Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

Thirty years after the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of this event, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse argues that the Soviet collapse was primarily a domestic affair, yet the United States also played an extraordinary and poorly-understood role.

A world-leading expert on the USSR and the Cold War, Vladislav Zubok grew up in Moscow, in 1993-2012 lived and taught history in the United States. His best-known books include Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War (with C. Pleshakov, 1996), A Failed Empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007), and Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (2009). He is now professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Notably, Dr. Zubok has been a fellow with the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program three times.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University and the National History Center) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partners (the George Washington University History Department and the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest) for their continued support.