I have long been interested in the politics of the Soviet Union. Frankly, much of the reading material out there assumes that I have more knowledge than I do on the internal players in the USSR. This book is remarkable in that it presents a compelling explanation while at the same time not being bogged down in undecipherable lists of Soviet functionaries. To be clear, the argument operates at a high level and this is not dumbed-down history but instead one that is approachable for someone who does not have a graduate degree in Russian studies. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the collapse of the USSR and what happened afterwards.

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A good history of Russia in the Soviet era. It tracks the seeds of it's collapse back to the 1970s when policies began to fail to deliver results and people, including high level communists, began to work around the system as if they could see the writing on the wall ("sticky fingered managers"). In a dysfunctional system, opportunism ruled. Russians have a history of very strong loyalty to "mother Russia" but never to the government.

The book makes clear that the old guard kept the Soviet Union going until the death of Chernenko and the rise of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Factoid: by the 1990s, 2/3 of factory equipment in Russia was judged obsolete. A lot of facts like that throughout the book make it an interesting read.

A good book well worth the time for anyone interested in history, economics and government.

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