Moscow, December 25, 1991
The Last Day Of The Soviet Union
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
History always comes down to the details. And when it comes to the fall of the Soviet Union, the details are crucial, especially when such an era-defining event hinged on the bitter personal relationship between two powerful men, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
On the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Cold War, Conor O'Clery has built his compelling and brilliantly constructed narrative of the fall of the Soviet Union around one day, December 25, 1991, the date Gorbachev resigned and the USSR was effectively consigned to history. From there, O'Clery looks back over the events of the previous six years: Gorbachev's reform policies of glasnost and perestroika; Yeltsin's ignominious fall and then rise to the top; the defiance of the once docile Soviet republics; the failed August coup by the hardliners; and the events that swiftly followed until a secret meeting in a central European forest sealed the fate of the communist monolith and the clock ticked down to the last day.
The result is an intricately detailed, thoroughly researched book, based on interviews with many of the key figures in a drama of Shakespearean intensity as well as contemporary reportage, the memoirs and diaries of key political figures and official documents. The book is written at a breathtaking, dramatic pace, drawing the reader in as it focuses equally on the personal and historical stories.
Moscow, December 25, 1991 is set to become a defining book on the fall of the Soviet Union.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Communist superpower ended in a whimper of personal rivalries, according to this shrewd political history. Former Irish Times correspondent O'Clery (The Billionaire Who Wasn't) alternates vignettes from the day Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's resignation brought the U.S.S.R. to a formal end with a chronicle of its collapse under his rule. He frames the story as a duel between Gorbachev, the principled but vain and haughty statesman who lost control of the reforms he initiated, and Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic a crude, drunken bully and something the Soviet Union had not seen before: a real politician, capable of translating popular sentiment into a democratic power base. O'Clery presents a colorful human-scale saga, full of pathos and pettiness. (As Gorbachev was preparing his farewell address, Yeltsin sent minions to evict his family from their dacha.) But he also illuminates larger historical forces: the revival of nationalist politics in the breakaway Soviet republics; the desperate food shortages as the command economy lost its authority; the social enervation that left no one willing to defend the Soviet system by force. The result is a revealing portrait of one of history's greatest upheavals.
