A Vision Unfulfilled: Russia and the Soviet Union in the Twentieth Century

by John M. Thompson

Unlike most Soviet-centered histories, A Vision Unfulfilled begins with a chapter summarizing late nineteenth-century Russian history, allowing instructors to begin their course with 1894, 1905, 1914, or 1917. The book also gives fuller attention to the history of the non-Russian populations in the tsarist and Soviet empires than other texts of its kind.

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction

612 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 1995

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally informative, but skipped around on details from time to time. In other words, a typical history textbook. While the first chapters concerning the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods in late 19th/early twentieth century Russia were detailed to the point of exhaustive, by the time the author finished Stalin's reign, it felt like he was just phoning it in from then on. Though I appreciated the overview of every single policy Stalin ever had or considered, I didn't feel like it should have only left room for a paragraph on the Cuban Missile Crisis and a sentence for the Fall of the Berlin Wall. I was also hoping to gain more insight into the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but again only received a brief blurb informing me that they had in fact been there and then left 8 years latter. Thanks! All in all, a decent review of Russian and Soviet history in the 20th century but the first half was much more informative than the last.

[Dee W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh history textbooks, you are full of cool things and useless things all at once. All this book did was stress me out and make me in a stressed out moment comment on the non-ugliness of Stalin as a young man. Other than that, it’s a good text with some good stuff but not fantastic.