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Rating: 
Summary: All in all, relatively poor
Review: All in all, I was pretty disappointed by this book. The author's role as a journalist provided some unique insights into Soviet like and culture, but his writing ability appeared to be somewhat limited.
As stated in other reviews, the author constantly repeats the same points in every chapter. Also, I think the author is placing too much blame on the actions of Western nation in not doing more to contain the Soviet Union. In hindsight, they should have definitely have done more, but I when you are threatened with nuclear war, it is understandable to "walk on eggshells" with your foreign policy.
This book contains many interesting points and anecdotes, but is a tedious read.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, non-technical history of collapse
Review: Coleman has written a good anecdotal history of the last decades of the Soviet Union, and for those interested in the subject, but not in the technical details and statistics of the Soviet collapse, this should be an informative and enjoyable read. His years of experience in the USSR serve the reader well in understanding the fundamental shortcomings of the Soviet system, and the struggle that kept it on the world stage for so long. It must be noted that the book does not prove any theses regarding whether the West could have accelerated the collapse or not, but it does give the interested reader food for thought, especially in light of the simplistic claims by some that increased US defense spending "won" the Cold War.
Rating: 
Summary: A mile wide and an inch deep
Review: Coleman sets himself up in the opening paragraphs of this book. Its title, "The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Empire" is matched by the equally forthright subtitle "Forty Years that Shook the World". One might have suspected Coleman of having a developed sense of self-parody were it not for the fact that by the end of the introduction the author has drawn explicit parallels between himself and John Reid and has laid claim to having written the definitive tract on modern soviet history to be studied by future generations of American statesmen seeking to avoid the myriad pitfalls of their predecessors. To be sure, Coleman is well qualified to write about his subject. He has spent extended periods over the last thirty years in the Soviet Union both before and after its collapse. He was in Moscow for the fall of Khruschev, in Prague for the Prague Spring and hitched a lift on one of the last soviet tanks to leave Afghanistan. He has interviewed Sakharov and Gorbachev. These years have clearly left him with a wealth of personal anecdote which could well have formed the basis of a better book. Unfortunately, Coleman's desire to lecture his reader on the failures of the soviet system and America's perceived foreign policy failures leads him astray. This book suffers a great deal as a result. It is not that Coleman's scholarship is mistaken. The fact is that it is never seriously attempted. At various points in his book Coleman talks of Communism collapsing of its own "internal contradictions" without once elaborating his point. To be sure there are examples galore of the futility of life under Communism. However, only the evident fact that the author has lived through this period and speaks with the benefit of first-hand experience raises these observations above the commonplace. Serious analysis is wholly absent. Rather Coleman makes liberal use of the device of using anecdote to validate his chosen point of view which is taken to be self-evident. For example, Coleman only mentions the role of oil in the Soviet economy once and then in passing to claim, somewhat improbably, that the US could safely have used the oil weapon as early as the nineteen sixties to force the collapse of communism. The effect of the twin oil shocks of the nineteen seventies and the oil price collapse of the mid nineteen eighties is entirely ignored. The author does manage, however, to devote a whole chapter to an early soviet Jazz festival with little obvious relationship to the rest of the book. If Coleman's point is that, with the benefit of hindsight, communism was a nasty, inefficient system doomed to fail, it would be difficult to fault him. Given his long connection with the Soviet Union and its successors, the author is clearly qualified to comment on its nastiness and inefficiency. However, Coleman's attempts to manipulate his personal experiences into the definitive tract on the Soviet Union and America's foreign policy response misses the point so completely as to be almost comic. This book is also uneven. On the whole, the later chapters are better than the earlier ones which are marked by a conspicuous lack of detail and erratic time scale. The chapters on Khruschev and, to a lesser extent, on Brezhnev are marked by a conspicuous lack of detail and erratic time line. Khruschev, for example, only seems to make a cameo appearance in the first chapter of the book which is named for him. In summary, Coleman would have been well advised to eschew the grandiose aims he sets himself and to have written a simpler book drawing on his wealth of personal experience. He would still not have written the definitive book on his subject but he might well have earned himself a footnote.
Rating: 
Summary: How Lenin ended up in the Tomb
Review: David Remnick's "Lenin's Tomb" remains THE definitive account of the fall of the Soviet Union. Fred Coleman's book is much more abstract, focussing on root historical causes rather than reports from the field as events happened. Coleman's main argument in the book, that the West could have forced the collapse of the Soviet Union through a more agressive foreign policy as early as the mid 1950s, is the most controversal argument he makes. Coleman believes that Hungary and later Czechoslovakia could have been freed from Soviet clutches in 1956 and 1967 respectively had the West only shown a willingness to flex its military muscle. Coleman argues that the Soviet military was always a paper tiger and that Soviet leaders were merely bluff an bluster. The only problem with this argument is that had the West followed Coleman's course of action, nuclear anihilation may have resulted. Still, this is a worthwhile book for those interested in the Cold War and how the Soviets lost it.
Rating:
Summary: How Lenin ended up in the Tomb
Review: David Remnick's "Lenin's Tomb" remains THE definitive account of the fall of the Soviet Union. Fred Coleman's book is much more abstract, focussing on root historical causes rather than reports from the field as events happened. Coleman's main argument in the book, that the West could have forced the collapse of the Soviet Union through a more agressive foreign policy as early as the mid 1950s, is the most controversal argument he makes. Coleman believes that Hungary and later Czechoslovakia could have been freed from Soviet clutches in 1956 and 1967 respectively had the West only shown a willingness to flex its military muscle. Coleman argues that the Soviet military was always a paper tiger and that Soviet leaders were merely bluff an bluster. The only problem with this argument is that had the West followed Coleman's course of action, nuclear anihilation may have resulted. Still, this is a worthwhile book for those interested in the Cold War and how the Soviets lost it.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting 'Point of View'
Review: For someone such as myself who is interested but not obsessed with Soviet history, this was an interesting read. I'm not sure I agree with the author's belief that America is partly to blame for Communism lasting as long as it did, but I did find his 'take' on it very interesting. The Soviet Union were master's of deception. It's not hard to believe why we (Americans) were a little intimidated by them. All in all, this was a good read. I give it 4 stars because I didn't get bored with it.
Rating:
Summary: At times tedious, but excellent eyewitness history, policy
Review: Fred Coleman was a journalist who spent decades behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union, and this book collects his various observations and his policy interpretations on that experience and his concerns about the nation's future. It's rousing eyewitness history; Coleman's insights on the long-term damage done by Stalinism, and the immeasurable psychological harm it wrought in family after family, are rendered poignantly. His account on the transfer of power from Stalin to Brezhnev-- nearly involving a shootout-- was extraordinary and little-appreciated in the West. Coleman gives a Soviet perspective for what it was like to live under Khruschchev and Brezhnev, and indicates that the citizens of the country were often quite cynical and unhappy about their leadership, a perspective not often obtained. He notes that the USSR's economic quagmire was evident to Andropov in the early 80's but hidden from most other policymakers (and from the U.S.), and he expounds in wonderful detail on the Afghan War and Chernobyl, including interviews with Soviet citizens that convey the trauma of those fiascoes and how important they were in precipitating the USSR's fall in 1991. Finally, Coleman's discourse on USSR-China relations is outstanding. It was little appreciated in the West how sour relations were between these two nations, despite both being led by Communist apparatchiks. Coleman unveils the ancient conflict between the two countries, the border disputes, the bitter cultural and economic altercations and the competition for leadership of the Communist party. This was rarely appreciated in the U.S. My main cavil pertains to the way the author proclaims and supports his book's primary argument: that lack of U.S. perception of the USSR's weakness led to many missed opportunities in weakening the country. It's drummed in numerous times throughout the book's pages, but the way it's presented here seems to my mind to neglect the palpable fear of nuclear war during the 1960s and 1970s; indeed, in the examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it seems fortunate indeed that we did not try to strongarm the Soviet Union, else we'd be in post-Apocalyptic Mad Max land by now! Furthermore, one less-emphasized but fascinating point made in the book is that a mistake in the Carter administration actually led to a bigger blunder by Brezhnev. That is, there had been some saber-rattling by Brezhnev in the late 1970s toward the Baltics and some neighboring regions, to which Carter did not respond. Brezhnev took a cue and assumed that the U.S. would allow the USSR to aggrandize itself territorially with relatively little objection-- leading to the Afghanistan intervention, and its kneecapping of the Soviet economy and support system. If this is the case, then if anything it was precisely that overestimation of Soviet capabilities by Carter (not a recognition of its weakness) that was so responsible, albeit indirectly, for the later Soviet collapse. A quite fascinating concept! In any case, I heartily recommend this book, b/c it's written by someone who saw events from the inside, and as a policy primer and an account of little-known details it's an immensely valuable read.
Rating: 
Summary: Response to Customer Comments
Review: The comment by Ashley Associates is woefully inaccurate. He begins by misspelling the name of John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World, calling him John Reid, then says I claim to have written a definitive book when my introduction clearly disclaims that. The rest of this review is equally inaccurate. The book has been widely praised, in Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post and elsewhere, by real experts on the subject. Readers would be better served by consulting them.
Rating:
Summary: A good start for Cold War readers
Review: This is not the definitive history of the Soviet Union nor of U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War. But Mr. Coleman, who spent three decades in Moscow as a correspondent, makes a valuable contribution to these subjects. His main argument is that the communist system was doomed from the start and that following the death of Stalin, its collapse was only a matter of time. He furthers argues that the U.S. could have accelerated the Soviet demise if it had challenged its rival instead of merely accomodating it. His first insight is well-taken and non-controversial. His second point is interesting and probably true, but he doesn't develop his theory well enough. I do think Mr. Coleman makes an excellent case for Mikhail Gorbachev's prominent and esteemed place in world history. The author also concludes with a nice, succint, and realistic commentary of where Russia is now and where it is headed. He understands that Russia's road to democratic stability and capitalism is bumpy. But with continued U.S. support it should be an experiment that Russia's people will benefit enormously from.
Rating:
Summary: A good start for Cold War readers
Review: This is not the definitive history of the Soviet Union nor of U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War. But Mr. Coleman, who spent three decades in Moscow as a correspondent, makes a valuable contribution to these subjects. His main argument is that the communist system was doomed from the start and that following the death of Stalin, its collapse was only a matter of time. He furthers argues that the U.S. could have accelerated the Soviet demise if it had challenged its rival instead of merely accomodating it. His first insight is well-taken and non-controversial. His second point is interesting and probably true, but he doesn't develop his theory well enough. I do think Mr. Coleman makes an excellent case for Mikhail Gorbachev's prominent and esteemed place in world history. The author also concludes with a nice, succint, and realistic commentary of where Russia is now and where it is headed. He understands that Russia's road to democratic stability and capitalism is bumpy. But with continued U.S. support it should be an experiment that Russia's people will benefit enormously from.
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