Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000. - book review

Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000. Stephen Kotkin. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]16.99 (US$25.00). 245 pages. ISBN 0-19-280245-3. This short study is concerned with the end of the Soviet Union and is not so much history as the reflections on history by an historian. It examines when the collapse occurred and asks why and under whose direction it occurred.

It must become compulsory reading for anyone interested in late twentieth century history. The author argues that the Soviet Empire was collapsing before 1985 and that the collapse, when it came, did not end in 1991. Mr Kotkin prefers the 'wider view' in which Russia saw 'the sudden onset, and then inescapable prolongation, of the death agony of an entire world comprising non-market economics and anti-liberal institutions'. It was 'triggered' by Communism's own ideology and undermined by reformers within the Soviet system. The Soviets' empire, largely inherited from the Tsars but added to by Stalin, also collapsed but without the wars that could have come. How all this happened, how in the end the Soviet elite helped to bring about the collapse by trying to reform a system that could not be reformed, are the questions this book tackles. Likewise, how did all this affect a Russian Federation burdened with the heavy Soviet legacy of government, KGB and planners? To answer these questions Mr Kotkin concentrates on surviving elites and those structures which survived the collapse and sees them all within the wider context of world politics. (T.B.)

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