The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire

Rating:
Summary: A Solid History of the Soviet Union on the World Scene
Review: ~The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire~ by Brian Crozier is a solid history of the Soviet empire. Crozier gives a good backdrop to the embryonic beginnings of the empire as it takes up the mantle of Russian nation. He rightly recognizes and soundly documents the Soviet Union's concerted effort to broaden its influence and power on the world scene since its impetus. The COMINTERN was aggressive to spread communism throughout the world, and particularly focused on Spain and Italy in the early twentieth century. The totalist rivalries between communism and fascism are written with remarkable clarity. Following World War II, FDR naively sold eastern Europe into communist slavery and Stalin quickly inaugurated satellization. The resistance to communist rule in Hungary and Czechoslovakia are well documented.

Crozier does not fall into the fallacies of leftist revisionists who would be guilty of excluding events and obfuscating truth. The Soviet Union actively sponsored terrorism, and used covert violence in furtherance of its political agenda to undermine the West. Some terrorists were not orthodox Marxist-Leninists, but received ample support nonetheless, such as the Irish Republican Army in Ulster, Argentina's Montoneros. The Soviets even maintained a terrorist training school dubbed the Patrice Lumumba Friendship University to train terrorists and foment revolution in the Third World. The infamous Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, a Venezuelan born son of a Marxist lawyer was one of their products. The Jackal spread a wave of terror throughout Europe. He was culpable for bombings in Paris, numerous murders, assassinations and the kidnapping of OPEC ministers in Vienna. This stark reality is something Marxist apologists ignore.

Leftists criticize Crozier for his introspection and "bias," but I'm apt to question their "bias" considering they ignore Soviet Stalinist atrocities, repression in eastern Europe and the Third World, as well as their state-sponsored terrorist campaigns. Crozier finds no fault with the CIA for whatever hand they may have had in Augusto Pinochet's coup to overthrow the Marxist Allende. Pinochet brought stability and prosperity to Chile, and saved it the perils of economic hardship from collectivization. American interests were served in stopping the spread of communism. Crozier poignantly chronicles the turning point of the Cold War where the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is foiled and becomes their own Vietnamese quagmire. Thereafter, Ronald Reagan stifles the Red takeover of Grenada and then comes the period of Glasnost. The waning years of Soviet hegemony are covered with amazing clarity.

The vocal criticism volleyed against this volume is mostly by embittered lefties, American college-campus Marxists, and liberals in denial about communist crimes and the inhumane nature of the Soviet system. Crozier, a London-based historian is blunt and finds no fault with West and the United States for efforts to thrawt Soviet expansion. Ronald Reagan was right in calling the Soviet Empire an "evil empire."

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke