Armageddon averted

Few observers in the decades of Cold War rivalry expected the Soviet Union to unravel from the inside, and fewer still expected it to end without a catastrophic war. Stephen Kotkin argues that the state's downfall owed little to the arms race. Instead, it grew out of the momentum of Communist ideology itself, especially the hope for a more humane form of socialism. The market reforms that many hoped would follow in post-Soviet Russia never materialised, and given the economic, political and social structures the Soviets left behind, they could not have.

The book looks closely at Soviet society and its institutions after Stalin, covering the everyday aspirations and the hidden power struggles that shaped the lives of some 285 million people. Kotkin traces the unexpected results and contradictions of perestroika, and the dramatic spectacle of a superpower disintegrating while still holding millions of troops and tens of thousands of weapons of mass destruction.