Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power

Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power PDF Author: John Miller
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349224596
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
One of the first studies of the full career of M S Gorbachev as Soviet leader, this book traces his seven-year struggle to reform the Soviet system and his failure to preserve it. Mr Miller analyses characteristics of Gorbachev that puzzled the West - his reformist gradualism, his relationship to the Communist party, his attitudes to communism, revolution, democracy and nationalism - and explores their role in the collapse of Soviet power.

Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power

Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power PDF Author: John Miller
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349224596
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the first studies of the full career of M S Gorbachev as Soviet leader, this book traces his seven-year struggle to reform the Soviet system and his failure to preserve it. Mr Miller analyses characteristics of Gorbachev that puzzled the West - his reformist gradualism, his relationship to the Communist party, his attitudes to communism, revolution, democracy and nationalism - and explores their role in the collapse of Soviet power.

Reagan and Gorbachev

Reagan and Gorbachev PDF Author: Jack Matlock
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812974891
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
“[Matlock’s] account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service.”—The New York Times Book Review “Engrossing . . . authoritative . . . a detailed and reliable narrative that future historians will be able to draw on to illuminate one of the most dramatic periods in modern history.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In Reagan and Gorbachev, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and principal adviser to Ronald Reagan on Soviet and European affairs, gives an eyewitness account of how the Cold War ended. Working from his own papers, recent interviews with major figures, and unparalleled access to the best and latest sources, Matlock offers an insider’s perspective on a diplomatic campaign far more sophisticated than previously thought, waged by two leaders of surpassing vision. Matlock details how Reagan privately pursued improved U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations even while engaging in public saber rattling. When Gorbachev assumed leadership, however, Reagan and his advisers found a willing partner in peace. Matlock shows how both leaders took risks that yielded great rewards and offers unprecedented insight into the often cordial working relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev. Both epic and intimate, Reagan and Gorbachev will be the standard reference on the end of the Cold War, a work that is critical to our understanding of the present and the past.

Gorbachev: His Life and Times

Gorbachev: His Life and Times PDF Author: William Taubman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245683
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction The definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev. "Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world’s two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system’s gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America’s arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev’s unique character that, by Gorbachev’s own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.

Conversations with Gorbachev

Conversations with Gorbachev PDF Author: Mikhail Gorbachev
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231529279
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that “thinking out loud” process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to “save socialism” to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.

Bucharest Diary

Bucharest Diary PDF Author: Alfred H. Moses
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815732732
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
An insider's account of Romania's emergence from communism control In the 1970s American attorney Alfred H. Moses was approached on the streets of Bucharest by young Jews seeking help to emigrate to Israel. This became the author's mission until the communist regime fell in 1989. Before that Moses had met periodically with Romania's communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, to persuade him to allow increased Jewish emigration. This experience deepened Moses's interest in Romania—an interest that culminated in his serving as U.S. ambassador to the country from 1994 to 1997 during the Clinton administration. The ambassador's time of service in Romania came just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. During this period Romania faced economic paralysis and was still buried in the rubble of communism. Over the next three years Moses helped nurture Romania's nascent democratic institutions, promoted privatization of Romania's economy, and shepherded Romania on the path toward full integration with Western institutions. Through frequent press conferences, speeches, and writings in the Romanian and Western press and in his meetings with Romanian officials at the highest level, he stated in plain language the steps Romania needed to take before it could be accepted in the West as a free and democratic country. Bucharest Diary: An American Ambassador's Journey is filled with firsthand stories, including colorful anecdotes, of the diplomacy, both public and private, that helped Romania recover from four decades of communist rule and, eventually, become a member of both NATO and the European Union. Romania still struggles today with the consequences of its history, but it has reached many of its post-communist goals, which Ambassador Moses championed at a crucial time. This book will be of special interest to readers of history and public affairs—in particular those interested in Jewish life under communist rule in Eastern Europe and how the United States and its Western partners helped rebuild an important country devastated by communism.

Collapse

Collapse PDF Author: Vladislav M. Zubok
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300262442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.

Gorbachev

Gorbachev PDF Author: 50minutes,
Publisher: 50Minutes.com
ISBN: 2806289602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Keen to learn but short on time? Get to grips with the life of Mikhail Gorbachev in next to no time with this concise guide. Arriving at a pivotal moment for national and international politics, Gorbachev was one of the key drivers behind the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War. His career led him from humble origins in rural Russia to the highest position of power in the Soviet Union, and his actions as leader earned him a Nobel Peace Prize and the title of ‘Man of the Decade’ from Time magazine. In just 50 minutes you will: • Have a more thorough understanding of Gorbachev’s life and political career • Discover Gorbachev’s role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron Curtain • Analyse the way in which Gorbachev’s political ideology led to tensions between Communism and democracy in Russia ABOUT 50MINUTES.COM | History & Culture 50MINUTES.COM will enable you to quickly understand the main events, people, conflicts and discoveries from world history that have shaped the world we live in today. Our publications present the key information on a wide variety of topics in a quick and accessible way that is guaranteed to save you time on your journey of discovery.

The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy

The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy PDF Author: Chris Miller
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469630184
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
For half a century the Soviet economy was inefficient but stable. In the late 1980s, to the surprise of nearly everyone, it suddenly collapsed. Why did this happen? And what role did Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's economic reforms play in the country's dissolution? In this groundbreaking study, Chris Miller shows that Gorbachev and his allies tried to learn from the great success story of transitions from socialism to capitalism, Deng Xiaoping's China. Why, then, were efforts to revitalize Soviet socialism so much less successful than in China? Making use of never-before-studied documents from the Soviet politburo and other archives, Miller argues that the difference between the Soviet Union and China--and the ultimate cause of the Soviet collapse--was not economics but politics. The Soviet government was divided by bitter conflict, and Gorbachev, the ostensible Soviet autocrat, was unable to outmaneuver the interest groups that were threatened by his economic reforms. Miller's analysis settles long-standing debates about the politics and economics of perestroika, transforming our understanding of the causes of the Soviet Union's rapid demise.

Perestroika

Perestroika PDF Author: Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev
Publisher: Fontana Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Relates the Soviet changes in attitudes, ideas, and practices that he is implementing.

The Cold War: a Very Short Introduction

The Cold War: a Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Robert J. McMahon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198859546
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Vividly written and based on up-to-date scholarship, this title provides an interpretive overview of the international history of the Cold War.