The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, investigates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing the often brutal political chess game within the Kremlin that ended in President George H. W. Bush's address of the end of the Cold War on Christmas, 1991. Drawing from unreleased presidential material, confidential foreign memos, and declassified documents, Plokhy largely discounts Reagan's get-tough policy as a cause. He credits Mikhail Gorbachev's embrace of Glasnost and electoral democracy in 1987 with loosening the grip of the party apparatus and rigidly controlled media, opening government matters to widespread public criticism despite fears of the Soviet military. Bush and his advisers cautiously tried to prolong the reign of Gorbachev, but worried about both the ambitions of the "boorish" Boris Yeltsin and the potential falling into the wrong hands of the nuclear arsenals in the newly freed republics. Plokhy's taut narrative features rapid snapshots of Yeltsin's soaring rhetoric to the masses as he stood atop a tank, the ruthless efficiency of the plotters against the powerless Gorbachev, the crisis of rebellious Ukraine, and the vigorous debate within the White House. This account is one of a rare breed: a well-balanced, unbiased book written on the fall of Soviet Union that emphasizes expert research and analysis. (May)