Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire [Paperback]

This a must read for anyone under 30 who will not remember the extraordinary events of 1989 when the whole world order changed with almost no bloodshed. This book reads like a thriller screen script and keeps you wanting to turn over page after page even though you know from the start that the tale has a happy ending. If you are feeling frustrated and depressed about world events this book shows how really important and major change occurred for the better for millions of people without recourse to war. Gorbachev set off the chain of events that led to the collapse of Communism - not be design but by accident - events veered out of his control and were taken up by a number of unlikely heroes - a Polish female crane driver and a carousing Czech playright are amongst a cast of amazing and colourful characters - stranger and much better than fiction

An impelling and informative account of the decline and fall of the Soviet Empire.

This book is a highly readable and impelling account of the decline and fall of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe. It is written in short and succinct chapters, most of which are of less than ten pages in length. The author's account dispenses with non-essential data and concentrates attention on the cardinal aspects of the subject, namely, the progressive disintegration of Soviet power and influence in the satellite countries of Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany (German Democratic Republic), Hungary, Poland and Romania. The origin of the debacle can be traced to a minor incident that occurred in the Lenin Shipyard, Gdansk, in August 1980. Anna Walentynowycz, a diminuative crane driver, was arrested for 'stealing' candle ends, to be melted down to make new candles, which were then to be used again to illuminate a shrine dedicated to forty-four 'martyrs' who had been killed during a crackdown in 1970. It was that incident, in particular, that led to the creation of the Solidarity movement, and that event subsequently resulted in the progressive formation of `democratic' governments in those countries in Eastern Europe to which reference has been made above.

The transformation that initially occurred in Eastern Europe, in general, can be likened to a cascade - an inexorable succession of events - which also had profound transformative effects within the Soviet Union itself. Those chapters that discuss the policies adopted by Mikhail Gorbachev - glasnost and perestroika - after he was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party, in March 1985, are of particular interest. Those policy initiatives encouraged Gorbachev to instruct the Eastern European dictators to take complete responsibility for their own domains, and not involve the Soviet Union in their internal, domestic affairs - either political or economic. Any further military action in Eastern Europe by the Soviet army would not to be contemplated. In the future each satellite would be obliged to resolve its own internal problems without recourse to the Soviet Union. Gorbachev quickly realised that the Soviet economy was no longer capable of underwriting the huge debts progressively accumulated by the bankrupt economies of Eastern Europe, particularly in view of the adverse economic effects of the Afghan venture. The sharp decrease in oil prices, during the middle 1980s, also had a serious, detrimental effect on the USSR's export earnings. Gorbachev was undoubtedly the most intelligent and the most effective President of the Soviet Union, and it was most unfortunate that he was superseded, in December 1991, by Boris Yeltsin.

This work comprises an excellent study of the economic, political and social consequences of dictatorship - 'the dictatorship of the proleteriat' - in accordance with the doctrine of Marxism- Leninism That doctrine, whatever merits it had, certainly served to create large-scale social debility within Eastern Europe for over half a century, and within the Soviet Union for more that seventy years. It is the `finest' system that man has created for the systemic creation of large-scale economic deprivation and poverty. Planned economies always produce long-term, chronic shortage of food and consumer goods, for reasons that have been extensively analysed by F A Hayek. The Soviet system certainly created an economy of chronic shortage.

Those who have a keen interest in the current NATO strategy in Afghanistan are recommended to study those chapters, in particular, which eloquently describe the consequences of the invasion of that domain by a large Soviet army in 1979. In this context the report written by The Russian General Staff, titled The Soviet Afghan War, How a Superpower Fought and Lost, Kansas 2002, and Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan, David Loyn, London 2008 are required reading. Although the Soviet and NATO objectives differ to a marked extent, what is actually happening in the present appears to be replicating what happened to the Soviet army in the past. I read this book with ever-increasing interest and enthusiasm and can recommend it to other readers with an equal degree of enthusiasm. Stuart Hopkins

I bought this book as I had lived through these times and all the preceding events leading up to the final collapse of the East European systems. Up until then, people in the west were not well informed as to what was going on and, in consequence, developed a curiosity which, in my case, has been fulfilled by this excellent book. It is written in such a way that each chapter is a short history in its own right. Highly recommended

Alistair Macpherson