The Last Empire

The Last Empire PDF Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465097928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal) On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades -- with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world. As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. Bush, in fact, was firmly committed to supporting Gorbachev as he attempted to hold together the USSR in the face of growing independence movements in its republics. Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months, providing invaluable insight into the origins of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the outset of the most dangerous crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War. Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Choice Outstanding Academic Title BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year

The Last Empire

The Last Empire PDF Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465097928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 522

Get Book Here

Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal) On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades -- with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world. As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. Bush, in fact, was firmly committed to supporting Gorbachev as he attempted to hold together the USSR in the face of growing independence movements in its republics. Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months, providing invaluable insight into the origins of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the outset of the most dangerous crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War. Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Choice Outstanding Academic Title BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year

The Decline and Fall of Soviet Empire

The Decline and Fall of Soviet Empire PDF Author: Fred Coleman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312168162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Red Coleman, A Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, has spent over thirty years gathering observations and experiences to produce this in-depth, up-close, definitive examination of the fall of the Soviet Union and the people and events that contributed essentially to its demise. From the Kremlin Palace coup against Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the emergence of the Soviet dissident movement during Leonid Brezhnev's rule, to the rise and fall of Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin's troubled presidency through 1995, Coleman was the man on the scene for virtually every defining event of Russian history in the postwar era.

Lenin's Tomb

Lenin's Tomb PDF Author: David Remnick
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804173583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.

The Selling of the Soviet Empire

The Selling of the Soviet Empire PDF Author: Alfred Kokh
Publisher: SP Books
ISBN: 9781561719846
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Never before has there been an attempt to transform a massive state-owned economy into a dynamic free market system. The story of the conversion of the dinosaur Marxist Soviet state into the free-wheeling capitalist society of today's Russian Federation is one of the most compelling dramas in history. This tale includes violence, corruption, and a web of political conspiracy. It is a true-life economic-political thriller. Who are the new Russian financial magnates who are grabbing former state property? What were the terms for disposing of the state's immense wealth to private investors? What was the role of American financiers? These questions, and more, are answered here. In addition to what he saw with his own eyes (in the crucial period between 1992 and 1997), Kokh also paints vivid pictures of the influential decision-makers that he worked closely with, including Anatoly Chubais, the little known Kremlin kingpin who ran Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign and served as both Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. Kokh uses his expert knowledge of the Russian government to bring readers into the momentous meetings that changed the world, including his cogent analysis of events occurring in Russia at the present time.

The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy

The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy PDF Author: Matthew J. Ouimet
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807861359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Since the sudden collapse of the communist system in Eastern Europe in 1989, scholars have tried to explain why the Soviet Union stood by and watched as its empire crumbled. The recent release of extensive archival documentation in Moscow and the appearance of an increasing number of Soviet political memoirs now offer a greater perspective on this historic process and permit a much deeper look into its causes. The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy is a comprehensive study detailing the collapse of Soviet control in Eastern Europe between 1968 and 1989, focusing especially on the pivotal Solidarity uprisings in Poland. Based heavily on firsthand testimony and fresh archival findings, it constitutes a fundamental reassessment of Soviet foreign policy during this period. Perhaps most important, it offers a surprising account of how Soviet foreign policy initiatives in the late Brezhnev era defined the parameters of Mikhail Gorbachev's later position of laissez-faire toward Eastern Europe--a position that ultimately led to the downfall of socialist governments all over Europe.

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire PDF Author: Brian Crozier
Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
ISBN: 9780761525554
Category : Soviet Union
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Revealed along the way is the dark underside of a regime whose march toward supremacy resulted in the loss of tens of millions of lives."--Jacket.

Autopsy on an Empire

Autopsy on an Empire PDF Author: Jack F. Matlock
Publisher: Random House (NY)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 874

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Book Description
Matlock, who served in the USSR for most of his career, including as ambassador during the Reagan and Bush administrations, gives this insider's look at the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

Revolution 1989

Revolution 1989 PDF Author: Victor Sebestyen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780753827093
Category : Europe, Central
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Documents the collapse of the Soviet Union's European empire (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslvakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria) and the transition of each to independent states, drawing on interviews and newly uncovered archival material to offer insight into 1989's rapid changes and the USSR's minimal resistance.

After the Soviet Empire

After the Soviet Empire PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004291458
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
The break-up of the Soviet Union is a key event of the twentieth century. The 39th IIS congress in Yerevan 2009 focused on causes and consequences of this event and on shifts in the world order that followed in its wake. This volume is an effort to chart these developments in empirical and conceptual terms. It has a focus on the lands of the former Soviet Union but also explores pathways and contexts in the Second World at large. The Soviet Union was a full scale experiment in creating an alternative modernity. The implosion of this union gave rise to new states in search of national identity. At a time when some observers heralded the end of history, there was a rediscovery of historical legacies and a search for new paths of development across the former Second World. In some parts of this world long-repressed legacies were rediscovered. They were sometimes, as in the case of countries in East Central Europe, built around memories of parliamentary democracy and its replacement by authoritarian rule during the interwar period. Some legacies referred to efforts at establishing statehood in the wake of the First World War, others to national upheavals in the nineteenth century and earlier. In Central Asia and many parts of the Caucasus the cultural heritage of Islam in its different varieties gave rise to new markers of identity but also to violent contestations. In South Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have embarked upon distinctly different, but invariably contingent, paths of development. Analogously core components of the old union have gone through tumultuous, but until the last year and a half largely bloodless, transformations. The crystallization of divergent paths of development in the two largest republics of that union, i.e. Russia and Ukraine, has ushered in divergent national imaginations but also in series of bloody confrontations.

Down with Big Brother

Down with Big Brother PDF Author: Michael Dobbs
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408851024
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
The author of this volume was present during the final decade of the Soviet empire, first for Reuters, then for the "Washington Post". While Dobbs watched, playwrights and elctricians were transformed into presidents, while Communist Party leaders became jailbirds or newly-minted tycoons. He identifies the seeds of destruction, and shows how Mikhail Gorbachev, in particular, was the unwitting inspiration for the upheaval of the empire, while he thought he could save the Communist Party by reforming it.;Dobbs' conclusion is that though Big Brother may be dead, his dark legacy is still alive in the turbulence in Russia, Romania, Bosnia and other countries that once made up the most brutal empire of the 20th century.