Just Finished Reading: The Shortest History of The Soviet Union by Sheila Fitzpatrick (FP: 2022) [230pp] 

I remember, back in the very early 80’s, sitting in an A Level Law class when the teacher asked us all a question. She was a typical Middle Class ex-hippy, and I liked her a lot. She asked us if we were worried in any way by the fact that the Soviets were pointing nukes at us and that we could all be dead with a few minutes notice. After a few others had expressed their opinions, I said that sure we KNEW that we all could be dead by the push of a button somewhere in Moscow, but it wasn’t anything to lose a night's sleep over. Such is the callowness of youth I guess... But there was something else too. I had been born into the Cold War, grew up in it and ‘matured’ in it. When the Soviet Union dissolved completely in December 1991, I had spent a little over 30 years with the possibility of nuclear annihilation always present. After a while you just get used to it. 

Spending almost half of my life with the Soviet Union as an ever-present force in the world has made me moderately obsessed about the Cold War world in particular, but with an almost equal fascination with the 1917 Revolution that started it all off. I’ve mentioned before here that we had a student teacher who covered the Revolution in GREAT depth for about 6 weeks one term, and it was DEEPLY ingrained into my brain for decades afterwards. It's a very interesting story and has helped to shape the world ever since. Obviously, as you might imagine, that’s exactly where this excellent fast paced history started its journey.  

With a successful Revolution under his belt, Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks consolidated the hold on Mother Russia – after a brutal Civil War and much upheaval – with Plans and a rather unhealthy dollop of misplaced Marxist ideology. Needless to say, this was rather less successful than hoped and Lenin’s successor – Stalin – decided that only drastic measures would do. What followed was, by any measure, brutal resulting in millions of dead – peasants, workers, soldiers and intellectuals. It’s hardly surprising that the initial attack of the Wehrmacht in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) was SO successful as there were so few talented people left to oppose it. 

The death of Stalin in March 1953 changed everything and the sigh of relief across the USSR must have been quite something to experience. When Nikita Khrushchev finally took the position of premier in 1958 things had already begun to relax and the Soviet economy entered its era of extended growth. It was, albeit briefly, a good time to be a Communist. I was too young to remember the Khrushchev era (or the Cuban Missile Crisis he gave to the world), but I do remember Leonid Brezhnev who was Premier until November 1982. I remember that, at times, the Cold War got VERY cold indeed and the RAF was intercepting Russian bombers probing our air-defence system on a regular basis. Things were, to say the least, tense.  

But by then the writing was already on the wall – both figuratively and no doubt in reality. The Soviet economy was in terminal decline and frequent changes of leaders from Yuri Andropov to Konstantin Chernenko (who only last a year in post!), to Mikhail Gorbachev (who EVERYONE remembers as the guy who ended it all almost by accident) didn’t really help. It was certainly an exciting time watching the collapse of the ‘Evil Empire’ in real-time on the nightly news. I remember a friend of mine suggesting that we book a flight to Berlin to *be there* as the Wall came down. Practicalities prevented that from happening, but we did think about it for a while whilst watching the BBC News. 

As a leading authority on the topic, it comes as no surprise that the author has produced a gripping and informative book the Soviet Union. I enjoyed it immensely and it’ll definitely be on my ‘Best Books of the Year List’ early in 2026. If you’re too young to remember what it was like to live in a world of two deeply opposed ideological nuclear powers with their fingers hovering over RED buttons this is definitely for you. Those who did experience living with the frisson of global destruction at any moment will find it equally interesting to see behind the Iron Curtain and begin to understand what was really happening beyond the headlines and propaganda (from both sides). Highly recommended and much more to come both from this EXCELLENT series of books and on the Cold War in all its variety.