The strange death of the Soviet empire /
David Pryce-Jones
- New York : Metropolitan Books, H. Holt, 1995
- viii, 456 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
No one was happy I would prefer not to Infantile ruses Seizing the spoils The man allowed to leave Tomorrow the whole world We can't go on like this Elections The Ribbentop-Molotov pact First steps in reform War as a class struggle A man with whom we can do business National in form The Muslim heritage The Baltic Republics The wish of the majority of Estonians You have killed Soviet Latvia Communism had rotted from within Solidarity and the general The round table The iron curtain opens Whoever acts too late is punished Flashpoints Little brothers Götterdämmerung The last ambassador German reunification There were no statesmen Let's call in the tanks Civic forium We had imposed ourselves A lack of political will The leading role Mafias of the world unite Initiatives Who is lying, I do not know Caught in a trap The state committee and the coup A friendly little chat The speaker What are you doing among them?
The sudden and almost bloodless demise of the Soviet Union - and with it, communism - caught everyone by surprise, from the KGB and the Red Army to Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the dissidents at home and in the satellite states. In the first full-scale account of this mysterious transformation, historian and journalist David Pryce-Jones is able to provide answers to the crucial questions: Why did Gorbachev not shoot his way out of the crisis in classic Soviet style, as former leaders had done in Hungary and Czechoslovakia? How did an unlikely alliance of nationalist actors, idealistic poets, and political priests unseat the ruling despots of Warsaw, Bucharest, East Berlin, and Prague? What role did the West really play in all this? And what do these remarkable events presage for Russia's future? The result is a vivid account of the Soviet empire's fall, as experienced from the inside - and at the top. Uncompromising in its accuracy and keen in its insight, The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire is the definitive account of one of history's greatest anticlimaxes.