Publisher's Synopsis
This textbook is designed to meet the need for an up-to-date account of Soviet politics written in the light of contemporary events in the now defunct Union. The spectacle of the rise, development and collapse of the Soviet Union - the great 20th-century empire and superpower - has fascinated contemporaries and provoked changes within both Europe and the world system. This book aims to provide a succinct overview of the political history of the Soviet Union, considered with hindsight from a contemporary perspective, together with an account of the achievements (and failures) of Gorbachev in the period of glasnost and perestroika, and a preliminary survey of Yeltsin's efforts to hold together a disintegrating Commonwealth. Covering the period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, this history of nearly a century of Soviet politics should be of interest to students, teachers and general readers alike.
