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Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000
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Review
"The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape."--The New Yorker"A triumph of the art of contemporary history. In fewer than 200 pages, Kotkin elucidates the implosion of the Soviet empire--the most important and startling series of international events of the past fifty years--and clearly spells out why, thanks almost entirely to the 'principal restraint' of the Soviet leadership, that collapse didn't result in a cataclysmic war, as all experts had long forecasted."--The Atlantic Monthly"Concise and persuasive The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage."--The New York Review of Books
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About the Author
Stephen Kotkin is Professor of European and Asian History at Princeton University, where he also directs the Russian-Eurasian Studies Program. He is the author of nine books, including an acclaimed two-volume study of the rise and fall of Soviet socialism: Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization and Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era.
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Product details
Paperback: 280 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Updated edition (December 23, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195368630
ISBN-13: 978-0195368635
Product Dimensions:
5.4 x 0.8 x 7.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.8 out of 5 stars
44 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#21,132 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This book covers a really interesting topic; the collapse of the Soviet Union, and there are surpisingly few other books that cover this topic. The content is very good, so I recommend the book. The major limitation is that the writing is so patchy; it appears to be written by a variety of authors or a single author in different moods such that in parts it is written intricately like a text book; casually, almost like a conversation; and sometimes like a popular book. But I recommend that you buy it and just put up with this defect. The book focusses on the interesting question about how the Soviet Union passed away so peacefully, and although this question is not really answered, it is a a point of central interest to modern history and well covered in this book.
I have read the first two of Kotkin's volumes on Stalin, and I eagerly look forward to the third. I bought this book because I thought he would help me understand the collapse of the Soviet Union. His understanding of the collapse revolves around three concepts: (1) Gorbachev's "romantic idealism," errantly hoping that through perestroika and glasnost the Soviet Union could be reframed around "humanistic socialism," which was said to be Lenin's initial ideal; (2) how this "romantic idealism" undercut the entire power structure of the Soviet Union, because free thought and press challenged the underpinnings of the Soviet Union; and (3) how the former apparatchiks of the Communist party, and others in the social elite, pillaged the State's entire (but outdated and antiquated) economy in the "privatization" of the country's assets. In this historical process, the Soviet Union splintered completely, and Russia, an agglomeration of fifty-some nationalities, emerged from the ashes. Kotkin does a great job describing the economic implosion and catastrophic GDP shrinkage, which was stopped only by a re-collection of legal power by the presidency and prime minister of Russia, our favorite guy, Vladimir Putin.Kotkin is amazed that during the implosion the Russian "power structure" of military, internal police (KGB), and regular police did not also blow inward. While the Army was shattered, Kotkin believes that the command structure remained relatively intact, so that no nuclear armageddon occurred.I enjoyed this book. I also agree with the reviewer that it was harder to read than Kotkin's other books. The concepts of macroeconomic theory and the specifics of the political structures--I found this hard to understand, so I read these sections twice Also, I was not clear where all the newly enriched apparatchiks came from other than a fuzzy "educated elite."
I found the book extremely interesting, thought provoking and laced with meaningful details. Was wonderful to finally get the background story on why the Soviet Union failed and the various actions leading up to it. I had relatives in East Germany during the Soviet occupation and visited there in 1983. I came to understand firsthand how much the East Germans detested the Soviets and how they were completely "under the thumb" of the Soviets. The East Germans would have revolted had they felt they had any realistic means to do so. This book brought together all of my prior knowledge as well as the aspects that I had never known until I had the opportunity of reading about it.
It's a great synopsis of the collapse of the USSR. As other reviewers have mentioned, the writing style is choppy, quickly changing topics. At times the author uses subjective terms without explaining what they mean. Also, he never really delves into the reason that Armegeddon was Averted. Why exactly did the top Soviet brass not rain nuclear hellfire on their crumbling union?I enjoyed reading it mostly, but would be reluctant to recommend it to a friend.
Stephen Kotkin's "Armageddon Averted" is a good, concise history of the Soviet collage from 1970-2000. Kotkin has two themes that he repeatedly touches on: 1) that the Soviet system collapsed from within and 2) that the collapse was remarkably peaceful. Kotkin's work is very good, although at only 200 pages, it is a cursory account of the Soviet collapse.Kotkin focuses almost entirely on the Soviet system's inner workings. He describes how the Soviet system was destined to collapse from within and would have collapsed earlier had oil prices not increased in the 1970s, allowing the Soviet Union to continue to finance itself. Only with the coming of the new generation - Gorbachev - did anyone in the Soviet leadership have the courage to realize that the system must be changed. However, when Gorbachev tried to save the Soviet Union by liberalizing part of society, he set loose powers and forces and quickly lost control of the country.It was at this point, Kotkin argues, that the real miracle occurred: while the Soviet Union had used military force to keep Hungary and Czechoslovakia in its sphere, and had an entire security apparatus that had perfected the police state, the Soviet dissolution was almost completely bloodless. The Soviet leadership (or reactionaries in the government) did not crack down on its own citizens, and neither did it lash out at the rest of the world in either a conventional world designed to foment nationalism nor launch a spiteful nuclear strike.This is a very good book, but it is lacking on details. Kotkin's writes from the perspective of a textbook, making sweeping statements and broad generalizations without much supporting argument. The book also lacks any personal look at the fall of the Soviet Union (other than occasional anecdotes about the leadership), unlike the excellent (but very different) "Lenin's Tomb." Kotkin also completely dismisses any credit to the United States or any other foreign power or policy for the Soviet collapse. Despite these drawbacks, though, this is an excellent book for anyone interested in Soviet/Russian history, modern history, or political science and foreign policy.
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