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.
