Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Plokhy, Serhii

Paperback

General Political ScienceGeneral World HistoryRussian History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0465046711
ISBN13: 9780465046713
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: Jun 2 2015
Pages: 544
Weight: 1.07
Height: 1.49 Width: 5.52 Depth: 8.26
Language: English
The 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

Also in

Russian History

View All