Author: Ted Gottfried Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books ISBN: 9780761325574 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 158
Book Description
Chronicles the Czarist Russian Empire in the 1800s, the birth of Bolshevism, events leading to the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the development of new political structures in its aftermath.
Author: Martin Mccauley Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317867823 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 623
Book Description
'An expert in probing mafia-type relationships in present-day Russia, Martin McCauley here offers a vigorously written scrutiny of Soviet politics and society since the days of Lenin and Stalin.' John Keep, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto. The birth of the Soviet Union surprised many; its demise amazed the whole world. How did imperial Russia give way to the Soviet Union in 1917, and why did the USSR collapse so quickly in 1991? Marxism promised paradise on earth, but the Communist Party never had true power, instead allowing Lenin and Stalin to become dictators who ruled in its name. The failure of the planned economy to live up to expectations led to a boom in the unplanned economy, in particular the black market. In turn, this led to the growth of organised crime and corruption within the government. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union examines the strengths, weaknesses, and contradictions of the first Marxist state, and reassesses the role of power, authority and legitimacy in Soviet politics. Including first-person accounts, anecdotes, illustrations and diagrams to illustrate key concepts, McCauley provides a seminal history of twentieth-century Russia.
Author: Archie Brown Publisher: Doubleday Canada ISBN: 0307372243 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 743
Book Description
Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — a definitive and ground-breaking account of the revolutionary ideology that changed the modern world. The inexorable rise of Communism was the most momentous political phenomenon of the first half of the twentieth century. Its demise in Europe and its decline elsewhere have produced the most profound political changes of the last few decades. In this illuminating book, based on forty years of study and a wealth of new sources, Archie Brown provides a comprehensive history as well as an original and highly readable analysis of an ideology that has shaped the world and still rules over a fifth of humanity. A compelling new work from an internationally renowned specialist, The Rise and Fall of Communism promises to be the definitive study of the most remarkable political and human story of our times.
Author: Robert V. Daniels Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300134932 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 493
Book Description
Distinguished historian of the Soviet period Robert V. Daniels offers a penetrating survey of the evolution of the Soviet system and its ideology. In a tightly woven series of analyses written during his career-long inquiry into the Soviet Union, Daniels explores the Soviet experience from Karl Marx to Boris Yeltsin and shows how key ideological notions were altered as Soviet history unfolded. The book exposes a long history of American misunderstanding of the Soviet Union, leading up to the "grand surprise" of its collapse in 1991. Daniels's perspective is always original, and his assessments, some worked out years ago, are strikingly prescient in the light of post-1991 archival revelations. Soviet Communism evolved and decayed over the decades, Daniels argues, through a prolonged revolutionary process, combined with the challenges of modernization and the personal struggles between ideologues and power-grabbers.
Author: Philip Hanson Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317885376 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 302
Book Description
Why did the Soviet economic system fall apart? Did the economy simply overreach itself through military spending? Was it the centrally-planned character of Soviet socialism that was at fault? Or did a potentially viable mechanism come apart in Gorbachev's clumsy hands? Does its failure mean that true socialism is never economically viable? The economic dimension is at the very heart of the Russian story in the twentieth century. Economic issues were the cornerstone of soviet ideology and the soviet system, and economic issues brought the whole system crashing down in 1989-91. This book is a record of what happened, and it is also an analysis of the failure of Soviet economics as a concept.
Author: Vladislav M. Zubok Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300262442 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 468
Book Description
A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.
Author: Fred Coleman Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 9780312168162 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 500
Book Description
Red Coleman, A Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, has spent over thirty years gathering observations and experiences to produce this in-depth, up-close, definitive examination of the fall of the Soviet Union and the people and events that contributed essentially to its demise. From the Kremlin Palace coup against Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the emergence of the Soviet dissident movement during Leonid Brezhnev's rule, to the rise and fall of Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin's troubled presidency through 1995, Coleman was the man on the scene for virtually every defining event of Russian history in the postwar era.
Author: Richard Sakwa Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134806019 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 544
Book Description
Through sources and documents, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union by Richard Sakwa places the Soviet experience in historical and comparative context. The author introduces each source in this volume fully and provides commentary and analysis. Using eye-witness accounts, official documents and new materials which have just come to light, Richard Sakwa gives an historical overview of the Soviet Union from the revolution of 1906 to the fall of the regime.
Author: Brian Crozier Publisher: Prima Lifestyles ISBN: Category : Soviet Union Languages : en Pages : 856
Book Description
For more than 80 years, the Soviet Empire cast an ever-lengthening shadow across the face of the world. Lenin's ruthless legacy consumed Eastern Europe and toppled governments on virtually every continent. Yet at the moment when the Empire appeared to have reached its zenith, it collapsed like a house of cards. "Brian Crozier's definitive history of the Soviet Empire is a chilling account of an ideology that haunted our century." -- Henry Kissinger In this seminal work, the eminent British writer and historian Brian Crozier tells the brutal history of the Soviet Empire--its birth, life, and sudden death. The book begins at the beginning, in 1917, when the oversized dreams of Lenin and the happenstance of events conspired to change the course of history. In meticulous detail, Crozier follows the Soviet conquests across Europe and into Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. He uses recently declassified information from Soviet archives to add texture and depth to familiar parts of the story--the betrayal at Yalta, the terror of Stalin, the tragedy of Hungary, the split with China, the false hope of Prague Spring, the rise of Castro, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Revealed along the way is the dark underside of a regime whose march toward supremacy resulted in the loss of tens of millions of lives. The book concludes with reflections on the extraordinary disintegration of Lenin's utopia and the seemingly endless chaos left in its wake. Provocative, comprehensive, and majestic in scope, "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire is the definitive account of history's most turbulent days.
Author: Ted Gottfried
Author: Martin Mccauley
Author: Archie Brown
Author: Robert V. Daniels
Author: Philip Hanson
Author: Vladislav M. Zubok
Author: Fred Coleman
Author: Samuel Farber
Author: Richard Sakwa
Author: Brian Crozier