Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia.

• Author: Gallagher, Tom
• Position: Brief Article

Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia by Stephen F. Cohen W. W. Norton. 160 pages. $21.95.

For Steven Cohen, Russian Studies professor at New York University, American scholars and journalists have told "considerably less that is truly essential about Russia after Communism than they did when it was part of the censorious Soviet system." Instead, many have functioned as cheerleaders for a failed crusade to turn Russia into a successful capitalist society.

So, while the European Children's Trust found the former Soviet Union with forty million children living in "genuine poverty," "tuberculosis levels usually associated with the Third World," and a life expectancy that...