Armageddon averted: the Soviet collapse, 1970-2000 ISBN: 9780195368635 Platform/Publisher: ACLS / Oxford University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Ten pages at a time; Download: Ten pages at a time Subjects: European: Russia & Eastern;
Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue - bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse - this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years. Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted--that the world's largest police state, with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper. Throughout the book, Kotkin also paints vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he offers a fascinating picture of Gorbachev, describing this virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer as "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"--and more or less going along with it.At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution."
Stephen Mark Kotkin was born on February 17, 1959. He is a historian, academic and author. Kotkin graduated from the University of Rochester in 1981 with a B.A. in English. He studied Russian and Soviet history under Reginald E. Zelnik and Martin Malia at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his M.A. in 1983 and his Ph.D. in 1988, both in history. Starting in 1986, Kotkin traveled to the former Soviet Union several times for academic research and fellowships. He was a visiting scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences (1993, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2012). He joined the faculty at Princeton University in 1989, and was the director of in Russian and Eurasian Studies Program for 13 years (1995-2008). He is currently the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton. He is also a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Biography with his title Stalin - Vol. 1 : Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928.
