The Last Empire: A Historical Look at the Final Days of the Soviet Union

Brian Dawson: The author of this book offers an alternative theory to the generally accepted one that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was primarily an American victory with one that the real reason was in the relationship between Russia and Ukraine and the subsequent failure to come to an agreement that would have made both independent along with the other Slavic and Muslim republics of the union (excluding the Baltic states that gained outright independence) but still part of a confederation of former Soviet republics. I found the book very readable and would recommend it to anyone with an interest of this time period.

United Kingdom on Mar 13, 2023

Amazon Customer: V. Putin soll einmal gesagt haben, dass Lenin eine Zeitbombe hinterlassen habe und Stalin habe sie nicht entschärft.
Diese Zeitbombe war die Umwandlung des zaristischen Imperiums in eine Union sozialistischer Republiken.
Mit Perestroika und Glasnost verlor das imperiale Zentrum schrittweise seinen Griff auf die Kolonien, die jetzt nach tatsächlicher und nicht nur behauptetet Souveränität strebten.
Plohky's Buch beschreibt, teilweise taggenau, die letzten Monate des letzten Imperiums der Welt, der UdSSR.
Ich kann das Buch nur empfehlen, nicht nur weil es ein detaillierter Bericht über das Ende der UdSSR ist, sondern weil es verständlich macht, warum die russischen Eliten der Ukraine den Krieg erklärt haben.
Damit hat schon Gorbatschov gedroht, als die Ukraine 91 ihr Referendum zur Unabhängigkeit abhielt.
Gorbatschov, obwohl noch Präsident der UdSSR und Oberbefehlshaber, hatte aber nicht mehr genug macht dazu.
Interessanterweise hatten die USA unter Bush sen. so gar kein Interesse weder an der Unabhängigkeit der Ukraine, Belarus und Russland noch am Zerfall der UdSSR.

Wenn Imperien sich auflösen, folgen in der Regel weitere Konflikte. Das...

Germany on Jan 28, 2023

Arbër cami: A must read if you want to understand today's war that russia started. From the coup against Gorbachev, to the fall of the Soviet Union, to the creation of the old soviet states we know them today and also the start of the problems between Ukraine and russia. Easy to read.

France on Dec 20, 2022

Paradesi K.Yarikipati: It is a tragic story of how the democratic forces unleashed by Gorbachev had engulfed and vanquished him..and adefinitive history of disintegration and downfall of the USSR..a great read

India on Oct 19, 2021

Michael Griswold: Serhii Plokhy in The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union offers a very detailed narrative of the final few months of the Soviet Union. Plokhy’s narrative is one of intense conflict and sadness, which seems like an odd mix considering that the United States and the Soviet Union had been in conflict for half a century.

Mikhail Gorbachev becomes an increasingly isolated figure declining in importance as time goes by besieged on all sides. His desire to keep the Union together with himself at the head first butts up against Boris Yeltsin-who has wrapped himself in a Russified form of democratic populism and wants power for himself and assails Gorbachev for not moving far enough with reforms. Gorbachev is also besieged by hardliners who view Gorbachev as betraying the Soviet system and attempt to get rid of him.

Beyond these dramas internal to the Soviet Union, Plokhy gives voice to the considerations of various international actors including; George H.W. Bush who made every effort to support Gorbachev and his efforts to stay in power until events on the ground in the Soviet Union overtook any influence Washington could have. Of particular note are the...

United States on Oct 16, 2020

Amazon Customer: Plokhy has written an excellent and much-awaited account of the decline and fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka the Soviet Union. The USSR inherited the mantle of the Russian Empire, which began with Ivan the Terrible's conquest in 1552 of the non-Russian Tatars of the Khanate of Kazan, and expanded over the centuries to include many other non-Russians and their homelands: Ukrainians, Georgians, Finns, Poles, Siberians, and many others. The new empire, created with Lenin's blessing by "Commissar of Nationalities" Joseph Stalin and called the USSR, included nearly all those non-Russian nationalities and territories. It declined rapidly under the democratizing reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev's six-year programme of "glasnost' and perestroka" -- ironically, since he intended to preserve the empire -- and finally disintegrated altogether in the last months of 1991. The author has shown, as has not been done before, that it was the non-Russians, and in particular the Ukrainians, who were key in ensuring that final disintegration and the phoenix-like re-emergence of a collection of mostly independent peoples. (Though not all: the largest emerging republic, often referred...

Canada on Dec 05, 2019

JEDrury: “The Last Empire” details historically and politically the collapse of the Soviet Union as it came about in the five months from August through December, 1991. Seghii Plokhy focuses on its four main players, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Leonid Kravchuk and George H.W. Bush and its main parts; the attempted coup against Gorbachev in August, the negotiations and stratagems over union, federation or commonwealth status, the evolving interests of Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states and the Central Asian countries, the all important referendum in Ukraine, the surprising Belavezha Agreement and the gradual marginalizing of Gorbachev as his influence waned. Plokhy, tho Ukrainian, is a matter-of-fact, unbiased chronicler of the timeline who deeply researched the archives of Russia, Ukraine, the United States and interviewed many of the main participants.

He notes Kravchuk’s caginess in negotiating Ukrainian independence and then having it overwhelmingly endorsed by the referendum in December. In this regard, Ukrainian leadership was the most unappreciated factor ending the Soviet Union. Yeltsin comes off as “a much more complex figure than might be suggested by the...

United States on Nov 03, 2015

Peter J. Piaseckyj: Prof. Serhii Plokhy is an erudite, careful and discerning researcher of primary sources, who has written the definitive account of the implosion of the Soviet Union. I was in Kyiv on business in 1991 and was a witness to the events described in the book, but was not fully aware of the undercurrents swirling around me. I even knew some of the Ukrainian political figures.

I agree with Timothy Colton, of Harvard University, and author of "Yeltsin: A Life", where on the back jacket of the book he writes, quote... "..The Last Empire ...equally notable for its penetrating analysis of this exceptionally complex set of events. It is particularly revealing on the contradictions built into U.S. policy and on the contributions to the outcome of the many nations of the USSR, including the Ukrainians, whose pivotal role has often been neglected in previous studies."...unquote. This is because Prof. Plokhy is fluent in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. It is so refreshing to read an American scholar who does not have to transliterate from Russian. For example he translates the name of the Belarusian dictator from Belarusian, namely Lukashenka and the Ukrainian capital correctly from...

United States on Jul 20, 2014