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Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 947
EAN: 9780195168945
ISBN: 0195168941
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: November 16, 2003
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Review:
In the Cold War era that dominated the second half of the twentieth century, nobody envisaged that the collapse of the Soviet Union would come from within, still less that it would happen meekly, without global conflagration.
In this brilliantly compact, original, engaging book, Stephen Kotkin shows that the Soviet collapse resulted not from military competition but, ironically, from the dynamism of Communist ideology, the long-held dream for "socialism with a human face." The neo-liberal reforms in post-Soviet Russia never took place, nor could they have, given the Soviet-era inheritance in the social, political, and economic landscape. Kotkin takes us deep into post-Stalin Soviet society and institutions, into the everyday hopes and secret political intrigues that affected 285 million people, before and after 1991. He conveys 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. Armageddon Averted vividly demonstrates the overriding importance of history, individual ambition, geopolitics, and institutions, and deftly draws out contemporary Russia's contradictory predicament.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A good summary
Mr. Kotkin is an excellent historian with a number of fine works on Russia and the USSR under his belt. In this one he offers a post-mortem on the terminal decline of the Soviet Union.
While it's refreshing to read a work that criticizes American cold war triumphalism and chest-pounding, it's important to evaluate all the causes. It seems that Mr. Kotkin is too narrowly focusing on internal and systemic factors, at the expense of external pressures and the interconnections between ... Read More
Rating:  - Book explains why the Soviet Union did not collapse amid a violent convulsion
The author's goal in this book, as he states in the introduction, is to explain why the Soviet Union did not erupt into a violent convulsion upon its collapse. Multi-ethnic empires rarely break apart without violent upheavel. Yet this one did. If your goal is to find out why this is happened this is a book you must read. Written by a leading scholar of the Soviet Union.
Rating: - almost perfect
This is the best historical narrative I had ever read on the subject. It does jingle very well with my own recollections about this period. It is informative with a lot of details.
According to Mr.Kotkin the final stages of the collapse were two-fold: first commie-romantic-idiot Gorbachev destroyed whatever was remaining of the existing system while trying to improve it, and then the Soviet elite saw better prospects in joining Eltsin in finishing the system off instead of fighting for ... Read More
Rating: - Good, Concise History of the Soviet Collapse
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Good book, but Kotkin Does Not Answer the Question
Kotkin attempts to answer how the Soviet Union and its empire could quickly and quietly implode - a bewildering topic indeed. He posits that Soviet leadership fossilized beginning with the drooling Brezhnev followed by other barely breathing leaders. He does an excellent job explaining how the disunion got started in Gorbachev's reforms, but fails to answer why no Soviet elites stopped him, or later, stopped Yeltsin.
When Gorbachev took over a moribund system, he had a real and abiding ... Read More
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