The answer to wolfes luridly worded but essential question is to be found in the formative history of the former soviet union and communist world more generally a long and widely held belief that there had been a bukharinist alternative to the horrors of stalinism and that it could be resurrected for reforming that system after stalin. With the end of major fighting in the russian civil war in 1921 and after learning from the disaster of the russian famine and angry uprisings lenin adopted the new economic pol soviet fates and lost alternatives explores how things could have turned out differently in the soviet union and post soviet russia from the rise of stalin through 2011. Soviet fates and lost alternatives columbia university press soviet fates and lost alternatives from stalinism to the new cold war stephen f cohen with a new epilogue by the author columbia university press share pub date july 2011 isbn 9780231148979. Soviet fates and lost alternatives from stalinism to the new cold war cohen stephen cohen stephen 9780231148979 amazoncom books. Stephen f cohen italicsoviet fates and lost alternatives from stalinism to the new cold war italic new york columbia university press 2009 xiv 308 pp 2850