Customer Reviews

The Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union

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4 star:		(1)
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Watson provides an overview of the Soviet Union in its last decades and explores the reasons for its ultimate collapse. The key biographies are useful

and the documents in translation make it a very useful book for research. I

also took Doc Watson's Russian history class, and it was excellent. The book

was a great complement to his lectures. He got the teaching award the year before I graduated.

I actually had Dr. Watson as a professor, and I have to say that the book made up for what he lacked as a lecturer. (Great guy - just slightly confusing. He has a lot going on in his head. Dedicated scholar.) It is an excellent resource for someone who is not very familiar with the time period. The primary sources in the appendix are extremely useful for research purposes, and the narrative is easy and engaging.

Dr. Watson is an impeccable gentleman who is also an excellent professor. Thus, it came as no surprise to me when I uncovered the depth and scope of his research on the collapse of Soviet communism. Dialectical materialism and Sovietology are clearly presented and I came away with a profound understanding as to why the great experiment of the twentieth century failed.