Archie Brown

(First, I have to say I have not gotten used to Goodread's new interface, or perhaps they just have not included the Audio version of this book in their listings, as I couldn't find it, so am using the hardback version for the review.)

The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
Print: COPYRIGHT: 6/9/2009; ISBN 978-0061138799; PUBLISHER: Ecco; First Edition; PAGES 736; Unabridged
Digital: COPYRIGHT: 6/9/2009; ISBN 9780061885488; PUBLISHER: HarperCollins; PAGES 618; Unabridged FILE SIZE: 1520 KB FORMATS: Kindle, EPUB
*(This version) Audio: COPYRIGHT: 8/25/2020; ISBN: 97805933409636; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape; DURATION: 31:55:57; PARTS: 35; File Size: 910211 KB; Unabridged (Overdrive LAPL)

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it: While reading Nixon’s memoirs, because so much of politics then, at least on the part of Republicans, was about saving the U.S., and other countries from falling into Communist rule, I decided I wanted to know more about Communism.
What’s it about? It’s an extremely comprehensive treatise on Communism with a primary, but not exclusive, focus on Russia, and the USSR.
What did I think? It’s long and it’s dry—and I’m sure I could re-listen to it multiple times and get even more from it with each listening. It is well organized, and I feel I learned a lot, so will probably be listening to more works by this author.

AUTHOR:
Archie Brown:
From Wikipedia: “Archie Brown (historian)
“Archibald Haworth Brown, CMG, FBA (born 10 May 1938) is a British political scientist. In 2005, he became an emeritus professor of politics at the University of Oxford and an emeritus fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, where he served as a professor of politics and director of St Antony's Russian and East European Centre. He has written widely on Soviet and Russian politics, on communist politics more generally, on the Cold War, and on political leadership.
Career
Brown taught at the University of Glasgow from 1964 to 1971, during which time he was a British Council exchange scholar at Moscow State University for the academic year 1967-68.[1]
In 1998, he was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame[1] in Indiana.
He was Director of Graduate Studies in Politics for Oxford University between 2001 and 2003.[1]
The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War was published in 2020. It was awarded the Pushkin House Book Prize 2021. The Human Factor was described by the Chair of the panel of judges Dr Fiona Hill, former Senior Director for Russian and European Affairs in the US National Security Council, as representing "the very best in western scholarship on Russia and comparative politics" and containing "a lifetime’s achievement of wisdom and insight".[2]
A brief description of Archie Brown's career and contribution to political science can be found at: https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/emeritus/archie-brown.html
Honours
He was appointed as a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2005 "for services to UK-Russian relations and to the study of political science and international affairs".[1]”

NARRATOR:
James Langton:
From MacMillan (.com)
“James Langton is an actor and narrator who has performed many voice-overs and narrated numerous audiobooks, including the international bestseller The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud by Julia Navarro, Fire Storm by Andrew Lane, and An Old Betrayal by Charles Finch. He has won multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards for his work in narration. As a voice-over artist, he has worked with a host of industrial and commercial clients including Geico, Johnson&Johnson, and ask.com. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002. Langton was born in York, England, and is now based in New York City.”

GENRE:
History; Nonfiction; Politics

SUBJECTS: (not comprehensive)
Communism; USSR; Asian Countries; Great Britain; Africa; Politics; Political Leaders

QUOTE:
From Part 1, “The Idea of Communism”
“From Chapter 1
‘A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.’ When Karl Marx began his Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848 with these famous words, he – and his co-author, Friedrich Engels – could have had no inkling of the way in which Communism would take off in the twentieth century. It became not merely a spectre but a living reality And not just in Europe, but for hundreds of millions of people spread across the globe – in places very different from those where Marx expected proletarian revolutions to occur. Communist systems were established in two predominantly peasant societies – the largest country in the world, Imperial Russia, which became the Soviet Union, and in the state with the largest population, China. Why and how Communism spread, what kind of system it became, how it varied over time and across space, and why and how it came to an end in Europe, where it began, are the central themes of this book.
Marx’s claim was an exaggeration when he made it in the middle of the nineteenth century. By the middle of the twentieth century it had become almost an understatement. That is not to say that the ‘Communism’ which held sway in so many countries bore much resemblance to anything Marx had envisaged. There was a wide gulf between the original theory and the subsequent practice of Communist rule. Karl Marx sincerely believed that under communism – the future society of his imagination which he saw as an inevitable, and ultimate, stage of human development – people would live more freely than ever before. Yet ‘his vision of the universal liberation of humankind’ did not include any safeguards for individual liberty.1 Marx would have hated to be described as a moralist, since he saw himself as a Communist who was elaborating a theory of scientific socialism. Yet many of his formulations were nothing like as ‘scientific’ as he made out. One of his most rigorous critics on that account, Karl Popper, pays tribute to the moral basis of much of Marx’s indictment of nineteenth-century capitalism. As Popper observes, under the slogan of ‘equal and free competition for all’, child labour in conditions of immense suffering had been ‘tolerated, and sometimes even defended, not only by professional economists but also by churchmen’. Accordingly, ‘Marx’s burning protest against these crimes’, says Popper, ‘will secure him forever a place among the liberators of mankind.’2 Those who took power in the twentieth century, both using and misusing Marx’s ideas, turned out, however, to be anything but liberators. Marxist theory, as interpreted by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently refashioned by Josif Stalin in Russia and by Mao Zedong in China, became a rationalization for ruthless single-party dictatorship.”

RATING:
4

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
12-18-2022 to 2/19… (more)

Human Factor by Archie Brown.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
-Print: Available – (Bib info from Amazon website: Hardcover) COPYRIGHT: 4/1/2020; ISBN-13: 978-0190614898; PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press; LENGTH: 512 pgs.
-Digital: (Bib info from Amazon website: Kindle) COPYRIGHT: March 13, 2020; PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press; FILE: 3092 KB; LENGTH: 512 pgs.
*Audio: (Info from Libby) COPYRIGHT: 4-May-2020; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape: Random House Audio; DURATION: approx. 21 hours; Unabridged (LAPL MP3)
Feature Film or tv: No.

SERIES: No.

CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
-Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; [First and last] President of the Soviet Union)
-Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004; U. S. President [1981-1989])
-Nancy Reagan [née Anne Frances Robbins] (July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016; U.S. First Lady)
-Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher [née Roberts] (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
-Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon (20 December 1926 – 9 October 2015; Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
-Charles David Powell, Baron Powell of Bayswater (born 6 July 1941; Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister)Caspar Willard Weinberger (August 18, 1917 – March 28, 2006; U. S. Secretary of Defense)
-Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. (December 2, 1924 – February 20, 2010; U.S. Secretary of State [1982-1989])
-Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine (born 21 March 1933; Conservative [Tories] Member of Parliament)
-Frederick Edward Robin Butler, Baron Butler of Brockwell (born 3 January 1938; Private Secretary)
-Eduard Ambrosis dze Shevardnadze (25 January 1928 – 7 July 2014; Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs)
-Colin Luther Powell (April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021 ; General, U. S. Senior Military Assistant)
-George Pratt Shultz (December 13, 1920 – February 6, 2021; U. S. Secretary of State [1982-1989])
-Pavel Palazchenko (born 17 March 1949; Soviet Chief English Interpreter)
-Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane (July 12, 1937 – May 12, 2022; U. S. National Security Advisor)
-Donald Thomas Regan (December 21, 1918 – June 10, 2003; U. S. Secretary of the Treasury [1981-1985]; White House Chief of Staff [1985 to 1987])
Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev (May 26, 1921 – March 12, 2017; Soviet Principal Foreign-policy Advisor)
-Georgy Khosroevich Shakhnazarov (October 4, 1924 – May 15, 2001; Soviet Aide)
-Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov (29 February 1924 – 23 November 2007; KGB First Chief Directorate)
-Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev (2 December 1923 – 18 October 2005; Soviet Union Communist Party Politburo and Secretariat Member)
-James Addison Baker III (born April 28, 1930; U. S. White House Chief of Staff [1981-1985, 1992-1993]; U. S. Secretary of the Treasury [1985-1988]; U. S. Secretary of State [1989-1992]
-Marshal Dmitry Timofeyevich Yazov (8 November 1924 – 25 February 2020; Soviet Defense Minister)
-Frank Charles Carlucci III (October 18, 1930 – June 3, 2018; U. S. Secretary of Defense)
-Marshal Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev (May 5, 1923 – August 24, 1991; Soviet Chief of the General Staff)
- Felipe González Márquez (born 5 March 1942; Spanish Prime Minister)
-Raisa Maximovna Gorbacheva [née Titarenko ] (5 January 1932 – 20 September 1999; Mikhail’s wife)
-Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (6 July 1923 – 25 May 2014; Polish President)
-Barbara Jaruzelski (23 January 1931 – 29 May 2017; First Lady of Poland)
-François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (6 October 1916 – 8 January 1996; French President)
-George Herbert Walker Bush (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018; U. S. President [1989-1993])
-Leonid Mitrofanovich Zamyatin (9 March 1922 – 19 June 2019; Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom)
-Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943; U. S. CIA Director [1991-1993])
-Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (15 June 1914 – 9 February 1984; General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [1982-1984])
-Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin (16 November 1919 – 6 April 2010; Soviet Ambassador to the United States [1962-1986]
-Jack Foust Matlock Jr. (born October 1, 1929; U. S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union)

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-Selection: I’d found this author’s book on Communism quite informative, so figured this one would be also.… (more)

A superb account of the rise and fall of communism and the communist states. Written in a direct, simple style, eschewing philosophical and existential jargon, it presents all sides of the phenomenon in a sober and factual manner. While the earlier chapters cover ground that is probably already to the keen reader, although they contain a valuable summary of Stalin's excesses and the sufferings of the people, it is the latter part that is of most interest, as it recounts the growth of glasnost and perestroika, the struggles of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and the dominoes effect of the breakup of the Soviet Union on the erstwhile 'people's democracies' of Eastern Europe. Of absorbing interest are also the author's discussion of the remaining communist states, especially China and Cuba, which have struck out in different ways from the Soviet model.… (more)

Disclaimer: This is a personal review and should not be taken into consideration before taking up this book

Pros:
1. A comprehensive history of the vast vast and complex Communism , cold war and its fall.
2. Very neutral . He seems to have no emotions into it and is just recording the happening with a little insight (that history always provides).
3. Very well defined scope of what he is going to deal with.
4. The writer has included everything , even small incidences of communist rising.
5. Loved certain moments as it provided a kind of simplicity and happiness that makes me like a book. Basically loved the Rise and Fall of Berlin Wall , the naivety or simplicity of Che Guevera made my day and made me believe in goodness for sometime. As a whole , I love Cold War politics and this book didnot disappoint me in it .

Cons:
1. For non native speaker , it is a super tough read. The language does not follow a free simple flow.
2. Very Western world centric. I don't buy his proclamation that Communism has ended whereas there is A huge China to prove otherwise. Though he justifies his thoughts , stating that China is at best a hybrid Communist state is a faulty one; if you look at it every Communist country molded Marx-Engels idea to suit their concept of power.
3. Pt.[2] brings to this , he seemed to treat Non European or Western countries/entites to be third class citizen who has no contribution to the world politics and all ideas have originated from the West, to be later used by them.
4. The writer has not dwelled upon the reasons behind such drastic change in the ideologies of USSR leaders. This was a personal peeve for me , as it seemed very astonishing to see the U turns taken by Krushchev or Gorbachev , without understanding where it came from . Though Gorbachev was a little explained towards the end but Khrushchev remained a mystery.
5. He seemed to be very harsh towards the strong leaders and to the idea as a whole right from the beginning. I personally would have liked a gradual change in tone as the novel proceeded.

Loved and hated the book equally. Will 3 star it till I don't find a book that will either make this book stand's better or worse.… (more)