The sudden and unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union during 1989-91 into its constituent republics is perhaps the most significant event of our time. In Rebirth of a Nation, former Financial Times Moscow correspondent John Lloyd gives an overview of why that collapse happened, and a more detailed look at its aftermath in Russia.

According to Lloyd, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had no idea what forces he was unleashing when he declared his policies of glasnost and perestroika in the mid-1980s. (In a poignant section of the book, Lloyd tells how Gorbachev remains unaware of the magnitude of change which he brought about.) By allowing freer speech and private economic activity, Gorbachev undermined Soviet ideology and legitimacy, and made the fall of the Communist regime possible.

Into this vacuum of power stepped Boris Yeltsin, whose great strengths and crippling weaknesses resemble those of a classical Greek hero. Lloyd chronicles Yeltsin's zig-zag course as president of the new Russian state, as he tried to placate competing clans of capitalists, communists, and nationalists in order to retain state authority and remain personally in power.

Lloyd also gives a detailed account of the workings and interactions of these clans, which based their power on and offered their loyalty to various commercial interests, ideological passions, criminal gangs, and/or regional identifications. He thoroughly chronicles the rise and fall of the liberal and democratic factions in 1991 and 1992, and the succession of competing communist, nationalist, and liberal clans that each briefly gained power during the unstable mid-90's.

If Lloyd's book has a significant weakness, it is that he concentrates too much on the elite maneuvering in Moscow and St. Petersburg and too little on the lives of poor Russians, leaving readers with an incomplete picture of the Russian situation. Also, it should be noted that Lloyd is strongly sympathetic toward (though also critical of) the liberal reform factions in Russian politics.

"[Continuity] is precisely what Russia has lacked, and cannot have," Lloyd argues in the final chapter of Rebirth, and he makes a persuasive case throughout his book that the Soviet upheaval of 1917-38 and the democratic and capitalistic upheavals of 1989-95 have left behind a country that will need decades, if not generations, to evolve into a stable and lawful society (even if it does not suffer further upheavals). Rebirth is a sober and sobering look at the instability and lawlessness that will plague Russia for many years to come.

Review posted: 18 September 1998