Russia Transformed Breakthrough to Hope - Hardcover

James H. Billington

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0029035155 ISBN 13: 9780029035153

Publisher: Free Press, 1992

Synopsis

Looks at the failed coup attempt and the other events that led to the breakdown of the totalitarian regime and the birth of a new optimism

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Reviews

Billington was in Moscow last August during the failed Communist coup and the democratic counter-coup that swept Boris Yeltsin into power. The Librarian of Congress and one of the foremosts expert on Russian history, Billington ( The Icon and the Axe ) views these events as a decisive turning point that transformed the Russian people psychologically, forcing them to accept responsibility for moral choices. In a stirring, perceptive eyewitness account of the coup and its aftermath, he witheringly portrays Gorbachev as a pure child of the Leninist party machine, intent only on limited reform-from-above. Traveling from Arctic Archangel to the Siberian city of Irkutsk, Billington met ordinary citizens, politicians, democratic activists and peasants as he undertook his quest for the sources of a post-Communist Russian identity. He is cautiously optimistic about the long-term prospects for democracy, placing his hope in an educated postwar, post-Stalinist generation influenced by contact with the West.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0029035155
• ISBN 13: 9780029035153
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 202