The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire

I loved this book! Despite its size (830 pages!) the book is not a long read. First of all, 1/3 of the book is taken up by appendixes, notes, and the index. Secondily, the book is broken down into easily digestable chapters that covers a specific period within a geographical location (e.g. Cuba, Korea, Poland). The chapters are short and well written. Yet the whole book is fluid and is hard to put down. You will get the big picture, but you will also get interesting nuggets of information that make the book so enjoyable to read (such as the portrayal of Che Guevara or Mao Tse Tung's true thoughts on Stalin). I love reading about history but fear the dry writing that often plagues it. This is not such an account.

Crozier paints quite a dismal portrait of the collectivist powers that squashed all forms of dissent and pushed forward their grandiose vision for the world. This book lays out in plain view for the world to see-the anti-Communists were right. Marxists were fomenting revolution, terror, war, and all sorts of inhumane practices all through their lifespan and through their satellites and allies. Comrades and fellow travellers at home, similarly, were not the humanitarians they pride themselves on claiming to be (the right of the self-anointed, more like); instead, they were vicious thugs with no minds of their own, instead following orders barked at them by their leaders in Moscow, despite knowledge of Communism's crimes against humanity, peace, and culture; indeed, they turned their back on all this because it is the Marxist nature.In that sense probably the best indication of this book's compelling style and content, which is backed by nigh-irrefutable evidence such as documents from the archives of Communist regimes, is that of the response it engenders from the far leftist crowd. You see, Marxism is in a most twisted sense the "intellectual" religion of modern times. People who surrender to it abandon all earthly rationality and participation in logical discourse. Instead, everything in life is placed into two categories: progressive and reactionary. "If you are not with us, you are against us." How odd, then, that these self-described nihilists should bemoan such a philosophy on the part of the free-marketers and the true democrats. This is why their best prepared and unified defense against this book is to point out that it is written by a right-winger, and that this somehow makes the book unobjective. One can only ask what they would say to a book that is similarly condemning of the Soviet system and all fellow travellers, yet written by leftists. In fact, this book (and others like it) is already written, and it is "The Black Book of Communism" (an equally, if not more so, recommended work on Communist reality).So, in the end, anyone can go through the book and find points where they disagree with the conclusions that Crozier has drawn. Such is natural; human nature. But similarly they know that he has the facts on his side. The documentation. The statistics. The reason. This is what makes them hysterical, and it is only to their utter disgrace.

Very complete. Its about time someone put the microscope to the results of socialist / communist thought, and its place in history. Well done.

The focus of the book is on the imperial aims & actions of the Soviet Union, which is indeed a very large topic! Fortunately the book moves extremely quickly, taking the reader from Lenin's revolution to the end of the empire. This author has written detailed books about much of what he writes here, and doesn't feel compelled to "show off" with trivial details. He is detailed enough, however, to give a firm understanding of the events in question. As far as bias goes, I think everyone from (unaffiliated) Marxists, Maoists & Trotskyites (excluding Stalinists) to the moderate Right would not argue with the essence of Crozier's account of the Soviet domination of other nations, using Marxism as a convenient (and all too accepted) cover. If you aren't in denial of this fact, and want to know the details of the issue, you will be delighted by this book! It is clearly a lifetime achievement from an outstanding historian.Another reviewer compared this book unfavorably to Shirer's similarly titled (and also excellent) book on the Third Reich. Having read both, I can say that Crozier manages to remain a little more detached than Shirer did, and did a far better job at telling the important story (including the essential facts) while avoiding the digressions Shirer was prone to. Still, for their relative subject matters, each is certainly unmatched in my opinion. Additionally, I don't know that either was out of line for occasionally expressing disgust when recounting the horrific deeds committed by the respective totalitarian regimes. Crozier does do much less of this, however, probably because the subject at hand is the expansion (and fall) of the empire, not the history of the Soviet Union per se.

If you intersted in history, political science, foreign policy, or the Soviet Empire in general, this book is a must read.