I chose to write my book reviews about books that mainly talk about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Personally, I think that the Cold War has always been one of the most interesting international conflicts in world history. The first book that I am writing about is A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev by Vladislav M. Zubok who is a Russian scholar who received his doctorate from the institute for the Study of Canada and the USA of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He wrote several books about the intensity of the cold war, including this one I have chosen. He wrote this book in 2007 to explain and essentially discuss how the Western Interpretations of the Cold War and the reasons behind the failure of the Soviet empire were wrong and were altered by the mainstream exaggeration of the Kremlin’s aggressiveness and policies, explaining the interests and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders from a non-Western point of view. A Failed Empire provides a history quite different from those written by the Western supporters. The second book that I chose to do a book review about is Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 by Stephen Kotkin who is an American historian, academic and author. He is a professor in history and international affairs. He has written several books that focus on the Soviet Union’s history and the paradoxes that surrounded the USSR during the Cold War period. In his book, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 that is written 2001, Stephen Kotkin argues that contrary to common belief, the Soviet Union did not collapse because of grown jealousy of the west, but collapsed because of Gorbachev’s easing of influence policies. The reason I am writing about these two books specifically is that they deeply discuss the collapse of the Soviet Union from both the perspective of an American author and a Russian author; moreover, I personally feel that these two books are comparable and in one way or another complement each other in a way that would help me produce a coherent and well-developed book review.
A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev:
For more than forty years, the Soviet Union stood in front of the west as a horrifying communist enemy. The West feared the Soviet Union as if it were a plague. This struggle that lasted for 4 decades shaped the foreign relations between states, economies and even cultures in the East and West. In the first book, which is A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev, Vladislav M. Zubok divides his book into ten chapters. Each chaoter explaining a significant event that occurred in a specific time frame. Starting from the Soviet people and Stalin between war and peace in 1945 and ending it with Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This work has interesting contributions into how the period of the Cold War looked from the Soviet side, which is anything but like how Americans and the US portrayed the Cold War. The spirit of a just war against Nazism and their experiences abroad pushed them to dream about a political and cultural liberalization. The alliance between the Soviet Union and Western democracies seemed to create a possibility for the introduction of civil freedoms and human rights. The opening of archives in Russia and Eastern Europe allowed Vladislav M. Zubok to create the first international study recounting the struggle from the perspective of the Kremlin. In the first chapter, Zubok describes how the streets of Kremlin looked like after the USSR defeated the third Reich or the Nazis after WWII. He then begins to hint at the fact that even though the USSR had just won, it was an exhausted giant. Contrary to what Western history claims, the Soviet human reserves were not limitless. In fact, by the end of the WWII, the Soviet army was as desperate for human resources as the German army. History has been subjective, Soviet leaders have always been afraid to reveal the real number of human casualties and have paid precise attention to miscalculating the Soviet casualties, which shows how important were Soviet security and power to Stalin and his successors.
After the end of the WWII, Kremlin Leaders, party elites and the military came to identify themselves as part of the great central power, which campaigned the inclusion of non-Russian and Slavic countries into this new collective identity. Moreover, even though the Soviet Union was anything but a strong empire, after the end of WWII, Soviet elites strongly believed that the Soviet can and will be a global empire. He then says that evidence found within the politburo, which is the principal policymaking committee of the communist party, shows that the Kremlin recognized global realities of power seeking as a mean to gain Soviet strength, while simultaneously defending the name of the Soviet Socialist empire of being with an anti-imperialist ideology and revolutionary driven. Zubok is a shrewd interpreter of the foreign-policy strategies and styles of the USSR’s supreme leaders. Zubok’s explanation of the
“revolutionary-imperial” paradigm assisted readers in understanding the mind-set of the Soviet leaders. Vladislav explains the pragmatism of Joseph Stalin that might have or might have not led to the mainstream idea of Soviet aggression and pragmatism. Stalin’s definition of what constituted security for the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe was not a set of neutral states along his borders. Instead, “Stalin defined Soviet security in ideological terms,” He was determined to constitute an exclusive security buffer zone around the USSR that would consolidate the territorial and political gain of the Soviets after WWII. In this specific process, Stalin failed to achieve his goals without antagonizing the United States paving a way for aggression to be put in place. Stalin has often been portrayed as a treacherous leader who betrayed the revolution, but while Stalin was strongly affected by the geopolitical strategies employed by tsarist statesman who came before Lenin and Trotsky, Zubok has often stressed upon Stalin’s approach “was an evolving amalgam, drawing on different sources”. Western teachings might say that the conflict that began between the two superpowers after the WWII was only ideological and mainly driven by the extreme communist ideas made by the Soviet Union; however, the Cold Wat was not only ideological, but also geopolitical. The Cold War was a clash of two ideologies, two forms of lives and even a clash of two civilizations. Each leader collaborated differently towards the collapse of the Soviet Union: Stalin with his absolute domination of policymaking and unitary control, Khrushchev with his destalinization policies and impulsive diplomacy. Brezhnev with “his dream to become a peacemaker” and his long period of détente paving a way for Gorbachev with his radical democratic reforms that the USSR was anything but ready for.
A Failed Empire has long been appraised for its uniqueness in terms of being one of the few books that was successful in showing the Soviet Union’s conditions during the Cold War from a Soviet’s perspective. It was not the Soviet aggression nor over ambitious policies that have started the Cold War, but rather the leaders who were in control of the Soviet Union and with their different policies that would take the Soviet Union from the far right to the left in a blink of an eye and vice versa. As a person with great interest in Soviet affairs, this book has provided not only pleasure and satisfaction, but also a wide range of educational background. Personally, I think that this book has been anything but biased. Of course, bias exists in every work of writing; however, to an extent the author has tried to preview the Soviet side and argument about the Cold war with careful attention paid to his wording and interpretations. Throughout the several book reviews I have read about A Failed Empire, all reviewers have agreed upon the fact that the author, Vladislav Zubok, succeeded in creating a decent piece of writing that achieved its purpose of showing the drawbacks of Soviet pragmatism and hints that were obvious steps leading to the fall of the Soviet Union. However, reading the book, I think that maybe the author has focused maybe a bit too much on the leaders without paying more attention to the conditions of the Soviet states. The Soviet states were going through horrible economic and political conditions, but they were too often small or “unnecessary” to be noticed. Apart from this personal critique, I am glad I have chosen this book to be taken into the Soviet world with unique insights.
Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000:
In the Cold War era that made up almost half of the twentieth century, almost nobody had expected that the collapse of the Soviet Union would in fact come from within and not from a Wester power, also known as, the United States. The second book that I think greatly complements and maybe fill in the blanks for the first book which I chose to write about is Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse by Stephen Kotkin. Kotkin depicts that the Soviet Union collapse was not a result from a military competition between leaders or aggression, but from the communist ideology that guided the Soviet Union. The democratic reforms and neoliberal ideas that were first suggested by Khrushchev and then applied by Gorbachev could have never taken place in an atmosphere like that of communism. Kotkin coveys the several obstacles that were facing the fall of a superpower, while stuck to millions of troops and tens of thousands of weapons of mass destruction. Armageddon Averted distinctively shows the abrogating significance of history, individual aspiration, geopolitics, and institutions, and deftly draws out contemporary Russia’s conflicting problem. Kotkin titled the book 1970-2000 to stress upon the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union did not start in 1985, nor in 1991; however, to understand the stages of the fall of the Soviet Union, one must trace all of the period from 1970 to 2000, maybe even from 1945. According to Stephen Kotkin, Mikhail Gorbachev might have been the man who broke the last straw and finally brought down the Soviet Union. His policies attempted undermine the communist party and he often positioned weak people as key government roles. Gorbachev often chose to use humane methods rather than violence and aggression with militaristic control. As extreme as this might sound, humanity was not what would have kept the Soviet Union in place, but rather aggression. Gorbachev’s policies were too soft to back up the communist and radical ideas that have been inherited for decades, eventually leading to the fall of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s policy of inaction was one with the most consequence in an aim to reduce confrontation with the US. As he was trying to hold the Union together, Gorbachev lost control over it in the process. Instead of blaming central planning, Kotkin blames attempts first made by Khrushchev in the destalinization effort and eventually led to Gorbachev’s ideas, such as: perestroika, Glasnost and attempts of democratization of a system that was incapable of being reformed. The first few chapters of Armageddon Averted, Kotkin explains why the reforms were taking place. With the rise of races like the arms race, race to the moon, Olympics, etc. The race to a more liberal society began to take place. Since the Soviet Union had this belief that it is somehow an experiment of socialism, which is a superior alternative to capitalism; it was almost crucial that Socialism would prove to be more successful than Capitalism making it more of a competition to the Soviets that cannot be lost. As the oil crisis of the 1970s approached, the Soviet economy was horribly affected. As the Western economies grew, the Soviet economy suffered from a prolonged period of stagnation. In the next chapters