The Dream that Failed: Reflections on the Soviet Union - Hardcover

Laqueur, Walter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195089782 ISBN 13: 9780195089783

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Walter Laqueur as been hailed as "one of our most distinguished scholars of modern European history" in the New York Times Book Review. Robert Byrnes, writing in the Journal of Modern History, called him "one of the most remarkable men in the Western world working in the field." Over a span of three decades, in books ranging from Russia and Germany to the recent Black Hundred, he has won a reputation as a major writer and a provocative thinker. Now he turns his attention to the greatest enigma of our time: the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
In Why the Soviet Union Failed, Laqueur offers an authoritative assessment of the Soviet era--from the triumph of Lenin to the fall of Gorbachev. In the last three years, decades of conventional wisdom about the U.S.S.R. have been swept away, while a flood of evidence from Russian archives demands new thinking about old assumptions. Laqueur rises to the challenge with a critical inquiry conducted on a grand scale. He shows why the Bolsheviks won the struggle for power in 1917; how they captured the commitment of a young generation of Russians; why the idealism faded as Soviet power grew; how the system ultimately collapsed; and why Western experts have been so wrong about the Communist state. Always thoughtful and incisive, Laqueur reflects on the early enthusiasm of foreign observers and Bolshevik revolutionaries--then takes a piercing look at the totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union. We see how Communist society stagnated during the 1960s and '70s, as the economy wobbled to the brink; we also see how Western observers, from academic experts to CIA analysts, made wildly optimistic estimates of Moscow's economic and political strength. Just weeks before the U.S.S.R. disappeared from the earth, scholars were confidently predicting the survival of the Soviet Union. But in underscoring the rot and repression, he also notes that the Communist state did not necessarily have to fall when it did, and he examines the many factors behind the collapse (the pressure from Reagan's Star Wars arms program, for instance, and ethnic nationalism). Some of these same problems, he finds, continue to shape the future of Russia and the other successor states.
Only now, in the rubble of this lost empire, are we coming to grips with just how wrong our assumptions about the U.S.S.R. had been. In The Dream That Failed, an internationally renowned historian provides a new understanding of the Soviet experience, from the rise of Communism to its sudden fall. The result of years of research and reflection, it sheds fresh light on a central episode in our turbulent century.

About this title

About the Author:

About the Author:
Walter Laqueur as been hailed as "one of our most distinguished scholars of modern European history" (New York Times Book Review), and "one of the most remarkable men in the Western world working in the field,"(Journal of Modern History). His most recent study of the Russian extreme right was described as "a model to study Russia" (American Historical Review). Walter Laqueur was for twenty-five years the director of the Institute of Contemporary History and the Wiener Library in London. He is editor of the Journal of Contemporary History and serves as chairman of the International Research Council at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. His books, which have been translated into many languagues, include Black Hundred, Russia and Germany, The Long Road to Freedom, The Fate of the Revolution, Terrorism, and most recently an autobiography, Thursday's Child has Far to Go.

From Publishers Weekly:

In a devastating postmortem of Soviet history, Laqueur (Black Hundred) challenges much conventional thinking as he illuminates two central questions: why the U.S.S.R. lasted as long as it did, and why it collapsed. He notes that the Bolshevik takeover in 1917 resulted from fortuitous circumstances, including the chaos of WWI and the disunity of anti-Bolshevik factions in the ensuing civil war. Ignorance of the outside world, enforced through the early 1960s, contributed to Soviet citizens' passive acceptance of the regime, surmises this prolific historian. As for the Soviet Union's breakup, he opines that the dismal quality of life-repression of freedoms, rising crime, routine high-level corruption, poisoned air and water and substandard housing-was even more decisive than economic failure. The author scathingly criticizes fellow Western travelers who turned a blind eye to Soviet totalitarianism, and CIA economists and academics who greatly overestimated the Soviet gross national product while underestimating the crushing burden of Soviet military spending as factors in the demise of the U.S.S.R.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0195089782
• ISBN 13: 9780195089783
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248