Gen. William E. Odom

Not really a casual book, or even a book for a person who loves history. This is a very high-level analysis of why the USSR collapsed as it did in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, and to my mind, the thesis is that there was no way Mikhail Gorbachev could have won. Once he tried to open up the system to catch up with the West, the USSR's internal contradictions dragged everything down. There is a very detailed look at the attempted coup, the attempt to overthrow both Gorbachev and Russian Federation president Boris Yeltsin, which shows just how chaotic it was. As I say, not easy reading to be sure, and you need a great deal of background to make heads or tails of it. (One of my former Georgetown professors, the man from whom I took "The Soviet State" in the late 80s, is mentioned in the book.)… (altro)