Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire [Paperback]

"Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!" - Nikita Khrushchev, November 17, 1956

In DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, author Michael Dobbs begins his narrative on December 26, 1979 as members of the Soviet Union's ruling Politburo gather to lay before Communist Party General Secretary Brezhnev the final plans for the invasion of Afghanistan. Dobbs ends his narrative at 7:00 PM on December 25, 1991, when General Secretary Gorbachev, in a television address broadcast worldwide, formally dissolved the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

It would, perhaps, be too much to expect that the author record all the facts of that 12-year period that related to the dissolution of the Soviet Empire; the resulting book would be huge. Rather, in 451 pages, Dobbs does a splendid job touching on the salient events in chronological order to yield an immensely readable and instructive work of popular history: the Soviet occupation of Kabul (12/79), Solidarity's strike in Gdansk's Lenin Shipyard (8/80), the suppression of Solidarity (12/81), Brezhnev's death (11/82), the shoot down of KAL 007 (9/83), Gorbachev's accesion as General Secretary (3/85), the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva (11/85), Chernobyl (4/86), the first use of Stinger missiles against Soviet aircraft by Afghan mujahedin (9/86), Mathias Rust's farcical penetration of Soviet airspace (5/87), the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan (2/89), the Tbilisi riots (4/89), the resurrection of Solidarity (6/89), the fall of Berlin Wall and the revolt in Prague (11/89), the downfall of Romania's Ceausescu (12/89), Yeltsin's elevation to power (5/90), the Soviet invasion of Vilnius, Lithuania (1/91), and the abortive KGB coup against Gorbachev (8/91). And, of course, thumbnail bios of the personalities who played crucial roles, including Walesa, Jaruzelski, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin. All this against the background of a Soviet society and economy, enfeebled by decades of centralized planning and consumer deprivation, which were unable to absorb the shock of Gorbachev's perestroika and vision of a revitalized socialism.

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER includes 18 pages of Notes, and a 5-page Bibliography; Dobbs did his homework.

This most excellent work is likely to be most appreciated by those post-WWII Baby Boomer's like myself, who grew up under the threat of a Soviet missile strike. (Those under 20 will probably yawn.) We remember the duck-and-cover drills in elementary school, the periodic tests of the town air raid siren, Khrushchev's shoe at the U.N., the Cuban Missile Crisis, bomb shelters, "better dead than red", the Domino Theory, "we will bury you", the Red Menace, the Evil Empire, the hammer and sickle on a blood red flag. Watching on TV the collapse of the Berlin Wall was, for me, the end of an era and a catharsis. My God, we'd "won".

Nowadays, those that would destroy skyscrapers, embassies, troop convoys, bus stops, and underground trains are anonymous and stateless. Peculiarly, I miss the relative stability of the Bad Old Days. At least then we could give the Enemy a face.

This is a terrific book. It makes history come alive through the people, big and small, who caused Communism to collapse from within the Spviet Union. It is easy to feel you are there as the pages replay the key events during the 80's and early 90's. I was most impressed by the author's ability to craft this epic into a gripping, moving story. Well done!!

This is a compelling and vivid description of the events that led to the toatal disintegration of the Soviet Empire, from the collapse of its East European satellite states to the impolosion of the USSR itself. Dobbs was an eyewitness to many events described in the book, and he writes accurately and convincingly. The beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire is traced to the final years of Brezhnev's rule, with its stagnation, over the hill, senile politicians, and the tragic decision to invade Afghanistan.

Because this is a very rich journalistic account, the reder should be prepared to deal with a myriad of Eastern European proper names that occur throughout the book. Still, this is a very sophisticated, historically-informed journalism, and if you want to know about the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, you owe it to yourself to read this book.