Taking the Soviet collapse - the most cataclysmic event of the recent past - as a case study, this text engages students in the exercise of historical analysis, interpretation and explanation. In exploring the question posed by the title, the author introduces and applies such organizing concepts as great power conflict, imperial decline, revolution, ethnic conflict, colonialism, economic development, totalitarian ideology, and transition to democracy in a most accessible way. Questions and controversies, and extracts from documentary and literary sources, anchor the text at key points. This book is intended for use in history and political science courses on the Soviet Union or more generally on the 20th century.

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.

On 26 December, 1991, the hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. Yet, just six years earlier, when Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and chose Eduard Shevardnadze as his foreign minister, the Cold War seemed like a permanent fixture in world politics. Until its denouement, no Western or Soviet politician foresaw that the standoff between the two superpowers -- after decades of struggle over every aspect of security, politics, economics, and ideas -- would end within the lifetime of the current generation. Nor was it at all obvious that that the Soviet political leadership would undertake a huge internal reform of the USSR, or that the threat of a nuclear Armageddon could or would be peacefully wound down. Drawing on pioneering archival research, Robert Service's gripping investigation of the final years of the Cold War pinpoints the extraordinary relationships between Ronald Reagan, Gorbachev, George Shultz, and Shevardnadze, who found ways to cooperate during times of exceptional change around the world. A story of American pressure and Soviet long-term decline and overstretch, The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991 shows how a small but skillful group of statesmen grew determined to end the Cold War on their watch and transformed the global political landscape irreversibly.

With an insider's view, an expert on Russia and former foreign policy advisor to President Nixon argues that Russia is returning to the world stage as a great power and intends to resume a major role in international affairs.

A one-stop source of information, analysis, biographical profiles, and key primary documents on the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union. Studies the rise and fall of a superpower and its ruling party. Following a chronology of events, five essays provide a narrative overview and discuss the evolution of Perestroika, the Brezhnev Doctrine and the Afghan War, nationalism and the end of the Soviet empire, and Russia after the collapse of Communism. Also contains biographical profiles of 15 leaders; the text of 22 documents, including writings by key figures; a glossary; and an annotated bibliography.

Democratization and Revolution in the USSR, 1985-91 presents a strikingly new view of the Gorbachev era and the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Written by one of America's most distinguished specialists on the former Soviet Union, this is the first comprehensive overview of the Gorbachev period and describes it as a real revolution, not mere "reform." According to Hough, despite Mikhail Gorbachev's talk of a regulated market, he never understood that a market must be created on a solid institutional and legal base. He was determined to use democratization to free himself from party control, but he saw democracy as a way of achieving near- universal consensus, not a mechanism for forcing through difficult choices. The many memoirs that have become available in the last few years, including those of Gorbachev himself, show that Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov and the "bureaucrats" in his government actually were the serious economic reformers in the leadership. Gorbachev opposed the key transitional steps at every stage and was far closer to the assumptions of shock therapy than he or his opponents ever recognized. Hough explains that Gorbachev was not alone in thinking that the destruction of old institutions was enough to unleash a market. Westerners also talked of leaping a chasm in a single jump as if democratic and market institutions existed pre-created on the other side. But, precisely because Gorbachev (and later Boris Yeltsin) was encouraged in all his worst mistakes by Western advice, his failure has crucial implications for Western thinking about the process of democratization and marketization. This unprecedented book explores those implications in depth. Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Book for 1998