Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000

by Stephen Kotkin

In 1991, the world looked in amazement at the collapse of the Soviet Union. But as Stephen Kotkin asserts in his concise, uncompromising history, this downfall was neither sudden nor unexpected but rather inevitable.
Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs of dozens of insiders and senior figures. He illuminates the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR, putting the collapse in the context of the
global economic changes from the 1970s to the present day, examining for example why the advent of Siberian oil had profound effects on the Soviet Union's raison d'etre . Kotkin also provides vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he paints a new
picture of Gorbachev's rise to General Secretary. Further, we see Gorbachev, the virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer, "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"--and more or less going along with it. Here, too, is Boris Yeltsin,
full of the theatrics and "ham-handed populism" that especially aggravated Gorbachev. Finally, Kotkin creates a compelling profile of the "stable mess" that is post-Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted--that the world's largest police state,
with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper.
At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self-interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution."

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction, Politics, Russian History, Soviet Union, European History

284 pages, Hardcover

First published November 29, 2001

About the author

Stephen Mark Kotkin is an American historian, academic, and author. He is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. For 33 years, Kotkin taught at Princeton University, where he attained the title of John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs, and he took emeritus status from Princeton University in 2022. He was the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the co-director of the certificate program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy. He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He is the husband of curator and art historian Soyoung Lee.
Kotkin's most prominent book project is his three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin, of which the first two volumes have been published as Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014) and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (2017), while the third volume remains to be published.

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great totalitarian communist empire with nuclear weapons, a large standing army, a space program, a manned satellite, secret police and complete control of the population simply dissolves from within. Unbelievable?
But it really happened to the USSR.



Why? How? and other important questions
The monumental second world collapse, in the face of a more powerful first world wielding the market and liberal institutions, was triggered not by military pressure but by Communist ideology. The KGB and to a lesser extent the CIA secretly reported that, beginning in the 1970s, the Soviet Union was overcome by malaise. But even though Soviet socialism had clearly lost the competition with the West, it was lethargically stable, and could have continued muddling on for quite some time. Or, it might have tried a Realpolitik retrenchment, cutting back on superpower ambitions, legalizing and then institutionalizing market economics to revive its fortunes, and holding tightly to central power by using political repression. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked on a quest to realize the dream of ‘socialism with a human face’.

Gorbachev's unplanned plan
That the man at the pinnacle of power in Moscow—a committed, true-believing Communist Party General Secretary—was engaged in a virtuoso, yet inadvertent liquidation of the Soviet system, made for high drama, which few appreciated for what it was. When crowds suddenly cracked the Berlin Wall in late 1989, and when Eastern Europe was allowed to break from the Soviet grip, dumbfounded analysts (myself included) began to wonder if the rest of the Kremlin’s empire, the Union republics, might also separate. That made the years 1990–1 a time of high drama, because, although it had been destabilized by romantic idealism, the Soviet system still commanded a larger and more powerful military and repressive apparatus than any state in history. It had more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy or blackmail the world, and a vast storehouse of chemical and biological weapons, with all requisite delivery systems. The Soviet Union also had more than five million soldiers, deployed from Budapest to Vladivostok, and hundreds of thousands more troops in KGB and interior ministry battalions. It experienced almost no major mutinies in any of these forces. And yet, they were never fully used—not to save a collapsing empire, nor even to wreak havoc out of spite.



What did the Army do?
Interior ministry police troops— about 350,000 strong—were becoming more dependent on local authorities for resources, but they were also undergoing deepened militarization at Moscow’s direction.

As for the army, republics were assuming greater responsibility for the draft and conscripts were increasingly serving on the territory of their home republic, but ‘somewhat surprisingly’, a top expert concluded, the Armed Forces ‘did not collapse overnight. The major command structures proved fairly resilient.’

Thankfully, however, reform socialism meant breaking with anything that resembled Stalinism or Brezhnevism, including domestic military crackdowns; even the men who belatedly attempted in August 1991 to salvage the Union chose not to mobilize more than a tiny fraction of their available might, which in any case they failed to use. In this light, perestroika should be judged a stunning success.



Although all the many steps to the change from the mighty USSR to the smaller modern Russia were reported it is Stephen Kotkin who drew them together for his detailed description of a quiet revolution.

Enjoy!

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the most bittersweet, most astonishing story in history, I think, so I’m compelled to read books about it, telling me the same story which I already know, again and again.

I don’t want to repeat the same things I said in my reviews of Revolution 1989 by Viktor Sebestyen or Down with Big Brother by Michael Dobbs. So I’ll be brief, as this excellent no nonsense book by Stephen Kotkin is.

Why do I think this is such a towering, Shakespearian tragedy? Well – it’s the almost completely peaceful (that’s the sweet part) decline, fall and death of the only serious alternative to capitalism (that’s the bitter part).

The USSR killed communism so very dead that any further alternative to capitalism might take another 500 years. And the guy who can most take the credit for this was a true believer in communism. For irony fans, this is a real treat.

By the 1980s Stalin had been dead for 30 years so he couldn’t be blamed any more. Thing was, the Soviet economy just didn’t work. And they had this horrible period where their leaders were walking corpses and kept dying. Brezhnev died in 1982, Andropov in died 1984 and Chernenko died in 1985. So they went for Gorbachev, who was 54, instead of another decrepit octogenarian.
Gorby was a true believer. He thought communism could be saved if only he could get it back on the right track.

Only a few of Gorbachev's politburo colleagues shared his socialist romanticism, but even fewer matched his craftiness.

He came up with glasnost (let’s be honest about the USSR) followed by perestroika (let’s reorganise the whole economy). But

Glasnost turned into a tsunami of unflattering comparisons

And perestroika reorganised communism into the grave.

Gorbachev served up the severed head of his superpower on a silver platter and still had to employ all his artifice to cajole two US administrations to the banquet.

SOVIET JOKE

There was a rather solemn joke told in the 1980s.

Lenin is on a train. The train grinds to a halt. Lenin jumps up and orders everyone out of the train, organising them into parties to try to push the train forward on the tracks.

Stalin is on a train. The train grinds to a halt. Stalin orders the train driver to be shot on the spot.

Brezhnev is on a train. The train grinds to a halt. Brezhnev pulls down the window shades and looks steadily at his companions and says “Gentlemen, let us assume the train is still in motion.”

SOVIET MAPS

How dishonest were the Soviets? In the 1980s:

Even geographical locations that could be indicated on Soviet maps were still being shown inaccurately, to foil foreign spies, as if satellite imaging had not been invented, while many cities were entirely missing

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL, PART 16

The USSR had more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy or blackmail the world, and a vast storehouse of chemical and biological weapons. The Soviet Union also had more than five million soldiers, deployed from Budapest to Vladivostok… It experienced almost no major mutinies in any of these forces. And yet they were never fully used – not to save a collapsing empire, nor even to wreak havoc out of spite.

A major riddle persists : why did the immense Soviet elite, armed to the teeth with loyal internal forces and weapons, fail to defend either socialism or the Union with all its might?

Yes, for once in human history the guns were not turned on the people. When a collection of drunken old farts tried to stage a coup to get rid of Gorby and reinstitute communism they made one tv announcement and the people saw what they were, which was drunken old farts, and ignored them, and they all slunk away. Followed quickly by the USSR, if a mighty empire can be said to slink away.

It's quite a complicated story and Prof Kotkin tells it very well.

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps not the most gripping narrative on the fall of the Soviet Union (the author is an academic), Kotkin's book nonetheless merits reading because it advances an important thesis about the causes of the collapse: the Soviet Union could probably have survived, albeit as an increasingly poor and dysfunctional nation (cf. North Korea), if Gorbachev had not fatally undermined it. The last General Secretary believed, as Kotkin notes - and as Gorbachev himself admitted at the time - in the dream of "socialism with a human face.” He undertook a fundamental remaking of the Soviet government, including the creation of a parliament with real power, in the name of this dream. When the various satellite states and soviet republics decided to use perestroika as a justification for leaving the Union, Gorbachev's own principles prevented him from sending in the tanks, and the hard-line communists who opposed him were all too old, marginalized, or alcoholic to overthrow him. The hyperinflation, widespread poverty, and outrageous corruption that beset Russia in the post-Soviet '90s represented, Kotkin further argues, a continuation of the institutional breakdown of the 1980s. Vladimir Putin was in a sense the first genuinely post-Soviet ruler of Russia, insofar as he ended the institutional dysfunction of the Russian parliament and began cracking the heads of the most egregiously corrupt oligarchs. ARMAGEDDON AVERTED was published in 2003 and it would be interesting to see an afterward on events since Putin's rise to power.

[Hadrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Virtually everyone seems to think that the Soviet Union was collapsing before 1985. They are wrong. Most people also think the Soviet collapse ended in 1991. Wrong again.

Just over thirty years ago today (December 26, 1991), the Soviet Union was no more. It was 74 years old. In this summary, Kotkin states that the causes of death were not just the results of increased military expenditure by the United States and the shortcomings of a centrally-planned economy - he says that the Soviet Union was "lethargically stable" as late as 1985 - but Gorbachev's attempts of reform, and consequently a system that was beyond reform.

Why reform? Why wasn't there an elite pushback until much later? The first two chapters describe this. The Soviet Union's ideals were borne out of a competition, or an experiment to provide a system that was in some way superior to capitalism - and if that was underachieved, then why bother? Kotkin provides a broad overview of 'why' here, but also including some of the grotesque details of ordinary life. The surge in oil prices of the 1970s, combined with the discovery of massive oil fields, provided an influx of foreign currency that kept the Soviet Union going for longer - but allowed structural reforms to be delayed or ignored - the strains of maintaining satellite states, or environmental degradation, a decaying healthcare system, and a lack of consumer goods built up further.

Enter Gorbachev. He was, to quote Milovan Djilas, a "true believer". He would not be satisfied with what was. Yet Kotkin also raises the point that the general public also believed, and that no one had any idea of what would transpire over the next twenty or thirty years.

The next two chapters concern the Soviet Union's move to a "halfway house". The vast state-owned complexes had autonomy in quantity production, but not in cost on prices setting. Quality of goods was still poor, owing to outdated equipment and the maintenance of factory complexes, lumber yards that should have been shuttered years ago, and then suddenly fell apart. Imagine a country where everywhere had the yawning economic collapse of Gary Indiana, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, or Springfield, Ohio in the 1990s and it did not ever end.

In Kotkin's telling, the risk of reform was that there was no safety net, no ideological cushion to break the fall. Khrushchev, in his experiments in the 1950s, could point to a return to "Leninism", where Gorbachev pointed to the entirety of the system itself. The empire crumpled in on itself by 1991, but the collapse continued for some years.

That's the business of Chapters 5 and 6. Boris Yeltsin was in charge of instituting a market economy, he did not understand nor could he control. The former Soviet elites began to loot state assets, most notably in the catastrophic "loans for shares" deal. Anatoly Chubais, Yeltsin's vice-premier, only acted to "rationalize" this systemic opportunism. The idea of legal guarantees private property backed by an honest civil service, bedrocks of small-l liberalism, were long gone, and might never have existed.

I keep heading back to Kotkin's account, as a nonspecialist, as it is a useful summary of the multiple factors leading to collapse. Now there is an embittered legacy, some disillusioned dreamers, and a propped up story from by right-wing authoritarians and their useful idiots.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

What it is: a synthesis of secondary literature and the author's reflections on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, beginning in the 1970s malaise through 2000.

What it argues: the Soviet Union died from the rise of a young generation, the Khrushchev generation, who attempted to apply reforms away from the Stalinist heavy-industry model. Because of WWII, there never really was a generation between the old Stalinist guard and the young generation (Gorbachev). The specific implosion of the Soviet Union (1991) was a mixture of the coup plotter's ineptness and Gorby's unwillingness to resort to military counter-measures. Although Kotkin describes the implosion of the USSR as a fleecing, democracy without liberalism, etc., he does note they had little other options and reminds us regularly that it could have been MUCH, MUCH worse. (Pointing to Yugoslavia.)

What I would have wanted to see: more detailed explanations of the comparison with Yugoslavia--more than a metaphor, but a real systematic comparison. More discussion of the position of USSR scientists, whom Kotkin says were just "too patriotic" to sell out military secrets. (Which may be true for some, but I want to see more than a statement proving that.)

What's good: the "rustbelt" imagery, which postions the USSR economy alongside a global challenge to meet the new computer industries; the language and style (fairly readable for a non-academic audience); the proliferation of points (Yeltsin ruled as a tsar and Russia became a series of fiefdoms under his administration.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kotkin treats the fall of the Soviet Union as a genuine civilizational collapse, perhaps more akin to the fall of the Roman empire than a typical modern revolution leading merely from one form of government to another. Kotkin thinks this collapse explains why the aftermath of the Cold War was so unsatisfying for all parties involved, and why Russia itself unraveled so definitively after 1991.

There are many sketches and anecdotes here, but the most interesting portrait by far is of Mikhail Gorbachev. While often portrayed as a steady reformer committed to a gradual transition to democracy and capitalism, Kotkin shows him to be the last of the true believers in socialism. Gorbachev did roundly repudiated Stalin and Brezhnev, but only to harken back to idealized images Lenin and Khrushchev and their putatively kinder brand of socialism. He believed right up to the end that glasnost was only reviving the older tradition of democratic soviets and that socialism's economy could be reformed through increased decentralization and task force studies of efficiency. (There were actually no real market reforms under Gorbachev, just a movement to give old functionaries some control over their factories and operations. His attempts to roll back military production actually cost the state money since this was its biggest export.) The spiraling consequences of his reforms came as a continual surprise to him and his allies. For instance, Gorbachev's late severing of the union of party and state had the unforeseen consequence of allowing the other Socialist republics that made up the USSR to drift off, since without the unifying party there was almost no constitutional basis for unity. Gorbachev himself dreaded the end of his empire, but his reluctance to use violence (perhaps due to his early exposure to Prague in the aftermath of the 1968 summer) meant he couldn't stomach sending in the troops to hold it all together.

Surprisingly, even while republics were breaking away and people were rioting in the streets to overthrow the system, he and his chief ideologue Alexander Yakovlev continued to believe that the main danger to his reforms came from "conservative" (read, traditional communist) reactionaries. He orchestrated an elaborate campaign against Yegor Ligachev, his former protege, to staunch this movement, even as his government was falling apart from "liberal" attacks from the outside.

In the end, Gorbachev proved a master strategist at implementing his reforms but woefully short-sighting about their effect. The result was something neither he nor anyone in his coterie would have wanted. The Russian people then suffered from both the lingering effects of communism and the disorganized way in which it unraveled. It still has not recovered.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an interesting book written shortly after Putin came to power, which attempts to show that the collapse of the USSR was caused by a number of factors - endemic to the system, that would have inevitably caused it collapse. The author claims that Khrushchev and Gorbachev similarly tried to reform the system - both were idealists of sorts. The truth, according to the author, is that it was only by abandoning the system could the system be reformed. The humanism and idealism of the Revolution could only be actualized by the dismantling of the system of centralism, which was based on an authoritarian political system, that was very democratically limited. The strictly top-down system could never be humanist, even if there was guaranteed employment, cheap housing, and so forth, because there were no structures protecting the individual, such as a strong independent and fair judiciary, or a free press.

The author repeats a couple of times that the West was lucky that no-one in the chaotic post Soviet days decided to use force to try to avert the collapse - given the USSR's nuclear arms/rockets/etc, the result could have been a global catastrophe.

Quotes from the book:
"...reform was collapse, and ...the collapse would not be overcome for quite some time..." "...less promising people...fought violently over the massive spoils of Communist-era offices, state dachas, apartment complexes, and vacation resorts." "...the sudden onset, and ...inescapable prolongation, of the death agony of an entire world comprising non-market economics and anti-liberal institutions." "...why did the ...Soviet elite...fail to defend either socialism or the Union with all its might?" "...how and why the Soviet elite destroyed its own system..." "...in October 1973, the Arabs and Israelis ...went to war for the fourth time." "...wen Egypt agreed to a ceasefire in late October, the coordinated cutbacks in oil output too, on a life of their own." "Oil prices rocketed up 400 per cent in 1973..." "Between 1973 and 1975, US GDP dropped 6 per cent, while unemployment doubled to 9 per cent." "The US's entire industrial heartland of the eight Great Lake states --Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, as well as Pennsylvania-- was devastated." "...the end not of industry per se, but a wrenching changeover to what was called flexible manufacturing." "...stagflation--high unemployment (stagnation) plus inflation--confounded America's leading economists, and Watergate paralyzed and disgraced Washington." "The USSR had risen to become the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas..." "In the 1990s...the oil (and gas) money would go into private offshore bank accounts and hideaways on the Spanish and French Rivieras." "If socialism was not superior to capitalism, its existence could not be justified." "Economic growth in the US...hit a phenomenal 52.8 per cent in the 1960s; ... median family income rose 39.7 per cent over the decade." "Already in the early 1950s, and especially after ...Khrushchev had denounced Stalin in 1956 and Poland an Hungary had erupted in revolt, Eastern Europe weighed down the Soviet leadership." "Relative to the West, the planned economy performed inadequately, but it employed nearly every person of working age, and the Soviet standard of living, though disappointing, was tolerable for most people (given what they did not know owing to censorship and travel restrictions)." "...many party officials nonetheless retained considerable faith in the possibilities of socialism and the party itself." "No other industrial country has ever experienced the devastation that befell the USSR in victory. The Nazi onslaught of 1941-5...leveled more than 1,700 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages, and obliterated about one-third of the USSR's wealth. Soviet military deaths numbered at least seven million..." "Soviet civilian deaths probably numbered between seventeen and twenty million, making its combined human losses near twenty-seven million. Almost an equal number of people were left homeless. Another two million perished from famine between 1946 and 1948." "...the war broke the regime-imposed isolation. Millions of Red Army soldiers advanced beyond Soviet borders, and most were stunned by what they saw." "This substantial population with first-hand experience of the outside world frightened the Soviet leadership." "Even returning POWs and slave laborers...were made to pass through special screening; many disappeared in the ...Gulag." "Few inhabitants inside the Soviet Union learned of the revolts in the Gulag or of the forest-dwelling anti-Soviet partisans." "...the party's grand historical teleology had to be abandoned. As the predicted date of 1980 for the transition to Communism passed, ideologues replaced Khrushchev's Utopian promise with the here and now of 'developed' socialism." "National themes did become ...more prevalent in the non-Russian republics, paralleling the 'national Communism' of Eastern Europe, but nationalism was nowhere allowed to displace the official socialist ideology..." "Russia's ...revolution, having originated in a ...quest for egalitarianism, produced an insulated privileged class increasingly preoccupied with the spoils of office for themselves and their children. The existence of a vast and self-indulgent elite was the greatest contradiction in the post-war Soviet Union, and the most volatile." "...the reformist generation dilemma: how to bridge the gap between socialism's ideals and its disappointing realities, within the context of the superpower competition." "...the Soviet steel industry...produced 160 million tons annually, far more than any other country." "...the economy's most advanced sectors (defense), whose exports might have paid for purchasing consumer goods, were targeted for drastic downsizing." "Compared with their parents and grandparents, the Soviet population was better fed, better clothed, and better educated. Comparisons, however, were were made not with the Soviet past...but with the richest nations in the world, and both the leadership and population expressed increasing impatience." "Widespread fictitious economic accounting was foiling planners to the point where the KGB employed its own spy satellites to ascertain the size of the Uzbek cotton harvest, but the spy agency itself suffered from internal falsifications." "All previous life was revealed as a lie." "...the same process that had targeted Stalin began de-sanctifying Lenin, meaning the Soviet system in toto." "Most people under the age of 30 -- one quarter of the Soviet population--were simply not interested in reforming socialism." "...most party officials, even those who had reformist inclinations, did not know how to address a public reconfigured as voters." "...with the party's central control mechanism [Secretariat] shattered and its ideology discredited, and the tentacles of the planned economy disrupted, Gorbachev discovered that the Supreme Soviets of the republics began to act in accordance with what he had unintentionally made them: namely, parliaments of de facto Independent states." "...although the gargantuan KGB collected voluminous information, glasnost removed people's fears and neutralized its capacity to intimidate." "In 1980-1, during Solidarity, the Soviet politburo pressured the Polish leadership to crack down, but internally Moscow recognized that its ability to implement the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine--the use of force to maintain loyal socialist regimes in Eastern Europe--was exhausted." "For four years, [Gorbachev] ...strut the world stage like a grand statesman transforming the international system, imagining his country would soon be accepted as part of the West." "...Gorbachev had never planned to 'lose' the [Warsaw] bloc. Overtaken by events, he began pressing for guarantees that NATO would not absorb East Germany or expand eastwards. But, in May 1990 US President George Bush pressed the issue of German unification within NATO." "...the Soviet leader's aides pitched the 'sacrifice' of Eastern Europe as essential for improving relations with the West, which they argued was itself an imperative, since the USSR could no longer afford the superpower competition." "Running in the Moscow district, Yeltsin won election to the 1989 Congress in a 90 per cent landslide." "The KGB conducted an international smear campaign against [Yeltsin] ... and tapped his telephones..." "...in March 1991... With an 80 per cent turnout, tree-quarters of the electorate supported a 'renewed Union.'" "...the Union's demise was 'national in form, opportunist in content'..." "...the central elite, rather than the independence movements of the periphery ...cashiered the Union." "About 90 per cent voted in favor [of independence for Ukraine in a referendum on 1 December 1991]; there were large pro-independence majorities in the ethnically Russian provinces of Eastern Ukraine." "...even ideologue[s]...got swept up in the pursuit of property. The KGB and the army began wheeling and dealing commodities... The Central Committee, still railing against the market, also established private businesses. ...officials signed over to themselves deeds for state dachas, vehicles, anything under their watch, at bargain prices, if they paid at all." "As... a rapid turn to the market became official policy in Russia, the seizure of the state-owned wealth of the USSR evolved into frenzy. Most ...peole had anticipated the onset of American-style affluence, combined with European-style social welfare. After all, these were the rosy images of the outside world, transmitted by glasnost, which had helped destroy what was left of their allegiance to socialism. But instead, the peole got an economic involution and mass impoverishment combined with a headlong expansion of precisely what had helped bring down the Soviet Union--the squalid appropriation of state functions and state property by Soviet-era elites." "Nothing revealed the bankruptcy of the late Soviet Union more than the bankruptcy of post-Soviet Russia." "...critics bitter about the fall of the Union accused Washington of a ...'global plot' ... to strangle Russian industry." "Inflation declined from 2,250 per cent in 1992, to 840 per cent in 1993, to 224 per cent in 1994, and by September 1996 to an annualized rate near zero..." "Russia's...transition...was a chaotic, insider, mass plundering of the Soviet era..." "...Russian officials used their positions of public power to pursue their private interests." "...vastly greater sums of capital fled Russia than the IMF ever loaned to it. Most large-scale exporters violated Russia's currency repatriation laws, but more nimble ones took advantage of the tax treaty that the Soviet Union had signed with Cyprus--... as a means tor the KGB to channel clandestine funds--which no one had repealed." "...the gas monopoly...was granted tax exemptions worth $4 billion in 1993 alone. Staggering fortunes were amassed, beginning at the top and extending down intricate 'loot chains' to the lowliest beneficiaries." "The lawlessness throughout officialdom was paralleled by an increase in lawlessness on the streets." "...criminal groups...working for the state engaged in the greatest extortion." "...this was 'pre-corrupt', a condition whereby everyone to varying degrees was a violator, but only the weak were targeted."
"'Loans for shares', a poorly disguised, cynical ploy to create a top business elite loyal to the Yeltsin regime (facing re-election), discredited privatization even among many of its defenders." "...thousands of Soviet-era firms were looted independently of their ownership status or the privatization process. Privatization did little to enable rank-and-file shareholders to defend their paper property rights." "Russian GDP, in a mere half-decade did shrink a eye-popping 50 per cent, according to official measurements." "...the Soviet legacy worked as a hindrance to full marketization, and as a safeguard against utter catastrophe. Soviet-era industry still dominated Russian employment, but major shifts occurred. For one thing, two-thirds of GDP was now in private hands." "...Russia's banking system functioned not to make household savings available for productive investment but, periodically to wipe savings out, and, with a big invisible hand from Western banks, to facilitate extensive money laundering and capital flight. Perhaps $150 billion of domestic capital fled Russia during the 1990s, an amount close to four times the IMF loans extended as 'aid.'" "...all post-Communist countries, whether subjected to state-led gradualism or elements of shock therapy, saw GDP fall off a cliff." "Democracy came to Russia atop the debris of the Soviet Union's expressly anti-liberal state, the institutional twin of the industrial planned economy." "Democratically elected office-holders, in multiparty systems, often behave like dictators unless they are constrained by a liberal order, meaning the rule of law." "The Soviet Union was governed by men, not laws. That was the very reason the Soviet executive power had an extremely difficult time governing itself." "...individuals elected or appointed to positions of state authority pursued private gain...the commitment to the public good that had existed in the Soviet Union--for health care, education, children's summer camps--eroded...demoralizing rather than empowering society." "...one could trace a movement over the years 1989-94 of officials from high Communist Party posts first to elected regional soviets, then to the new regional executive bodies, which appropriated the local Soviet-era Communist party headquarters sporting the best offices and communication equipment." "For the post-Soviet KGB, which still occupied the same armada of buildings in historic central Moscow, there were no more ideological nonconformists to persecute." "Anti-terrorist (and terrorist) operations claimed substantial man hours, but so did clandestine surveillance on the state elite, and the compilation of damaging dossiers on businessmen and politicians for cash." "...the Presidential Security Service (PSS) ...established a private firm, which specialized in the blackmail of the president's enemies and the assistance of court favorites." "Russia's entire economy ($350 billion) was valued at little more than total US health are fraud." "Its elites were under constant, illegal surveillance..." "...even Russia's best newspapers and TV stations yielded their integrity for cash and political expediency..." "...the October revolution was accompanied b deeply felt ideals, which endured all the nightmares, and ... a quest to recapture those ideals would not only arise from within the system, but, given the above-mentioned institutional arrangements [such as the Communist Party being indispensable to the integrity of the Union] destroy it." "...in 1967...[Gorbachev and his Czech friend Zdenek Mlynar] ...talked of a renewed socialism devoid of Stalinist 'distortions', the enchanted fable for the educated, Marxist idealists of their cohort." "...Gorbachev and his Establishment quest for humane socialism ...emerged from the soul of the Soviet system." "...the institutional dynamic that tied the fate of the Union to the fate of socialism--the party's simultaneous redundancy and indispensability to the federal Soviet state." "'Blame' for Russia's 'failure' was craftily shifted to the International Monetary Fund (whose organizational chart had the US Treasury Secretary at the top)." "Life expectancy at birth was in decline (essentially since the 1970s), and the population was shrinking." "In 1983, one perceptive scholar, surveying the hollowing of Communist ideology, predicted that Russian nationalism 'could become the ruling ideology of state'."

[Dmitry · Rating 4 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Книга поделена на две части или затрагивает две большие темы: последние годы существования СССР, в частности причины его распада и произошедшие перемены в России после окончания «советского эксперимента».

Переход России к рынку не шел и не мог идти по плану. Характерной его чертой стало хаотичное, повальное разграбление теми, кто оказался поближе к кормушке, всего оставшегося от советской эпохи. Корни этого процесса уходили в период до 1991-го, а ветви тянулись далеко в будущее.
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Также во Франции отсутствовала кодифицированная в российской Конституции практика, согласно которой главы силовых министерств (МВД, Министерства обороны и ФСБ), а также министр иностранных дел подчинялись не премьеру, а непосредственно президенту — как в советские времена они подчинялись генсеку, а до революции — царю.
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Ни одна страна, которой нефть приносила более трети экспортных доходов, так и не смогла совершить прочного перехода к настоящей демократии. Россия в основном стала тем, чем и должна была стать, — и будет оставаться такой вплоть до тех пор, пока альтернативные формы энергии не заменят в глобальном масштабе нефть и газ.

Автор отмечает, что многие, если не все проблемы связанные с неудачами в реформах 90-ых в новой России были вызваны советским наследием, однако никто это советское наследие и не пытался при Ельцине полностью уничтожить.

Советская система служила мощным щитом, ограждавшим страну от диктата мировой экономики. Но такая изоляция не могла продолжаться вечно, и когда она закончилась, ее последствия оказались особенно разрушительными. При этом, поскольку в основе коммунистического режима лежала государственная монополия на собственность, СССР принципиально отличался даже от авторитарных разновидностей исторического либерализма тем, что в стране просто не существовало ни законов, ни традиции правового обеспечения законных сделок между действующими в собственных интересах частными лицами. Конечно, в советском государстве было огромное количество законов, обширная система судов и юристов, которые помимо прочего предлагали защиту частным лицам, пострадавшим от действий властей. Однако бесчисленное множество распоряжений исполнительной власти, многие из которых были секретными, утверждали главенство административной нормы над законом, и исполнительная власть, подобно тому как она доминировала над властью законодательной, имела на руках все козыри, чтобы побить и любое судебное решение. Советским Союзом правили люди, а не законы.

Однако книга не о Ельцине и его псевдодемократических реформах (хотя этому тоже уделяется в книге много внимания), а о Горбачёве и о том, почему же казавшийся монолитом Советской Союз рухнул, при том, что репрессии в стране были крайне эффективными (оппозиции не существовало, а влияние диссидентов на общество было минимальным). Если коротко, то нежелание Горбачёва проливать кровь, нежелание проводить массовые репрессии, а также желание реформировать страну, и стали теми основными причинами, почему СССР распался. Горбачёв вовсе не желал распада СССР, а ровно наоборот, он хотел и дальше править, но править дальше как раньше становилось всё сложнее и сложнее именно по экономическим причинам. Как мне кажется, неудачи в экономике могли поспособствовать тому, что некоторые члены политбюро или некоторые представители элиты решились бы на государственный переворот и чтобы избежать этого Горбачёв и затеял ту политическую трансформацию, из-за которой власть КПСС, власть генерального секретаря ослабла, но усилилась власть региональных правительств и региональных глав.

Усиление Советов сопровождалось дальнейшим закулисным ослаблением власти партийного аппарата. Прекрасно помня, что именно партийные верхи ополчились против предыдущего реформатора, Хрущева, вынудив его «уйти на пенсию» в октябре 1964-го, и, очевидно, не вполне удовлетворенный исходом «дела Нины Андреевой», Горбачев вторгся в сферу влияния Лигачева. В сентябре 1988-го, перед началом кампании по выборам Съезда народных депутатов, он начал «реорганизацию» Секретариата ЦК. Ссылаясь на необходимость улучшить его работу, Горбачев создал целый ряд отдельных партийных комиссий, каждая из которых возглавлялась членом Политбюро. Неожиданно ушли в прошлое коллективные заседания Секретариата и отправляемый им контроль за деятельностью партийных комитетов по всей стране (будь то для воздействия на ход выборов или для организации заговора против генерального секретаря). Так, по-прежнему держась за свою ленинистскую веру в потенциал партийных масс, Горбачев сознательно лишил аппарат его могущества, а всего через 15 месяцев после этого вынужден был (в декабре 1990­го) формально отменить монополию КПСС на власть.

Нерешительность в вопросах репрессий, это наверно ключевой фактор в событиях того периода. Если подумать, то до Горбачёва все правители Советского Союза спокойно шли на этот шаг, начиная с кровавого палача Ленина и Сталина и заканчивая Хрущёвым и Брежневым, один из которых подавил танками народные восстания в Чехословакии, а другой расстрелял мирную демонстрацию в Новочеркасске (Новочеркасский расстрел). Горбачев, похоже, не был готов к таким решительным шагам, и если это моё предположение верно, то тогда он единственный из советской системы кто не был готов применить такие меры. Интересно, что уже через несколько десятков лет и уже в новой России появится человек, который с лёгкостью отправит танки, самолёты и даже ракеты на подавления другой Пражской весны, только теперь её можно будет обозначить как Украинская весна. Путин действует точно так же как действовали Хрущёв, Брежнев и Сталин – нисколько не считаясь с людскими жизнями ради достижения своих политических целей. Что это? Советское влияние или обычная человеческая жестокость, которая присуща всем людям?

Но даже несмотря на все эти факторы, распад Союза не был неизбежным. В Индии в 1980-1990-х годах во имя сохранения целостности государства от рук центральных властей погибли многие т��сячи сепаратистов, но на демократическую репутацию страны это почти — или совсем — не повлияло. Индийское правительство постоянно и недвусмысленно давало понять, что некую черту нельзя переступать, и без колебаний использовало силу против тех сепаратистских движений, которые игнорировали эти сигналы. Советское руководство при Горбачеве не только не смогло провести такую черту, но и само непреднамеренно способствовало распространению национализма. Нерешительное и ничего не решающее пролитие крови в Грузии в 1989 году и в Литве в начале 1991-го стало прекрасным оружием в руках сепаратистов, помогая им привлекать на свою сторону тех, кто все еще сомневался, и при этом ставило Москву в положение обороняющейся стороны, деморализуя КГБ и армию.

Интересно, что автор упоминает Китай и его трансформацию из маоистского Китая в современный Китай, который мы наблюдаем сегодня. В контексте сегодняшнего дня меня привлекли такие строки, которые могут стать ключевыми, если российский авторитаризм закончится на Украине, т.е. путинская авантюра приведёт к перевороту внутри страны. Просто как сказано в одной книге, авторитарные режимы сегодня очень устойчивы, но ровно до той поры пока они не начинают внешние военные интервенции, чем и является сегодня путинское СВО. В этом смысле пример Китая может быть очень поучительным (для авторитарных лидеров).

Китайское руководство, проявив большую дальновидность, обозначило соответствующий 20S компромисс словами «учиться жить с гегемоном». Сохранив свою империю, поглотив Тибет и другие территории во Внутренней Азии и продолжая занимать непоколебимую позицию по поводу «возвращения Тайваня», Китай при этом следовал тому, что он сам называл «добрососедской политикой». Это означало, что Пекин воздерживается от вмешательства во внутренние дела соседей и предстает в их глазах как заслуживающий всяческого уважения двигатель региональной экономики.

Не правда ли, эти слова в книге 2001 года звучат очень актуально, чрезвычайно актуально для сегодняшнего дня и для сегодняшней России? Интересно так же, что если понять название книги «Предотвращенный Армагеддон» как то, что Горбачёв своим нежеланием идти по кровавому пути всех предыдущих правителей СССР и всех будущих правителей новой России, тем самым предотвратил югославский сценарий распада Советского Союза, который в этом случаи мог бы всё равно случится, но с большим, намного большим количеством жертв как это и произошло в Югославии. В этом смысле сегодня мы можем стать (а можем и не стать) свидетелями другого Армагеддона, который, в отличие от советского Армагеддона, может произойти именно потому, что Путин выбрал дорогу советских вождей, при этом, не имея тех ресурсов, что были у них. Произойдёт ли российский Армагеддон в таком случаи, покажет только время.


The book is divided into two parts and covers two major topics: the final years of the USSR, in particular, the reasons for its collapse, and the changes that took place in Russia after the end of the “Soviet experiment.”

(all quotations have been translated from Russian)

Russia's transition to a market economy did not go according to plan, nor could it have done so. It was characterized by the chaotic, widespread plundering of everything left over from the Soviet era by those who found themselves closest to the trough. The roots of this process went back to the period before 1991, and its branches stretched far into the future.
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France also lacked the practice codified in the Russian Constitution, according to which the heads of the security ministries (the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, and the FSB), as well as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, reported not to the prime minister, but directly to the president — just as in Soviet times they reported to the general secretary, and before the revolution — to the tsar.
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No country that derived more than a third of its export revenues from oil has ever managed to make a lasting transition to true democracy. Russia has largely become what it was meant to be, and will remain so until alternative forms of energy replace oil and gas on a global scale.

The author notes that many, if not all, of the problems associated with the failures of the 1990s reforms in the new Russia were caused by the Soviet legacy, but no one under Yeltsin attempted to completely destroy this Soviet legacy.

The Soviet system served as a powerful shield, protecting the country from the dictates of the global economy. But such isolation could not last forever, and when it ended, the consequences were particularly devastating. At the same time, since the communist regime was based on a state monopoly on property, the USSR differed fundamentally even from authoritarian varieties of historical liberalism in that the country simply had no laws or traditions of legal protection for legitimate transactions between private individuals acting in their own interests. Of course, the Soviet state had a huge number of laws and an extensive system of courts and lawyers who, among other things, offered protection to individuals who had suffered from the actions of the authorities. However, countless executive orders, many of which were secret, asserted the supremacy of administrative norms over the law, and the executive branch, just as it dominated the legislative branch, had all the trump cards in its hands to defeat any court decision. The Soviet Union was ruled by people, not laws.

However, the book is not about Yeltsin and his pseudo-democratic reforms (although this is also given a lot of attention in the book), but about Gorbachev and why the seemingly monolithic Soviet Union collapsed, despite the fact that repression in the country was extremely effective (there was no opposition, and dissidents had minimal influence on society). In short, Gorbachev's unwillingness to shed blood, his unwillingness to carry out mass repression, and his desire to reform the country were the main reasons why the USSR collapsed. Gorbachev did not want the USSR to collapse at all; on the contrary, he wanted to continue ruling, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so for economic reasons. It seems to me that economic failures could have contributed to some members of the Politburo or some representatives of the elite deciding to stage a coup d'état, and to avoid this, Gorbachev initiated the political transformation that weakened the power of the CPSU and the general secretary, but strengthened the power of regional governments and regional leaders.

The strengthening of the Soviets was accompanied by a further behind-the-scenes weakening of the party apparatus's power. Well aware that it was the party leadership that had turned against the previous reformer, Khrushchev, forcing him to “retire” in October 1964, and obviously not entirely satisfied with the outcome of the “Nina Andreyeva case,” Gorbachev encroached on Ligachev's sphere of influence. In September 1988, before the start of the campaign for the election of the Congress of People's Deputies, he began “reorganizing” the Secretariat of the Central Committee. Citing the need to improve its work, Gorbachev created a number of separate party commissions, each headed by a member of the Politburo. Suddenly, the collective meetings of the Secretariat and its control over the activities of party committees throughout the country (whether to influence the course of elections or to organize a conspiracy against the general secretary) became a thing of the past. Thus, still clinging to his Leninist belief in the potential of the party masses, Gorbachev deliberately stripped the apparatus of its power, and just 15 months later (in December 1990) was forced to formally abolish the CPSU's monopoly on power.

Indecisiveness in matters of repression was probably the key factor in the events of that period. If you think about it, before Gorbachev, all the rulers of the Soviet Union calmly took this step, starting with the bloody executioners Lenin and Stalin and ending with Khrushchev and Brezhnev, one of whom suppressed popular uprisings in Czechoslovakia with tanks, and the other shot a peaceful demonstration in Novocherkassk (the Novocherkassk massacre). Gorbachev, it seems, was not ready for such decisive steps, and if my assumption is correct, then he was the only one in the Soviet system who was not prepared to take such measures. It is interesting that in a few decades, in a new Russia, a man will appear who will easily send tanks, aircraft, and even missiles to suppress another Prague Spring, only now it will be called the Ukrainian Spring. Putin acts in exactly the same way as Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Stalin did—without any regard for human lives in order to achieve his political goals. What is this? Soviet influence or ordinary human cruelty, which is inherent in all people?

But even with all these factors, the breakup of the Union wasn't inevitable. In India in the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of separatists died at the hands of the central government in the name of keeping the country together, but this had little or no impact on the country's democratic reputation. The Indian government consistently and unequivocally made it clear that certain lines could not be crossed, and did not hesitate to use force against those separatist movements that ignored these signals. The Soviet leadership under Gorbachev not only failed to draw such a line but also inadvertently contributed to the spread of nationalism. The indecisive and inconclusive bloodshed in Georgia in 1989 and in Lithuania in early 1991 became a powerful weapon in the hands of the separatists, helping them to win over those who were still undecided, while putting Moscow on the defensive and demoralizing the KGB and the army.

It is interesting that the author mentions China and its transformation from Maoist China to the modern China we see today. In today's context, I was caught by these lines, which could be key if Russian authoritarianism comes to an end in Ukraine, meaning if Putin's adventure leads to a coup inside the country. As stated in one book, authoritarian regimes today are very stable, but only until they begin external military interventions, which is what Putin's SVO (SMO) is today. In this sense, the example of China can be very instructive (for authoritarian leaders).

The Chinese leadership, showing great foresight, described the corresponding 20S compromise as “learning to live with the hegemon.” Having preserved its empire, absorbed Tibet and other territories in Inner Asia, and continuing to take an uncompromising stance on the “return of Taiwan,” China followed what it called a “good-neighbor policy.” This meant that Beijing refrained from interfering in the internal affairs of its neighbors and presented itself to them as a highly respectable engine of the regional economy.

Isn't it true that these words in the 2001 book sound very relevant, extremely relevant to today and to today's Russia? It is also interesting that if we understand the title of the book, “Armageddon Averted,” as meaning that Gorbachev, by his unwillingness to follow the bloody path of all previous rulers of the USSR and all future rulers of the new Russia, thereby prevented the Yugoslavian scenario of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which in this case could still have happened, but with a much, much greater number of victims, as happened in Yugoslavia. In this sense, today we may (or may not) witness another Armageddon, which, unlike the Soviet Armageddon, may occur precisely because Putin has chosen the path of the Soviet leaders, without having the resources that they had. Only time will tell whether a Russian Armageddon will occur in this case.

[Steven Z. · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a reasonably compact review of Russian history encompassing the last three decades of the twentieth century, Princeton University historian and fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Stephen Kotkin’s book ARMAGEDDON AVERTED, THE SOVIET COLLAPSE 1970-2000 should be considered. Published in 2008 it foresaw some of the problems we are experiencing today with Russia and looking back fourteen years later Kotkin would not be shocked by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Kotkin has written two volumes of his biographical trilogy of Joseph Stalin; STALIN: PARADOXES OF POWER, 1878-1928 and STALIN: WAITING FOR HITLER, 1929-1941, one of which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Kotkin is an exceptional historian blessed with a pleasing writing style and the ability to synthesize vast amounts of historical information and documentation that the general reader along with professional colleagues can admire and enjoy. With the war raging in Ukraine, Kotkin provides insights into Putin’s thought process and the impact of the 1970-2000 period on the Russian autocrat that explains a great deal of his actions.

A key theme in Kotkin’s monograph is his stated purpose in authoring the book; try and explain why the Soviet elite destroyed its own system with an absence of an all-consuming conflagration. Pursuing historical hindsight Kotkin points to the importance of the 1973 Arab oil embargo as a watershed event that helped nudge the Soviet system toward economic failure. According to Kotkin the 1973-4 embargo led to the economic collapse of Soviet industry in the late 1970s. For Moscow, the discovery of oil in western Siberia in the 1960s coincided in the 1973 rise in oil prices brought about by the embargo which saved the Soviet economy from disaster. From 1973-1985 oil was responsible for 80% of Soviet hard currency, much of which went for weapons procurement to equalize its relationship to the United States. Further, Russia needed the excess wealth to pay for the war in Afghanistan; assist Eastern European satellites by offsetting energy costs; and importing the necessary technology, pay elites among other expenses. It appeared that Russia was in a period of prosperity, but Kotkin is correct in that it postponed the inevitable collapse of the Soviet system as its industrial infrastructure continued to deteriorate.

Kotkin’s concise and analytical narrative raises many interesting points among them that the Soviet Union tried to clone satellite regimes after World War II. The problem was that Moscow presented itself as a role model at a time of the post-war capitalist boom in the west. The discrepancies between the two systems were clear and Eastern Europe became a thorn in the side of the Soviets as 1953, 1956, 1968, and 1980 invasions and pressure can attest to. Eastern Europe went from a supposed Soviet strength to a vulnerability as more and more western consumer goods and loans were used to mollify populations. Further aggravating Moscow was the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese economic expansion and the cost in playing a leading role in the Third World.

It is obvious that Soviet infrastructure was on the decline throughout the 1970s and it could not compete with western capitalism, but what pushed the Soviet system over the edge was the generational leadership shift of the 1980s as the gerontocracy of Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko passed on to be replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev and his ill-fated perestroika. The rot within the Soviet leadership is undeniable and the new Soviet leader sought to save the system from itself as Kotkin argues, “what proved to be the [Communist] Party’s final mobilization, perestroika, was driven not by cold calculation about achieving an orderly retrenchment, but by the pursuit of a romantic dream,” which Gorbachev referred to as “humane socialism.”

Kotkin raises an important question. Why did Gorbachev’s reform agenda fail so miserably? The author points to a number of reasons that make a great deal of sense. First, Gorbachev’s economic agenda went halfway toward achieving a market transformation, something that was doomed from the start. Second, oil prices declined drastically in 1986 which devastated hard currency earnings curtailing the import of consumer goods and reducing the standard of living for Soviet citizens. Third, by pursuing a halfway approach toward a market economy it fell even further behind the west. Fourth, the disaster at Chernobyl showed the west that Gorbachev was no different than his predecessors, being ensconced in secrecy. Fifth, with Glasnost the public was now aware of secrets buried for decades; murder, the gulag, elite corruption etc. Sixth, 25% of the population was under 25 years of age and were not interested in reforming socialism - Glasnost afforded unprecedented access to “commercial culture and values of capitalism.” Seventh, party officials had no idea how to address a public reconfigured as voters or how to deal with shortages of goods, pollution, deteriorating assembly lines etc. Somehow the Communist Party was supposed to be both the instrument and the object of perestroika. Eighth, later Gorbachev admitted he failed to create a program for the transformation of a unitary state into a federal state and crippled the centralized party machine. Lastly, Russia’s 15 Union republics had clearly defined state borders and their own state institutions and they began to act as independent states which they eventually became.

To Gorbachev’s credit he kept the Soviet military out of the loop when it came to events in Eastern Europe and let events evolve. Since the Soviet Union could no longer compete with the west he let the satellite states move on as they and most republics declared their independence.

Kotkin provides an in-depth analysis of the August 1991 putsch and the role of conservative elements, the military, and of course Boris Yeltsin. What he describes has been repeated by many scholars, but what stands out is his analogy of the putsch, its leadership, and its result to George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM. His presentation is priceless! The result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union did not bring on the onset of American type affluence combined with European style social welfare but a chaotic system by which inflation wiped out the pensions and savings of the Russian people and the squalid appropriation of state functions, property, and wealth by Soviet era elites. In addition to Yeltsin’s cronies and KGB types particularly from Vladimir Putin’s St. Petersburg colleagues and organized crime raping the wealth both monetary and physical from the Russian people.

The 1990s was a disaster and Kotkin fills in the gaps as to what occurred. He carefully explores the machinations of officials, bankers, factory management, political elites, and others who accumulated enormous wealth during the decade. These groups developed numerous schemes from privatizations, auctions, loans for shares, bankruptcy procedures for cut rate hostile takeovers of profitable assets, money laundering, capital flight to offshore accounts leaving nothing for investment as they absconded with the wealth of their country. The bottom line for Kotkin was “How was the incoherent Russian state going to solve the country’s problems when the state was the main problem?”

The main criticisms of Kotkin’s work comes from historian Orlando Figes who writes in the January 20, 2002 ,New York Times Book Review; “This relates to a broader criticism of Kotkin's work. ''Averting Armageddon'' plays down the importance of two vital factors in the Soviet collapse. One is the role of ideology -- or more specifically the way in which it lost all meaning to the apparatchiks who deserted Gorbachev in 1989-91. Gorbachev was the last of the believers in the Communist ideal -- but his party comrades, for the most part, had long ceased to believe. Their ideology had become little more than an empty slogan, a means of entry to the special shops reserved for the Soviet elite. This fact is essential if we are to understand why so few Communists were prepared to fight for the Soviet regime. The August putsch of 1991 was doomed from the start by the inertia of the middle and the upper ranks of the party. The plotters' leader, poor old Gennadi I. Yanayev, was aware of this when, his hands in an alcoholic tremble, he read out to the world's press a declaration of emergency.

The other factor is human agency -- or more specifically Gorbachev. He may have started out as a Communist reformer, but there must have been a moment (for he tells us there was one) when he realized the need to dismantle the regime without a violent backlash from the hard-liners. His political maneuverings were intended to avoid a civil war or a crackdown against Eastern Europe that might have led to a disastrous loss of life. He was a sort of political Columbus -- setting out with high ideals to find one thing and achieving something better by discarding them. He is a hero of our times.”*

Despite these criticisms Kotkin has written a concise, readable and informative book striking a pleasing balance between tedious detail and sweeping generalizations. He offers a practical, accessible, and informative account of the Soviet Union’s collapse and insights into the impact of Russian history and allows for greater understanding of ongoing events in the Ukraine.

*Orlando Figes. “Who Lost the Soviet Union?” New York Times, January 20, 2002. Figes latest book THE STORY OF RUSSIA was published a few weeks ago.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I have a renewed interest for Russian affairs, I've decided to read Princeton's professor Kotkin's account of the end of the Soviet regime.

Needless to say, his pedagogical approach of the subject is everywhere in the book. I understood and learned more about Russian politics and history than with any other book I read before.

Kotkin's prose is half geopolitical analysis and half historical assessment. Using lots of different sources from common people's letters to official State documents:

"A teenager warned "not to let our young people go to capitalist countries." Why? "I had the chance to go to the United States on an exchange basis. I used to be a true patriot of our country and I turned into something really horrible. I think I have my own opinions. It's a nightmare (...) I sympathize with Gorbachev but deep in my heart I am no longer a Soviet citizen and I don't care what's going on in the USSR and I don't believe in anything in this country"

The author often uses comparative politics and relevant data to articulate his analysis:

"No country where oil accounts for one-third or more of export revenues had ever made an enduring shift to genuine democracy."

"China offered an important counterpoint. Many people regretted that Gorbachev had not followed the Chinese model of reforms. Under Deng, the Chinese leadership bolstered the party's monopoly by allowing market behavior flourish, while maintaining political controls with repression. But China did not have to overcome the wreckage of the world's largest ever assemblage of obsolete equipment. Heavy industry in China was in deplorable shape, yet the population was 80 percent peasant. Also, China's economic boom was made possible by massive direct investments, some $300 billion in the 1990s, mostly from overseas Chinese; Russia had no Hong Kong or Taiwan. Finally, the ambiguous results in China - the widespread unpaid debts, the unsecured property rights, the official malfeasance - were not necessarily different from those in Russia."

Great read!

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable account that is focused almost entirely on Russia (I had hoped for more on the other republics). Kotkin is perhaps too keen to avoid the idiocies of right (THE EVIL EMPIRE CAN NEVER REFORM AND MUST BE DESTROYED!!!!) and left (AMERICAN ECONOMISTS LED DIRECTLY TO RUSSIAN OLIGARCHY!!!!), and so ends up with the strange position that whenever the USSR ended, it had to lead to massive theft and suffering. You can't blame anyone--not evil Russkies, not evil neoliberals--for what happened. Now, okay, I don't want to blame Milton Friedman for the state of Russia today, but I'm also pretty sure that things could have gone differently.

Speaking of Putin, the epilogue is deeply depressing reading, all about how Putin and Medvedev could make everything better, and how magnanimous of was of Putin to give up the presidency. Perhaps time for a new epilogue, or just time to re-issue the book without any epilogue whatsoever.

[Des · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book offers a unique and insightful perspective on the collapse of the Soviet Union, a topic that historians and political scientists have extensively studied and debated. Stephen Kotkin argues that the Soviet collapse was not a result of the Gorbachev reforms of perestroika and glasnost, as many had previously believed, but rather stemmed from the contradictions and limitations of Communist ideology.
However, while the book presents an intriguing argument, it is not without its flaws. It can be jargon-heavy and sometimes the arguments can be convoluted. This can make the book difficult to follow for those who are not already familiar with the history and politics of the Soviet Union.
Despite this, Kotkin's writing style is engaging and he does an excellent job of bringing to life the everyday hopes and secret political intrigues that affected millions of people before and after 1991. His deep understanding of post-Stalin Soviet society and institutions allows him to convey the high drama of a superpower falling apart while armed to the teeth with millions of loyal troops and tens of thousands of weapons of mass destruction.
Overall, “Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000” is a valuable contribution to the study of the Soviet collapse, and will be of interest to anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of this pivotal moment in world history. While the book's intriguing arguments and engaging writing style make it a valuable contribution to the study of the Soviet collapse, readers should be aware that the book's generalised descriptions and complex arguments may present a challenge for those who are not already well-versed in the history and politics of the Soviet Union.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent enough, I suppose, if you know nothing on the subject, but overall not a very satisfying work. Kotkin passes over with a limpid head-toss much of the criticism of the international economic institutions and US "financial aid" to Russia during the 1990s in favor of an approach which highlights (rightly) the institutional sickness and malaise of the late-Soviet system. This was unnecessary for his analysis which could have neatly combined both. Has some good economic insights onto the Soviet/post-Soviet industrial plant, etc. Kind of smarmy.

[Anatoly Bezrukov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Хороший и (что нечасто встречается в подобном нонфикшене) краткий обзор распада СССР, его причин, хода и последствий.
По мнению Коткина, именно Горбачев в первую очередь является непосредственным виновником: он хотел следовать своим романтическим представлениям о "социализме с человеческим лицом", но не рассчитал, что предпринимаемые меры попросту подрывают сам фундамент государства (на партийном контроле и партийной дисциплине держалось всё здание, и как только была введена гласность и упразднена однопартийная система - это самое здание рухнуло в одночасье).
Также Коткин полагает, что с распадом СССР на самом деле история не закончилась - этот распад продолжался вплоть до начала 2000-х (повествование заканчивается периодом начала президентского срока Медведева). По сути, радикального слома не произошло, поскольку подавляющее большинство партийных функционеров и руководителей предприятий остались на своих местах.
Не все выводы кажутся бесспорными, особенно с позиций сегодняшнего дня, но чтение, безусловно, познавательное и интересное. Хорошо идёт в комплекте с книгами Юрчака, Гайдара, Иноземцева, Дубнова и Плохия.

[Will E Hazell · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent dive into the Soviet collapse.

What I liked:

- Kotkin begins the narrative of decline in the Brezhnev era. This is often overlooked by many observers, who instead consider it to be the high watermark of Soviet society. But rather, this is the point where the depth of the systems inefficiencies and the weight of its contradictions become unsustainable, and reform inevitable.

- It looks beyond the scapegoats of the botched economic/political reform and provides a compelling picture of Gorbachev’s real ambitions.

- It doesn’t dwell on the mythologised origins of collapse (i.e. Reagan) and weights appropriately the genuine causes.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the title suggests, what Kotkin is interested in with this book is the question of “why, when the Communism was in collapse, did not the USSR begin World War Three to defend it?” His answer will surprise some: he says that Communism was still quite sustainable at the end of the 1980s, with no need for sweeping reform, but chose to commit suicide for largely ideological reasons. The real reasons for Perestroika and Glasnost were not economic necessity or because of large-scale popular resistance, but simply that the “true believers” in the system wanted to restore “the promise of the Revolution and the spirit of October” to a society that had lost any sense of hope. Gorbachev, committed to a “humane socialism,” then failed to use military force to re-establish power when it was clear that such a thing was not possible. This largely removes the US and Western powers from the equation, and thus will not be popular with some, but his argument remains worth considering.

Kotkin is a trained historian with a background in Eastern Europe, but this book is written in a breezy, accessible style that makes it readily understandable by popular readers. Professional historians may be a bit less impressed with his use of sources and methodology. Fifteen years later, Russianists will be especially conscious of his predictions vis-à-vis the Putin regime and the future of “democratic” Russia. In his preface, Kotkin argues that “the best way to understand Russian politics was mostly to ignore the grand ‘reform’ programmes…and instead closely to track prime real estate,” an observation that seems to have chilling relevance to the US in this era during the rise of a new elite represented by Donald Trump.

[Ardent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Začnem od konca.
Knižka končí zoznamom odporúčanej literatúry, čo je celkom štandardné.
Čo štandardné nie je, je to, že tento zoznam obsahuje knižky s alternatívnymi a odporujúcimi pohľadmi na tematiku, bez toho že by boli označené za chybné alebo nesprávne. Bravo Kotkin.

A teraz k samotnej knižke:
Názov knihy je zavádzajúci. Vyhnutie sa armageddonu pri páde sovietskeho zväzu kniha popisuje úplne okrajovo a prakticky ho nevysvetľuje. Strhnime teda pánovi profesorovi jednu hviezdičku. Ale to tiež bude posledná.

História, geopolitika a podobná háveď ma zaujíma a o rozpade sovietskeho zväzu som čo-to vedel, chýbal mi však komplexnejší pohľad na jednotlivé udalosti, ich pôvod a následky. Kotkin má podľa mňa čisto subjektívne Rusov rád ako národ, ale neberie si ani na sovietsky, ani na postsovietsky režim rukavičky. Nemá problém vyzdvihnúť čo a ako urobil Gorbačov, Jeľcin, ale tiež neskôr Putin a aké to malo následky.
Či to bolo správne, alebo nesprávne, zlé alebo dobré nech si čitateľ rozhodne sám.

Po prečítaní knihy som si nie istý, že rozumiem viac rozpadu ZSSR, skôr by som povedal že mu rozumiem menej, ale zato lepšie.
Stále sa zdá niečím s vysokou pravdepodobnosťou v danom období, jeho priebeh sa však naopak stáva skoro neuveriteľným, podobne ako návrat Putinovho Ruska medzi hráčov s ktorými treba počítať v posledných 10-15 rokoch.

Pevne dúfam, že profesor Kotkin popri svojej sérii o Stalinovi nájde čas na pokračovanie, ktoré popíše udalosti po roku 2008. Toto už síce robí v diskusiách, ale kniha je kniha.

Na 220 stranách a 35 stranách poznámok sa kniha dosť dobre číta a v konečnom dôsledku som asi rád že nemá rádovo 1000 strán ako prvý diel Stalina...

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it largely disappointing. The title is misleading, it fails to explain why the collapse of the Soviet Union would have led to armageddon, or how or why it was averted. It is a good overview of the period with a strong bias. No credit is given given to the democrats for bringing about change and the path to disunion should have been obvious to all as it was simply inevitable. I just took away another star thinking about it.

[Pinko Palest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sovietology for the 21st century. While making some valid and intriguing oints here and there, for most of the book the author gives vent to his dislike of socialism. Not just soviet socialism, mind, but any form of socialism. Plus, he can't hide his intense dislike of Russia. I would have given it just the one star, but it's rather well-written so it gets two stars from me

[Thomas Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000, Stephen Kotkin, 2001, 245 pages, ISBN 0192802453, Dewey 947.085

The collapse of the USSR continued through the 1990s, millions of officials looting state assets. But with no nukes used, nor any reign of terror.

A perceptive, insightful book. Yet:

The author writes as if the USSR's problems were all internal. Ignoring the massive U.S. effort to make sure no leftist government could succeed, anywhere in the world. The Truman administration told the U.S. public that Soviet military power was a threat to the U.S. That was a lie. The truth was, Soviet /political/ power was a threat to the U.S. corporate elite's control of the world's wealth and resources. /The Myth of American Idealism/, Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, p. 26. More from Noam Chomsky: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

Nor was all the looting by Russians. Western billionaires and corporations rushed to claim spoils.

The USSR lost more than 20 million lives to defeat Nazism. It was the Soviet example that inspired, or frightened, the West to expand job programs, unemployment benefits, pensions, medical subsidies, home mortgages, and public school lunches. U.S. cold-war hotheads not only opposed social welfare, but, under the cover of national security, damaged the ultimate weapon of U.S. strength: open, accountable, democratic government. p. 173.

Officials always stole from the USSR. p. 113. --Hedrick Smith, /The Russians/, 1976.

The vast, self-indulgent elite was the greatest contradiction in the post-WWII USSR. p. 48.

Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, 1986. Russia and other post-Soviet states continue operating identical reactors, as of 2001. photo 6a, before p. 75.

People's incomes, pensions, and savings were wiped out by hyperinflation. Ceasing to hand out free credit, Russia's inflation rate declined: p. 124
1992 2,250%
1993 840%
1994 224%
1996.09 near 0.

Capitalism without regulation or with chaotic, manipulated government, is not pretty. p. 129. Markets presuppose a competent, honest bureaucracy, and the rule of law. The USSR was governed by men, not laws. p. 142-144.

Russia was no longer a dictatorship, as of 2001. It was largely ungoverned, despite large numbers of government officials. p. 170.

Soviet-era hospitals and schools were decaying or closing. Power grids were ageing and not being replaced. One-seventh of Russia's people were affected by alcoholism. p. 187.

As of 2001, Russia had mastered attributes of the United States: p. 8

gross income disparities
contempt for the public interest
mass corporate tax evasion
pervasive recourse to political power in the marketplace
hyper-commercialized media
money-besotted elections
demagogy

The U.S. bears a titanic national security establishment not demobilized after the cold war, a combustible mix of arrogance and paranoia in response to perceived challenges to its global pretensions, perversely disparaging the government institutions that provide its strength. p. 196.

I think the author is wrong that "Russia's best hope is to join the euro." p. 194. Spain, Portugal, and Greece suffered mass unemployment resulting from submitting to monetary union without political union.

[Sud666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a book to explain the current Russian imbroglio, then this is not the book for you. It is a very focused look at the collapse of the Soviet Union between the years 1970-2000. However, reading this book will give you an insight into the mindset that plagues the Russian people and the Russian government with Putin at its apex.

Dr. Kotkin is a superb historian of Russia, especially the Communist era. In this excellent book he traces the dissolution of the Soviets through the vehicle of Gorbachev. While Gorbachev was a true believer and did not want the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his actions destabilized an already dangerously creaky governmental system and an already flaccid economy.

This book shines in explaining the ins and outs of the political and economic machinations that occurred to topple the Communist dictatorships that plagued humanity in the Eastern European nations and Russia itself. Kotkin shows how the political moves and the economic realities of the 70s and 80s led to Gorbachev's reforms and how those reforms led to the destruction of the Communists.

Yet the book also points out one of the terrible mistakes (though it could be argued it was an impossibility due to military considerations) perpetrated by Western Society was in not having War Crimes trials against the Communist Party, as well as Crimes against humanity. Only by putting these monsters to death or life in prison (a' la Nuremberg trials for the Nazis) and shaming this nefarious ideology could Russia (and many foolish peoples around the world who embraced this murderous ideology and failed economic system) have freed itself from the shackles of the Communist mind virus. Hence, while the Soviet system went away, the party members, the Army, the KGB, and all of the criminal government were still there with a name change. Putin, himself, is former KGB. It is this stupidity that puts us in the situation we are in today.

A fascinating book and one well worth reading. It's a great look, in detail, at the Soviet collapse.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kotkin argues the USSR was dismantled by communist idealists. He highlights the problems of using the party to reform itself.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel "mixed feelings" might be the largest understatement for my opinions on this book.

First off, I strongly dislike the author, Stephen Kotkin, as a conservative historian who recently has been hellbent on describing Russians as helpless, authoritarian-seeking people. Through a podcast conducted by a conservative think tank called the Hoover Institution, Kotkin laid out one of the most hackneyed and eye-rolling arguments on a "new Cold War," and he uses phrases like "cancel culture" to describe treaties being canceled by Russia. Great. With this being said, my expectations for this book was essentially at zero.

Despite all this, the book is honestly not an entirely bad read, and I think Kotkin does a good job framing the Soviet collapse into a larger picture. Starting from the origins of collapse, he looks at stagnation and the dynamics between socialism and capitalism, framed in the context of the 1970s oil crises and beyond. He notes Gorbachev's failures to reform and how those failures are inherently connected to his admiration of Leninism. He discusses how the post-Soviet landscape inherited the Soviet legacy, a fact that both showed deep problems in the new Russia and showcased why many Soviet leaders simply shrugged off the Soviet downfall. Bureaucrats and leaders alike simply refilled in a void left by the Soviet Union and controlled the economy, leaving little to have to be changed. For an American audience, Kotkin does a good job framing the Soviet economy as a giant "Rust Belt." His writing really makes me wonder, as someone living in the American Rust Belt, if industrial collapse here was a good thing in the long run, at least for middle-class America. Overall, an interesting interpretation.

Where the book can lose me is the upholding of liberal capitalism from an entirely first (and to an extent second) world perspective. Sure, capitalism looked more enticing after the postwar boom, yet this was simply capitalism with a human face. This ties back to the "Rust Belt" analogy as a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" predicatment. If you're the USSR, trying to keep jobs in industry through the planned economy only hurted you because of no diversification in an ailing economy. If you're the United States, the economy changes from an industrialized economy to a vast field of jobs where people answer emails and talk in meetings, pushing manufacturing out of the country and putting the industrial burden on the Third World. To me, Kotkin kind of understands this, particularly in Gorbachev's willingness to succumb to the West's offers like a baby enticed by keys jingling in their face. Yet, at the end of the day, classical liberalism is not a perspective to Kotkin, but a truth. This politicization is fine, but when capitalism being this great system is central to your argument, reading the book in a post-2008 recession and COVID recession context makes the book's praising of the market in America and elsewhere feel quaint. Granted, Kotkin upholds government intervention, but then implies in chapter seven the problems of Americans who challenge liberal institutions, as if the United States Constitution is some perfect document (it isn't) and the government's systems are too prefectly running to be criticized (they're not).

Long review, but I needed to type this to get out my conflicting feelings for a book that, for the most part, kept my attention (Language choice was a bit off to me. General audience? UNdergrad students? Who uses "willy-nilly" and "assiduously" in the same chapter?). In other words, I made it through the book just fine. Three stars for that.

[Dr. Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and in-depth analysis of the events leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the decline and fall of the Communist utopian dream. Kotkin's writing is refreshingly light and easy to comprehend, uncluttered by the tedium which so often haunts the pages of historically erudite political reviews.

Kotkin traverses the historical entity which was the USSR, from its initial formation well into it's post socialist period. He captures well the essence of the idealism as well as the rabid greed that has always been a fundamental aspect of the Russian political ethos.

Interesting aspects were the comparative revolutions of China and the former Soviet Union and why one was more successful than the other. The reasoning why there actually was no Armageddon finally, and the differences between political idealism and economic realism and the effects of "reform Socialism."

This is a fascinating book, which even for a novice will prove informative and enlightening.

[Andrew Tollemache · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really fascinating exploration of why the USSR imploded with such little mayhem than it had the potential to unleash. When compared to the brutal conflict that arose when Yugoslavia dissolved, the collapse of the Soviet Empire was rather mild. Sure civil wars broke out in a number of places and economic ruin ensued, but the Soviet state had the military means and where with all to have created cataclysmic strife when Gorbachev's attempts at reform went off the rails.
Kotkin makes a revisionist take that the implosion of the old USSR in the early 90s was not so much because the West messed up, but that the seeds of Soviet ruin were sewn into its very structure. The looting of the 90s was brewing for decades by party elites, but when the Communist party ceased to be able to enforce discipline it just became everything goes.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very perceptive short summary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The author has quite an insightful analysis of the subject. However, the book lacks concrete examples, personalities and incidents, so that the subject remains curiously abstract.

He attributes of the collapse, in part, to the ideological optimism of the actors about the possibility of a humanistic socialism.

Hubristic world powers, present company included, had best take warning

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of the economic discussions went over my head but I found the personalities and politics - and the minimal role of the USA in actually bringing about the collapse of the USSR contrary to popular American mythology - positively fascinating.

[Bhautik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thrilling story of idealism and the tragic quest of making a just and free society.
There are many lessons to be taken from the fall of Soviet Union, especially the current political climate, in which we are now facing very similar problems of the post-WW2 world.

This book goes by very fast, and I will have to listen to it again. But I am going to put some quotes here for my reflections.

"Liberalism is more fundamental to successful state building than democracy. Democratically elected office-holders, in multiparty systems, often behave like dictators unless they are constrained by a liberal order, meaning the rule of law"

"liberalism entails not freedom from government but constant, rigorous officiating of the private sphere and of the very public authority responsible for regulation. In short, liberalism means not just representative government but effective government"

"Civil society and a liberal state were not opposites but aspects of the same phenomenon. That government was not the enemy of liberty but its sine qua non. That private property without good government was not worth what it otherwise would have been. In short, that good government was the most precious thing a people could have"

"Remember the mesmerizing maps of Eurasia covered with miniature tanks, missile launchers, and troops representing the Soviet military that appeared on American television for Congressional debates over Pentagon appropriations? This hyper-militarized USSR, during the troubles of perestroika, did not even attempt to stage a cynical foreign war to rally support for the regime. Remember the uproar over Saddam Hussein’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait—right amid the Soviet drama—and his alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction? Iraq’s capabilities were trivial next to the Soviet Union’s. Remember the decades of cold-war warnings, right through the 1980s,about the danger of a preemptive Soviet first strike? Even if Soviet leaders had calculated that they were doomed,they could have wreaked terrifying havoc out of spite, or engaged in blackmail. Remember the celebrated treatise equating the Soviet and Nazi regimes? The Nazi regime, which never acquired atomic weapons, held on to the last drop of blood. Remember the wrath that Franklin Roosevelt incurred for ‘handing over’ Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta? Roosevelt had not a single soldier on the ground. Gorbachev had 500,000 troops in Eastern Europe, including 200,000 in Germany after the unification. The Warsaw Pact command and control structure remained operational right through the end of 1991"

"How much worse it all might have turned out, if a strong leader and faction of the Moscow elite had shown ruthless determination to uphold the empire, or, even after the situation had ceased to be salvageable, had indulged in malice or lunacy. Much had changed in the world since the 1940s, but the bloodbath of Yugoslavia’s demise in the 1990s certainly gives pause. Historically,such a profoundly submissive capitulation, as took place in the Soviet case, was a rarity"

" Long-distance trains and urban mass-transit systems still functioned, but Soviet-era hospitals and schools were decaying or closing, while power grids were ageing and not being replaced. In more remote areas,Soviet-built airports were overgrown with weeds and riv-er boats rusted along once popular routes to dilapidated summer camps...Life expectancy at birth was in decline (essentially since the 1970s), and the population was shrinking. Untreated toxic wastes continued to flow into contaminated rivers and water tables "

"Meanwhile, police troops of the Interior Ministry had ballooned to twenty-nine divisions, and the tax police as well as the new Emergency Ministry personnel were militarized, like US SWAT teams, as if Russia were fighting a society-wide domestic war. "

"In fact, its hundreds of thousands of nuclear,chemical, and biological weapons scientists and technicians, acting with or without the government’s blessing,could have altered the strategic balance of any world region. ‘Only the intense pride and patriotism of Russian nuclear experts has prevented a proliferation catastrophe’, concluded a team of concerned scientists, who added that, ‘virtually everything else in Russia is for sale’ "

"This turn of events may have exposed, and even helped unloose, the instability inherent in the second world economy. Capitalism is an extremely dynamic source of endless creation, but also of destruction. Interconnections bring greater overall wealth but also heightened risks. And the USA—bearing a titanic national security establishment not demobilized after thecold war, exhibiting a combustible mixture of arrogance and paranoia in response to perceived challenges to its global pretensions, and perversely disparaging of the very government institutions that provide its strength—makes for an additional wild card. "

[Abhi V · Rating 4 out of 5]

The shattered idealism of the USSR and of Gorbachev in particular has immense pathos.... Kotkin's emphasis on how it could have been so much worse I think was interesting (how political is it?): and it's true, there is something (besides the normal things to say) almost eerie and beautiful about how one of the largest and most formidable empires in the history of the world just dissolved, partly from genuine idealism and partly from deviousness. (The contrast between Gorbachev, who was a genuine Aden Barton type achiever, and Yelstin, who was much less impressive....) What's surprising was how glasnost was destructive, because even as people had lived through the Soviet Union, there was still genuine hope and faith in the ideals: which were only shattered at last, as a part of an attempt at self-criticism! (Such a cynical story: It gives you the idea that the very stupid, first order reactionary formula of "suppress negative information at all costs" is maybe better than we give it credit for; as with self-consciousness in life, the salience of negative facts--true as they may be--cancels the ability to be aspirational. (Steve Martin says: "There is nothing wrong with pumping yourself up with delusions, in between bouts of valid inspiration."))

Although Kotkin is a better talker than speaker, and in a sense the prose of this book was a disappointment.

[Yannick M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kotkin's thesis is that Gorbachev didn't surrender the Cold War, but that he was an idealist who genuinely believed in the possibility of socialism to reform itself and show its superiority to capitalism. His conservative opponents were defeated by him brilliantly at every turn, but the move to openness destroyed the little legitimacy the USSR had.
The USSR had fissures at the lines of the ethnic republic and once Gorbachev took the power from the party machine that had held it together he ultimately opened up the way for opportunistic local elites to grab power for themselves under the guise of nationalism. Gorbachev retained the power over the army and KGB but due to his idealism he refused to use them to keep it all together.
The decade that followed is less a liberal transformation (that was mostly talk), but in fact it was mostly just a giant feeding frenzy.

Telling the story of the fall of the USSR as an elite focussed story is interesting, but I think the books structure is a bit unclear at times.