The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

A Book Talk by Serhii Plokhii

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 Plokhii 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 - weakened by infighting and economic turmoil - might suddenly crumble, throwing all of Eurasia into chaos.

Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhii presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months and argues that the key to the Soviet collapse was the inability of the two largest Soviet republics, Russia and Ukraine, to agree on the continuing existence of a unified state. By attributing the Soviet collapse to the impact of American actions, US policy makers overrated their own capacities in toppling and rebuilding foreign regimes. Not only was the key American role in the demise of the Soviet Union a myth, but this misplaced belief has guided - and haunted - American foreign policy ever since.

For more information, see:
http://www.harvard.com/book/the_last_empire_the_final_days_of_the_soviet_union