Kremlinology is the study and analysis of Soviet (and today, Russian) politics and policies based on efforts to understand the inner workings of an opaque central government. The term is named after the Kremlin, the seat of the Russian/Soviet government. Kremlinologist refers to academic, media, and commentary experts who specialize in the study of Kremlinology. Sovietology/Sovietologist describes specialists of the country as a whole. The term is sometimes sweepingly used to describe Western scholars who researched issues of, or specialized in, Russian/Soviet law, although the correct term is simply Russian law scholar. Sovietologists or Kremlinologists should also be distinguished from transitologists, scholars who study legal, economic and social transitions from socialism to capitalism.

During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to "read between the lines" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square, and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics.

The term "Kremlinology" is still in use in application to the study of decision-making processes in the politics of the Russian Federation, and it has also been used in the context of other similarly closed regimes such as China and North Korea. In popular culture, the term is sometimes used to mean any attempt to understand a secretive organization or process, such as plans for upcoming products or events, by interpreting indirect clues^[1]. See also Alec Nove The Uses and Misuses of Kremlinology.

Vaticanologist is a related term coined in the mid-to-late twentieth century to describe journalists who specialize in studying the manner by which the Roman Catholic Church operates.

[edit] Notable Kremlinologists and Sovietologists

• Mark R. Beissinger
• Zbigniew Brzezinski
• Hélène Carrère d'Encausse (French)
• Stephen Cohen
• Marshall Goldman
• William G. Hyland
• George Kennan
• William Mandel
• Jack F. Matlock, Jr.
• Mark Palmer
• Richard Pipes
• Condoleezza Rice
• Mark Saroyan
• Dimitri K. Simes
• Stephen Sestanovich
• Marshall D. Shulman
• Llewellyn Thompson, Robert Kennedy's Kremlinologist
• Robert C. Tucker Biographer of Stalin and former head of Princeton Russian Studies program.
• Adam Ulam (brother of Stanislaw Ulam), head of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University for 16 years.

[edit] See also

Look up Kremlinology in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Soviet–United States relations
• Russo–United States relations
• Team B
• Predictions of Soviet collapse
• China watcher
• Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies
• Slavistics
• Russian studies
• List of Russian Legal Historians
• Russian legal history

[edit] References