Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union

by David Satter

Book Overview

The first state in history to be based explicitly on atheism, the Soviet Union endowed itself with the attributes of God. In this book, David Satter shows through individual stories what it meant to construct an entire state on the basis of a false idea, how people were forced to act out this fictitious reality, and the tragic human cost of the Soviet attempt to remake reality by force.

"I had almost given up hope that any American could depict...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300087055
• ISBN13: 9780300087055
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Good, but there's a better choice to read.

I read this good book, here in Brazil.The book "Down With the Big Brother", by Michael Dobbs is better, than this book and talks about the same subject.I must tell you that this book follows a unlinear way.The Epilogue and afterword are really about late soviet fall. In fact, the first chapter "The Coup" is about the soviet coup of 1991.The best chapter of this book is the number six "The Economy".The description of a soviet colletive farm makes me remeber, the also calamitous collective farms of MST,here in Brazil. About Ukraine, there's desciption of apparition of Virgin Mary. Among the best parts of this book: a)Page 151:"Recently, there was a program on Soviet television called 'Rural America' that showed conditions on American farms.We saw veterinarians riding out in medical vans to give injections to pigs with disposable syringes.In Novokuznetsk, we don't even have disposable syringes for human beings". b)Page 188:"To support their private plots, farmers engaged in constant stealing.Adults stole, as did their children.It was possible to stand in a collective farmer's house surrounded by wire, hammer, nails, wheels, machine oil, and lumber, only to realize that not a single item had been purchased." c)Page 265:"The other pole of unseen world was the psychiatric hospitals where political prisoners were destroied with the help ofdrugs.The most commonly employed drugs were the halopelidol, wich turned off part of the brain; aminazine, wich reduced the victim to a half-stupor; majeptil, wich led to acute psychological distress; and sulfazine, wich , injected intramuscularly, usually in the buttocks, caused a sharp rise in body temperature and excruciating pain." d)Page 335:"During my first years in the Soviet Union, I often wondered why atheistic communism triumphed in Russia, which was onceregarded as perhaps the most religious country in Europe.But the longer I lived there, the more I became convinced that it was not an irony, but a historical inevitability that a people who had long ceased to value the moral judgment of the individual , would one day throw off its mental bondage to a messianic religion in favor of a messianic ideology." e)Page 371:"BY THE FALL OF 1990, the power of Communist establishment in Ukraine appeared to be crumbling under the twin blows of glasnost and a worsening economic crisis.On september 14, Lvov became the sixteenth city in Western Ukraine to take down a monument of Lenin,, and throughout the republic, food disappeared from the stores and the lines for gas were half a mile long." About the Fall of Soviet Union, the book is good, but Michael Dobbs' book is a better choice than this book.

Literally Hell On Earth

David Satter's stunning book is one of the most vivid accounts I've ever read about the day-to-day reality of life in the old Soviet Union. He was a reporter in and out for the last 18 years of the regime and interviewed many, many inhabitants, dozens of whose stories he tells in this riveting, horrifying book. It turns out that Orwell's "1984", which is fiction for most of us, was documentary reality for these poor people. It's a chronicle of wasted lives and blasted hopes. Satter tells of a total lack of human freedom in the smallest aspects of human life (typified by the internal passport, a document which dictates where you live, what your job is, and even who you can marry.) The most basic concepts of compassion and even common courtesy were swept away, and many people admit that behaving like animals was standard practice in relating to other people. Add to this the grinding poverty, the bullying by local authorities (because you have no rights as an individual, you are at the mercy of "the good of the collective"), and the atmosphere of the total lie in newspapers, television, and even conversation with your "friends" who may be informers. Satter diagnoses that the basic problem of the Communist experiment was it attempted to do away with the idea of transcendent morality. Becuase matter is all that is, you can do anything you want to it--thus producing the mass slaughter of the Stalin years (which only came to light in Russia during Gorbachev's ill-fated glasnost. The new knowledge destroyed the remaining moral authority of the regime.) After finishing the book, you will be shaken enough to admit that the phrase "evil empire" was totally appropriate. Satter closes with a few stories of people trying to rebuild from the ruins; a local party secretary becomes a priest, a convicted murderer helps build a new church on the site of a Stalinist mass grave. One can only wish the Russian people good luck after seventy years of catastrophe.

Riveting Chronicle of the Last Days of the USSR!

I could not put this book down and am happy to report that it is one of the finest books about Russia ever written. No details, no personalities were left unexplored by this incredibly talented author. The ideas I had of the USSR were sharpened and some of the myths I had believed dispelled. An extraordinary historical work!

A Stunningly Brilliant Book

Before the Soviet Union collapsed, any number of so-called Soviet "experts" wrote nonsense about what was happening in that country. David Satter was a notable exception. His book is full of the kind of conscientious reporting, real-life descriptions, and insightful analysis that tells the true story of how the Soviet system worked--and why it ultimately collapsed. I suspect that the "experts" who carp about his work are simply jealous that they never produced anything that even comes close to his level of writing. By reading Satter, you can really get a feel for what life was like in the Soviet Union, and the absurdities of that system. It's a terrific read.

amazingly detailed

This is an amazing book- truly an in depth study of the personal stories that made up the huge events surrounding the fall of the Soviet Union. That is the biggest benefit of reading this book- the reader will get a view of the political events from the standpoint of the little people. Factory workers, mothers and soldiers are all represented here. Forget Yeltsin's autobiography- this is the real story. By the end of this book you will probably understand the myriad of factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet state.