The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

by Serhii Plokhy

Overview

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
Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize
Choice Outstanding Academic Title
BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465046713
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/02/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	195,337
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. The New York Times bestselling author of  The Gates of Europe and Nuclear Folly, Plokhy is an award-winning author of numerous books. He lives in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

“Empire Strikes Back:” A Foreword to the Paperback Edition
Maps
Introduction

I. The Last Summit
1. Meeting in Moscow
2. The Party Crasher
3. Chicken Kiev

II. The Tanks of August
4. The Prisoner of the Crimea
5. The Russian Rebel
6. Freedom’s Victory

III. A Countercoup
7. The Resurgence of Russia
8. Independent Ukraine
9. Saving the Empire

IV. Soviet Disunion
10. Washington’s Dilemma
11. The Russian Ark
12. The Survivor

V. Vox Populi
13. Anticipation
14. The Ukrainian Referendum
15. The Slavic Trinity

VI. Farewell to the Empire
16. Out of the Woods
17. The Birth of Eurasia
18. Christmas in Moscow

Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A superb read: a deeply researched, indispensable reappraisal of the fall of the USSR that has the nail-biting drama of a movie, the gripping narrative and colorful personalities of a novel, and the analysis and original sources of a work of scholarship."—Simon Sebag Montefiore, BBC History Magazine (Best History Books of the Year)

“A stirring account of an extraordinary moment…what elevates The Last Empire from solid history to the must-read shelf is its relevance to the current crisis.”—Wall Street Journal

"Using recently released documents, Plokhy traces in fascinating detail the complex events that led to the Soviet Union's implosion."—Foreign Affairs

"A fine-grained, closely reported, highly readable account of the upheavals of 1991."—Financial Times

"Plokhy makes a convincing case that the misplaced triumphalism of the senior Bush's administration led to the disastrous hubris of his son's."—Slate

"A fascinating and readable deep dive into the final half-year of the Soviet Union."—Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"A superb work of scholarship, vividly written, that challenges tired old assumptions with fresh material from East and West, as well as revealing interviews with many major players."—Spectator (UK)

"An incisive account of the five months leading up to the Union's dissolution.... His vibrant, fast-paced narrative style captures the story superbly."—Sunday Times (UK)

"Almost a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the actions and reactions of the main figures.... Very relevant to today's Ukrainian crisis...very well recounted."
—Literary Review (UK)

"Serhii Plokhy's great achievement in this wonderfully well-written account is to show that much of the triumphalist transatlantic view of the Soviet collapse is historiographical manure."—Times of London (UK)



"Plokhy does a good job of debunking much of the conventional wisdom, especially prevalent in the United States, about the American role in the break-up of the Soviet Union.... His setting the record straight is also of more than historiographical significance." —Times Literary Supplement

"A meticulously documented chronicle of the evil empire's demise.... [Plokhy] is the voice Ukrainians have been yearning for."—Ukrainian Weekly

"With Crimea annexed and eastern Ukraine starting to break away to Russia, The Last Empire may be the most timely book of the year."—National Review

"One of a rare breed: a well-balanced, unbiased book written on the fall of Soviet Union that emphasizes expert research and analysis."—Publishers Weekly

"[Plokhy] provides fascinating details (especially concerning Ukraine) about this fraught, historic time."—Kirkus

From the Publisher

04/28/2014
Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, investigates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing the often brutal political chess game within the Kremlin that ended in President George H. W. Bush's address of the end of the Cold War on Christmas, 1991. Drawing from unreleased presidential material, confidential foreign memos, and declassified documents, Plokhy largely discounts Reagan's get-tough policy as a cause. He credits Mikhail Gorbachev's embrace of Glasnost and electoral democracy in 1987 with loosening the grip of the party apparatus and rigidly controlled media, opening government matters to widespread public criticism despite fears of the Soviet military. Bush and his advisers cautiously tried to prolong the reign of Gorbachev, but worried about both the ambitions of the "boorish" Boris Yeltsin and the potential falling into the wrong hands of the nuclear arsenals in the newly freed republics. Plokhy's taut narrative features rapid snapshots of Yeltsin's soaring rhetoric to the masses as he stood atop a tank, the ruthless efficiency of the plotters against the powerless Gorbachev, the crisis of rebellious Ukraine, and the vigorous debate within the White House. This account is one of a rare breed: a well-balanced, unbiased book written on the fall of Soviet Union that emphasizes expert research and analysis. (May)

Publishers Weekly

★ 05/01/2014
The recent Russian-Ukrainian crisis has its roots in the breakup of the Soviet Union. Here, Plokhy (Ukranian history, Harvard Univ.; Yalta: The Price of Peace) details the collapse of the USSR in late 1991. His contention is that the USSR, which he views as the last great European empire, dissolved under the stress of internal tensions and ethnic clashes. Rejecting the notion that the United States won a great victory in the Cold War, the author uses the memoirs, correspondence, and other writings of American and Soviet officials to strengthen the picture he puts forth of an American leadership that failed to understand the players and movements shaping Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. Plokhy's cleanly written narrative presents a clear view of the complex events and numerous parties involved in the Soviet Union's demise as well as the reasons that the Soviet government could not ultimately rein in Ukrainian and Russian national movements. VERDICT Plokhy's fine scholarship should be set alongside such great works as David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb and Vladislav M. Zubok's A Failed Empire. An excellent text for historians, students of current events, and anyone fascinated with political intrigue.—Jacob Sherman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., San Antonio

Library Journal

2014-03-29
A dour, authoritative look at the last bitter months of 1991 leading up to the Soviet Union's collapse. Plokhy (Ukrainian History/Harvard Univ.; The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires, 2012, etc.) uses access to newly declassified documents and rich primary sources for a close study of these final decisive months, from the July summit in Moscow between President George H. W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Gorbachev's resignation from the defunct state on Christmas Day. Bush was sympathetic to the travails of Gorbachev and, unlike his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, wanted to proceed with caution as the satellite republics began to peel off from the Soviet motherland under Gorbachev's new reform policies. The second most populous Soviet republic, Ukraine, was a prize neither Gorbachev nor Boris Yeltsin wanted to lose, however, as underscored in Bush's unfortunate (for Ukrainian independence) "Chicken Kiev" speech, in which he drew a wishy-washy line between "freedom" and "independence." Events hurtled to a climax as Gorbachev and his family were virtually imprisoned in his Crimean dacha by a "state of emergency" when the KGB hard-liners attempted a clumsy coup d'état—which very well might have succeeded in the old-school Soviet style if Yeltsin had not made a strong, public stance and Bush and the Western media not made their dissatisfaction known. Yeltsin and the Russian Federation emerged triumphant, with Gorbachev clearly in retreat, forced to ban the Communist Party at Yeltsin's instigation. Once Ukraine grasped the new political landscape, its parliament voted overwhelmingly for independence, causing shock waves throughout the union. Plokhy delineates the nerve-wracking wrangling over maintaining some form of economic union of Slavic republics, up to the very end, while Bush and others supported Gorbachev and a Soviet center—which could not hold. The author provides fascinating details (especially concerning Ukraine) about this fraught, historic time.

Kirkus Reviews