Stephen Kotkin, in Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, takes upon himself the responsibility to answer the question of how and why did the Soviet Union collapse and simply cease to exist. He presents the arguments that the collapse was at the fault of Mikhail Gorbachev and his idea of socialist reform. The story is written in the setting of the first ten years of the Russian makeover. I felt that this book was very different from most of the other Russian books we have read so far because Kotkin is an American writer, writing about an unfamiliar topic and system.
<Tab/>The first few chapters of Kotkin's book concern the reasons behind why the reform was carried out. He also clears up some myths about the Soviet Union.
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