Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue-bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse-this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years. Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws...

With conflicts again dividing Russia and the United States, the need for balanced, accessible scholarship that benefits from new materials and critical perspectives is imperative. In seven lucid, groundbreaking essays, Stephen F. Cohen questions many conventional assumptions about the course of Soviet history, the fall of communism, and the effect of Russia's policies at home and abroad. Written for specialists and general readers, Cohen's essays...

"Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the world--and still very dangerous. In this ever-shifting landscape, a senior KGB officer--code name GAMBIT--has approached the CIA Moscow Station chief with top secret military weapons intelligence and asked to be exfiltrated. GAMBIT demands that his handler be a former CIA officer, Alex Garin, a former KGB officer who defected...

"Four teenagers grow inseparable in the last days of the Soviet Union-but not all of them will live to see the new world arrive in this powerful debut novel, loosely based on Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Coming of age in the USSR in the 1980s, best friends Anya and Milka try to envision a free and joyful future for themselves. They spend their summers at Anya's dacha just outside of Moscow, lazing in the apple orchard, listening to Queen songs,...

A collection of articles debating issues related to the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the future of the region, and America's foreign policy there.