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Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

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"Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!" - Nikita Khrushchev, November 17, 1956

In DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, author Michael Dobbs begins his narrative on December 26, 1979 as members of the Soviet Union's ruling Politburo gather to lay before Communist Party General Secretary Brezhnev the final plans for the invasion of Afghanistan. Dobbs ends his narrative at 7:00 PM on December 25, 1991, when General Secretary Gorbachev, in a television address broadcast worldwide, formally dissolved the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

It would, perhaps, be too much to expect that the author record all the facts of that 12-year period that related to the dissolution of the Soviet Empire; the resulting book would be huge. Rather, in 451 pages, Dobbs does a splendid job touching on the salient events in chronological order to yield an immensely readable and instructive work of popular history: the Soviet occupation of Kabul (12/79), Solidarity's strike in Gdansk's Lenin Shipyard (8/80), the suppression of Solidarity (12/81), Brezhnev's death (11/82), the shoot down of KAL 007 (9/83), Gorbachev's accesion as General Secretary (3/85), the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva (11/85), Chernobyl (4/86), the first use of Stinger missiles against Soviet aircraft by Afghan mujahedin (9/86), Mathias Rust's farcical penetration of Soviet airspace (5/87), the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan (2/89), the Tbilisi riots (4/89), the resurrection of Solidarity (6/89), the fall of Berlin Wall and the revolt in Prague (11/89), the downfall of Romania's Ceausescu (12/89), Yeltsin's elevation to power (5/90), the Soviet invasion of Vilnius, Lithuania (1/91), and the abortive KGB coup against Gorbachev (8/91). And, of course, thumbnail bios of the personalities who played crucial roles, including Walesa, Jaruzelski, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin. All this against the background of a Soviet society and economy, enfeebled by decades of centralized planning and consumer deprivation, which were unable to absorb the shock of Gorbachev's perestroika and vision of a revitalized socialism.

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER includes 18 pages of Notes, and a 5-page Bibliography; Dobbs did his homework.

This most excellent work is likely to be most appreciated by those post-WWII Baby Boomer's like myself, who grew up under the threat of a Soviet missile strike. (Those under 20 will probably yawn.) We remember the duck-and-cover drills in elementary school, the periodic tests of the town air raid siren, Khrushchev's shoe at the U.N., the Cuban Missile Crisis, bomb shelters, "better dead than red", the Domino Theory, "we will bury you", the Red Menace, the Evil Empire, the hammer and sickle on a blood red flag. Watching on TV the collapse of the Berlin Wall was, for me, the end of an era and a catharsis. My God, we'd "won".

Nowadays, those that would destroy skyscrapers, embassies, troop convoys, bus stops, and underground trains are anonymous and stateless. Peculiarly, I miss the relative stability of the Bad Old Days. At least then we could give the Enemy a face.

This is a terrific book. It makes history come alive through the people, big and small, who caused Communism to collapse from within the Spviet Union. It is easy to feel you are there as the pages replay the key events during the 80's and early 90's. I was most impressed by the author's ability to craft this epic into a gripping, moving story. Well done!!

This is a compelling and vivid description of the events that led to the toatal disintegration of the Soviet Empire, from the collapse of its East European satellite states to the impolosion of the USSR itself. Dobbs was an eyewitness to many events described in the book, and he writes accurately and convincingly. The beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire is traced to the final years of Brezhnev's rule, with its stagnation, over the hill, senile politicians, and the tragic decision to invade Afghanistan.

Because this is a very rich journalistic account, the reder should be prepared to deal with a myriad of Eastern European proper names that occur throughout the book. Still, this is a very sophisticated, historically-informed journalism, and if you want to know about the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

A very readable book; made some excellent points. One thing Dobbs ignores completely, though, was the actual breaking down of the Berlin Wall by people wielding hammers and other instruments. The Wall had already been opened, yes, but the sight of people demolishing it, flashed around the world on TV, was of immense symbolic significance and it accordingly accelerated the downfall of Communism. Also, here's some food for thought: Andropov wasn't picked to lead the USSR as a "caretaker"; his death was untimely. Everyone had expected him to live for decades. Likewise, John Paul I died an untimely death after only two weeks as Pope. How might the history Dobbs describes have unfolded differently with Andropov in the Kremlin and an Italian Pope in the Vatican throughout the 1980's? Without John Paul II's protective influence, could Solidarity have survived to lead Poland into the 1990s? Maybe not....

I read this book, translated to portuguese, here in Brazil.It's a good book about this subject.It describes the soviet fall.There's failures in this book?Yes.It has no enough details about soviet fall.Even so, thid book is good and fun to read.

Obviously, the author knows his subject and writes about it from the many interviews he conducted. But these interviews seem to "float in space", without connecting them to the historical picture to round them out. Also, he jumps around quite a bit, and that can be very confusing. A chronological table, and perhaps some maps, would have helped

Starting near the end of the Brezhnev era, Michael Dobbs chronicles the chain of events that led to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. I recently picked this book up because, with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Belin Wall a few months back, I wanted to read something about the fall of Communism.

Based on reviews and recommendations, I ordered this one, and am very glad I did. Dobbs takes a very big-picture view, looking at events in the so-called "satellite states," problems in Afghanistan, political machinations in the Kremlin, failures of the Soviet system, and many more factors and events related to the USSR's fall unfolding over more than a decade. He also provides interesting vignettes along the way of how the system impacted ordinary people. However, despite its impressive scope, the book reads like a good, fast-paced novel, thanks to Dobbs's superb writing. All of the key characters really come to life, and Dobbs portrays them deftly, in all their subtlety and contradictions. If you want to read a gripping story, one of the greatest triumphs (however imperfect and incomplete, admittedly) of humanity over an evil system that can be found in history, I highly recommend this book.

This is a very good book about the astonishing series of events at the end of the 80s that ended communist domination of Eastern Europe and Russia.

For someone of my generation (an American baby boomer now in his 50s) these events were really quite stunning. I assumed growing up that the Soviet Union would be a permanent adversary for the United States throughout my lifetime. The idea that it could just implode is still a little stunning. The book points out that there were 15 million members of the Soviet communist party when the party was dissolved and not one resisted.

Dobbs was on the scene for many of the events as a correspondent, and the book is clearly a "first draft" of history. There is a little bit of a hopscotch effect as he moves from say Poland in one chapter to Moscow in the next, but you do get the feeling you are in the moment.

I also thought the analogy in the title to Orwell's masterpiece, 1984 was perhaps a bit forced, but really a very strong effort that will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the time and place. Although to be honest, if you read just one book on the era, and your focus is Eastern Europe, you might try Tina Rosenberg's The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism Dobbs devotes more of his story to the fall of the USSR.

Many threads contributed to the story of the downfall of the Soviet empire, and Dobbs ties them together nicely. Example: Matthias Rust's light-plane landing in Red Square, evading or confounding Russian air defenses. How could this contribute to the downfall of the empire? Because it contributed to Gorbachev's distrust of his military brass, whom he thought were trying to embarrass him. This among other incidents, like initial efforts to lie about the Chernobyl nuclear accident, cemented Gorbachev's belief that glasnost was necessary so that the popular will (presumed by Gorbachev to be on his side) could prevail over the entrenched party bureaucracy, who were trying to slow down Gorbachev's reforms. But once glasnost (akin to free speech) started, there was no stopping the will of the people for real change.

Dobbs cites first-person Russian sources extensively (and footnotes to them) and seems to do a good job of sorting through what is accurate versus self-serving in those sources.

First of all, GREAT book. Reads like a dream and tells one of the most fascinating tales in modern history. The story of how and why one of the world's most powerful empires imploded with relatively little violence is both enthralling and instructive. Stretched to the limit financially, mired in an un-winnable conflict in Afghanistan, paralyzed by internal politics... hmmm, that sounds vaguely familiar?!

Plus, assuming you're a history buff, (Let's face it, who else is reading a review of a history of the fall of the Soviet Union) I think we should take a moment and revel in the fact that the great books WE like are so damned affordable. Right now hard copies of this book are going for a penny! Bingo! (How fun)