Tompson, Khrushchev - A Political Life; Galeotti, Gorbachev And His Revolution

Abstract

In retrospect, the last fifty years of the Soviet Union's existence constitute a case study in the decline and fall of empire. The legacy of Stalin's systematic terror, the burdens of world war, economic and industrial decline, technological backwardness, a single-party regime that stifled innovation, and the burdens of maintaining a military-industrial system capable of propping up multinational empire seem insurmountable obstacles to reforming the unreformable. These two books join the flood of works examining efforts at reforming the Soviet Union after Stalin's death. Both books approach their topics from the perspective of the Soviet leaders and their attempts to reform the Soviet Union from the top down. Tompson's political biography of Nikita Khrushchev offers a well-written, carefully researched narrative aimed at the general reader, while Galeotti's brief study is a simple, straightforward primer for students of the last ten years of the Soviet Union's existence.