Ilya Prizel – författare

Latin America through Soviet Eyes provides an original and comprehensive assessment of changing Soviet perceptions of politics in Latin America during the Brezhnev years. Dr Prizel surveys the views of Soviet academics and journalists as well as of politicians on three main areas. He explores the changing Soviet perceptions of Latin America's domestic politics including the Church, the military and national liberation movements; he examines the role of Latin America in global politics and the way in which the USA has influenced regional events, and he discusses the emerging Soviet-Latin American relationship. Case studies of Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina provide a framework for understanding changing Soviet perceptions in the context of the domestic dynamics of specific individual countries. This book is based on a wealth of Russian, Spanish and English language sources. Soviet academic journals, newspapers, communist party journals and the numerous books published by the Institute of Latin America of the Academy of Sciences in the USSR provide the Soviet view of Latin America and this is examined against a background of regional perceptions expressed in Spanish-American material.

Latin America through Soviet Eyes provides an original and comprehensive assessment of changing Soviet perceptions of politics in Latin America during the Brezhnev years. Dr Prizel surveys the views of Soviet academics and journalists as well as of politicians on three main areas. He explores the changing Soviet perceptions of Latin America's domestic politics including the Church, the military and national liberation movements; he examines the role of Latin America in global politics and the way in which the USA has influenced regional events, and he discusses the emerging Soviet-Latin American relationship. Case studies of Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina provide a framework for understanding changing Soviet perceptions in the context of the domestic dynamics of specific individual countries. This book is based on a wealth of Russian, Spanish and English language sources. Soviet academic journals, newspapers, communist party journals and the numerous books published by the Institute of Latin America of the Academy of Sciences in the USSR provide the Soviet view of Latin America and this is examined against a background of regional perceptions expressed in Spanish-American material.

This book is based on the premise that the foreign policy of any country is heavily influenced by a society's evolving notions of itself. Applying his analysis to Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, the author argues that national identity is an ever-changing concept, influenced by internal and external events, and by the manipulation of a polity's collective memory. The interaction of the narrative of a society and its foreign policy is therefore paramount. This is especially the case in East-Central Europe, where political institutions are weak, and social coherence remains subject to the vagaries of the concept of nationhood. Ilya Prizel's study will be of interest to students of nationalism, as well as of foreign policy and politics in East-Central Europe.