Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (29 page)

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5 Soviet and post-Soviet ecocide

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Further reading

Probably the best starting point for analyses of the Soviet collapse is Fred Halliday, ‘A Singular Collapse: The Soviet Union, Market Pressure and Inter-State Competition’,
Contention
, 1/2

(1992), 121–41. Another concise, early overview of explanatory factors can be found in Alexander Dallin, ‘Causes of the Collapse of the USSR’,
Post-Soviet Affairs
, 8/2 (1992), 279–302.

Unusually suggestive essays include Vladimir Bukovsky, ‘Who Resists Gorbachev?’,
Washington Quarterly
, 12/1 (1989), 5–19; ‘Djilas on Gorbachev’,
Encounter
, 71/3 (1988), 3–19; Donna Bahry, ‘Society Transformed? Rethinking the Social Roots of Perestroika’,
Slavic Review
, 52/3 (1993), 512–54; and Alex Alexiev, ‘Soviet Nationalities in German Wartime Strategy 1941–1945’, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, 1982. For the post-mortems among Sovietologists, there is Michael Cox (ed.),
Rethinking the Soviet Collapse: Sovietology, the Death of Communism
and the New Russia
(London, 1998).

Unfortunately, most of the avalanche of Soviet and post-Soviet memoirs have not been translated into English, including exceptionally valuable ones by bodyguards, press secretaries, prime ministers, officers of the general staff and army command, high officials of the KGB, and the long-serving Kremlin doctor. Valuable secondary studies on the collapse are Steven L.

Solnick,
Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions
(Cambridge, MA, 1998); John Dunlop,
The Rise of Russia and
the Fall of the Soviet Empire
(Princeton, 1993, 1995); Murray 233

further reading

Feshbach and Alfred Friendly, Jr.,
Ecocide in the USSR
(London, 1992); Kazimierz Z. Poznan śki,
Poland’s Protracted Transition:
Institutional Change and Economic Growth 1970–1994
(New York, 1996); and Charles S. Maier,
Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism
and the End of East Germany
(Princeton, 1997). Alternatives to the interpretation presented here can be found in Moshe Lewin,
The Gorbachev Phenomenon
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988, 1991); Scott Shane,
Dismantling Utopia: How Information
Ended the Soviet Union
(Chicago, 1994); Ben Fowkes,
The Disintegration of the Soviet Union: A Study in the Rise and Triumph of
Nationalism
(New York, 1997); and Robert M. Gates,
From the
Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They
Won the Cold War
(New York, 1996). Valerie Bunce,
Subversive
Institutions: The Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State
(New York, 1999), also argues that Soviet institutions subverted themselves, but her explanation differs from that offered here.

Few books on post-Soviet Russia take account of the Soviet collapse or exhibit a grasp of history, geopolitics, and institutions. Exceptions include Eugene Huskey,
Presidential Power in
Russia
(Armonk, NY, 1999); Mary McAuley,
Russia’s Politics of
Uncertainty
(New York, 1997); Clifford G. Gaddy,
The Price of the
Past: Russia’s Struggle with the Legacy of a Militarized Economy
(Washington, 1996); William E. Odom,
The Collapse of the Soviet
Military
(New Haven, 1998); and David Woodruff,
Money
Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism
(Ithaca, NY, 1999). Among outstanding short pieces are Thomas Graham, ‘The Fate of the Russian State’,
Demokratizatsiya
, 8/3 (2000), 354–75; Richard E. Ericson, ‘Economics and the Russian Transition’,
Slavic Review
, 57/3 (1998), 609–25; Vladimir Shlapentokh, ‘Russia: Privatization and Illegalization of Social and Political Life’,
Washington Quarterly
, 19/1 (1996), 65–85; Jeremy 234

further reading

R. Azrael and Alexander G. Rahr, ‘The Formation and Development of the Russian KGB, 1991–1994’, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, 1993; and Peter H. Solomon, ‘The Limits of Legal Order in Post-Soviet Russia’,
Post-Soviet Affairs
, 11/2 (1995), 89–114.

Analyses of Russia that differ from that expressed here can be found in Tim McDaniel,
The Agony of the Russian Idea
(Princeton, 1996), and Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski,
The Tragedy of
Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy
(Washington, 2001).

Typically, English-language journalism on the late Soviet Union and especially post-Soviet Russia left something to be desired, but numerous instances of outstanding reporting are cited in the notes. Very highly recommended is Ryszard Kapusćin

śki,
Imperium
(New York, 1994).

Perhaps the most incisive, albeit brief, discussion of the wider significance of Russia’s example can be found in Stephen Holmes, ‘What Russia Teaches us Now: How Weak States Threaten Freedom’,
American Prospect
, 33 (1997), 30–9.

For those interested in studying the art of contemporary history, there is no better place to turn than Thucydides,
The
Peloponnesian War
(New York, 1951).

235

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Index

Afghanistan, war in
16,
50,
61,
68,

Bukovsky, Vladimir
1,
177

87,
102

bureaucracy versus civil service Aganbegyan, Abel
62–
63

142,
144,
166,
170

Akhromeev, Sergei
80–
81,
88

suicide
211

Caucasus
168,
193

Andropov, Yuri
49,
56,
59,
93,
172

Central Asia
168,
193