The Collapse of an Empire. Lessons for Modern Russia

The audio book is devoted to the problems faced by authoritarian regimes in multi-ethnic states whose economies depend to a significant extent on unpredictable fluctuations in the prices of fuel and energy resources. This issue is relevant for modern Russia, and the author explains what mistakes made by the Soviet Union should not be repeated. The uniqueness of the audiobook is that Yegor Gaidar for the first time clearly demonstrates how the collectivization policy, which ruined our agriculture, predetermined—through more than sixty years—the accelerated collapse of the Soviet regime, which had de facto become bankrupt by that time. What was the real economic situation of a seemingly mighty superpower? Was the collapse of the USSR absolutely inevitable? Could the dismantling of the Soviet system have been done differently—and why was the Chinese or Latin American path of transformations impossible in Russia? You will find answers to these questions in “The Fall of the Empire.”