Overview

The author uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why swimming against the tide of history would be a huge mistake. The USSR sowed the seeds of its own economic destruction, and Gaidar worries that Russia is repeating some of those mistakes in its nostalgia for empire. Once again, for example, the nation is putting too many eggs into one basket, leaving the nation vulnerable to fluctuations in the energy market.

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9780815731146

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<p> Gaidar wonders whether Russia's political and economic institutions will prove flexible enough to cope with another balance-of-payment crisis. If not, Russia may yet meet an end similar to the Soviet Union's. And on this critical point, Gaidar--no Cassandra, but rather a sober analyst of the half-baked illiberal democracy that is Russia today--has written a book far more instructive than most of the Western media's mass-produced anti-Putin pamphlets. --Guy Sorman, City Journal

Gaidar has produced a book of insight and importance. It is must reading for anyone trying to comprehend what really happened to the Soviet Union, why its system was inherently instable, and why nostalgia for the 'days of empire'--fashionable at the highest levels in Russia today--is wrongheaded and dangerous. -- Educational Book Review The author's analysis of the fate of the USSR is as compelling as it is lucid. --Tomas Hirst, Fund Strategy Collapse of an Empire is a warning to today's Russian leaders to avoid the disastrous mistakes of their Soviet predecessors. --Stefan Wagstyl, Financial Times Collapse of an Empire is about the disintegration of the USSR. It is one of the best accounts we have, and is likely to be referred to for a long time. --Philip Hanson, Chatham House, The Russian Review Gaidar wonders whether Russia's political and economic institutions will prove flexible enough to cope with another balance-of-payment crisis. If not, Russia may yet meet an end similar to the Soviet Union's. And on this critical point, Gaidar--no Cassandra, but rather a sober analyst of the half-baked illiberal democracy that is Russia today--has written a book far more instructive than most of the Western media's mass-produced anti-Putin pamphlets. --Guy Sorman, City Journal

Gaidar has produced a book of insight and importance. It is must reading for anyone trying to comprehend what really happened to the Soviet Union, why its system was inherently instable, and why nostalgia for the 'days of empire'--fashionable at the highest levels in Russia today--is wrongheaded and dangerous. - Educational Book Review The author's analysis of the fate of the USSR is as compelling as it is lucid. - Tomas Hirst, Fund Strategy Collapse of an Empire is a warning to today's Russian leaders to avoid the disastrous mistakes of their Soviet predecessors. - Stefan Wagstyl, Financial Times Collapse of an Empire is about the disintegration of the USSR. It is one of the best accounts we have, and is likely to be referred to for a long time. - Philip Hanson, Chatham House, The Russian Review Gaidar wonders whether Russia's political and economic institutions will prove flexible enough to cope with another balance-of-payment crisis. If not, Russia may yet meet an end similar to the Soviet Union's. And on this critical point, Gaidar--no Cassandra, but rather a sober analyst of the half-baked illiberal democracy that is Russia today--has written a book far more instructive than most of the Western media's mass-produced anti-Putin pamphlets. - Guy Sorman, City Journal

Author Information

Yegor Gaidar, Boris Yeltsin's acting prime minister in 1992, was the architect of ""shock therapy"" reforms designed to hasten Russia's transition to capitalism in the 1990s. He is currently the director of the Institute for the Economy in Transition, a Moscow-based research organization.On November 24, 2006,Yegor Gaidar fell seriously ill while presenting the Russian edition of this book in Ireland. Much speculation at the time, including Gaidar's own article in the Financial Times, attributed the illness to poisoning.

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