Last Empire War Z Free Bot
Regulo Akers
The breakup of the Soviet Union, the country that for decades was one of the key players in the world arena, today continues to fascinate, puzzle and provoke sharp debates among scholars, politicians and readers, interested in world history.
"Plokhy's exhaustive reassessment of the dramatic incidents draws on recently declassified American documents, archives in the U.S. and Moscow, and personal interviews with many individuals in both the former Soviet states and the U.S who were directly involved in the historic events. Forging a more complex and potentially controversial interpretation of those events, he suggests that, despite what American policy makers or Gorbachev's advisers might have believed at the time, the end of the USSR occurred as much by chance as by design. Crucial to Plokhy's narrative is his argument that the Soviet Union was the world's last major empire. Hence, while the lost arm race, economic decline, democratic resurgence, and the bankruptcy of the communist ideals all contributed to the Soviet implosion, Plokhy reveals that the Union's imperial foundations, multiethnic composition, and pseudo-feudal structure were the root causes of its ultimate disintegration.
As for the role the Bush administration played in the unraveling events, Plokhy asserts that the U.S. policies contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union, but more often than not contrary to the intentions of the White House."
The Last Empire has already been praised as "a dour, authoritative look at the last bitter months of 1991" that preceded "the Soviet Union's collapse" (Kirkus Review). "This account is one of a rare breed: a well-balanced, unbiased book written on the fall of the Soviet Union that emphasizes expert research and analysis." (Publisher Weekly).
Timothy Colton, Professor of Government at Harvard University, calls the book " a masterful account of the end of the Soviet Union". According to Edward Lucas, senior editor of the Economist, it is a "gripping, vivid and incisive - [in other words,] essential reading for anyone wanting to counter modern Russian Myth-making about the Soviet collapse."
"In this highly original reanalysis, drawing on rarely used sources scattered from Texas to Ukraine, - writes Ian Morris, Professor of History at Stanford University, - Serhii Plokhy gives us a whole new perspective on the Fall of the Soviet Union."
And Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History, calls S. Plokhy's latest book "indispensable": "At last, a definitive account of the breakup of the USSR: for the first time, Serhii Plokhy tells the story not just from the point of view of Moscow, and not from Washington, but also from Ukraine and the other republics where many of the most important decisions were actually made. If you don't understand what really happened in 1991, then you'll find it impossible to understand the politics of the region today."
Probably the greatest empire was the Roman Empire. It flourished for an unusually long time for an empire - about 400 years. It reached its height from 27 BC to AD 180. BC stands for before Christ. AD stands for anno Domino, which is Latin for in the year of our Lord.
The last great empire was the British Empire of the 19th century. It stretched so far around the globe that it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire. At one time it embraced a quarter of the world's population.
This is what Sir Winston Churchill, the great British wartime prime minister, meant when he said in a speech in Fulton, Mo., in 1946 that ''an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.'' He was referring to Europe. As a result, he made popular the phrase ''behind the Iron Curtain.'' It refers to all those communist countries in Eastern Europe shut off from the democracies of the West because they had come under the armed might and political control of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union expanded its empire after World War II by taking in parts of Finland, Poland, and Romania. A few years later three entire countries were taken over and forced to become an essential part of Soviet territory. These were Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. For a short time before the war, they were independent nations. Now they form three of the 15 republics that make up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Here Socialist means Communist. Russia is another name for the Soviet Union or USSR but it is not really a correct one since Russia forms only a part of the larger area known as the Soviet Union.
This was true of Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Although they are independent countries, they have come almost completely under the thumb of the Soviet Union. They act at Soviet bidding. That is why we call countries of Communist East Europe or the East bloc ''satellites'' of Moscow. Moscow is the capital of the Soviet Union.
Noncommunist Western Europe, together with the US and Canada, has its own military alliance. It's called NATO, which is short for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO and the Warsaw Pact are not at war. But they recognize each other as the enemy.
As big and powerful as the Soviet Union is, it has not always been able to keep all its allies in line. Yugoslavia broke away from Soviet domination in 1948. It is not a member of the Warsaw Pact even though it remains communist. Another East European country that has gone its own way is tiny Albania. It, too , is communist, but it is not a member of the Warsaw Pact and does not want to be controlled by Moscow.
Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.
Discover the scientific advances in ground excavations, aerial mapping, and modern remote sensing, that are helping experts develop a greater understanding of the vast scope and accomplishments of this fascinating empire.
Fifty years ago, the American Republic set forth to become the American Empire. In the name of saving the world from Communism, GORE VIDAL explains, its leaders created a National Security State, engaged in perhaps a hundred covert and overt wars, and ran up $5 trillion in debt. The winners were the arms merchants; the losers, the hoodwinked citizens of the United States. Without its Soviet enemy, the author asks, can the empire survive?
It is late July, roundup time on the King Ranch in South Texas. By nine in the morning the temperature is approaching 100 degrees. The deep azure sky is unmarked by clouds. The herd sends up a cloud of dust that mutes the harsh sunlight so that the cattle and the vaqueros are bathed in a subtle haze. The sound is deafening. Horses neigh and sputter. The cattle are in full voice, up and down the register from high tenor to deep bass. Upwind, where a few Longhorns form the nucleus of a second herd, other cattle add their voices with the antiphony of a fugue.
Crouched so low that his belly seems to be touching the ground, his mane swirling, the horse drives the cow backward, away from the security of the herd, out into the territory controlled by the vaqueros. The instant the cow is turned away from the herd, one of the vaqueros runs it across the pasture to the new herd. Santa Gertrudis cattle are surprisingly agile and fast, so this process often demands wild rides at full gallop across rugged ground and through mesquite thickets.
King spent the rest of the war piloting steamboats up and down the Rio Grande for the U.S. Army. When the Mexican War ended in 1848 King bought a surplus steamboat and went into business hauling freight and passengers. A year later he and Kenedy joined a border entrepreneur named Charles Stillman in a shipping company they called M. Kenedy & Company. King provided the muscle and designed new boats for the twisting, shallow, windswept river; Stillman put up the capital; Kenedy contributed the diplomacy and the management. By 1852 they had run their competitors off the Rio Grande. There was a good deal of legitimate freight in their business, but their primary trade was smuggling. A burdensome tariff system imposed by Mexico made smuggling the accepted way of doing things, as it had been in the American colonies before the Revolution.
One sweltering day in 1850 Captain King had wrestled his war surplus steamboat up the river, past snags and mud bars, fighting the wind, and he was ready for a few drinks. But an old steamboat was docked in his customary berth. Fuming, King brought his boat in and began stamping and cussing around the waterfront. As he ranted about the effrontery of putting a rat-infested scow in his berth, a young lady of seventeen emerged from the boat and, with some indignation, put King in his place.
When King got to Corpus a friend of his, a Texas Ranger named Legs Lewis, proposed that they establish a partnership to operate a cow camp on the plains. King would supply the capital; Lewis would work the place and, above all, guard it. That was the theory, but King would quickly become more involved than would an absentee investor. They chose as their headquarters a little rise on the banks of Santa Gertrudis Creek, the site of an old Mexican rancho about 45 miles west Corpus Christi. King had camped there on his journey north.
King was different. He did not establish a Southern cattle farm, worked by slaves. His manner was American, but his model was Mexican. He did not look back east for his inspiration; he looked across the Rio Grande. His first cattle came from border ranches, and so did his first hands, Mexican vaqueros from a long tradition of Spanish cattle ranching that had little in common with Anglo-Saxon farming.
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