A 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.
