Review of the Uncivil Society

The Uncivil Society by Stephan Kotkin dispels many of the myths created surrounding the 1989 fall of the Soviet Empire. His reviewer in the New York Times Book Review, Serge Schmemann, notes a sobering parallel.
"Ultimately, Kotkin writes, the system was crushed by the “double whammy” of Gorbachev, who lifted the threat of military intervention, and a political class that proved unable to compete with capitalism. Still, the reader shouldn’t get too smug on revisiting that victory. Kotkin suggests a sobering parallel between the bankruptcy of the Eastern elites and the ruinous excesses of Western elites as revealed in the financial meltdown of 2008."
In 1989 the leadership cashed in and got out. In 2008 the leadership discovered they would not be punished for their excesses.