Soviet history

How can you break the mental manacles of an empire that has occupied not only your physical world but also your education, publishing, media, high culture and popular entertainment? In his endearing memoir of Odesa, Undefeatable, Julian Evans quotes the Ukrainian author Viktoria Amelina, who describes growing up in post-Soviet Ukraine surrounded by all things Russian. She attended a Russian school, acted in children’s Russian theatre, listened to Russian rock and prayed in a Russian Orthodox church: ‘There was an entire system in place that aimed to make me believe that Moscow, not Kyiv, was the centre of my universe.’ When she was 15, Amelina felt flattered to be invited

Why should we want to read yet another thumping great book about the collapse of the Soviet empire? Sergey Radchenko attempts an answer in his well-constructed new work. Based on recently opened Soviet archives and on extensive work in the Chinese archives, it places particular weight on China’s role in Soviet policy-making. The details are colourful. It is fun to know that Mao Tse-Tung sent Stalin a present of spices, and that the mouse on which the Russians tested it promptly died. But the new material forces no major revision of previous interpretations. Perhaps the book is best seen as a meditation on the limitations of political power. Stalin and