Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Reading Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century: how the ‘West’ wrote its history of the USSR
- Part I Russia and the Soviet Union: The Story through Time
- 2 Russia’s fin de siècle, 1900–1914
- 3 The First World War, 1914–1918
- 4 The revolutions of 1917–1918
- 5 The Russian civil war, 1917–1922
- 6 Building a new state and society: NEP, 1921–1928
- 7 Stalinism, 1928–1940
- 8 Patriotic War, 1941–1945
- 9 Stalin and his circle
- 10 The Khrushchev period, 1953–1964
- 11 The Brezhnev era
- 12 The Gorbachev era
- 13 The Russian Federation
- Part II Russia and the Soviet Union: Themes and Trends
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
12 - The Gorbachev era
from Part I - Russia and the Soviet Union: The Story through Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Reading Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century: how the ‘West’ wrote its history of the USSR
- Part I Russia and the Soviet Union: The Story through Time
- 2 Russia’s fin de siècle, 1900–1914
- 3 The First World War, 1914–1918
- 4 The revolutions of 1917–1918
- 5 The Russian civil war, 1917–1922
- 6 Building a new state and society: NEP, 1921–1928
- 7 Stalinism, 1928–1940
- 8 Patriotic War, 1941–1945
- 9 Stalin and his circle
- 10 The Khrushchev period, 1953–1964
- 11 The Brezhnev era
- 12 The Gorbachev era
- 13 The Russian Federation
- Part II Russia and the Soviet Union: Themes and Trends
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
No period in peacetime in twentieth-century Russia saw such dramatic change as theyears between 1985 and 1991. During this time Russia achieved a greater politicalfreedom than it had ever enjoyed before. The Soviet system moved from being highlyauthoritarian to essentially pluralist. This process ended with the disintegrationof the Soviet state, although even after the fifteen union republics went theirseparate ways, Russia remained the largest country in the world. The break-upitself was remarkably peaceful, in sharp contrast to the extensive violence thataccompanied the separation of the constituent parts of Yugoslavia. Within what wassometimes called ‘the outer empire’, the Soviet leadership brokewith the past by ruling out military intervention when, one after another, thecountries of Eastern Europe became non-Communist and independent. The Cold War,which had begun with the Soviet takeover of East-Central Europe, endeddefinitively in 1989 when the Central and Eastern European states regained theirsovereignty.
Before these remarkable changes are examined in greater detail, the immediateprelude to the Gorbachev era deserves attention, albeit briefly. When LeonidBrezhnev died in November 1982 he was succeeded by Iurii Andropov who had earlierin the same year become the second secretary of the Communist Party of the SovietUnion, following Mikhail Suslov. Andropov had spent the previous fifteen years aschairman of the KGB and that organisation had left its mark on him.
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- The Cambridge History of Russia , pp. 316 - 351Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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