Reviews for Russia's Path from Gorbachev to Putin: The Demise of the Soviet System and the New Russia

The average rating for Russia's Path from Gorbachev to Putin: The Demise of the Soviet System and the New Russia based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-09-09 00:00:00 Bradley Leifermann We're 31 years on since the collapse of communism in E. Europe, 29 years on from the last days of the USSR. There are many explanations of what happened and why, none have been particularly satifying from where I'm sitting. - Yes there was corruption - but that seems to come with pretty much any state, rich, poor anything in between. - Yes, a rough history with so much blood in the soil but then there is the heroic and mostly ignored decisive role that the USSR played in defeating Nazism during WW2 - a whole nation who loved their country in spite of Stalin. - Yes the economy was in a kind of gridlock, but then again this can be overstated... the Soviet Union was an advanced industrialized country and if it couldn't match the West in terms of consumer goods it had one of the best machine tool industries in the world with many branches of its manufacturing world class. - Yes, there was a pervasive cynicism about the Communist Party leadership but when polled as late as 1989, 1990 in their overwhelming majority the Soviet people were still commited to Socialism... albeit one "reformed" from the Soviet model. At least these are some of the questions that have been on my mind since the collapse. Had hopes for Gorbachev, to be honest... and have some idea as to what went wrong, rough, undocumented, just stuff rolling around in my head. And very little that I have read - perhaps Stephen F. Cohen te exception - has come close to getting to the heart of the matter, what happened and why... And then I read Kotz and Weir. Stimulating read. Of course one book does not a comprehensive historical explanation make... still, one of the better books the subject. Think I met Weir back in the day... but am not sure. Think it's (it = the collapse of the USSR) irrelevant thirty years on? You're wrong. Impossible to find in stores but you can read it for free on-line...

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-19 00:00:00 James W Verba First book on recent Russian development, solved many of my concerns on Russian's attitude towards the West and their past. Authors tactfully included comparison of Yelsin's & Gorbachev's neoliberal approach with the (still-continuing) Chinese economic reform - interesting to see the absence of the Chinese way in the last section, where authors chose to talk vague on idealized theories - on the lessons for future socialism. It deserves 5-star, but the last section is quite vague.