Author Description

On December 7, 1988, the northwest region of Soviet Armenia, including Leninakan, the republic's second largest city, was devastated by an earthquake which left tens of thousands dead and forced the central government, for the first time in Soviet history, to call for international assistance. Armenia in Crisis documents the tragic Armenian earthquake and the surrounding political controversies that rocked the Soviet Union and contributed to its collapse. In sparse and gripping prose, Pierre Verluise, a French journalist and Soviet specialist, uses the accounts of survivors and relief workers to tell the story of this catastrophe in its human and political dimensions. Relying on personal interviews and press reports, he recounts the destruction and despair, the emotional reactions of survivors and relief workers, the political struggles between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and the Armenians, and the shortcomings in Soviet construction methods and disaster preparedness. The new epilogue by translator Levon Chorbajian completes Verluise's story of human loss and high political drama, with updates of Armenia's independence, the Soviet Union's demise, and the still uncompleted task of earthquake reconstruction.