Life After Lenin?

[00:00:00]You want to learn about Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Well, here's three great books that will help you out. So, save this and send this to a friend and this is part one of a brand new series. Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok. This is the best book I have ever read about the actual break-up of the Soviet Union and it identifies two big problems. The first is the economy, how the Soviet economy worked or more accurately didn't, and how Gorbachev tried to transform that. And the second is the relationship between Russia and the other republics of the Soviet Union.

[00:00:29]Gorbachev basically thought that he could just give freedom to the people of the Soviet Union and they would use their freedom to identify the problems of the Soviet state. He didn't realize that the first thing they would use their freedom to do is to leave. To understand the break-up of the Soviet Union, this is a great place to start.

[00:00:45]Yeltsin Alive by Timothy J. Colton. This is a biography of Boris Yeltsin, who is the first president of post-Soviet Russia. It talks about his childhood, his rise through the Soviet Communist Party, how he gained this reputation as one of the rare breed of apparatchiks who could actually get things done, how he lost faith in Soviet Communism whilst at a petrol station in Texas, and his rise to being the first president of post-Soviet Russia, the turmoil of the 1990s, how he couldn't prevent the economy from spinning out of control.

[00:01:19]Allah's Mountains by Sebastian Smith. As the republics of the Soviet Union start to break away, the question starts being asked in Moscow, just where exactly is this process going to end? When Chechnya starts breaking away, it's decided that a line has to be drawn, otherwise there'll be no Russia at all and the tanks go in. In the 1990s, there are two terrible wars in Chechnya. Huge numbers of people die and if you want to understand this brutal conflict, Sebastian Smith's book is a combination of travelogue, politics book, and history. Part two in this series will be coming up soon. Let me know some great books that you've read on post-Soviet Russia. To pick up any of these, comment book below or click the link in my bio and follow Ancient to Recent for more book reviews and recommendations just like this.