Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives

Stephen F. Cohen is far and away the most original, creative, informed, and insightful observer writing on Russian affairs today. A pioneering historian and a fine political scientist and journalist with a tireless commitment to ferreting out elusive evidence, Cohen has had extensive, first-hand experience in both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, close contacts among contemporary Russian leaders, and a unique following among Russian intellectuals. Known for his bold, independent, passionately held, and often provocative ideas, he is respected even by many who strongly disagree with him. Cohen writes with clarity, elegance, and power. -- Alexander Rabinowitch, author of The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd Stephen F. Cohen is one of our most astute historians of both the Soviet Union and Russia. Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives once again demonstrates his encyclopedic grasp of his subject, his knack for original archival research, his deep wisdom, and an unerring ability to make difficult concepts intelligible. This book is a brilliant and probing analysis of U.S. relations with the Kremlin from Stalin to Putin. Read it! -- Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast Stephen F. Cohen is one of those writers who keeps real history visible while making striking and controversial policy arguments. This masterly investigation of 'lost opportunities' is necessary background for understanding Russia and the world today, giving us an opportunity for essential historical and political debate. Critics will challenge him, but Cohen is likely to emerge triumphant. -- Robert Conquest, author of The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine A brilliant and important book. Stephen Cohen is one of the world's foremost thinkers about Russia--its past, present, and future. -- Dan Rather, global correspondent and managing editor, Dan Rather Reports, HDNet

In this wide-ranging and acclaimed book, Stephen F. Cohen challenges conventional wisdom about the course of Soviet and post-Soviet history. Reexamining leaders from Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin's preeminent opponent, and Nikita Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachev and his rival Yegor Ligachev, Cohen shows that their defeated policies were viable alternatives and that their tragic personal fates shaped the Soviet Union and Russia today. Cohen's ramifying arguments include that Stalinism was not the predetermined outcome of the Communist Revolution; that the Soviet Union was reformable and its breakup avoidable; and that the opportunity for a real post-Cold War relationship with Russia was squandered in Washington, not in Moscow. This is revisionist history at its best, compelling readers to rethink fateful events of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the possibilities ahead. In his new epilogue, Cohen expands his analysis of U.S. policy toward post-Soviet Russia, tracing its development in the Clinton and Obama administrations and pointing to its initiation of a "new Cold War" that, he implies, has led to a fateful confrontation over Ukraine.