Soviet Tragedy
A History of Socialism in Russia
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
"The Soviet Tragedy is an essential coda to the literature of Soviet studies...Insofar as [he] returns the power of ideology to its central place in Soviet history, Malia has made an enormous contribution. He has written the history of a utopian illusion and the tragic consequences it had for the people of the Soviet Union and the world."
-- David Remnick, The New York Review of Books
"In Martin Malia, the Soviet Union had one of its most acute observers. With this book, it may well have found the cornerstone of its history."
-- Francois Furet, author of Interpreting the French Revolution
"The Soviet Tragedy offers the most thorough scholarly analysis of the Communist phenomenon that we are likely to get for a long while to come...Malia states that his narrative is intended 'to substantiate the basic argument,' and this is certainly an argumentative book, which drives its thesis home with hammer blows. On this breathtaking journey, Malia is a witty and often brilliantly penetrating guide. He has much wisdom to impart."
-- The Times Literary Supplement
"This is history at the high level, well deployed factually, but particularly worthwhile in the philosophical and political context -- at once a view and an overview."
-- The Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This shrewd analysis of the failure of the Soviet experiment dismantles the view that the Soviet regime originated in a genuinely popular revolution rather than a conspiratorial coup and that the Bolsheviks' quest for democratic socialism was derailed by pressing circumstances. Malia traces a direct link between Lenin's monolithic one-party state and Stalin's purges, pulverization of civil society and institutionalization of terror. A former professor of history at UC Berkeley, the author contends that Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev oscillated between attempts to reform and to preserve Stalin's legacy, which aggravated Communism's systemic problems. This study closes with a look at post-Communist Russia in near-total economic chaos.
