The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the Ussr, and the Successor States

This is a very fine survey of Soviet history from the Russian Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet state. While this is a chronologically arranged account, Suny divides Soviet history into a set of sensibly selected periods. These are the Russian Revolution and establishment of the Soviet state in the Civil War, the period of modest relaxation of state efforts at control that was the New Economic Policy (NEP), the Stalinist revolution from above and WWII, the efforts at reform after Stalin, the stagnation of the Brezhnev decades, and the final effort at reform that led to the fall of the Soviet state. Major political, social, economic, and to a lesser extent, intellectual developments are discussed for each period. Suny makes a very successful effort to balance narrative and analysis. Controversial issues are described as such and references given to appropriate further reading. The balance between sufficient detail and maintaining a good narrative flow within the limits of a moderate sized survey is excellent. Consistent themes are the discrepancies between Marxist doctrine and the social realities of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, the enormous transformation of Soviet society that took place under the leadership of the Communist party, the brutality of Stalin, and the consistent Soviet suppression of civil society and democratic impulses. The bibliography is excellent. This book is an excellent entry into the complicated literature on the Soviet Union and recommended strongly.

Splendid overview of Russian history, particularly in the Soviet years. Suny is very balanced, steering a course between hardline interpreters Right and Left. He gives a broad background of Russian history, and then concentrates on the specific conditions that shaped the Soviet effort at socialism--which, under Stalin, became the totalitarian antithesis of its egalitarian and democratic roots. He has the gift of summarizing enormous trends briefly and clearly, and giving telling vignettes that keep up interest. A clear, thoughtful writer. It's only a pity the book was written in the late 90s, and so is not able to follow up on some of the later post-Yeltsin developments. The account of the early Yeltsin years briefly but completely supports Naomi Klein's much longer account in The Shock Doctrine: free-market gospeleers running amok and driving the economy to near-ruin.

This is a good book for people just trying to get a grasp on what's going on. There are some "generalizations" as someone mentioned in an earlier review, but they are less unsubstantiated than they are just not always elaborated upon. I think it's a blessing, since Suny's other book on Soviet Essays & Documents is a lot more precise and, consequently, hard to get through. It's good information though, and especially in the Soviet Experiment his style of writing makes for an easy, fair-minded, fascinating read.

Suny writes in an interesting, story-telling style that is easy to read. At the same time, he tackles a complex subject with the authority you would expect from a historian of his calibre. A first rate book!