Читать книгу History of the Soviet Union - Geoffrey Hosking - Страница 8

By a strange coincidence, the first edition of this book was published on the very day that Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. That made for good publicity, but it meant that the text rapidly became overtaken by the remarkable events which began to take place under the new leadership. It is true that in the last pages of the old edition I remarked that change, when it came, would be rapid and far-reaching, and that the Soviet public would prove to be more ready for it than we were then accustomed to think. As a pointer to the future, that now seems to have been reasonably apt, but all the same, a mere four years into the new era, a generous extension of the last chapter seemed essential to give some idea of the momentous changes which have been occurring and to relate them to earlier Soviet history. I have taken this opportunity to correct a few errors earlier in the text, and thank those reviewers and readers who have pointed them out to me.

School of Slavonic & East European Studies,

University of London,

July 1989