The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire (Studies in Contemporary History)

The crisises of 1956, 1968, and 1980 are examined in detail, and throughout humor is used to get the point across (such at the Kiti-Kat fiasco, and contemporary Soviet and Eastern European jokes about the regime).


The story of Communist imperialism   August 14, 2007
Gary Selikow (Great Kush)
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The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire traces the creation, expansion, maintenance and eventual demise of the Soviet Empire, one of history's greatest tyrranies, from 1945 to 1991.
He describes how the Soviet empire was indeed an imperialist venture (making it all the more absurd how Communists and their fellow travellers refer to the democratic West as 'imperialists').
The author describes the conflict between the forces of nationalism and freedom on the one hand against those of Communist imperialism on the other.
Indeed if you are truly against imperialism you will support nationalism and the nation-state.
The book refers to how East European independence was jointly obliterated by the Nazi and Soviet empires. About the Communist tactics of subjugating Eastern Europe to Communist tyrany after World War II, and the shameful British and American aquiescence in this (so soon after British appeasement of Hitler at Munich, 1938).
As the book traces the development of Stalinist and neo-Stalinist tyranny, we learn of internal Soviet political and economic developments, and the movements of nationalism and liberalism crushed by the Soviets over decades, before their eventual triumph over Communist despotism in 1989-1991.
Key points covered include the conflict between Yugoslav leader Tito and Stalin in the late 1940's and early 50's.
The brutal and bloody Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush nascent pro-democracy movements there.
25 000 Hungarians died in the Soviet invasion and crackdown of 1956.
Then we read of the dishonourable appeasement of Soviet tyranny by the West at Helsinki, 1975, and the crushing of Solidarity and the pro-democracy movement in Poland in 1981.
The book then traces the reforms of Gorbachev to the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989, and the fall of Communist dictatorships in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria that year.
Two years later the Soviet Union itself collapsed with the independence of the 15 republics that made up the Soviet Union.
The book highlights some interesting facts. For example that the two predecessors of the Soviet Empire were the pre-war Soviet Union and the Nazi Neordnung.
"Over 1939-45, the German Empire self-interestedly liquidated many of the indigenous political cadres of Eastern Europe, inadvertently clearing away the opposition for it's imperial sucessr. By the irony of history, the New Order unwittingly did much of the Soviet Empire's dirty work for it, creating a power vacuum, which the beleagured Soviet Union found impossible to resist over the later 1940s. In effect...the wartime Nazi 'New Order' facilitated a postwar Soviet 'Newer Order'. Given it's parentage it comes as no surprise that the Soviet Empire was seen by many hostile contemporaries as a 'Soviet Ordnung' or 'Stalinist Reich', inheriting the genetic characteristics of both forebears".
Pearson describes something of the nature of life in the Soviet Empire: like the fabled Narnia of CS Lewis, the Soviet Empire remained a joyless land where there was always winter, but never Christmas.
The West has fought two struggles for freedom against forces of world tyranny in the last century, first against Nazism, then against Communist and now is fighting a third strugle against hegemonic Islamic fundamnetalism, which is backed by the international left.