undermined the self-esteem and prestige of the Soviet armed forces and provided ample ammunition for media correspondents who sought to challenge the norms of the Soviet system. Through extensive analysis of Soviet newspapers and interviews conducted with Soviet war veterans and regular citizens in the early 1990s, Ro'i argues that the effects of the war precipitated processes that would reveal the inbuilt limitations of the Soviet body politic and contribute to the dissolution of the USSR by 1991.
Read Yaacov Ro'i's New Op-Ed on Politico EU,"Russia risks another ‘bleeding wound’ in Ukraine" »
Continue reading "Recommended Resources for Understanding Russia's Invasion of Ukraine" »
