The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union (Routledge Sources in History) 1st Edition

Richard Sakwa's book is a compendium of original documents (or sometimes excerpts) that relate to Soviet history. The author restricts his own words to explanatory comments that set a particular document in context and sometimes relate the effect the document had on Soviet history. From the letters of nineteenth century Marxists to Gorbachev's last speech of December, 1991, the documents tell a story. However, everything depends on the choice of documents.Certain key documents seem to be missing. In particular, the decree, issued not long after Stalin's death, that transferred the secret police's vast industrial empire to the relevent civilian and military bureaucracies, is not presented. This decree is key to understanding the end of Stalinism, because it ended the secret police's need for vast numbers of arrested slaves. In line with this omission, it is not made clear that the number of political arrests after Stalin's death was several orders of magnitude less than during the tyrant's misrule.Unlike fascism, Communism attracted the support of vast numbers of decent, idealistic, and intelligent people. Portrayal of Soviet Communism as strictly evil and deceitful does not explain why this happened, and it does not explain why many Soviet citizens were enthusiastic about the direction of the USSR, at least before the Terror.

This is a collection of quoted writings by Lenin and his contemporaries. The author does give a paragraph summary here and there, but this is not useful for study of the Soviet Union. I want my 30 bucks back.

A little wordy and sometimes hard to find the main idea in each chapter. There is quite a bit of info in in the book.

Bought this book for school, it was very cheap and came in very good condition.

Good product.

Very good.

This kindle book is marked as having 'real page numbers' but when it downloads, it only gives percentages. It's not good enough for referencing. Don't download this unless page numbers don't matter to you.

I found his book was mediaca at best but wish the writer had considered an earlier book to help with university students covering that period. However, it was insiteful for Lenin's April Thesis. I would recomend that it would be excellent for History students at GCSE and A Level.