The Book Prize Index

The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Serhii Plokhy

A prize-winning historian describes the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, dispelling the myth that the event was spurred on in part by the close relationship between George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. 20,000 first printing.

HistoryWorld History · medium confidenceWorld History81 signalsLlm Classifier: World History -> World HistoryGoogle Books: History -> HistoryTopic Classifier: Cold War & Nuclear Politics -> War & MilitaryCold War & Nuclear PoliticsEmpire & ColonialismEurope & Russia

Award History

1 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Lionel Gelber Prize: International AffairsMajor2015WinnerSecondary source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • George H.W. Bush38%
    • Mikhail Gorbachev38%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not significantly spurred by any close relationship between George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev.

    Model confidence 62%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 66%.