Hello All
I am interested in the fall of the USSR. Do you guys have any good Book recommendations. I know there is a lot of political motivated people who want to talk about the fall of the USSR from a free market and pro capitalism slant. Is there a good book that gives a fair and accurate analysis especially with regard to late soviet economics.
Thanks
For the collapse of the USSR, Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted which is a brief account of Soviet collapse with Kotkin's trademark incisiveness and snark. Chris Miller's The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR is a recent monograph that uses some interesting sources from Gorbachev's own archives. William Taubman also has a new biography of Gorbachev that is worth looking at. For social history, Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation is a bit harder read than the other books, but one of the best single-volume approaches to what the terminal stages of the Soviet Union looked like for the masses. All of these books above strike a balanced view of the USSR's fall, calling the USSR out for its faults, but not from a triumphalist view.
PS, I am really not a fan of the Askhistorians Russia booklist. Half of the books on there are, well, not all that great for Russian history.
In case you don’t get any specialized recommendations, you might find something of interest in the Russia section of our booklist.