Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009
From: Philip Leventhal <pl2164@columbia.edu>
Organization: Columbia University Press
Subject: Announcement for Stephen Cohen's new book [Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War]
Johnson's Russia List readers may be interested to learn that Columbia University Press has just published Stephen F. Cohen's new book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.
Focusing on missed opportunities - roads taken and not taken - in Soviet and post-Soviet history, and the fates of leaders who represented them, the book treats major (and controversial) developments from the 1920s to the present. Those subjects are reflected in the chapter titles:
1. Bukharin’s Fate
2. The Victims Return: Gulag Survivors Since Stalin
3. The Tragedy of Soviet Conservatism
4. Was the Soviet System Reformable?
5. The Fate of the Soviet Union: Why Did It End?
6. Gorbachev’s Lost Legacies
7. Who Lost the Post-Soviet Peace?
In light of President Obama's upcoming trip to Moscow on July 6-8, many readers may be especially interested in Cohen's two concluding chapters, which treat U.S.-Russian relations from the late 1980s to the present. They provide essential background and context for Obama's attempt to "re-set" the relationship.
Johnson's Russia List readers in the New York City area may also want to know that Cohen (with Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation) will be discussing the book at the Barnes & Noble store at Broadway and 82nd St on Wednesday, July 1 at 7:00 pm and at the Strand bookstore, at Broadway and 12th St. on Tuesday, July 21 at 6:30 pm.
The book is now available wherever books are sold. It can also be ordered at
this link:
http://www.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14896-2/soviet-fates-and-lost-alternatives.