Download or read book Perestroika written by Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gorbachev His Life and Times written by William Taubman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction The definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev. "Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world’s two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system’s gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America’s arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev’s unique character that, by Gorbachev’s own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.
Download or read book The New Russia written by Mikhail Gorbachev and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-06-08 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has been in the past 25 years. Putin’s motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia’s elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal the development of Putin’s regime and the intentions behind it. He argues that Putin has significantly diminished the achievements of perestroika and is part of an over-centralized system that presents a precarious future for Russia. Faced with this, Gorbachev advocates a radical reform of politics and a new fostering of pluralism and social democracy. Gorbachev’s insightful analysis moves beyond internal politics to address wider problems in the region, including the Ukraine conflict, as well as the global challenges of poverty and climate change. Above all else, he insists that solutions are to be found by returning to the atmosphere of dialogue and cooperation which was so instrumental in ending the Cold War. This book represents the summation of Gorbachev’s thinking on the course that Russia has taken since 1991 and stands as a testament to one of the greatest and most influential statesmen of the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy written by Chris Miller and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-10-13 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For half a century the Soviet economy was inefficient but stable. In the late 1980s, to the surprise of nearly everyone, it suddenly collapsed. Why did this happen? And what role did Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's economic reforms play in the country's dissolution? In this groundbreaking study, Chris Miller shows that Gorbachev and his allies tried to learn from the great success story of transitions from socialism to capitalism, Deng Xiaoping's China. Why, then, were efforts to revitalize Soviet socialism so much less successful than in China? Making use of never-before-studied documents from the Soviet politburo and other archives, Miller argues that the difference between the Soviet Union and China--and the ultimate cause of the Soviet collapse--was not economics but politics. The Soviet government was divided by bitter conflict, and Gorbachev, the ostensible Soviet autocrat, was unable to outmaneuver the interest groups that were threatened by his economic reforms. Miller's analysis settles long-standing debates about the politics and economics of perestroika, transforming our understanding of the causes of the Soviet Union's rapid demise.
Download or read book Memoirs written by Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 1996 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In these long-awaited memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev looks back on a lifetime that mirrors the fate of the Russian people. From the persecution of his family under Stalin to his first political steps, to his extraordinary rise within the Communist Party, Gorbachev recounts the events that led to his own disillusionment, without which the eventual implosion of communism would not have taken place. He casts an equally sharp eye on the policies of both past communist governments and present-day reformers."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book A Terrible Country written by Keith Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Hilarious. . . . To understand Russia, read A Terrible Country.” —Time "This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best books you'll read this year." —Ann Levin, Associated Press A New York Times Editors' Choice Named a Best Book of 2018 by Bookforum, Nylon, Esquire, and Vulture A literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyalty—from a founding editor of n+1 and the author of Raising Raffi When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It’s the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia’s violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can’t always remember who he is. Andrei learns to navigate Putin’s Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly—but surprisingly sharp!—grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a café to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother’s health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei’s politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid. A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation.
Download or read book Reagan and Gorbachev written by Jack Matlock and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-11-08 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Matlock’s] account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service.”—The New York Times Book Review “Engrossing . . . authoritative . . . a detailed and reliable narrative that future historians will be able to draw on to illuminate one of the most dramatic periods in modern history.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In Reagan and Gorbachev, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and principal adviser to Ronald Reagan on Soviet and European affairs, gives an eyewitness account of how the Cold War ended. Working from his own papers, recent interviews with major figures, and unparalleled access to the best and latest sources, Matlock offers an insider’s perspective on a diplomatic campaign far more sophisticated than previously thought, waged by two leaders of surpassing vision. Matlock details how Reagan privately pursued improved U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations even while engaging in public saber rattling. When Gorbachev assumed leadership, however, Reagan and his advisers found a willing partner in peace. Matlock shows how both leaders took risks that yielded great rewards and offers unprecedented insight into the often cordial working relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev. Both epic and intimate, Reagan and Gorbachev will be the standard reference on the end of the Cold War, a work that is critical to our understanding of the present and the past.
Download or read book Conversations with Gorbachev written by Mikhail Gorbachev and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that “thinking out loud” process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to “save socialism” to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.
Download or read book Mikhail Gorbachev written by Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 999 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these memoirs Gorbachev reveals his feelings about the sad state of his country today. He tells us of his childhood in the North Caucasus during World War II, of coming to Moscow as a student and meeting Raisa Maksimovna, of his glittering career as a Party functionary - and his eventual role as one of the most powerful men in the world.
Download or read book After the Collapse written by Dimitri K. Simes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an insider's view, an expert on Russia and former foreign policy advisor to President Nixon argues that Russia is returning to the world stage as a great power and intends to resume a major role in international affairs.
Download or read book My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze written by Pavel Palazchenko and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Last Superpower Summits written by Svetlana Savranskaya and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book publishes for the first time in print every word the American and Soviet leaders – Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George H.W. Bush – said to each other in their superpower summits from 1985 to 1991. Obtained by the authors through the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S., from the Gorbachev Foundation and the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, and from the personal donation of Anatoly Chernyaev, these previously Top Secret verbatim transcripts combine with key declassified preparatory and after-action documents from both sides to create a unique interactive documentary record of these historic highest-level talks – the conversations that ended the Cold War. The summits fueled a process of learning on both sides, as the authors argue in contextual essays on each summit and detailed headnotes on each document. Geneva 1985 and Reykjavik 1986 reduced Moscow's sense of threat and unleashed Reagan's inner abolitionist. Malta 1989 and Washington 1990 helped dampen any superpower sparks that might have flown in a time of revolutionary change in Eastern Europe, set off by Gorbachev and by Eastern Europeans (Solidarity, dissidents, reform Communists). The high level and scope of the dialogue between these world leaders was unprecedented, and is likely never to be repeated.
Download or read book Seven Years that Changed the World written by Archie Brown and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-19 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rigorously argued and lively interpretation of the transformation of the Soviet system, written by a leading authority on Soviet politics. This thoroughly researched book draws on new archival sources and puts perestroika in fresh perspective.
Download or read book Gorbachev s Gamble written by Andrei Grachev and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gorbachev’s Gamble offers a new and more convincing answer to this question by providing the missing link between the internal and external aspects of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Andrei Grachev shows that the radical transformation of Soviet foreign policy during the Gorbachev years was an integral part of an ambitious project of internal democratic reform and of the historic opening of Soviet society to the outside world. Grachev explains the motives and the intentions of the initiators of this project and describes their hopes and their illusions. He recounts the story of the internal debates and struggles in the Kremlin and behind-the-scene decisions that led to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and eventually the demise of the Soviet Union itself. The book is based on exclusive interviews with the leaders of the Soviet Union including Gorbachev, personal notes and diaries of their assistants and advisers and transcripts of the discussions inside the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee. Together they constitute a multi-voice political confession of a whole generation of decision-makers of the Soviet Union that enables us better to understand the origin and the breathtaking trajectory of the events that led to the end of the Cold War and the unprecedented transformation of world politics in the closing decades of the 20th century.
Download or read book Perestroika and the Party written by Francesco Di Palma and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countless studies have assessed the dramatic reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, but their analysis of the impact on European communism has focused overwhelmingly on the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations. This ambitious collection takes a much broader view, reconstructing and evaluating the historical trajectories of glasnost and perestroika on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Moving beyond domestic politics and foreign relations narrowly defined, the research gathered here constitutes a transnational survey of these reforms’ collective impact, showing how they were variably received and implemented, and how they shaped the prospects for “proletarian internationalism” in diverse political contexts.
Download or read book Military Power in Europe written by Lawrence Freedman and published by Springer. This book was released on 1990-06-18 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays illuminate different aspects of military power and European security. It deals with the practicalities of planning and command within an alliance structure or the problems connected and with distinguishing between offensive and defensive operations for purposes of arms control.
Download or read book The Gorbachev Factor written by Archie Brown and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author writes about Gorbachev, both as the statesman and as the man. He explores how an ordinary man can become a world leader, wielding enormous power.
