Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

BY THE AUTHOR OF CHERNOBYL: HISTORY OF A TRAGEDY, WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2018

WINNER OF THE PUSHKIN HOUSE RUSSIAN BOOK PRIZE 2015

On Christmas Day 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union. By the next day the USSR was officially no more and the USA had emerged as the world's sole superpower. Award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy presents a page-turning account of the preceding five months of drama, filled with failed coups d'état and political intrigue.

Honing in on this previously disregarded but crucial period and using recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, he shatters the established myths of 1991 and presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months. Plokhy argues that contrary to the triumphalist Western narrative, George H. W. Bush desperately wanted to preserve the Soviet Union and keep Gorbachev in power, and that it was Ukraine and not the US that played the key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The consequences of those five months and the myth-making that has since surrounded them are still being felt in Crimea, Russia, the US, and Europe today.

With its spellbinding narrative and strikingly fresh perspective, The Last Empire is the essential account of one of the most important watershed periods in world history, and is indispensable reading for anyone seeking to make sense of international politics today.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The recent Russian-Ukrainian crisis has its roots in the breakup of the Soviet Union. Here, Plokhy (Ukranian history, Harvard Univ.; Yalta: The Price of Peace) details the collapse of the USSR in late 1991. His contention is that the USSR, which he views as the last great European empire, dissolved under the stress of internal tensions and ethnic clashes. Rejecting the notion that the United States won a great victory in the Cold War, the author uses the memoirs, correspondence, and other writings of American and Soviet officials to strengthen the picture he puts forth of an American leadership that failed to understand the players and movements shaping Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. Plokhy's cleanly written narrative presents a clear view of the complex events and numerous parties involved in the Soviet Union's demise as well as the reasons that the Soviet government could not ultimately rein in Ukrainian and -Russian national movements. VERDICT Plokhy's fine scholarship should be set alongside such great works as David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb and Vladislav M. Zubok's A Failed Empire. An excellent text for historians, students of current events, and anyone fascinated with political intrigue.-Jacob Sherman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., San Antonio (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, investigates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing the often brutal political chess game within the Kremlin that ended in President George H. W. Bush's address of the end of the Cold War on Christmas, 1991. Drawing from unreleased presidential material, confidential foreign memos, and declassified documents, Plokhy largely discounts Reagan's get-tough policy as a cause. He credits Mikhail Gorbachev's embrace of Glasnost and electoral democracy in 1987 with loosening the grip of the party apparatus and rigidly controlled media, opening government matters to widespread public criticism despite fears of the Soviet military. Bush and his advisers cautiously tried to prolong the reign of Gorbachev, but worried about both the ambitions of the "boorish" Boris Yeltsin and the potential falling into the wrong hands of the nuclear arsenals in the newly freed republics. Plokhy's taut narrative features rapid snapshots of Yeltsin's soaring rhetoric to the masses as he stood atop a tank, the ruthless efficiency of the plotters against the powerless Gorbachev, the crisis of rebellious Ukraine, and the vigorous debate within the White House. This account is one of a rare breed: a well-balanced, unbiased book written on the fall of Soviet Union that emphasizes expert research and analysis. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

Plokhy (Harvard) documents in great detail the last months of the Soviet Union, telling the story of how and why the country collapsed. He especially focuses on the negotiations for dissolution that occupied the summer and fall of 1991, drawing on new documents from US and Russian archives to illustrate the difficult and uneasy time as the world's largest empire peacefully imploded and separated into 15 new states. Plokhy reveals that US president George H. W. Bush supported maintaining Gorbachev in power rather than local leaders, such as Boris Yeltsin in Russia, who were emerging in the 15 provinces of the collapsing empire. The book provides an essential chronological framework to understand more fully this dramatic event of recent history and shows the importance of ethnic identities and their role in the ultimate collapse. This work will stand as a tremendous achievement that highlights the internal politics of the Soviet Union and its relationship to the world as the country ceased to exist. A valuable work for both specialists and general readers interested in this subject. --William Benton Whisenhunt, College of DuPage

Kirkus Book Review

A dour, authoritative look at the last bitter months of 1991 leading up to the Soviet Union's collapse.Plokhy (Ukrainian History/Harvard Univ.; The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires, 2012, etc.) uses access to newly declassified documents and rich primary sources for a close study of these final decisive months, from the July summit in Moscow between President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Gorbachev's resignation from the defunct state on Christmas Day. Bush was sympathetic to the travails of Gorbachev and, unlike his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, wanted to proceed with caution as the satellite republics began to peel off from the Soviet motherland under Gorbachev's new reform policies. The second most populous Soviet republic, Ukraine, was a prize neither Gorbachev nor Boris Yeltsin wanted to lose, however, as underscored in Bush's unfortunate (for Ukrainian independence) "Chicken Kiev" speech, in which he drew a wishy-washy line between "freedom" and "independence." Events hurtled to a climax as Gorbachev and his family were virtually imprisoned in his Crimean dacha by a "state of emergency" when the KGB hard-liners attempted a clumsy coup d'tatwhich very well might have succeeded in the old-school Soviet style if Yeltsin had not made a strong, public stance and Bush and the Western media not made their dissatisfaction known. Yeltsin and the Russian Federation emerged triumphant, with Gorbachev clearly in retreat, forced to ban the Communist Party at Yeltsin's instigation. Once Ukraine grasped the new political landscape, its parliament voted overwhelmingly for independence, causing shock waves throughout the union. Plokhy delineates the nerve-wracking wrangling over maintaining some form of economic union of Slavic republics, up to the very end, while Bush and others supported Gorbachev and a Soviet centerwhich could not hold.The author provides fascinating details (especially concerning Ukraine) about this fraught, historic time. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.