Very well written but still nothing more than a synthesis of secondary literature and some of the Kotkin´s notes on the dissolution of the USSR. Liked the book but expected a little more. 3* too little, 4* too much, gave it 4* as I like Kotkin´s works in general

This is a fine work of political economy. Hard to imagine a better work on soviet collapse.

This concise work plots a historical course from the energy windfall (derived from 1973 oil crisis) that sustained the Soviet regime, explains the major issues of a planned economy (supply never met demand), the generational and cultural forces that produced Gorbachev, the bifurcation of state and party under Gorbachev and the immense implications therein, and finally ends in Russia’s devolution into illiberal democracy.

Kotkin explains why the transitional economic outcomes on the ground are less attributable to the popular narratives of oligarchs and IMF policies (respectively) than they are to horrible monetary policy/instituions (regional central banks), state sponsored inefficient factories with a populous factory director class, and the state officials carte blanche to a frenzy of soviet property appropriation at bargain prices .... “a Shakespearean irony of idealism giving way to the basest opportunism.”

It’s easy to take history as matter of fact, but Kotkin does a wonderful job of highlighting the not improbable counterfactual where soviet collapse would have manifested itself in nuclear malice or lunacy against its ideological opponents.

A favourite quote: “The lefts romanticism about a reform that would make socialism humane was, as the right argued, an illusion, but this illusion sustained what the right thought impossible - the top down self dismantling of the system.”

Strongly recommended - added to my favourite books for its concise clarity and comprehensiveness.

A great totalitarian communist empire with nuclear weapons, a large standing army, a space program, a manned satellite, secret police and complete control of the population simply dissolves from within. Unbelievable?
But it really happened to the USSR.



Why? How? and other important questions
The monumental second world collapse, in the face of a more powerful first world wielding the market and liberal institutions, was triggered not by military pressure but by Communist ideology. The KGB and to a lesser extent the CIA secretly reported that, beginning in the 1970s, the Soviet Union was overcome by malaise. But even though Soviet socialism had clearly lost the competition with the West, it was lethargically stable, and could have continued muddling on for quite some time. Or, it might have tried a Realpolitik retrenchment, cutting back on superpower ambitions, legalizing and then institutionalizing market economics to revive its fortunes, and holding tightly to central power by using political repression. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked on a quest to realize the dream of ‘socialism with a human face’.

Gorbachev's unplanned plan
That the man at the pinnacle of power in Moscow—a committed, true-believing Communist Party General Secretary—was engaged in a virtuoso, yet inadvertent liquidation of the Soviet system, made for high drama, which few appreciated for what it was. When crowds suddenly cracked the Berlin Wall in late 1989, and when Eastern Europe was allowed to break from the Soviet grip, dumbfounded analysts (myself included) began to wonder if the rest of the Kremlin’s empire, the Union republics, might also separate. That made the years 1990–1 a time of high drama, because, although it had been destabilized by romantic idealism, the Soviet system still commanded a larger and more powerful military and repressive apparatus than any state in history. It had more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy or blackmail the world, and a vast storehouse of chemical and biological weapons, with all requisite delivery systems. The Soviet Union also had more than five million soldiers, deployed from Budapest to Vladivostok, and hundreds of thousands more troops in KGB and interior ministry battalions. It experienced almost no major mutinies in any of these forces. And yet, they were never fully used—not to save a collapsing empire, nor even to wreak havoc out of spite.



What did the Army do?
Interior ministry police troops— about 350,000 strong—were becoming more dependent on local authorities for resources, but they were also undergoing deepened militarization at Moscow’s direction.

As for the army, republics were assuming greater responsibility for the draft and conscripts were increasingly serving on the territory of their home republic, but ‘somewhat surprisingly’, a top expert concluded, the Armed Forces ‘did not collapse overnight. The major command structures proved fairly resilient.’

Thankfully, however, reform socialism meant breaking with anything that resembled Stalinism or Brezhnevism, including domestic military crackdowns; even the men who belatedly attempted in August 1991 to salvage the Union chose not to mobilize more than a tiny fraction of their available might, which in any case they failed to use. In this light, perestroika should be judged a stunning success.



Although all the many steps to the change from the mighty USSR to the smaller modern Russia were reported it is Stephen Kotkin who drew them together for his detailed description of a quiet revolution.

Enjoy!

Feels a bit rushed in its content and conclusions, but still rich in insight

It's a good book overall about the fall of the Soviet Union and the aftermath. It's more of an long essay than a standard history book. But you are in good hands with the esteemed Stephen Kotkin, who can read and write Russian.

Kotkin starts out to prove that it was Gorbachev's reforms that caused the USSR'S collapse and nothing else. He then proves his point over the next 180 or so pages. USA President Reagan and Bush who think it was them are very much mistaken. I thought at one point in the book "that me or the average intelligent person could not have done a better job of destroying the Soviet Union than Gorbachev did." After finishing the book, I still think that is true. But don't discount the role that Yeltsin played. He hated Gorbachev's guts with a passion and wanted to see the Soviet Union die. And he did. But Yeltsin was a product of the whole open system that Gorbachev created.
Spoiler alert! What I learned from this book was that starting in February 1991, the Russian Republic quickly took over many of the government functions and staff. Then by the fall of 1991, there was nothing left of the Soviet Union.

PHIL Kuhn

Interesting story of the latter days of the Soviet Union; I had forgotten much of this, but it's a fascinating tale, focusing on the 80s, with Gorbachev taking over and introducing the little freedom that was enough to bring the empire down, esp. since the economy was in a very bad shape -- in fact only because the earlier oil-money could it be sustained for so long.

Also the roles of Yeltsin, the various older apparatchiks, the economical reforms, and some upcoming promising man called Putin... it ends in 2000.

As I have a renewed interest for Russian affairs, I've decided to read Princeton's professor Kotkin's account of the end of the Soviet regime.

Needless to say, his pedagogical approach of the subject is everywhere in the book. I understood and learned more about Russian politics and history than with any other book I read before.

Kotkin's prose is half geopolitical analysis and half historical assessment. Using lots of different sources from common people's letters to official State documents:

"A teenager warned "not to let our young people go to capitalist countries." Why? "I had the chance to go to the United States on an exchange basis. I used to be a true patriot of our country and I turned into something really horrible. I think I have my own opinions. It's a nightmare (...) I sympathize with Gorbachev but deep in my heart I am no longer a Soviet citizen and I don't care what's going on in the USSR and I don't believe in anything in this country"

The author often uses comparative politics and relevant data to articulate his analysis:

"No country where oil accounts for one-third or more of export revenues had ever made an enduring shift to genuine democracy."

"China offered an important counterpoint. Many people regretted that Gorbachev had not followed the Chinese model of reforms. Under Deng, the Chinese leadership bolstered the party's monopoly by allowing market behavior flourish, while maintaining political controls with repression. But China did not have to overcome the wreckage of the world's largest ever assemblage of obsolete equipment. Heavy industry in China was in deplorable shape, yet the population was 80 percent peasant. Also, China's economic boom was made possible by massive direct investments, some $300 billion in the 1990s, mostly from overseas Chinese; Russia had no Hong Kong or Taiwan. Finally, the ambiguous results in China - the widespread unpaid debts, the unsecured property rights, the official malfeasance - were not necessarily different from those in Russia."

Great read!

Not bad, recommended by Econ teacher to learn more about russia. Good opener to learn more about the history of russia

Review forthcoming

"What did y'all think 'all power to the soviets' meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers."

-Mikhail Gorbachev probably

Decent. Key argument is that Gorbachev tried to reform the USSR along the lines of an imagined, decentralized, and from-below Leninist Communism of which he was a True Believer, only to bring the whole thing crashing down. Kotkin is less in his groove than he is in the various lectures of his from the past decade that you can watch on YouTube, but you can still hear his voice when he uses exclamation points.

Decent enough, I suppose, if you know nothing on the subject, but overall not a very satisfying work. Kotkin passes over with a limpid head-toss much of the criticism of the international economic institutions and US "financial aid" to Russia during the 1990s in favor of an approach which highlights (rightly) the institutional sickness and malaise of the late-Soviet system. This was unnecessary for his analysis which could have neatly combined both. Has some good economic insights onto the Soviet/post-Soviet industrial plant, etc. Kind of smarmy.

An insightful and well balanced read

Although Kotkin gets clearly passionate at times with his disapproval of certain choices, he presents events with insightful context and rational explanations. The book reads very well and is largely enjoyable. I would have appreciated more clear designation of the time periods he discussed, but it is organized exquisitely for thematic understanding.