From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR by Louis Sell (review)

Louis Sell has written a smart and engaging book chronicling the collapse of the Soviet Union. Spanning the period from Leonid Brezhnev's rise to power to Mikhail Gorbachev's unexpected fall, Sell has written a fine survey of the myriad causes that led to the great upheaval of 1991. While the book 's original contribution to the field is limited, it is a fine read for those interested in understanding the larger scope of the Soviet demise, or for those seeking a general overview before diving more deeply into specific moments and historiographical debates of the era.

From Washington to Moscow offers a long list of the causes of the Soviet Union's collapse; a list that is, for the most part, well established in the current historiography on the late-Soviet era. From Brezhnev's "Trust in Cadres" to his astronomical military spending and commitments in Afghanistan, the stage was set in the 1970s for the slow and steady deterioration of state power and social cohesion inside Soviet society and government. Gorbachev's rise to power held great promise, but also great risk, as his reforms had the potential to open the floodgates of popular criticism and to expose the already collapsing system to even further stress. The disasters of Chernobyl, the decline of the economy, the collapse of productivity, the continued quagmire of Afghanistan, and the quick exit of Eastern Europe from the Soviet sphere all left little foundation upon which the Party could base its legitimacy.

While Sell's book does a fine job of chronicling these many causes for the Soviet Union's demise, it struggles at times with knowing what kind of book it wants to be. It periodically deviates into disproportionately long discussions of American and Soviet diplomatic relations—relations that were not necessarily tied to the larger story of the Soviet Union's collapse. The reader is left wondering if this is a book about the history of United States-Soviet diplomacy in the second half of the twentieth century or if this monograph wants to lay out a compelling story for the demise of a super power. No doubt the two stories intertwine but their connection is only tenuously established.

This problem is reflected in the fact that the book lacks a central, cohesive argument and does not show how it is making an original contribution to the scholarship. A number of current historiographical debates surround this momentous event. To name a few: Why did the Soviet Union collapse without bloodshed? Why did the effort to create new and stable political institutions fail under Gorbachev? What was the nature of the Soviet nationalities problem? How should we periodize the collapse? And how can we understand the complex interaction of central and centripetal forces in creating the final maelstrom of 1991? Sell does not engage with the scholarly debates on this period. The inclusion of some critical secondary sources, from Stephen Kotkin to Richard Sakwa to Alena Ledeneva, would have perhaps strengthened and clarified an argument for the book. Because the monograph is largely bereft of archival work, it is difficult for Sell to make claims that we have not already heard before.

All that said, there are lovely moments in this book, especially when Sell recounts his personal experiences as a diplomat who served for decades in the Soviet Union. His memories of interactions with members of the dissident moment, with Soviet leaders, and with regular citizens lend a sense of urgency and presence that is often missing in histories of this era. Moreover the book is a joy to read when it goes into detail about events that have not already been exhausted by the current scholarship. Sell's retelling of Moscow's preparations for the 1980 Olympics, his description of the catastrophic downing of Korean Flight 007 in 1983, his...