Why read The Last Empire?

Book cover of The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Book description

On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Last Empire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Stephen M. Norris

Author

When it first appeared, I reviewed this book for The Moscow Times and called it “the best account yet of the Soviet collapse.” Plokhy pays particular attention to how events in Ukraine during 1991 proved crucial to the final breakup of the USSR (“the last empire” of the title).

Moreover, Plokhy’s conclusions help to explain how the narratives about the collapse contributed to Russia’s aggression against its neighbor in the 2000s. Everything Plokhy writes is worth reading, including his Gates of Europe, Chernobyl, and The Russo-Ukrainian War (he is prolific), but The Last Empire’s details have remained with me:…

From Stephen's list on The best books for understanding Russia’s empire in Ukraine.

Fabian Baumann

Author

Putin’s war, among other things, is aimed at reversing Ukraine’s move towards independence after the crumbling of the Soviet Union in the wake of Gorbachev’s perestroika.

Serhii Plokhy, one of the most respected experts in Ukrainian history, explains in detail how the Ukrainian party leadership and population played a central role in the dissolution of the union. An essential read to understand the processes that ultimately led towards Ukraine’s democratization and towards the rise of a revisionist authoritarianism in Russia.

From Fabian's list on The best books to understand the long prehistory of Russia’s war against Ukraine.