Abstract
This book intends to show that the violent disintegration of the Soviet Union, characteristic for the South Caucasus region, cannot be fully explained by the ethnopolitical and national uprisings which were stimulated by the political changes of the Perestroika period. Instead, it argues that a rigorous analysis of the late 1980s/early 1990s violent transitions has to be linked with a longer-term perspective focusing on the functioning and development of the Soviet developmentalist state.
This perspective tends to view the Soviet system as an alternative to the Western capitalist system and aims at understanding the socio-economic processes which determined the dynamics of the system. In this sense, the analysis of the roots of the violent conflicts accompanying the collapse of the Soviet Union has to involve the socio-economic dynamics of the Soviet developmentalist state.
From thea theoretical perspective, the book critically assesses the approaches grounded in the modernization paradigm. The formulation of the alternative theoretical explanation draws on the rich tradition of historical sociology, studying large socio-economic transformations and rather ethnographic approaches analytically approximating the macro and micro levels.
Empirically, the volume argues that violent Georgian violent mobilization resulted from the processes that were determined by the functioning and decline of the Soviet developmentalist state. While accepting the dynamics of ethnopolitical mobilization, it seeks to answer the question which socio-economic processes breed these mobilizations.