Serhii Plokhy, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (NY: Basic Books, 2014).
The recent turmoil in Ukraine has led many Western analysts to accuse President Vladimir Putin of seeking to resurrect the "Soviet Empire." Indeed, Russia's justification for the annexation of Crimea largely stems from insistence that the Soviet transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was illegitimate, yet few understand the complex mechanics that determined the current borders of the post-Soviet states, and even fewer remember how the West tried to preserve the integrity of Soviet Union during its last days, fearing the onset of a Yugoslavia-type civil war.
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