http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee 380 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 8 / 2016 The subject of this book is highly topical because it refers to symbolism as well as to geopolitics. To this effect, the fact that stands out is that it was 25 years since the failed coup to the then still Soviet Union in August of 2016 stands out. That failed coup had targeted toppling Gorbachev and, consequently, reversing the democratic changes that he had brought to his country after becoming its maximum authority in 1985. Likewise, the dispute that Russia carries on with Ukraine today, in spite of Minsk II, has turned the former Soviet area into a protagonist of information and debate. The Last Empire is a meticulous and clarifying account of the dismantling of the USSR. The author transmits it giving priority to the role played by its two main re-publics (Russia and Ukraine), and the United States under the presidency of George Bush, and with James Baker as Secretary of State. Sherhii Plokhy adequately defines the aim of his study. On the one hand, he identi-fies the main actors, who are not always in conflict, although conflict rather than coo-peration tends to prevail between them; in fact, when the latter takes place, in most cases it is out of self-interest. On the other hand, he chronologically restricts his work (August – December 1991); in other words, from the failed coup against Gorbachev until the signing of the Belavezha Accords by which the USSR was dissolved and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was created, with Russia, Ukraine, and to a lesser degree, Belarus, as the driving forces (and leadership) behind its creation. The introduction to this work is a fundamental part of it because in it the author explains his research methodology, standing out his thoroughness. Indeed, besides his readings of monographs, reports and the press, Serhii Plokhy stresses that he inter-viewed some of the main political actors that are mentioned in his work, and that he had access to consult the «declassified documents at the George H.W. Bush presidential library, among which are the archives of the National Security Council of the United Sta-tes, the correspondence of White House civil servants in charge of arranging trips abroad for the President, and transcriptions of interviews and telephone conversations between Bush and other leaders» (pg. 22). Throughout the almost 600 pages of this work, Presidents, Prime Ministers, di-plomats and ministers also appear…, with whom the reader who is not specialized in History or in International Relations may not be familiar. To make up for this deficit, the author adequately contextualizes each one of the names that come up, which en-riches the book and makes its reading easier. In the introduction, Serheii Plokhy also anticipates the theses that he will prove as the book unfolds. The main thesis refers to the idea that the disintegration of the USSR had as its main factor the position taken by its two main republics (Russia and Ukraine), linked to two names: Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk. From this point on, he narrates, dissects, and analyzes the events that followed. Likewise, the figure of Gorbachev is a transversal protagonist of the book, and he uses this to describe the situation of the USSR in 1991, a «giant stroke of luck with clay foundations». However, Gorbachev was unable to understand nor assume such a reality; proof of this is that in his actions he combined requests of economic aid, with
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