Kremlinology is the study of Soviet politics and policies based on efforts to understand the inner workings of an extremely opaque central government, named after the Kremlin, the seat of the Soviet government. Kremlinologist refers to media, academic and commentary experts that specialized in the study of Kremlinology. Sovietology/Sovietologist describes specialists of the country more broadly.

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 May Day parades, 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.

Notable Kremlinologists

• Zbigniew Brzezinski
• William Hyland
• George Kennan
• Mark Palmer
• Richard Pipes
• Condoleezza Rice
• Llewellyn Thompson, Robert Kennedy's Kremlinologist
• Robert C. Tucker Biographer of Stalin and former head of Princeton Russian Studies program.
• Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, a French Kremlinologist
• Adam Ulam (Adam Bruno Ulam, brother of Stanislaw Ulam), head of the Russian Research Center at Stanford University for 16 years.

See also

• Team B
• Predictions of Soviet collapse

Political science | History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia | Sowietologia | kremlologi