The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Empire: Forty Years that Shook the World from Stalin to Yeltsin

by Fred Coleman

Traces the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union, from Stalin's death in 1953, drawing on once secret Soviet archives and interviews with key figures--including Sakharov, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin--to provide a definitive account of forty years of Russian history. First serial, US News and World Report.

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction

459 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Brett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a few books about the heyday of the Soviet revolution in the last few years and was looking forward to reading this one that deals mostly with the post-Stalin years in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, it is not one that I can recommend.

Coleman spent many years in Soviet Russia working for various Western press organizations, writing in mainstream publications like Time, US News, and major newspapers. His perspective should give him lots of useful insights in the workings of the Soviet Union, but the book has a pervasive sense of unearned convictions about superpower relations and commitment to ideological opposition to the Soviets that comes across as reflexive and almost as dogmatic as Soviet policymakers themselves.

For instance, early in the book Coleman is highly critical of US "Kremlinologists" for failing to see what is very clear to Coleman: that Soviet leaders will alternate between hardline factions and reform factions. He draws this conclusion based on the succession of Khrushchev (reform), Brezhnev (hardline), Andropov and Chernenko (hardline but with tenures too short for Coleman to count), and Gorbachev (reform). These leaders were in place from 1956 through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. To see an obvious pattern that must be asserting itself in this extremely small sample over such a long time is nonsense but Coleman treats it as obvious, and castigates the US foreign policy establishment for not seeing this same certainty.

Similarly, Coleman believes the US erred by not being more proactive in confronting the USSR, especially regarding the USSR's interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. He believes the US could have I guess used more strong threats or possibly even militarily intervened in some way, and that the USSR, recognizing it was by far the weaker of the superpowers, would have acquiesced. While possibly some version of this may have been true, these countries directly bordered the USSR and were in a very different geopolitical context than, say, Cuba during the missile crisis.

Coleman is very cavalier in swinging his big stick, seeming to forget that the prospect of worldwide nuclear war was a very real possibility if things went off the tracks. He continually depicts the US actions during the decades the book covers as overly deferential to the Soviets, seemingly ignoring the near constant US involvement in every corner of the globe, either directly or indirectly. The United States, whatever our faults and our virtues may be, was not idly sitting at home.

Finally, the book is littered with little asides were Coleman makes ideological assertions about the impossibility of functional planned economies or other communist ideas. He cannot limit himself to making historical observations about the collapse of the Soviet Union, but has a side project of inserting unsupported ideological statements throughout.

One thing that is clear is that he has great admiration for Gorbachev and his efforts at perestroika and glasnost, and somewhat less admiration for Yeltsin. The final section of the book is more engaging reading as he describes how the closed society was gradually opened to increasing forms of democratization. The book ends in 1996, so this is where we leave off; the new forces of autocracy and kleptocracy had not yet fully emerged.

[J.S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fred Coleman, a news correspondent who spent over 30 years reporting from the Soviet Union, explains the collapse of the USSR. Coleman explains the back and forth cycles after Stalin's death in the Communist party between reform and hardline - Khrushchev/reformer, Brezhnev/hardliner (also Andropov and Chernenko), Gorbachev/reformer (also Yeltsin) - in an effort to both maintain control of the people and try to fix the economy. Published in 1996, this book ends while Yeltsin was still in power but after he had swung back towards authoritarianism. Coleman offers the lessons he's seen from his long time living and working in Moscow.

I started reading this 430 page book nearly 2 months ago - which is a long time for me - so it's a pretty heavy read (and I used a highlighter an awful lot). And while it could feel very heavy and tedious at times, I thought it was a fascinating look at the disintegration of an economic system that was never going to succeed. I wasn't aware that Khrushchev implemented reforms (ending Stalin's "terror" among other small measures) or the precipitous decline in the nation during the long and inept Brezhnev rule.

There were two things that bothered me. First, Coleman is an unabashed fan-boy of Gorbachev. Some of his praise is terribly embarrassing and seems especially misplaced when he later recounts all the mistakes and failures Gorbachev made (not to mention how unpopular he was among his own people). I understand that he was the first to try REAL reform, but he also turned to authoritarianism in order to keep his position. Nonetheless, Gorbachev saw just how desperate the situation was for his country and tried to save it (he desperately tried to save communism, too).

The other thing was his repeated criticisms of the US and other Western countries for their mistakes in dealing with the USSR. It's not that I think Coleman was wrong - I think he was right that our presidents were cowed by the Soviets and essentially allowed them to dictate the way things ran and enabled the communists to stay in power much longer than they should have, perhaps by decades. But my criticism is that he doesn't give credit where I believe it's due. He constantly mentions how soft (and fearful) Western leaders were but never acknowledges that Reagan stood up to them and did pretty much what Coleman thinks Western leaders should have done all along. (If Coleman can be a fan-boy of Gorbachev, I can be a fan-boy of Reagan.) Instead, he seems to fall in the camp that believes the USSR was just failing on it's own - which it was, but I'd like to have seen him admit that Reagan was the one who finally gave it the push it needed. Instead Reagan is sparsely mentioned (actually, all Western leaders get very little attention).

Great cold war history, but not for casual readers.

[Leeny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a well-informed and fascinating analysis of Russian history during the specified years and Western responses, particularly those of the US, to political events in Russia. The interaction of strengths and weaknesses of Russian dictators and the West's actions are especially incisive and interesting. Finally, Coleman's book is prophetic, alarmingly so.

[Mer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good information about the various leaders since the rise of communism. Way too much information; and I never made it to the time period I wanted to read about.

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another one of those books that I have had on the shelf for years and years (actually in storage for the last 3) and finally got around to reading. It was a mix of previous reporting stories and personal accounts. What I found most informative was the discussions about the Brezhnev era and what all transpired. Admittedly, my knowledge about Soviet history is not as strong about that timeframe as it is for the Lenin/Stalin era. He hammers home the fact that we (America) never got it right about the Soviets, when it was all so simple (that he who held the Party Secretary position would rule the USSR, that the Soviets would flinch if directly challenged, etc). Of course, he has some legitimate grips, but he also is writing this with a lot of hindsight, which is always 20/20. Some of his recommendations from the 1990s can still apply. However, he projections about the future leaders of Russia were about as accurate as the American projections about the Soviet times. True, no one in the mid to late 1990s ever thought that Putin would be the heir apparent for Yeltsin, etc. Overall, the book is a solid historical reference.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first Western post-Soviet glimpse into the inner machinations of the leadership of the USSR. The book seems a bit immature now as much more is known of this period than was at the time.

However it was an interesting read at the time and still has value to the historian.

[Briapedia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given his research and background, it has promise- however, he's so opinionated and just anti-everyone. He gives you the vibe that he thinks he's smarter than everyone.

[Kevan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only on page 52 but it promises to be a good read.
It was published in '96 so it'll be interesting to see if Coleman is even close to being correct about post-Soviet Russia