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This book investigates rapid societal change in Russia during the early 1990s. The story of the anthropologist (author) and the people he studied reveals cultural similarities and differences between them. Russians and Latvians taught the author about the Soviet Union, its people, and its cultures. Formal axiology provides a novel way to access their changing values.

This book investigates rapid societal change in Russia during the early 1990s. The story of the anthropologist (author) and the people he studied reveals cultural similarities and differences between them. Russians and Latvians taught the author about the Soviet Union, its people, and its cultures. Formal axiology provides a novel way to access their changing values.

Countless studies have assessed the dramatic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, but their analysis of the impact on European communism has focused overwhelmingly on the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations. This ambitious collection takes a much broader view, reconstructing and evaluating the historical trajectories of glasnost and perestroika on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Moving beyond domestic politics and foreign relations narrowly defined, the research gathered here constitutes a transnational survey of these reforms’ collective impact, showing how they were variably received and implemented, and how they shaped the prospects for “proletarian internationalism” in diverse political contexts.