The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Serhii Plokhy

Dec 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Alex Wyndham

About this audiobook

On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades. As Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. On the contrary, American leaders dreaded the possibility that the Soviet Union might suddenly crumble, throwing all of Eurasia into chaos. Bush was firmly committed to supporting his ally Gorbachev, and remained wary of radical leaders such as recently elected Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Fearing what might happen to the large Soviet nuclear arsenal in the event of the union's collapse, Bush stood by Gorbachev as he resisted the growing independence movements in Ukraine, Moldova, and the Caucasus. Plokhy shows that it was only after the movement for independence of the republics had gained undeniable momentum on the eve of the Ukrainian vote for independence that Bush finally abandoned Gorbachev to his fate.

About the author

Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. The author of numerous books, including Chernobyl, which was awarded the Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction, Plokhy lives in Burlington, Massachusetts.

An Oxford University and Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduate, Alex Wyndham has voiced everything from Apple iPad campaigns to fertilizer instructions. He's also starred in several BBC and HBO shows, including the Emmy Award-winning Little Dorrit and Rome, and in various films.