The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union - Rilegato

Serhii Plokhy

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 178074529X ISBN 13: 9781780745299

Casa editrice: Oneworld Publications, 2014

Riassunto

On Christmas Day 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union. By the next day the USSR was officially no more and the USA had emerged as the world's sole superpower. Award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy presents a page-turning account of the preceding five months of drama, filled with failed coups d'etat and political intrigue. Honing in on this previously disregarded but crucial period and using recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, he shatters the established myths of 1991 and presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months. Plokhy argues that contrary to the triumphalist Western narrative, George H. W. Bush desperately wanted to preserve the Soviet Union and keep Gorbachev in power, and that it was Ukraine and not the US that played the key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The consequences of those five months and the myth-making that has since surrounded them are still being felt in Crimea, Russia, the US, and Europe today. With its spellbinding narrative and strikingly fresh perspective, The Last Empire is the essential account of one of the most important watershed periods in world history, and is indispensable reading for anyone seeking to make sense of international politics today.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

'Serhii Plokhy's dramatic account of the high politics behind the collapse of the Soviet Union could not be more timely... The Last Empire is a brilliant work of political narrative: vivid, original, urgent, and above all, wise.' --Rachel Polonsky, author of Molotov's Magic Lantern: Travels in Russian History

'Serhii Plokhy's fine book combines a colourful, fast-paced narrative with trenchant analysis of key players in the Soviet collapse... By far our best account yet of the death spiral of the USSR.' --William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

'At last, a definitive account of the breakup of the USSR... This book usefully eviscerates some of the remaining mythology about the end of the Cold War, and is an indispensable guide to the tensions and rivalries of the present.' --Anne Applebaum Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History

L'autore:

Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and a leading authority on Soviet history. He has won the first prize of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies three times, and his book Yalta: The Price of Peace won the Ukrainian National Women's League of America Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Foundation Prize. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Oneworld Publications
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 178074529X
• ISBN 13: 9781780745299
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 496