Conclusion

Stephen Fortescue

pp. 205-214

in: Stephen Fortescue (ed), Russian politics from Lenin to Putin, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

In the Introduction to this volume I listed four things that T.H. Rigby knew about the Soviet Union which drove his theoretical ideas and empirical research: that legitimacy issues were important and particularly complex, that there had been great debate within the discipline of Soviet studies over the nature of political and social control, that the system was heavily bureaucratic in its structures and behaviours, and that despite that personalist politics and relationships played a major role.