Book Review: Stephen Kotkin's 'Armageddon Averted'

On the contrary, Stephen Kotkin's Armagedon Averted offers a concise yet in-depth look at the last twenty years of the Soviet polity and its subsequent collapse from a non ideological lens. He describes the problems that agglomerated throughout the late Soviet years: an elite that was the country's de facto upper class (in a supposed egalitarian society!), the obsolete nature of the country's industrial infrastructure, and attempts at reform resulting in sometimes ousting from power (as with Khrushchev and Interior Minster Beria) and counter-reform. Interestingly Kotkin writes of the influx of Western consumer goods and the Russian youth's fascination with Western culture – from blue jeans to rock n' roll. Kotkin lays such a firm foundation for Soviet collapse but he seemingly gives all the credit to one man: Mikhail Gorbachov and the Soviet elite who could not and then simply would not stop him. Kotkin describes him as a crafty Machiavellian politician who was too cunning a tactician to let Ligachev or any other anti- reformers high up in government take him down as had been done to Khrushchev. It was surely true as Kotkin posits that Gorbachov's reforms had the unintended consequences of ultimately bringing to the Soviet Union. Also, he cites how the lack of will power of those trying to save the Union when they briefly took over in a coup. Though Kotkin hints at the answer, as he describes the coup orchestrators with their access to the world's largest military and an enormous nuclear arsenal, he does not explicitly say why they did not order the troops to forcibly arrest Yelstin as he impudently gave a speech atop a hostile tank.

The fall of the Soviet Union, which Kotkin accurately argues was collapsing throughout the 1990's, was something that was ready to occur. The de facto ownership of state property by Soviet elites, the people basically imprisoned in a poorly realized utopia, failure to compete with the West economically after World War II, an obsolete industrial sector, dated technology with a fraction of the computers Western countries had....all these factors added up. After Gorbachov set the polity's windows ajar and people stared out into the world, jaw hanging open, the Soviet structure was doomed. When Gorbachov allowed a choice and thought everyone would return to the belief in “humane socialism” out of their own volition, he poorly underestimated his people's desire for freedom, a higher standard of living and access to consumer goods.

Kotkin is certainly correct in his assertion that the Soviet Union could have perpetuated for decades longer, using similar methods of KGB or military intimidation and additionally had a new drive towards industrialization so as not to completely fall behind the rest of the developed world with its superannuated machinery. Yet the Soviet military and the coup leaders didn't act more forcefully because Soviet communism had lost its reason to exist. Why save a corpse? At least have some decency and not create other corpses in the process! Ever since Western consumer goods and culture started pouring into the USSR en masse in the late sixties, the communist dream was shattered. The atheist, Marx, had wanted to create a Heaven on earth – not mere delusional opium to be smoked after an intolerable day working endless hours like a machine for a capitalist owner! Yet the consumer goods and culture that poured in, in contrast to the simple, difficult life most Soviet citizens led, surely made these same citizens wonder who was living closer to a Heaven on earth.

Kotkin's Armagedeon Averted offers the reader an eye-opening experience unavailable in most other literature regarding the Soviet Union. Yet the author of this paper, while finding Kotkin’s thesis outwardly correct, finds Kotkin's implicit belief that “great men” create history flawed. The top tier of Soviet elites orchestrated the USSR collapse, yet Kotkin neglects to connect the orchestrators, Gorbachov and Yeltsin, to the vast members of the orchestra: the people and every aspect of stringent Soviet life that could barely function. Armagedeon Averted, while illuminating, relies heavily on this idea of “great men” creating history rather than the entirety of the orchestra creating the music.

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Freeze, George L. “From Stalinism to Stagnation.” Russia: A History. Ed. George L. Freeze. 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. 347-383.

Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.