Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia

by Stephen F. Cohen

Book Overview

Failed Crusade is a deeply informed and passionate call for a fundamentally different American-Russian relationship in the post-Yeltsin era. Author Stephen Cohen shows that what US officials and other experts call "reform" has for most Russians been a catastrophic development--namely the unprecedented demodernization of a twentieth-century country--and for the United States the worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. What emerges is an alarming...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393322262
• ISBN13: 9780393322262
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 366 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Best Book on Post Communist Russia

I have read some other reviews on this book my obvious Russians and have found their views thoughtful. I think the main thrust of this book is to say The U.S. treated Russia as a defeated enemy. I think Mr. Cohen misinterprets errors in judgment with some kind of sinister motive. Even before the breakup of the USSR the U.S. was trying to prevent its collapse. Let us not forget President Bush Sir's famous Chicken Kiev speech when he told the Soviet people "Yet freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred ". He was ridiculed at the time but history has shown he was right. Ukraine had an economy the size of France in 1990 its economy and all the other Soviet Republics are in ruins because these nations all operated as a single machine for too long to be torn apart. President Clinton seemed to do everything to further humiliate the Russians by crowing all the time America was the world's sole superpower. In 2000 I had such high hopes Bush Jar would repair our relationship with Russia and somehow put forth some kind of Marshall Plan for Russia and the former USSR. Perhaps in a way he did. By invading Iraq sending oil prices through the roof he did more to restore the Russian economy and sense of national pride than any Marshall Type plan. Putin inherited a very exotic set of national problems, I think the international community should have been more understanding. For the sake of future generations he needed to recover all the booty looted by the oligarchs and seemed to me to do so without much hysteria. All Putin wanted was for democratic Russia to be given the same respect that the Soviet Union commanded. Most of the former Soviet republics are ruled by political gangster types and the West needs to take a hard cold look at who these people are. I was amused to read an article in Foreign Affairs written by Yulia Tymoshenko who has amassed a 5 billion dollar fortune most of it from GAS stolen from Russian pipelines. Bush Jr. has ruined our relationship with Russia like he has much of the world. At this writing it looks like Hillary Clinton is a shoe in to be the next President. All we Russia watchers can do is hope she has learned from Bill Clinton's mistakes.

the best and a must read on post-communist Russia

Part I of the book is pure gem - every word is true about Russia, about the American crusaders, about what's wrong and who is to blame. all the more amazing when you get to Part II, and realize that Dr Cohen has been giving the warnings as early as the early 1990s and on. Unfortunately his sage advice has not been and is not heeded to -- just witness the latest crusade in Iraq. The only post-socialist transitions that have done well are the ones that did not bother to listen to American advisers. Imposition of foreign systems and values, however valid in another national setting, is bound to fail because of the mismatch with local realities and traditions. How can American crusaders so quickly forget the fate of Marxism itself - another wise theory and model imported from abroad and imposed on all countries that became "communist."

Was the end of the Soviet Union really the end???

I checked this book out at the library for a paper I was writing regarding the violations of human rights in Chechnya. I learned a lot more than I expected! And now I am even more concerned than ever before. On pages 35 & 36 Cohen points out one of the most freighting thoughts, "In December 1994, Yeltsin precipitatly launched a war against the tiny breakway republic of Chechnya. By the time it ended in a temporary truce in 1996, the war had killed tens of thousands of civilians, many of them ethnic Russians in the Capital city of Grozny...earned the horrendous distinction of being the first civil war ever to occur in a nuclearized country." This statement sent chills down my spine. To this day...Chechnya is still battling for freedom from Russian rule. This is a small country that was absorbed by the Soviet Union by force in 1921 when the Red Army invaded. While I do not excuse the behavior of the Chechen guerilla's...the world must come to understand the threat that still exists. And, while we were busy celebrating the victory of democracy over the fall of Communism - Russia began to really fall apart. Let's hope that our greatest fears do not come true especially since we are so busy in Iraq.

U.S. Policy in Russia Should Change

Stephen Cohen examines the effects of the US' premature and overly optimistic drive to promote free market policies in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. (I concur and conjured up an image in my mind of American mangers handing out copies - at cost - of 'The One Minute Manager' and 'Who MOved My Cheese' to Russian scientists telling them to change). He considers this one of the US main foreign policy failures of the 90's. These policies, he argues have set Russa back to an almost feudal condition comparable to the worse experiences prior to the 1917 Revolution. Somehow, when I meet so many talented Russian scientists, engineers, intellectuals of all sorts I notice that mopst have had to abandon the their careers becasue of lack of investmnet and opportunities. Now many talented people have to become salesmen or business men , programmers and take up jobs that have little use for their talents. In this sense I whleheartedly agree with Prof. Cohen. Cohen lived in Russia and, perhaps due to his efforts to understand the Communist moderste Bukharin, argues that a progressive rollback of the state economy along with democratizing reforms would have provided Russians a better alternative than a cold jump into the market - as Sachs advocated. Cohen describes the corrupt Yeltsin years and the Americans who failed to understand Russian developments in the 1990s. Cohen fears that a change in policy is necessary in order to prevent Russia from becoming a threat.It seems that the september 11 attacks and the overwhelming Russian support of the US will provide that opportunity.

An excellent read

As an American businessman who has spent the last five years in Russia, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. My own experience leads me to fundamentally agree with its basic premise. American policy by its unconditional support of Yelstin's regime has essentially aided and abetted the legalized theft of Russia's most valuable resources, impoverished the country and led to an increasingly virulent anti American sentiment. Whether or not one agrees with the authors assertion that the nature of our economic advice (pure capitalism with minimal government involvement; essentially a copy of ourselves) was wrong for Russia, I can attest from ground level to his point as to the arrogance with which it was often delivered and the resentment it has caused. This combined with the ultimate failure of Yeltsin's economic policy, NATO encroachment and the Kosovo bombing has caused the Russian people to begin to turn away from America. At the same time America seems to be turning away from them. The consequences of this cannot be good and I hope that whoever is making policy today reads and considers the message of this book. As the author points out several times, Russia was a great country and undoubtedly will be great again. When that time comes, their view of how we treated them in their time of difficulty will matter. A lot.