What do you think?
Rate this book
Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union
The former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow provides an eyewitness account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, discussing the origins of the conflict, detailing the plot to oust Gorbachev, and profiling some of the key players, including Yeltsin, Shevardnadze, and Gorbachev. 40,000 first printing. Tour.
836 pages, Hardcover
First published October 24, 1995
12 people are currently reading
254 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 2, 2020
Strangely enough I finished this on December 25, the anniversary of Gorbachev's resignation.
My first impression of this was that it was the definitive account of the fall of the Soviet Union and certainly I've never encountered a volume on the subject containing so much detail but my final impression was rather underwhelming.
It honestly reads like a personal diary and the diary of an American ambassador the the Soviet Union during its last days is hardly irrelevant to the topic, but I would've preferred more of a historian's perspective with more emphasis on analyses and big picture explanations about what was happening, though that wasn't entirely absent here either, especially towards the end.
It's day by day coverage, which isn't even necessarily exciting. The coup was covered with a surprisingly small amount of pages, and you get a grasp of how bureaucratic, and mundane diplomacy can be. Like I said at times this seems more like Matlock's personal story. Nonetheless it wasn't all dull. My favorite incident was the clandestine warning of the coup, and then President Bush, leaking the name of the informant.
Matlock seemed to have a rather good grasp of what the future would hold, knowing that the Soviet Union would inevitably fall, if at least not so quickly, and also seems to have a rather high confidence that Gorbachev was always a liberal, always having planned multiparty elections for example. I am not enough of an expert to properly judge these notions here, but I've seen differing opinions, especially regarding the latter. Gorbachev's turn to the right around 1990 is certainly covered by a disapproving Matlock.
It's in the end that we finally find less of a day by day coverage of events and more of an analyses on which events led to the fall of the Soviet Union in the exact manner that it happened. Gorbachev takes the bulk of the blame, although Yeltsin, Kravchuk and the coup plotters get their own credit and so forth. The book ends with coverage of the USSR's successor states, some getting along, none of them doing ideally, some sliding back into dictatorships.
It must be noted that this is absolutely a partisan book as well. Matlock the Reagan and Bush diplomat definitely took a side both in American and Russian administrations. This is the first time I've seen anyone defend the 'Chicken Kiev' speech for example, and I've never seen such a one sided pro-Yeltsin defense of the presidential response to the 1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis win which an autocratic Yeltsin shelled the Russian legislature in the name of democracy and liberalism. I'm not even complaining though. I like getting multiple perspectives especially on such important topics, but you gotta know where your author is coming from.
My first impression of this was that it was the definitive account of the fall of the Soviet Union and certainly I've never encountered a volume on the subject containing so much detail but my final impression was rather underwhelming.
It honestly reads like a personal diary and the diary of an American ambassador the the Soviet Union during its last days is hardly irrelevant to the topic, but I would've preferred more of a historian's perspective with more emphasis on analyses and big picture explanations about what was happening, though that wasn't entirely absent here either, especially towards the end.
It's day by day coverage, which isn't even necessarily exciting. The coup was covered with a surprisingly small amount of pages, and you get a grasp of how bureaucratic, and mundane diplomacy can be. Like I said at times this seems more like Matlock's personal story. Nonetheless it wasn't all dull. My favorite incident was the clandestine warning of the coup, and then President Bush, leaking the name of the informant.
Matlock seemed to have a rather good grasp of what the future would hold, knowing that the Soviet Union would inevitably fall, if at least not so quickly, and also seems to have a rather high confidence that Gorbachev was always a liberal, always having planned multiparty elections for example. I am not enough of an expert to properly judge these notions here, but I've seen differing opinions, especially regarding the latter. Gorbachev's turn to the right around 1990 is certainly covered by a disapproving Matlock.
It's in the end that we finally find less of a day by day coverage of events and more of an analyses on which events led to the fall of the Soviet Union in the exact manner that it happened. Gorbachev takes the bulk of the blame, although Yeltsin, Kravchuk and the coup plotters get their own credit and so forth. The book ends with coverage of the USSR's successor states, some getting along, none of them doing ideally, some sliding back into dictatorships.
It must be noted that this is absolutely a partisan book as well. Matlock the Reagan and Bush diplomat definitely took a side both in American and Russian administrations. This is the first time I've seen anyone defend the 'Chicken Kiev' speech for example, and I've never seen such a one sided pro-Yeltsin defense of the presidential response to the 1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis win which an autocratic Yeltsin shelled the Russian legislature in the name of democracy and liberalism. I'm not even complaining though. I like getting multiple perspectives especially on such important topics, but you gotta know where your author is coming from.
August 25, 2019
Partisan self-serving bullshit from a Reaganaut who cannot provide fair credence to perspectives other than his own. All the photo inserts are Matlock with this person, Matlock with that person. Pathetic.
November 12, 2022
Good book from the eyewitness
February 12, 2011
This book opened my eyes to the multitudes of people involved in the government of the former USSR and the complexity of the forces involved in the break-up. If you think that the US "won the cold war" or that the break-up was a black and white affair, you should read this book. A bit dry at times, but the author really knows the subject matter.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews