The Baltic States and the End of the Soviet Empire

The Baltic States and the End of the Soviet Empire
Author: Kristian Gerner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351059130

First published in 1993. How is it possible for the three tiny Baltic republics to gain their freedom from the Soviet Union, without a single shot being fired or a single stone thrown at the oppressor? The topic of this book is the implosion of the Soviet empire. It tells the parallel stories of how the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania struggled successfully to gain their freedom, and how the policies pursued by Mikhail Gorbachev served to mobilize and politicize Baltic demands. Particular emphasis is placed on unintended consequences that resulted from repeated interventions by Moscow. The authors develop a loose theoretic framework for the examination of this critical struggle. The study starts by developing the analytical tools and then proceeds to outline, as background, the most salient features of Gorbachev's reform programme and of the history of the Baltic States. The core of the analysis is then presented in three chapters, devoted to three consecutive stages in the game. The first shows how strategies on both sides were initially formulated in consensus. In the second it is shown how consensus transformed into pure conflict, and in the third all actors are seeking to escape general collapse. The main conclusion points at the absence of ‘politics’ in the Soviet System as a main cause of its self-destruction.

The Last Empire

The Last Empire
Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 522
Release: 2015-09-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465097928

The New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal) On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades -- with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world. As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. Bush, in fact, was firmly committed to supporting Gorbachev as he attempted to hold together the USSR in the face of growing independence movements in its republics. Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months, providing invaluable insight into the origins of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the outset of the most dangerous crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War. Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Choice Outstanding Academic Title BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year

The Baltic States and the End of the Cold War

The Baltic States and the End of the Cold War
Author: Kaarel Piirimäe
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Baltic States
ISBN: 9783631716557

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania at the end of the Cold War - Politics of history in Russia - Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost - Atheism, and informal social networks - Soviet cultural diplomacy - Danish diplomacy and the Baltic question - Normalization regime in Czechoslovakia - Baltic diasporas - Use of force and the coup d'état in the USSR in 1991 - Security narratives in the 1990s

The Baltic States and the End of the Soviet Empire

The Baltic States and the End of the Soviet Empire
Author: Kristian Gerner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1993
Genre: History
ISBN:

Points at the absence of "politics" in the Soviet system as a main cause of its self-destruction, by analyzing in loose game-theoretic framework the struggle between Moscow and the Baltic states during the Soviet Empire's last years.

Broken Empire

Broken Empire
Author: Gerd Ludwig
Publisher:
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN:

Ten volatile years after the fall of the Soviet Union, an award-winning photographer teams ups with a world-renowned journalist to complete an unforgettable visual and textural record of Russia's ambivalent rebirth. 120 color photos.

Collapse

Collapse
Author: Vladislav M. Zubok
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300262442

A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania: Country Studies

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania: Country Studies
Author: Walter Iwaskiw
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2013-06-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9781490435572

This volume is one in a continuing series of books prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. This volume is about Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Lenin's Tomb

Lenin's Tomb
Author: David Remnick
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2014-04-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804173583

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times.

Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries

Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries
Author: Daniel Baldwin Hess
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2019-08-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030233928

This open access book focuses on the formation and later socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It also explores claims that a distinctly “westward-looking orientation” in their design produced housing estates that were superior in design to those produced elsewhere in the Soviet Union (between 1944 and 1991, Estonia was a member republic of the USSR). The first two parts of the book provide contextual material to help readers understand the vision behind housing estates in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. These sections present the background of housing estates in the Baltic Republics as well as challenges and debates concerning their formation, evolution, and present condition and importance. Subsequent parts of the book consist of: demographic analyses of the socioeconomic characteristics and ethnicity of housing estate residents (past and present) in the three Baltic capital cities, case studies of people and places related to housing estates in the Baltic countries, and chapters exploring relevant special topics and themes. This book will be of interest to students, scholars, and advocates interested in understanding the past, present, and future importance of housing estates in the Baltic countries.

Autopsy on an Empire

Autopsy on an Empire
Author: Jack F. Matlock
Publisher: Random House (NY)
Total Pages: 874
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN:

Matlock, who served in the USSR for most of his career, including as ambassador during the Reagan and Bush administrations, gives this insider's look at the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.