Table of Contents

1. The October Revolution, Its Meaning and Significance 1. A Blunder of History, Accident or Necessity? 2. Was Socialism Built in the Soviet Union? 3. Let's Not Oversimplify! A Balance Sheet of the Soviet Years 4. October and the World 5. One More Balance Sheet: Something Worth Thinking About 6. October and Perestroika 7. Does Socialism Have Future? 8. Summing Up 2. The Union Could Have Been Preserved 1. A Tragic Turn of Events 2. Tbilisi... Baku... Vilinius 3. Toward a New Union Treaty 4. Referendum on the Union 5. The Coup-A Stab in the Back-and the Intrigues of Yeltsin 6. The Belovezh Accord: Dissolution of the USSR 7. What Lies Ahead 3. The New Thinking: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow 1. The Very First Steps 2. The Conception (1985-1991) 3. Overcoming the Cold War 4. The Transitional World Order 5. The New Thinking in the Post Confrontational World 6. The Challenge of Globalization 7. The Challenge of Diversity 8. The Challenge of Global Problems 9. The Challenge of Power Politics 10. The Challenge of Democracy 11. The Challenge of Universal Human Values 12. The Beginning of History?

Promotional Information

Here is the whole sweep of the Soviet experiment and experience, as told by its last steward. Drawing on his own experience as well as rich archival material, Gorbachev ponders Russia's past, present, and future place in the world-including the October Revolution, the Cold War, and key figures such as Lenin, Stalin, and Yeltsin.

About the Author

Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991, and President of the Soviet Union, 1988-1991, currently heads the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and lectures widely. He is also the author of Perestroika and Soviet-American Relations, The Search for a New Beginning: Developing a New Civilization, and The August Coup: The Truth and the Lessons.George Shriver has translated and edited many books, including Nikolai Bukharin's How It All Began: The Prison Novel and Roy Medvedev's On Soviet Dissent, The October Revolution, Let History Judge, and Post-Soviet Russia (all published by Columbia).

Reviews

We find passages of perceptive analysis that we should not ignore. Foreign Affairs Gorbachev's authorship alone makes this book an important text... [His] take on history and his analysis of global issues are unique and provocative no matter where one stands in the political spectrum. Booklist (starred review)