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Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, eds. The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective. Armonk, N.Y: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. xvi, 374 pp.
This collection of articles-the ninth volume of a ten-volume series devoted to what until recently was Russian-ruled Eurasia-compares the collapse and legacy of the USSR with those of the Ottoman, Habsburg, Romanov, French, and British empires. It reflects the post-1989 trend in scholarship to treat the USSR and the Soviet bloc as an empire, but it fails to explain why so very few academics or journalists used the term "empire" earlier when referring to that part of the world. Also lacking is an explanation of why the editors chose to compare the empires they did and why they omitted, for example, Japan, which, like tsarist and Soviet Russia but unlike any other modern empire, located industry in its borderlands.
Focussing on international relations and elite politics, The End of Empire? pays little attention to the role of social forces, American audio-visual products, and multinational corporations as causes of imperial collapse or as determinants of future trends. The book does not tell us whether it is significant that young people in what was the USSR prefer Coke to kvass, confuse liberty with consumerism, and know more about MTV, Michael Jackson, and Sylvester Stallone than they do about MTSs, Thomas Jefferson, or Stalin, or that young women there find Helena Rubinstein and Mary Quant more exciting than Sofiia Perovskaia or Praskovia Angelina. Anyone wondering about what to expect of workers more interested in John Lennon and Marks and Spencer than in Lenin and Marx and Engels will be disappointed by this collection. Its authors neither mention these variables nor explain why they don't, thereby leaving readers to determine for themselves how such neglect might affect the comprehensiveness and validity of the arguments and relationships they present. Finally, not all issues are evenly covered. Consideration of the impact of anti-colonial public opinion in the ruling nations on...