John Keep - Last of the Empires: A History of the Soviet Union, 1945-1991

In this book, John Keep gives a narrative history of the USSR from the last years of Stalin's despotic rule to the eventual collapse of the empire in 1991. During these years living standards slowly improved as various attempts were made to reform Communist rule. Although material prosperity rose under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, the Communist system began to erode as official ideology grew less relevant to people's everyday concerns; the Party lost its moral authority. The early 1980s saw a growing black market economy, incompetent management, and agricultural waste. When control passed to pragmatic, younger leaders like Gorbachev, their attempts to reinvigorate the economy by appealing to the intelligentsia opened a Pandora's box of conflicting opinions. The Party surrendered its monopoly of power, central institutions crumbled, and the centrifugal forces emanating from national minorities culminated in the empire's downfall.

' John Keep has produced a masterpiece. In his introduction he states that the book is a "narrative history", which it is, designed for the "general reader". It is much more than that.'

Roy D. Laird, University of Kansas

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OPUS General Editors Christopher Butler Robert Evans John Skorupski

OPUS books provide concise, original, and authoritative introductions to a wide range of subjects in the humanities and sciences. They are written by experts for the general reader as well as for students.

John Keep has studied and lectured in Russian History for many years. He was a research assistant with the Foreign Office from 1953-4, a lecturer in Modern Russian History at the University of London between 1954 and 1966, and Reader in Russian Studies there from 1966 to 1970. In 1964 he became a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and he was Professor of Russian History at the University of Toronto between 1970 and 1988. He has now retired. His previous publications include The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia ( Clarendon Press, 1963), Contemporary History in the Soviet Mirror (edited with L. Brisby in 1964), The Russian Revolution: A Study in Mass Mobilization ( 1976), and Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874 ( Clarendon Press, 1985).

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