I found it largely disappointing. The title is misleading, it fails to explain why the collapse of the Soviet Union would have led to armageddon, or how or why it was averted. It is a good overview of the period with a strong bias. No credit is given given to the democrats for bringing about change and the path to disunion should have been obvious to all as it was simply inevitable. I just took away another star thinking about it.

Survey history of the Soviet Union. Provides some interesting, beginner friendly perspectives, but ultimately falls short. The book underutilizes primary sources. While the author no doubt referenced them in research, the narration doesn’t distinguish between when a claim is verifiable, and when a claim is the author’s own conjecture. This leads to a “vibes based” approach to history, where forcing the imagery of the narration takes precedent over supporting any particular claim with evidence.

I really appreciate the density of information. Every chapter and paragraph has a lot to say and adds a great deal of context. I also think the book has a great writing style - it's easy to understand but does not compromise on the quality of content. I really enjoyed it and ideally it should be read a few times to take in all the different details and aspects.

An amazing period of time and a good book about it, showing why due to internal dynamics within the Soviet system collapse happened as it did, and how due to some exceptionally good luck, etc. things ended relatively safely. The 1990s remain a massive missed opportunity leading to the rise of Putin, but the 70s and 80s were essentially driven by economic and political dynamics within the Soviet empire.

It's interesting how the Communist Party essentially replicated all the organs of state internally in each country, and the path of each former Soviet state largely depended on the Communist Party within that state at time of collapse.

Super succinct and dense history of the Soviet Union’s decline and collapse. I was struck by how little I know about the dissolution of the USSR and the “transition” under Yeltsin. Hoping to read more about the Soviet Union’s collapse with a few other books that I own. Giving this 4 stars because I have nothing to compare this work to. I will likely have to reread this book once I become more familiar with the subject.

An incisive overview into the reasons for the collapse of the USSR and the loathsome communist party. Detailed but succinct capturing aspects of the national characteristics of Russia & Russians, the inherent pitfalls of communism and the ineptitude of an array of political figures who ultimately lacked the skill and/or conviction to keep the USSR intact.

A very well written book by someone who has lived in the former USSR.
Stephen Kotkin writes about the Kremlin and about the Soviet society with such a thorough knowledge, thanks to his experiences in the USSR but also thanks to his many friends and
acquaintances in many levels of the Soviet world.

We get to look behind the thick curtains of regional and state politics.

The West likes to think that it is the Western pressure that provoked the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
This pressure certainly played a role, but other mechanisms were far more impactful:
Stephen describes how the USSR in the end collapsed mainly due to the many internal mutually
counterproductive processes and the enormous amounts of corruption.

Stephen describes and arguments with the eye and brains of an academic and uses lots and lots of
historical proof.
Very interesting if you want to better understand present-day Russia or the former USSR.

The book offers a unique and insightful perspective on the collapse of the Soviet Union, a topic that historians and political scientists have extensively studied and debated. Stephen Kotkin argues that the Soviet collapse was not a result of the Gorbachev reforms of perestroika and glasnost, as many had previously believed, but rather stemmed from the contradictions and limitations of Communist ideology.
However, while the book presents an intriguing argument, it is not without its flaws. It can be jargon-heavy and sometimes the arguments can be convoluted. This can make the book difficult to follow for those who are not already familiar with the history and politics of the Soviet Union.
Despite this, Kotkin's writing style is engaging and he does an excellent job of bringing to life the everyday hopes and secret political intrigues that affected millions of people before and after 1991. His deep understanding of post-Stalin Soviet society and institutions allows him to convey 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.
Overall, “Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000” is a valuable contribution to the study of the Soviet collapse, and will be of interest to anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of this pivotal moment in world history. While the book's intriguing arguments and engaging writing style make it a valuable contribution to the study of the Soviet collapse, readers should be aware that the book's generalised descriptions and complex arguments may present a challenge for those who are not already well-versed in the history and politics of the Soviet Union.

The Dialectic of Socialist Idealism and Capitalist Realism

Dreams, Nightmares, Visions and Imaginings:

Who likes discipline? The market is an unrelenting dispenser of this commodity which everyone needs, and no one wants. It is in overwhelming supply but there always seems to be shortage of where it is needed most. The central contradiction of late communism was that economic transformation was necessary but politically impossible. The unrelenting discipline dispensed by market forces eventually ended the Soviet experiment. The market does not solely mete out stern discipline, it also sends signals and transmits information, though not often what us humans want to hear and often fail to heed - at our own risk. An example of this is the oil and foreign currency boom enjoyed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Without market signals, the proceeds were used to fund antiquated heavy industry, military expansionism and overseas adventurism. Counterfactually, I cannot help but wonder if the resources of the boom were used to subsidize the civilian society, to provide a cornucopia of consumer goods and benefits to the citizens at subsided prices, instead of being poured into propping up antiquated industry, military expansion and overseas adventures, that a glimpse of a social order based on something other than markets and capital might have been possible. This would have been the long-promised experiment in humanist socialism, this was the Gorbachev ideal, but it never came to pass thus leaving the markets as the only alternative.

Squaring the Circle:

A potential socialist success story (socialism with a human face) raises an irony. It can only be made possible by global markets and international capital. Making socialism work is rather like trying to square the circle. Too bad really, the socialist dream, the vision of Gorbachev, is a human imagining (a romantic dream that turns nightmare when lawless elites betray the people) but the human reality takes place within the discipline of the market which brings its own nightmares, especially when left unregulated. I do not celebrate this, I merely acknowledge it. For the record, Gorbachev never did not fully embrace the market and clung to the Communist Party. Thus, the square-circle has been aptly used to describe the realization of ‘market-socialism’. That is, reforming socialism (not to be mistaken for social democracy) is about as possible to creating a square circle.

Squaring the Circle yet again:

Gorbachev tried to square the circle yet again as Stephen Kotkin tells us when he attempted to reform the Soviet system by separating the Party from state without realizing that it was the Party that held together the state. His plan was to govern the Soviet Union directly through the provincial governments without the redundancy of the Party apparatus. In this case, it was another type of discipline, the political discipline dispensed by the Communist Party that held the union of otherwise independent provincial soviet socialist republics together. The Party was both redundant and indispensable to the Soviet Union. Stephen Kotkin tells us that it was this archaic and contradictory party-state structure that proved more fatal to the Union than any form of nascent nationalism in the provinces. Gorbachev's reforms failed because they were not, and could not be, reforms of the system. The Party remained in control with reform reduced to meaning nothing more than moderation by the Party. Substantive reform would have encompassed a change in control but under the communist system, this was not possible without destroying the system.

Further Irony:

In many newly of the autonomous republics such as Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, it was the former officials of the old USSR, (Union loyalists, reformers and opportunists) who emerged to take over the new state from the small group of naïve and inexperienced reformers. The tragic outcome of the swift overthrow of a state-run economy in the post-soviet environment was a plundering private criminal class benefiting from the appropriation of what was state property and self-enrichment through crony state-capitalism. The problem is that markets do not magically work without institutional, political and legal supports as well as constraints, preciousness little of which existed in the Soviet Union, or traditional pre-soviet Russia. In fact, the Soviet Union had just the opposite, a legacy of official larceny. The necessary, but far from perfect institutional supports and constraints, do not just spring into being, but evolve over the course of time and had no time in which to develop after the fall of the Soviet Union, these include:

Citizenship with political representation
Public authority
Public infrastructure
Public accountability
A social safety-net
Private property ownership
Contract enforcement
Rule of law
Free press
Independent judiciary
A non-military consumer-based economy
A work ethic - not my strength

How Petty Larceny Saved the World :

I believe that the key to explaining the peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union is that the elites that stood to lose the most from the breakup also had the most to gain from the breakup. Simply put, there was more to be gained in looting the defunct state and pursuing crass self-enrichment than in Armageddon or retrenchment. Ironically yet again, as most things are in Russia, it was fortunate for the rest of the world that there was still something worth steeling. Kleptocracy, normally inimical to good social order, a characteristic endemic in Russia and much to the great frustration of Peter The Great, averted Armageddon.

The Dialectic:

The Dialectic of Socialist Idealism (Thesis) and Capitalist Realism (Antithesis) yields Authoritarian Nationalism (Synthesis).

The next step:

The Dialectic of Authoritarian Nationalism (Thesis) and Global Capitalism (Antithesis) yields Neo-Mercantilism (Synthesis).

We can see now that as the myth of the Soviet Union did not so much as end as simply fade into other myths, new stories and alternative narratives.

Many of the economic discussions went over my head but I found the personalities and politics - and the minimal role of the USA in actually bringing about the collapse of the USSR contrary to popular American mythology - positively fascinating.

A good book but I felt it was only half the length it should have been. The discussion of the collapse of the Soviet Union was quite brief and felt like a summary. Funnily enough, the best part of the book was the post collapse chapter, while the last chapter felt unnecessary.

Short but Chunky Read
This book provides a great overview of the soviet union's collapse up to 2000.
Great Detail is provided throughout the book which makes it a good primer on what happened to make the most powerful socialist country collapse. At times the details seem a little much, but due to its short length, they are bearable.

Overall, worth the read if you want to learn about the USSR during the Cold War Era.