Armageddon averted
by Stephen Kotkin · first published 2001
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2recommended by
2HN commenters
2017–2024first – last mentioned
100% recommend
"In the Cold War era that dominated the second half of the twentieth century, nobody envisaged that the collapse of the Soviet Union would come from within, still less that it would happen meekly, without global conflagration. In this compact book Stephen Kotkin shows that the Soviet collapse resulted not from military competition but, ironically, from the dynamism of Communist ideology, the long-held dream for 'socialism with a human face'. The neo-liberal reforms in post-Soviet Russia never took place, nor could they have, given the Soviet-era inheritance in the social, political, and econom
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…some books that explain this, and include abundant primary source documentation of my claims. Please feel free to email me at my address as listed in my profile. I think you might really enjoy a copy of Armageddon Averted by Kotkin. It is a very enjoyable account of this era, and it quite deftly addresses your contention.
on “Russia Requires Apple and Google to Remove LinkedIn from Local App Stores” ↗Kotkin (of the New Yorker interview recently making the rounds, the Stalin bio, etc) wrote Armageddon Averted - one interesting and fairly brief summary.
on “How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London” ↗A short and fun to read corrective is Kotkin's Armageddon Averted. The competition, inefficiency and the demands of its own power projections were a costly strain but nowhere close to leading to ruin or an irrecoverable state.
on “The Soviet Union's Monster Mi-6 Helicopter Airliner” ↗