This is a book review by Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse, president of the American Orthodox Institute. He blogs at AOI’s Observer. This review will appear in the forthcoming Spring 2012 Religion & Liberty. Sign up here for a free digital subscription to R&L.

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Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991. By Leon Aron (Yale University Press, June 2012). 496 pages

Review: The Second Russian Revolution (1987-1991)

Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse

“There are different ways to understand how revolutions work,” writes Leon Aron in his new book Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and the Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991 that chronicles the collapse of Soviet Communism during Glasnost from 1987-1991. The most dominant is structuralism, an approach that draws from Marxist thought and sees the state as the central actor in social revolutions. In the structuralist view revolutions are not made, they happen.

Aron explains that structuralism has some merit because of its chronological linearity. It can reveal the events that lead from point A to B to C; an important function because the historian’s first step is to grasp what actually happened. But structuralism also has a grave flaw: the materialist assumptions (“objective factors”) informing it are deaf to the “enormously subversive influence of ideas.” Read more on Review: The Second Russian Revolution (1987-1991)…

The Washington Post’s editorial page reminds us that today is the 30th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s address at Westminster Hall, London. The speech, famous for its “ash heap of history line,” was Reagan’s challenge to the Soviet Union’s very legitimacy and pointed to its hollow core. Reagan’s great strength was not just America’s military posture against the Soviets, but that he truly made the Cold War a battle of moral ideas. It was a decisive pivot away from America’s policy of containment.

Read more on 30 Years Ago Today: Reagan’s Westminster Address…

I recommended a Claire Berlinski article last Thursday. Ron Radosh forcefully calls into question several elements of the Berlinski piece, though her central claim seems to me to remain intact: While the Nazis are widely and duly vilified, far too many in the West continue to excuse, minimize or ignore the activities of the Soviet communists. At any rate, Radosh’s commentary has sparked a lively discussion in the comments section under his post.

Read more on Radosh Responds to Berlinski…