Collapse

The Fall of the Soviet Union

by

Hardcover, 560 pages

English language

Published March 28, 2021 by Yale University Press.

ISBN:
978-0-300-25730-4
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5 stars (1 review)

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.

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reviewed Collapse by Vladislav M. Zubok

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5 stars

The processes of reform from actually existing socialism have been a subject of speculative analysis, particularly when they entailed the transformation of institutions from one-party rule into other forms of social organisation and participation. The reason is that most of them were eventually crushed, externally or internally.
This book provides an extremely thorough account of the failure of the one process that came to fruition - only to end up giving way to extreme capitalism. In many cases, the analysis is outright ruthless, but with good reason - it is vital to understand the shortcomings and the factors that drove perestroika and glasnost, and the Soviet experiment, to an end, and Zubok is keen on documenting it without fear or favour. It is also an enticing book with an engaging style, serving both as a divulgative work and as a reference for academic work.