The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire

About this book

For more than 80 years the Soviet Empire cast an ever-lengthening shadow across the face of the world. Lenins ruthless legacy consumed Eastern Europe and toppled governments on virtually every continent. Yet at the moment when the Empire appeared to have reached its zenith it collapsed like a house of cards. "Brian Croziers definitive history of the Soviet Empire is a chilling account of an ideology that haunted our century." Henry Kissinger In this seminal work the eminent British writer and historian Brian Crozier tells the brutal history of the Soviet Empireits birth life and sudden death. The book begins at the beginning in 1917 when the oversized dreams of Lenin and the happenstance of events conspired to change the course of history. In meticulous detail Crozier follows the Soviet conquests across Europe and into Asia Africa and the Western Hemisphere. He uses recently declassified information from Soviet archives to add texture and depth to familiar parts of the storythe betrayal at Yalta the terror of Stalin the tragedy of Hungary the split with China the false hope of Prague Spring the rise of Castro the invasion of Afghanistan and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Revealed along the way is the dark underside of a regime whose march toward supremacy resulted in the loss of tens of millions of lives. The book concludes with reflections on the extraordinary disintegration of Lenins utopia and the seemingly endless chaos left in its wake. Provocative comprehensive and majestic in scope The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire is the definitive account of historys most turbulent days.