The Structure of Strategic Revolution: Total War and the Roots of the Soviet Warfare State

by James J. Schneider

The national defense and security apparatus, internal and external, developed by the Soviet Union was unique in the history of the world. Soviet leaders created a warfare state that, taken in its totality, left no part of life in the Soviet Union untouched. Social, economic, artistic, industrial, politicalall aspects of Soviet society were affected.
Professor Schneider shows how the Soviet security apparatus evolved and how the warfare state was achieved by Stalin. He offers important new insights into the strategic revolution of the nineteenth century that resulted from the Industrial Revolution, providing the technological means and industrial capacity for nations to wage total war.
Ironically, the Soviet warfare state contained the seeds of its own destruction. Professor Schneider shows how the success of Stalin's "revolution from above," which resulted in the warfare state, created the conditions that ultimately made the historical achievement of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms possible.

384 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1994