Eight pieces of empire : a 20-year journey through the Soviet collapse

Eight pieces of empire A 20-year journey through the Soviet collapse

Lawrence Scott Sheets

Book - 2011

A detailed chronicle of the collapse of the Soviet Union is told through a series of episodes and vignettes to explore personal, political, and historical contributing factors as well as its ongoing repercussions.

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Subjects
Sheets, Lawrence Scott > Travel > Soviet Union.
Sheets, Lawrence Scott > Travel > Russia (Federation)
Social change > Soviet Union > History.
Social change > Russia (Federation)
Post-communism > Russia (Federation)
Soviet Union > History > 1985-1991.
Russia (Federation) > History > 1991-
Soviet Union > Description and travel.
Russia (Federation) > Description and travel.
Published
New York : Crown Publishers c2011.
Language
English
Main Author
Lawrence Scott Sheets (-)
Edition
1st ed
Physical Description
xvi, 318 p. : ill., map ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9780307395825
  • Legal Note
  • Author's Note
  • Part I. Farewell Leningrad, Farewell Empire (1989-1991)
  • A Civil War Outside My Door
  • Our Communal
  • Tears of a KGB Man
  • A Bigamist Bandit and a Button Maker
  • Sickle and Hammer Down: An Empire's Last Hours
  • Part II. Georgia: Anarchy in Paradise (1992-1996)
  • Nobody Started This War
  • Exodus
  • Buried Five Times: Insurgents in Flat Black Nylons
  • A Word About War
  • Part III. Azerbaijan and Armenia at War (1993-1996)
  • Azerbaijan: Lifesaving Carpets
  • Armenia: A Faded Tintype of Mount Ararat
  • Azerbaijan: The Shish Kebab War and Eastern Democracy
  • Part IV. Chechnya: Echoes of the Deportation (1993-2004)
  • Grenade, Lightly Tossed
  • Grozny
  • Three Libertine Sabotage Women
  • A Disappearance
  • Three Boys Seeking Martyrdom
  • Part V. Resurrections: The Abdication of Atheism (1998-2005)
  • A Nameless Bunch of Bones
  • A KGB Church and Latter-day Saints
  • Part VI. Central Asia: Rise of the Red Sultans (2001-2002)
  • Uzbekistan: I Cannot Answer That Question
  • An Afghan Interlude
  • The Island of Dr. Moreau
  • Part VII. Revolutions, Reindeer, and Radiation (2003-2011)
  • The Flaming Recliner
  • Last Song of the Ultas
  • Home, Sweet Chernobyl
  • The Road to the Schoolhouse
  • Part VIII. An Empire Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Selected Bibliography
Review by Booklist Review

Sheets, formerly a journalist for Reuters and NPR, reported on wars that erupted in the Caucasus Mountain republics following the disintegration of the USSR. In reconstructing his reporting trips, he presents a series of narrative sketches that meld individuals, scenery, and rough, often dangerous, travel into impressions of societies falling apart. Historical synopses of the wars are the most Sheets gives by way of background. His emphasis is on the immediate reality he witnessed. Into the first conflict he describes, in a Georgian civil war over the Abkhazia region, he infuses tones of absurdity and despair that recur in ensuing depictions of the wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan and between Russia and Chechen rebels. Relief from scenes of destruction comes from a trip to Sakhalin Island, but violence returns in accounts of the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan and the 2004 Chechen massacre of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia. Often grim, Sheets' suite of incidents nevertheless bespeaks his Russian-fluent immersion among people unmoored by the Soviet collapse, a quality watchers of the Russian scene will appreciate.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

Sheets (former Moscow bureau chief, NPR) writes candidly about eight nations with past connections to the Soviet Union and his personal experiences as a war correspondent in, e.g., Ossetia, Georgia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. Sheets's experience gives him a singular perspective on many of the conflicts those in the West remember now as vague historical footnotes. His matter-of-fact style never becomes overly political; when he includes his own commentary, he does so in a reserved and rational manner. Sheets details his numerous dangerous encounters with a calm that belies the risk but always draws personal connections to the people affected the most by the events he chronicled. VERDICT Journalism students and professors, readers interested in the recent history of a region struggling to redefine itself, or anyone who has ever listened to a war correspondent's reports with fascination will find Sheets's new memoir engrossing.-Elizabeth Zeitz, Otterbein Univ. Lib., Westerville, OH (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Down the Volga (1992), Thomas Goltz's Chechnya Diary (2003) and Andrew Jack's Inside Putin's Russia (2004).]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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