Reviews for The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States

The average rating for The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-07-26 00:00:00 John Holmes This is a sweeping history of the Soviet Union, from its origins to approximately 1996 (there is an updated edition that brings the reader nearly up to the present, but that's not the version I saw). The book emphasizes the early USSR and the Stalinist period, giving each of these portions around 40% of the text each (especially the Revolution itself), whereas the USSR after 1953 is only given ~20% of the space. Although I understand these decisions, I wish more space was given to the later period, as this was the portion I was most interested in. Suny goes into a great deal of detail on early political decisions made by early revolutionaries and leaders during the first decade of the Soviet Union, but as the narrative gets closer to the present, less detail is given and the book becomes more broad sweeps (which is actually what I expected from the whole text). Nevertheless, I'm glad I read this because it allows me to better place other books on the USSR, both temporally and thematically. Recommend

Review # 2 was written on 2020-05-04 00:00:00 Rene Blanchette Read this for my Soviet history uni course. I highly recommend the book if you're interested in the Soviet Union. I'm from the US, so the first thought of the USSR is some homogeneous looming machine, but being able to learn about the people's lives and events of the USSR gave me a better understanding of what went on.