AccueilGroupesDiscussionsPlusTendances
Site de recherche
Ce site utilise des cookies pour fournir nos services, optimiser les performances, pour les analyses, et (si vous n'êtes pas connecté) pour les publicités. En utilisant Librarything, vous reconnaissez avoir lu et compris nos conditions générales d'utilisation et de services. Votre utilisation du site et de ses services vaut acceptation de ces conditions et termes.

Résultats trouvés sur Google Books

Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.

Chargement...

Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia

par Yegor Gaidar

MembresCritiquesPopularitéÉvaluation moyenneDiscussions
421593,071 (5)Aucun
"Uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why Russian nostalgia for empire could lead to repeating past strategies that result in instability, leaving Russia vulnerable to economic downturns"--Provided by publisher.
Aucun
Chargement...

Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre

Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.

I had high expectations for this book. The author was the acting prime minister of Russia in 1992 and was deeply involved in the Russian economy in the 1990s. An analysis of the Soviet collapse based on his personal experience and declassified materials, promising lessons for modern Russia, seemed like a book worth reading. And indeed it is worth reading if you're a professional economist, but I have to note a few reservations for readers with a general interest in Russian politics. Although the author introduces the subject with historical comparisons, he reverts to much more narrow economic analyses in the main chapters.

In the introduction the author writes that the historical picture which currently dominates Russian public opinion is one where a prospering Soviet Union fell victim to catastrophic reform blunders in the 1980s, leading to a chaotic decade in the 1990s. Then, in 1999-2000, people with the country's best interest at heart finally came to power (page xviii). More controversially, he claims to see "striking analogies between the rhetoric of people using post-imperial nostalgia in our country and the standard propaganda of the National Socialists in the last years of the Weimar republic" (page xv).

The table thereby seems set for a detailed analysis of Russian politics and recent history. But in the main part of the book the author in fact only shows how the Soviet Union's economy deteriorated. Moving from oil prices to a broad collection of economic data, he narrates its descent step by step. He shows that the economic collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable and that only brutal repression of dissent could have kept the communist edifice standing. The last Soviet leaders deserve credit for not going down that road, if not for much else.

This is well and good as far as it goes, but beyond these rather obvious conclusions this book offers no lessons which would be relevant for political questions facing Russia in the 21st century. Do the current leaders have a legitimate right to rule, and whom does their rule benefit? How can the partitioning of the Russian state in the 1990s be justified and accepted? How much independence should current autonomous regions in Russia be granted? How should the Russian state use oil and gas proceeds fairly? Can Russian nationalism be benevolent?

Such questions must be answered with broad historical and philosophical analyses. The author's initial diagnosis of Russia's problems hints that he had the capacity to get such a fundamentally important discussion started, but instead he chose to write this book in a specialist vein. It's a real pity that he did not venture out beyond his area of professional expertise and write a more general history of Russia's Soviet inheritance. The lessons from such an endeavour could have made a much greater difference than the economic portrait this book now provides.
1 voter thcson | Apr 9, 2015 |
aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Vous devez vous identifier pour modifier le Partage des connaissances.
Pour plus d'aide, voir la page Aide sur le Partage des connaissances [en anglais].
Titre canonique
Titre original
Titres alternatifs
Date de première publication
Personnes ou personnages
Lieux importants
Évènements importants
Films connexes
Épigraphe
Dédicace
Premiers mots
Citations
Derniers mots
Notice de désambigüisation
Directeur de publication
Courtes éloges de critiques
Langue d'origine
DDC/MDS canonique
LCC canonique

Références à cette œuvre sur des ressources externes.

Wikipédia en anglais (3)

"Uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why Russian nostalgia for empire could lead to repeating past strategies that result in instability, leaving Russia vulnerable to economic downturns"--Provided by publisher.

Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque

Description du livre
Résumé sous forme de haïku

Discussion en cours

Aucun

Couvertures populaires

Vos raccourcis

Évaluation

Moyenne: (5)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5 2

Est-ce vous ?

Devenez un(e) auteur LibraryThing.

 

À propos | Contact | LibraryThing.com | Respect de la vie privée et règles d'utilisation | Aide/FAQ | Blog | Boutique | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliothèques historiques | Critiques en avant-première | Partage des connaissances | 203,235,619 livres! | Barre supérieure: Toujours visible