In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this bestselling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. "A moving illumination . . . Remnick is the witness for us all." —Wall Street Journal.
Amazon.com Review
David Remnick was Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post between 1988 and 1991 and later a staffer at the New Yorker. While with The Post he covered events the emergence of perestroika, the taking of power by democrats, the failed Communist counter-coup of August 1991 and beyond. His gripping personal account of that historic period is filled with vivid sketches of people. He writes with passion of the twofold nature of the crimes of Stalinist communism--"murder and the unending assault against memory." His powerful literary style is suggested in the title, the mausoleum holding Lenin's body being a central image in his book for the construction and maintenance of the dead culture of communism. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1994.
From Publishers Weekly
An outstanding piece of reportage informed by interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Andrei Sakharov and others, this is an account of the unraveling of the Soviet empire. It shuttles temporally across the disastrous 75-year rule of the Communist Party, and geographically from Siberian mines to Riga, Latvia, where Remnick, a former Washington Post Moscow correspondent, uncovered KGB subterfuge aimed at the Baltic independence movements. His dramatic reconstruction of the botched August 1991 putsch underscores Gorbachev's misjudgment in light of top-level fears that a right-wing coup was an imminent threat. Now a New Yorker staff writer, Remnick met farmers, Eskimos, diehard Stalinists, democratic activists, Party hacks, anti-Semites, homeless men and women, Chernobyl evacuees. He tracked down Gorbachev's high school girlfriend and a CIA agent who defected to the KGB. He portrays Yeltsin as a "theatrical populist" precariously leading an "infinitely fragile" regime. Author tour. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this bestselling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. "A moving illumination . . . Remnick is the witness for us all." —Wall Street Journal.
Amazon.com Review
David Remnick was Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post between 1988 and 1991 and later a staffer at the New Yorker. While with The Post he covered events the emergence of perestroika, the taking of power by democrats, the failed Communist counter-coup of August 1991 and beyond. His gripping personal account of that historic period is filled with vivid sketches of people. He writes with passion of the twofold nature of the crimes of Stalinist communism--"murder and the unending assault against memory." His powerful literary style is suggested in the title, the mausoleum holding Lenin's body being a central image in his book for the construction and maintenance of the dead culture of communism. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1994.
From Publishers Weekly
An outstanding piece of reportage informed by interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Andrei Sakharov and others, this is an account of the unraveling of the Soviet empire. It shuttles temporally across the disastrous 75-year rule of the Communist Party, and geographically from Siberian mines to Riga, Latvia, where Remnick, a former Washington Post Moscow correspondent, uncovered KGB subterfuge aimed at the Baltic independence movements. His dramatic reconstruction of the botched August 1991 putsch underscores Gorbachev's misjudgment in light of top-level fears that a right-wing coup was an imminent threat. Now a New Yorker staff writer, Remnick met farmers, Eskimos, diehard Stalinists, democratic activists, Party hacks, anti-Semites, homeless men and women, Chernobyl evacuees. He tracked down Gorbachev's high school girlfriend and a CIA agent who defected to the KGB. He portrays Yeltsin as a "theatrical populist" precariously leading an "infinitely fragile" regime. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.