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The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere

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English, French (translation)

236 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

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About the author

Emmanuel Todd

59 books107 followers
Emmanuel Todd (born 16 May 1951) is a French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. His research examines the different types of families worldwide and how there are matching beliefs, ideologies and political systems, and the historical events involving these things.

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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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6,709 reviews25 followers
June 27, 2018
Maybe Todd was some sort of prophet and he really saw the Fall of the Soviet System a decade before. Maybe, like most, if not all, French intellectuals he just gambled. After all the probability was the same 50% French intellectuals had to gamble in 1940: will it fall or will it last till I die? The sheer stupidity of the phrasing and the logical mess exposed makes the text unreadable. Take the opening of the book:

> Postulat: dans un societe "normale", un systeme repressif sert a reprimer.

Yea, this is how it gets its name. This is not a postulat, this is just etymology. He continues:

> On voit tout de suite que l'Allemagne de Hitler et la Russie de Staline echappaient a la regle: leurs systemes repressif n'etaient pas fonctionnels.

Quite on the contrary: they were quite effective at silencing dissent.

Also, the sick mind of Todd implies that every government should employ such a system. The reasoning is so shallow Todd is incapable to grasp that every strong government fights with concepts and hence fights categories of enemies: counter-revolutionaries for the Soviets, Jews or Jew friends for the Nazi, terrorists for today's Democratic governments.
102 reviews1 follower
December 28, 2014
Written back in 1976, Todd in this book was forecasting the end of the Soviet Union
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews

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