Gorbachev's Gamble
Gorbachev's Gamble

Author: Andrei Grachev

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2018-03-12

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 074567383X

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Gorbachev’s Gamble offers a new and more convincing answer to this question by providing the missing link between the internal and external aspects of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Andrei Grachev shows that the radical transformation of Soviet foreign policy during the Gorbachev years was an integral part of an ambitious project of internal democratic reform and of the historic opening of Soviet society to the outside world. Grachev explains the motives and the intentions of the initiators of this project and describes their hopes and their illusions. He recounts the story of the internal debates and struggles in the Kremlin and behind-the-scene decisions that led to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and eventually the demise of the Soviet Union itself. The book is based on exclusive interviews with the leaders of the Soviet Union including Gorbachev, personal notes and diaries of their assistants and advisers and transcripts of the discussions inside the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee. Together they constitute a multi-voice political confession of a whole generation of decision-makers of the Soviet Union that enables us better to understand the origin and the breathtaking trajectory of the events that led to the end of the Cold War and the unprecedented transformation of world politics in the closing decades of the 20th century.

Gorbachev's Gamble
Gorbachev's Gamble

Author: Baruch A. Hazan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-04-12

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 0429713908

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This book is an outcome of the 'Nineteenth All-Union Party conference, convened on Gorbachev's initiative. The conference recommends that, taking account of the new realities, legislation pertaining to union and autonomous republics and autonomous oblasts and okrugs should be developed and renewed.

Gorbachev's Gamble
Gorbachev's Gamble

Author: Andrei Grachev

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-30

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 0745655327

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Gorbachev’s Gamble offers a new and more convincing answer to this question by providing the missing link between the internal and external aspects of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Andrei Grachev shows that the radical transformation of Soviet foreign policy during the Gorbachev years was an integral part of an ambitious project of internal democratic reform and of the historic opening of Soviet society to the outside world. Grachev explains the motives and the intentions of the initiators of this project and describes their hopes and their illusions. He recounts the story of the internal debates and struggles in the Kremlin and behind-the-scene decisions that led to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and eventually the demise of the Soviet Union itself. The book is based on exclusive interviews with the leaders of the Soviet Union including Gorbachev, personal notes and diaries of their assistants and advisers and transcripts of the discussions inside the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee. Together they constitute a multi-voice political confession of a whole generation of decision-makers of the Soviet Union that enables us better to understand the origin and the breathtaking trajectory of the events that led to the end of the Cold War and the unprecedented transformation of world politics in the closing decades of the 20th century.

The Invention of Russia
The Invention of Russia

Author: Arkady Ostrovsky

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0399564187

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WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE WINNER OF THE CORNELIUS RYAN AWARD FINALIST FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR “Fast-paced and excellently written…much needed, dispassionate and eminently readable.” —New York Times “Filled with sparkling prose and deep analysis.” –The Wall Street Journal The breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of optimism around the world, but Russia today is actively involved in subversive information warfare, manipulating the media to destabilize its enemies. How did a country that embraced freedom and market reform 25 years ago end up as an autocratic police state bent once again on confrontation with America? A winner of the Orwell Prize, The Invention of Russia reaches back to the darkest days of the cold war to tell the story of Russia's stealthy and largely unchronicled counter revolution. A highly regarded Moscow correspondent for the Economist, Arkady Ostrovsky comes to this story both as a participant and a foreign correspondent. His knowledge of many of the key players allows him to explain the phenomenon of Valdimir Putin - his rise and astonishing longevity, his use of hybrid warfare and the alarming crescendo of his military interventions. One of Putin's first acts was to reverse Gorbachev's decision to end media censorship and Ostrovsky argues that the Russian media has done more to shape the fate of the country than its politicians. Putin pioneered a new form of demagogic populism --oblivious to facts and aggressively nationalistic - that has now been embraced by Donald Trump.

Seven Years that Changed the World
Seven Years that Changed the World

Author: Archie Brown

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-04-19

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 0199282153

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A rigorously argued and lively interpretation of the transformation of the Soviet system, written by a leading authority on Soviet politics. This thoroughly researched book draws on new archival sources and puts perestroika in fresh perspective.

The Human Factor
The Human Factor

Author: Archie Brown

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0198748701

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The Human Factor tells the dramatic story about the part played by political leaders - particularly the three very different personalities of Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher - in ending the standoff that threatened the future of all humanity

The Myth of Triumphalism
The Myth of Triumphalism

Author: Beth A. Fischer

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 0813178193

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Did President Reagan's hawkish policies destroy the Soviet Union and enable the United States to win the Cold War? Many Americans believe this to be the case. In this view—known as "triumphalism"—Reagan's denunciations of the "evil empire" and his military buildup compelled Moscow to admit defeat. The president's triumph demonstrates that America's leaders should stand strong and threaten adversaries into submission. Drawing on both US and Soviet sources, this study demonstrates that triumphalism is a series of falsehoods about President Reagan's intentions, his policies, and the impact his administration had on the Soviet Union. In reality, the president's initially hardline posture undermined US interests and brought the superpowers to the brink of war. This work exposes Reagan's dedication to diplomacy and his unorthodox views about global security, which frequently brought him into conflict with his own advisers and allies. The president did not seek to destroy the USSR; rather, he sought to eliminate nuclear weapons. This volume also explains why Moscow chose to abandon the arms race, adopt democratic reforms, and withdraw from its ill-fated war in Afghanistan. These initiatives were part of a reform movement that had been growing in the USSR for decades before Reagan entered office. The Kremlin did not acquiesce to American pressure; rather, Soviet reformers believed the arms race had been futile and sought to move beyond the Cold War. In fact, President Reagan's initially aggressive policies had made it more difficult for Moscow to pursue these revolutionary reforms. Ultimately President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev together were able to accomplish what no one at the time thought possible—the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. The president's opposition to nuclear weapons, his determined leadership, and his dedication to diplomacy are his most enduring legacies.

America’s Cold War
America’s Cold War

Author: Campbell Craig

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 0674247345

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“A creative, carefully researched, and incisive analysis of U.S. strategy during the long struggle against the Soviet Union.” —Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy “Craig and Logevall remind us that American foreign policy is decided as much by domestic pressures as external threats. America’s Cold War is history at its provocative best.” —Mark Atwood Lawrence, author of The Vietnam War The Cold War dominated world affairs during the half century following World War II. America prevailed, but only after fifty years of grim international struggle, costly wars in Korea and Vietnam, trillions of dollars in military spending, and decades of nuclear showdowns. Was all of that necessary? In this new edition of their landmark history, Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall engage with recent scholarship on the late Cold War, including the Reagan and Bush administrations and the collapse of the Soviet regime, and expand their discussion of the nuclear revolution and origins of the Vietnam War. Yet they maintain their original argument: that America’s response to a very real Soviet threat gave rise to a military and political system in Washington that is addicted to insecurity and the endless pursuit of enemies to destroy. America’s Cold War speaks vividly to debates about forever wars and threat inflation at the center of American politics today.

Gorbachev: His Life and Times
Gorbachev: His Life and Times

Author: William Taubman

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 541

ISBN-13: 0393245683

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Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction The definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev. "Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world’s two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system’s gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America’s arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev’s unique character that, by Gorbachev’s own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.

Why Communism Did Not Collapse
Why Communism Did Not Collapse

Author: Martin K. Dimitrov

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-07-31

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 1107035538

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Addresses the durability of communist autocracies in Eastern Europe and Asia, the longest-lasting type of non-democratic regime to emerge after World War I.