They’re just not ready
Neal Ascherson: Gorbachev Betrayed, 7 January 2010
Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment
by Stephen Kotkin, with Jan Gross.
Modern Library, 240 pp., $24, October 2009,978 0 679 64276 3 Show More
by Stephen Kotkin, with Jan Gross.
Modern Library, 240 pp., $24, October 2009,
Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire
by Victor Sebestyen.
Weidenfeld, 451 pp., £25, July 2009,978 0 297 85223 0 Show More
by Victor Sebestyen.
Weidenfeld, 451 pp., £25, July 2009,
There Is No Freedom without Bread: 1989 and the Civil War that Brought Down Communism
by Constantine Pleshakov.
Farrar, Straus, 289 pp., $26, November 2009,978 0 374 28902 7 Show More
by Constantine Pleshakov.
Farrar, Straus, 289 pp., $26, November 2009,
1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe
by Mary Elise Sarotte.
Princeton, 321 pp., £20.95, November 2009,978 0 691 14306 4 Show More
by Mary Elise Sarotte.
Princeton, 321 pp., £20.95, November 2009,
“... and said the idea was not sinister ‘but merely stupid’. The story, well told in his book by Constantine Pleshakov, shows yet again how reluctant American policy-makers were to see the end of the Soviet imperium as an undiluted triumph, rather than as a threat of trouble ahead. As Sebestyen puts it, ‘there were times in the middle of the year ... ”
