Kremlinology
Encyclopedia
Kremlinology is the study and analysis of Soviet (and today, Russia
n) politics and policies based on efforts to understand the inner workings of an opaque central government. The term is named after the Kremlin
, the seat of the Russian/Soviet government. Kremlinologist refers to academic, media, and commentary experts who specialize in the study of Kremlinology. Sovietology/Sovietologist describes specialists of the country as a whole. The term is sometimes sweepingly used to describe Western scholars who researched issues of, or specialized in, Russian/Soviet law, although the correct term is simply Russian law scholar. Sovietologists or Kremlinologists should also be distinguished from transitologists
, scholars who study legal, economic and social transitions from communism
to capitalism
.
During the Cold War
, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to "read between the lines" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square
, the choice of capital or small initial letters in phrases such as "First Secretary", the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper "Pravda
" and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics. In the German language, such attempts acquired the somewhat derisive name "Kreml-Astrologie" (Kremlin Astrology), hinting at the fact that its results were often vague and inconclusive, if not outright wrong.
The term "Kremlinology" is still in use in application to the study of decision-making processes in the politics of the Russian Federation
. In popular culture, the term is sometimes used to mean any attempt to understand a secretive organization or process, such as plans for upcoming products or events, by interpreting indirect clues. See also Alec Nove The Uses and Misuses of Kremlinology.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n) politics and policies based on efforts to understand the inner workings of an opaque central government. The term is named after the Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...
, the seat of the Russian/Soviet government. Kremlinologist refers to academic, media, and commentary experts who specialize in the study of Kremlinology. Sovietology/Sovietologist describes specialists of the country as a whole. The term is sometimes sweepingly used to describe Western scholars who researched issues of, or specialized in, Russian/Soviet law, although the correct term is simply Russian law scholar. Sovietologists or Kremlinologists should also be distinguished from transitologists
Transitology
In political science, international and comparative law and economics, transitology is the name for the study of the process of change from one political regime to another, mainly from authoritarian regimes to democratic ones....
, scholars who study legal, economic and social transitions from communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
to capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
.
During the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to "read between the lines" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square
Red Square
Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...
, the choice of capital or small initial letters in phrases such as "First Secretary", the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper "Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
" and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics. In the German language, such attempts acquired the somewhat derisive name "Kreml-Astrologie" (Kremlin Astrology), hinting at the fact that its results were often vague and inconclusive, if not outright wrong.
The term "Kremlinology" is still in use in application to the study of decision-making processes in the politics of the Russian Federation
Politics of Russia
The politics of Russia take place in a framework of a federal semi-presidential republic. According to the Constitution of Russia, the President of Russia is head of state, and of a multi-party system with executive power exercised by the government, headed by the Prime Minister, who is appointed...
. In popular culture, the term is sometimes used to mean any attempt to understand a secretive organization or process, such as plans for upcoming products or events, by interpreting indirect clues. See also Alec Nove The Uses and Misuses of Kremlinology.
Notable Kremlinologists and Sovietologists
- Anders ÅslundAnders ÅslundAnders Åslund is a Swedish economist with a particular interest in economic transition from centrally planned to market economies. Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Russia and Ukraine and from 2003 was director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie...
- Mark R. BeissingerMark R. BeissingerMark R. Beissinger is an American Sovietologist and author of the book Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State, which won the 2003 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs as awarded by the American Political Science...
- Zbigniew BrzezinskiZbigniew BrzezinskiZbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....
- Hélène Carrère d'EncausseHélène Carrère d'EncausseHélène Carrère d'Encausse is the permanent secretary of the Académie Française and a historian specializing in Russian history....
- Stephen Cohen
- Marshall GoldmanMarshall GoldmanMarshall Goldman is an expert on the economy of the former Soviet Union. Goldman is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and Associate Director of the Harvard Russian Research Center. Goldman received his Ph.D. in Russian studies from Harvard University in 1961.Goldman is well known for...
- Donald E. GravesDonald E. GravesDonald Edward Graves was a State Department analyst who specialized in studying the government of the USSR. As a Kremlinologist, Donald Graves tracked the personal history of individual Soviet officials. These files, profiled in the 1982 Washington Post story, "The Secret Files of Mr...
- William G. HylandWilliam G. HylandWilliam George Hyland was Deputy National Security Advisor to President of the United States Gerald Ford and editor of Foreign Affairs magazine.-Biography:...
- George KennanGeorge F. KennanGeorge Frost Kennan was an American adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War...
- Michael KortMichael KortMichael Kort is an American historian, academic, and author who studies and has written extensively about the history of the Soviet Union. He teaches at Boston University.-Biography:...
- William MandelWilliam MandelWilliam Marx "Bill" Mandel is an American broadcast journalist, left-wing political activist and author, best known as a Soviet affairs analyst.-Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee:...
- Jack F. Matlock, Jr.Jack F. Matlock, Jr.Jack Foust Matlock, Jr. is a former American ambassador, career Foreign Service Officer, a teacher, an historian, and a linguist. He was a specialist in Soviet affairs during some of the most tumultuous years of the Cold War, and served as U.S...
- Mark PalmerMark PalmerRobie Marcus Hooker Palmer is a former United States Ambassador to Hungary . He is a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Committee on the Present Danger, Vice Chairman of Freedom House and the Council for a Community of Democracies. He is also the co-founder of the National...
- Richard PipesRichard PipesRichard Edgar Pipes is an American academic who specializes in Russian history, particularly with respect to the Soviet Union...
- Condoleezza RiceCondoleezza RiceCondoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
- Mark SaroyanMark SaroyanMark Andrew Saroyan was a professor of Islamic and Soviet studies, focusing on religion and ethnicity in Central Asia and the Caucasus....
- Dimitri K. SimesDimitri K. SimesDimitri K. Simes is a foreign policy analyst and author who serves as president of The Center for the National Interest and publisher of the foreign policy journal The National Interest. In the 1970s, Simes was a noted Kremlinologist analyzing Soviet politics...
- Stephen SestanovichStephen SestanovichStephen Sestanovich is the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His areas of expertise include Russia and the former Soviet Union, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and U.S. foreign policy.-Biography:Stephen Sestanovich...
- Marshall D. ShulmanMarshall D. ShulmanMarshall Darrow Shulman, born in Jersey City, NJ, was a scholar of Soviet studies and the founding director of W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University.Mr...
- Llewellyn ThompsonLlewellyn ThompsonLlewellyn E. "Tommy" Thompson Jr. , was a United States diplomat. He served in Sri Lanka, Austria, and for a lengthy period in the Soviet Union where his tenure saw some of the most significant events of the Cold War....
, Robert Kennedy's Kremlinologist - Robert C. TuckerRobert C. TuckerRobert Charles Tucker was an American political scientist.Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he was a Sovietologist at Princeton University. He served as an attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow from 1944–1953. He received his PhD degree from Harvard University in 1958; his doctoral dissertation...
, biographer of Joseph StalinJoseph StalinJoseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and former head of PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
Russian Studies program. - Adam UlamAdam UlamAdam Bruno Ulam was a Polish and American historian and political scientist at Harvard University. Ulam was one of the world's foremost authorities on Russia and the Soviet Union, and author of twenty books and many articles.-Biography:...
(brother of Stanisław Ulam), head of the Russian Research Center at Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
for 16 years.
See also
- Soviet–United States relationsSoviet–United States relationsThe relations between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics succeed the relations between the Russian Empire and the United States and predate the post-Soviet Russo-United States relations . Full diplomatic relations between the two countries were established late due to...
- Russo–United States relations
- Team BTeam BTeam B was a competitive analysis exercise commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1970s to analyze threats the Soviet Union posed to the security of the United States. Team B, approved by then Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush, was composed of "outside experts" who...
- Predictions of Soviet collapsePredictions of Soviet collapseThere were people who predicted that the Soviet Union would eventually be dissolved before the process of dissolution began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989....
- China watcherChina watcherChina watcher, or, less frequently, Pekingologist, is a person who monitors current events and power struggles in People's Republic of China....
- Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian StudiesKennan Institute for Advanced Russian StudiesThe Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars was founded in 1974 to the carry out studies of the Soviet Union , subsequently of post-Soviet Russia and other post-Soviet states....
- SlavisticsSlavisticsSlavic studies or Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, Slavic languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was primarily a linguist or philologist who researches Slavistics, a Slavic or Slavonic scholar...
- Russian studiesRussian StudiesRussian studies is a field of study first developed during the Cold War. It is an interdisciplinary field crossing history and language studies. It is closely related to Soviet and Communist studies...
- List of Russian Legal Historians
- Russian legal history
- VaticanologistVaticanologistVaticanologist or Vaticanist is a term coined in the mid-to-late twentieth century to describe journalists, academics and commentators whose area of expertise is in studying and understanding the manner by which the Holy See and the Roman Catholic Church operates...
- Soviet and Communist studiesSoviet and Communist studiesSoviet and Communist studies is the field of historical studies of the Soviet Union and other Communist states, as well as of communist parties, such as the Communist Party USA, that existed or still exist in some form in many countries, inside or outside the former Soviet Bloc...
- Smolensk ArchiveSmolensk ArchiveThe Smolensk Archive is the name given to the archives of Smolensk Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which were captured intact by the army of Nazi Germany when it conquered the city of Smolensk in 1941...