Descriere: One of the great surprises in modern military history is the collapse of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1991--along with the party-state with which it was inextricably intertwined. In this important book, a distinguished United States Army officer and scholar traces the rise and fall of the Soviet military, arguing that it had a far greater impact on Soviet politics and economic development than was perceived in the West. General William E. Odom asserts that Gorbachev saw that dramatically shrinking the military and the military-industrial sector of the economy was essential for fully implementing perestroika and that his efforts to do this led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Odom enhances his account with interviews with key actors in the Soviet Union before, during, and after the collapse. He describes the condition of the Soviet military during the mid-1980s and explains how it became what it was--its organizational structures, manpower policies, and military-industrial arrangements. He then moves to the dramatic events that led to its destruction, taking us to the most secret circles of Soviet policy making, as well as describing the public debates, factional struggles in the new parliament, and street combat as army units tried to repress the political forces unleashed by glasnost. Odom shows that just as the military was the ultimate source of stability for the multinational Soviet state, the communist ideology justified the military's priority claim on the economy. When Gorbachev tried to shift resources from the military to the civilian sector to overcome economic stagnation, he had to revise the official ideology in order to justify removing the military from its central place. Paralyzed by corruption, mistrust, and public disillusionment, the military was unable and unwilling to intervene against either Gorbachev's perestroika or Yeltsin's dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Autori: William E. Odom (Author) | Editura: YALE UNIV PR | Anul aparitiei: 2000 | ISBN: 9780300082715 | Numar de pagini: 544 | Categorie: History
Zuckoff, Mitchell
Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II
#1 New York Times bestseller!Frozen in Time is a gripping true story of survival, bravery, and honor in the vast Arctic wilderness during World War II, from the author of New York Times bestseller Lost in Shangri-La.On November 5, 1942, a US cargo plane slammed into the Greenland Ice Cap. Four days later, the B-17 assigned to the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on board survived, and the US military launched a daring rescue operation. But after picking up one man, the Grumman Duck amphibious plane flew into a severe storm and vanished.Frozen in Time tells the story of these crashes and the fate of the survivors, bringing vividly to life their battle to endure 148 days of the brutal Arctic winter, until an expedition headed by famed Arctic explorer Bernt Balchen brought them to safety. Mitchell Zuckoff takes the reader deep into the most hostile environment on earth, through hurricane-force winds, vicious blizzards, and subzero temperatures.Moving forward to today, he recounts the efforts of the Coast Guard and North South Polar Inc. - led by indefatigable dreamer Lou Sapienza - who worked for years to solve the ...
Karam Dana (Author)
To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States
In recent years, attitudes in the United States toward the Palestinian cause have shifted dramati
Laura Hobson Faure (Author)
9, The first comprehensive study of Jewish children's flight from Nazi Germany to France--and their subsequent escape to America from the Vichy regime At the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. While 10,000 of them escaped to Britain in the Kindertransport, only some 500 found a new home in France. Here they attempted to begin again--but their refuge would all too soon become a trap. For the first time, Laura Hobson Faure brings to life the experiences of these children, and the Jewish and non-Jewish organizations who helped them. Drawing on survivors' testimonies as well as children's diaries, letters, drawings, songs, and poems, Who Will Rescue Us? re-creates their complex journeys, including how some of them eventually found safety in America. Hobson Faure paints a moving portrait of these children and their escape, uncovering their agency in the flight from Nazism--and knits together the network of the many who aided them along the way.