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The Last Empire
- The Final Days of the Soviet Union
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
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Publisher's Summary
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.
As Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. On the contrary, American leaders dreaded the possibility that the Soviet Union might suddenly crumble, throwing all of Eurasia into chaos. Bush was firmly committed to supporting his ally Gorbachev and remained wary of radical leaders such as recently elected Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Fearing what might happen to the large Soviet nuclear arsenal in the event of the union's collapse, Bush stood by Gorbachev as he resisted the growing independence movements in Ukraine, Moldova, and the Caucasus. Plokhy shows that it was only after the movement for independence of the republics had gained undeniable momentum on the eve of the Ukrainian vote for independence that Bush finally abandoned Gorbachev to his fate.
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What listeners say about The Last Empire
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- Charles Martin
- 2022-04-27
Detailed account of events leading to fall of USSR
In light of the recent Russian invasion into Ukraine I wanted to better understand the reasons why the Soviet Union fell to better educate myself on what's going on today. Plokhy's narrative starts roughly a year or so before the fall of Soviet Union in December 1991 and centers the story on Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the Bush administration. very detailed, very thorough I learned a lot.
Only reason I'm giving it four stars and this may be my own mistake but I was looking to read a book that really explained the lead up to the fall of the Soviet Empire and all of the reasons why it crumbled onto itself. I wanted to learn a bit more about the other countries outside of Ukraine, but the author does stress that Ukraine independence as a major reason why the USSR couldn't continue on after. I may need to pick up a book that is a bit less detailed in the events and days directly leading up to the fall and read something that is a bit more broadly sweeping in time and scope.
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