Abstract: By 1991, the Soviet Union had ended after a death struggle that lasted several years. Profoundly changing societies and states, the way these transformations played out and their outcomes, depended overall on how one particular relation turned out: that between politics and economy, between democratic politics and the new capitalists. In this comparative, forthcoming, book, four case studies of former Soviet republics that went in different politico-economic directions after 1991 are in focus: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and on Ukraine. I re-visit the decades of late socialism after Stalin´s death in 1953 in order to produce an answer to why these states were differently prepared for pluralism, both economic and political. The analytical focus is more on state and social elites, than on mass movements, and more on continuity than on radical change and rupture.

Bio: Li Bennich-Björkman is Johan Skytte Professor in Eloquence and Political Science at Uppsala University. She is the author, editor and co-editor of numerous books in English or Swedish, numerous articles, book chapters and popular pieces. She has specialized in political and cultural trajectories in Eastern Europe, on the internal dynamics of dictatorship and democratization. Her most recent book is on Soviet nomenklatura and intelligentsia relations in the Baltic States and Ukraine, and how such governance affected the transition and the politics of independence.    

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