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The Shortest History of the Soviet Union Kindle Edition
by Sheila Fitzpatrick (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 76 ratings
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Soviet Russia arrived in the world accidentally and departed unexpectedly. More than a hundred years after the Russian Revolution, the tumultuous history of the Soviet Union continues to fascinate us and influence global politics.
Here is an irresistible entree to a sweeping history. From revolution and Lenin to Stalin’s Great Terror, from World War II to Gorbachev’s perestroika policies, this is a lively, authoritative distillation of seventy-five years of communist rule and the collapse of an empire.
Sheila Fitzpatrick shows us the fate of countries often left out of discussions of the Soviet age, provides vivid portraits of key Soviet figures and traces the aftermath of the regime’s unexpected fall: the rise of Vladimir Putin, a creature of the Soviet system but not a Soviet nostalgic; and how China learned from the Soviet collapse.
The Shortest History of the Soviet Union is a small masterpiece, replete with telling detail and peppered with some very black humour.
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About the Author
SHEILA FITZPATRICK is the multi-award-winning author of The Russian Revolution, Everyday Stalinism, Mischka's War, White Russians, Red Peril and The Shortest History of the Soviet Union, among other titles. She is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and a professor at the Australian Catholic University. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Print length : 262 pagesBest Sellers Rank: 218,306 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)618 in History of England (Kindle Store)
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4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 76 ratings
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Andreas Oberender
4.0 out of 5 stars Die Geschichte der Sowjetunion im SchnelldurchlaufReviewed in Germany on 11 July 2023
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Sheila Fitzpatrick (born 1941) is the grand old lady of Soviet Union research. No one who studies the history of the Soviet state in depth can ignore the works of the Australian-born woman who lived and taught in the USA for a long time. With her book “The Shortest History of the Soviet Union,” Fitzpatrick takes stock of her decades of scholarly work. The title is meant seriously: In just 230 pages, Fitzpatrick draws a line from the First World War and the revolutionary year of 1917 through the Stalin era to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The condensation and succinctness of the presentation leads to shortenings and exaggerations here and there some readers may regret. Some topics deserve more detailed treatment, such as the Great Terror of 1937/38 and Gorbachev's reform policies in the 1980s. The text is divided into seven chapters, which follow the common division of Soviet history into specific periods: revolution and civil war; the interlude of the 1920s (New Economic Policy); the Stalin period; the second World War; the Khrushchev period; the Brezhnev era; Gorbachev and perestroika. The volume contains several maps and numerous illustrations. The literature references at the end of the book, which are divided into chapters, are limited to English-language titles. Fitzpatrick's style is catchy and pleasantly unpretentious. The presentation exudes confident expertise. Readers would expect nothing less from a historian who has made many important contributions to the study of Soviet history over the course of half a century.
Fitzpatrick begins by outlining the Marxist ideology of the Russian revolutionaries who came to power in the fall of 1917. But Lenin and his colleagues were not only interested in building a classless society without private ownership of the means of production. Since old Russia was backward compared to Western Europe and the USA, the Bolsheviks saw the building of socialism as a comprehensive modernization of the huge empire. At enormous material costs and high human sacrifice, the Soviet Union developed into an industrial state within just a few years. After the Second World War, the Soviet Union took on the role of the second superpower next to the USA on the world stage. Fitzpatrick highlights the oppressive, disturbing ambivalence of the Stalin era: on the one hand, heroic efforts to catapult the country into modernity; on the other hand, excessive violence against social groups that were considered enemies of socialist transformation. Fitzpatrick names industrialization and urbanization, literacy and educational expansion as well as the establishment of a welfare state after the Second World War as achievements of the Soviet era. She also addresses the multi-ethnic character of the Soviet state and rejects the view that the Soviet Union was a Russian empire that kept non-Russian peoples in colonial dependence. If you follow Fitzpatrick, the center and the periphery met at eye level. As far as the limited space allows, the author also addresses the conditions in the non-Slavic union republics (Baltics, Caucasus, Central Asia).
The history of the Soviet Union after Stalin, under the party leaders Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev, is a history of oscillation between the poles of departure and reform, rigidity and stagnation. Fitzpatrick leaves no doubt that the Soviet Union faced serious problems, especially economic ones, after Brezhnev's death in 1982. However, it avoids the question of whether the system, which essentially dates back to the Stalin era, could be reformed at all. Something of the astonishment and perplexity that the (peaceful) collapse of the Soviet state once caused among Western politicians and scientists can still be felt in Fitzpatrick's portrayal. Under Brezhnev, Soviet people enjoyed peace, stability and modest prosperity, as Fitzpatrick points out. However, she does not highlight an important point: although the Soviet people appreciated the advantages of the system, in the crisis of the late 1980s they were unwilling and unable to actively work for reform and the continued existence of the Union State. They watched the dissolution without action or resistance. A bitter truth emerged in 1991: Seventy years and the dramatic collective experiences since the revolution had not been enough to weld the many peoples of the Soviet Union together into a true community of shared destiny. There was no organic connection between Lithuanians and Armenians, between Ukrainians and Uzbeks. The Soviet Union fell apart because it was an anachronism. There is no place for multi-ethnic empires in the modern world.
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abhishek
5.0 out of 5 stars Good for basic understandingReviewed in India on 28 July 2023
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Its jist
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Graham Anderson
3.0 out of 5 stars Good bookReviewed in the United States on 24 August 2023
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Good book. I enjoyed it very much following having it redelivered due to errors in shipping
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edward bache
5.0 out of 5 stars goodReviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 May 2022
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A very good concise history of the Soviet Union , have read a few of these shortest history books and although very short they cover the main events well
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Mr P Du Cane
1.0 out of 5 stars DubiousReviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2022
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I have my doubts about this author. Indeed, these began to arise as early as the dedication in which she describes her mentor (born 1903) as an Old Bolshevik. An Old Bolshevik means someone who was already a member of the Bolsheviks at the time of the October revolution. Her mentor would have been 14…. More bizarrely she describes Napoleon as originating as a humble corporal. He was in fact a member of the aristocracy who left the French military academy and joined the army directly as a commissioned artillery officer. I gave up at this point…
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