The author of this book, Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, writes that there are many hypotheses regarding the causes of USSR’s downfall, but none of them can properly explain what happened. Yes, structural economic problems were deepening in the country, and stagnation of progress was evident, but the situation was not an emergency. There were no large-scale military losses. Soviet Union was generally in control of the situation in the socialist part of the world. Society in the country was generally stable. Nevertheless, the Soviet regime was swept away in the sudden revolution of 1987−1991.
In reconstructing the key events of the country’s history and the collapse chronology of the party-bureaucratic Soviet system, Leon Aron draws on a vast array of information published by Soviet and foreign sources of the time. This allows him to expose the main questions that awakened the self-consciousness of the people: who are we? What is our real history? What should a just state be like? And, finally, what should we do? It was glasnost, in the author’s opinion, that opened the «Roads to the Temple» — people’s realization of the interconnection of memory, repentance and rebirth as a moral imperative.
Roads to the Temple
Truth, memory, ideas, and ideals in the making of the Russian revolution, 1987−1991
Leon Aron. Roads to the Temple: truth, memory, ideas, and ideals in the making of the Russian revolution, 1987−1991. Translation from English (Roads to the Temple: truth, memory, ideas, and ideals in the making of the Russian revolution, 1987−1991. Yale University, 2012. New Haven and London). — Moscow: School of Civic Education, 2017. — 400 p.
