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The Question of Questions: Was the Soviet Union Worth Saving?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Karen Dawisha
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Abstract

Karen Dawisha suggests that Cohen's argument is based on a minimalist definition of the requirements for the survival of the “Soviet Union” and that it ignores what she asserts is its most fundamental feature, the essential internalized and structural violence that was at the heart of the Soviet system. She therefore disagrees with Cohen, arguing that at the end of the day, Gorbachev's brilliance and capabilities were restricted by the fact that he was die leader of a country almost totally lacking in political, economic, or social capital.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , Fall 2004 , pp. 513 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2004

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References

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12 Nina Andreeva, “I Cannot Forgo Principles,” Sovietskaia Rossiia, 23 March 1988.

13 The Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation, f. 2, op. 2, from Tlie End of the ColdWar in Europe, 1989: “New Thinking” and New Evidence, National Security Archives Critical Oral History Conference, Musgrove, St. Simon's Island, Georgia, 1-3 May 1998 (emphasis added).

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29 As brilliantly explored in Svetlana Boym, TheFuture of Nostalgia (New York, 2001).

30 See, for example, the interview with Masha Gessen, the former managing editor of Itogi, in RFE/RI Media Matters 4, no. 3 (13 February 2004).

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