Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

by Vladislav M. Zubok

of his own shortcomings and mistakes that Russian democracy will take much longer to build than he thought.”11 A leading Cold War historian, Odd Arne Westad, seems to agree. “The final drama of the Cold War became a purely Soviet tragedy,” he concludes. Gorbachev could have preserved the country by force, but he “would rather see the union disappear . . .”