The Soviet Union Today
Author: National Geographic Book Service
Publisher:
Published: 1990-01-01
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780870448171
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The Last Empire
Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2015-09-08
Total Pages: 522
ISBN-13: 0465097928
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal) On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades -- with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world. As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. Bush, in fact, was firmly committed to supporting Gorbachev as he attempted to hold together the USSR in the face of growing independence movements in its republics. Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months, providing invaluable insight into the origins of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the outset of the most dangerous crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War. Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Choice Outstanding Academic Title BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year
Collapse
Author: Vladislav M. Zubok
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2021-11-30
Total Pages: 468
ISBN-13: 0300262442
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA 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.
Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States
Author: John Lewis Gaddis
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages
Published: 1990
Total Pages: 404
ISBN-13: 9780075572589
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom the capricious reign of Catherine the Great and Alexander I to the provocative leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the author concentrates on the interplay between interests and ideologies in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, in an even-handed, non-ideological narrative.
China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-present
Author: Thomas P. Bernstein
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 568
ISBN-13: 9780739142226
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this book an international group of scholars examines China's acceptance and ultimate rejection of Soviet models and practices in economic, cultural, social, and other realms.
Black on Red
Author: Robert Robinson
Publisher: Acropolis Books (NY)
Published: 1988
Total Pages: 448
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Robert Robinson (1907?-1994) was a Jamaican-born toolmaker who worked in the auto industry in the United States. At the age of 23, he was recruited to work in the Soviet Union, where he spent 44 years after the government refused to give him an exit visa for return. Starting with a one-year contract by Russians to work in the Soviet Union, he twice renewed his contract. He became trapped by the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II and the government's refusal to give him an exit visa. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering during the war. He finally left the Soviet Union in 1974 on an approved trip to Uganda, where he asked for and was given asylum. He married an African-American professor working there. He finally gained re-entry to the United States in 1976, and gained attention for his accounts of his 44 years in the Soviet Union."--Wikipedia.
The Handbook of the Former Soviet Union
Author: Michael Kort
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
Published: 1997-01-01
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9780761300168
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLooks at the past, present, and future of all the newly independent nations of the former Soviet Union, with a chronology of events leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine
Author: Gail Barbara Stewart
Publisher: Referencepoint Press
Published: 2014-08
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781601527080
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHistorical perspective on the republics that once made up the Soviet Union and the choices and challenges that have shaped where they are today is the focus of The Former Soviet Union: Then and Now. All books in the series examine important political, economic, and cultural events during the Soviet period and since the Soviet Union's collapse. Challenges that lie ahead are also explored. Quotes from recognized experts, respected news organizations, and other knowledgeable sources add depth and perspective to the text as do maps, sidebars, and key facts. Book jacket.
A History of the Soviet Union
Author: Geoffrey A. Hosking
Publisher: London : Fontana Press : Collins
Published: 1985
Total Pages: 540
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRussia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union
Author: Roman Szporluk
Publisher: Hoover Press
Published: 2020-02-24
Total Pages: 579
ISBN-13: 0817995439
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book chronicles the final two decades in the history of the Soviet Union and presents a story that is often lost in the standard interpretations of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Although there were numerous reasons for the collapse of communism, it did not happen—as it may have seemed to some—overnight. Indeed, says Roman Szporluk, the root causes go back even earlier than 1917. To understand why the USSR broke up the way it did, it is necessary to understand the relationship between the two most important nations of the USSR—Russia and Ukraine—during the Soviet period and before, as well as the parallel but interrelated processes of nation formation in both states. Szporluk details a number of often-overlooked factors leading to the USSR's fall: how the processes of Russian identity formation were not completed by the time of the communist takeover in 1917, the unification of Ukraine in 1939–1945, and the Soviet period failing to find a resolution of the question of Russian-Ukrainian relations. The present-day conflict in the Caucasus, he asserts, is a sign that the problems of Russian identity remain.
