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Overview
This memoir by the second most powerful Communist Party leader during the early Gorbachev years provides an important alternative view of the USSR’s transformation—a view that is gaining ground in Russian politics today. In a substantial new piece for this edition, Mr. Ligachev outlines the political agenda of today’s communist coalition—the establishment of a new Soviet Union, with strong economic and political integration of its member-states.Yegor Ligachev, a seasoned Party boss from Siberia, made a solid career for himself in the capital during the Khrushchev era, but, following Khrushchev’s ouster, chose to retreat to the provinces. In 1985, his political patrons brought him back to Moscow to help them build a dynamic new leadership team under Mikhail Gorbachev. The two reform-minded communists launched an effort to inject life and energy into the Party, economy, and society through a series of liberalizing measures. But when Ligachev saw the reforms moving into a revolutionary phase that could result in the Party’s loss of control over the helm of state, he found himself increasingly siding with the opposition.In this gripping book, Ligachev describes the evolving confrontation between opposing forces at high-level Party meetings and sessions of the Politburo as well as in less formal conversations. Along the way, he gives revealing glimpses not only of Gorbachev but also of Yuri Andropov, Andrei Gromyko, Alexander Yakovlev, Eduard Shevardnadze, Boris Yeltsin, and other top leaders. Notorious events such as the 1989 massacre in Tbilisi and the Gdlyan/Ivanov affair—in which, Ligachev argues, he was unjustly implicated—are also highlighted.Synopsis
This memoir by the second most powerful Communist Party leader during the early Gorbachev years provides an important alternative view of the USSR’s transformation—a view that is gaining ground in Rus
Publishers Weekly
Sovietologists and general readers alike should find this book of major interest, not only for its insider's perspective on Gorbachev's Kremlin but also for its insights into the character of Communist leader Ligachev. Ligachev--who was for 17 years First Secretary of Siberia before he was recalled to Moscow by General Secretary Andropov in 1983, then went on to become Gorbachev's second-in-command until his de facto removal in 1988 and ultimate ouster in 1990--was a reformist but a Communist true believer as well. That conflicted view informs his memoirs, which are at once self-serving, instructive and tremendously thought-provoking. Ligachev charges that glasnost and perestroika were abused by high level apparatchiks for personal aggrandizement and careerism, that Gorbachev, drawn to the role of ``enlightened monarch,'' increasingly surrounded himself with ``academic thinkers'' instead of ``practical realists,'' also that Gorbachev came under the radical influence of Alexander Yakovlev, the ambassador to Canada whom he brought home from exile in 1985. Spearheaded by glasnost and in turn by Yakovlev's strategic editorial appointments, the press, according to Ligachev, engaged in a destabilizing propaganda campaign: ``A dictatorship of destructive forces reigned in the mass media. This accelerated economic collapse and intensified ethnic conflicts.'' While damning his critics for their ``unjust calumny'' and for their use of ``Stalinist methods of the witch hunt in the struggle against Stalinism,'' Ligachev attempts to distance himself from the news-making anti-reform actions that have been attributed to him. If his denial of culpability for the publication, in 1988, of Nina Andreyeva's article decrying perestroika rings hollow, the evidence he presents to document his claimed uninvolvement in the 1989 Tbilisi tragedy when Army troops attacked nationalist demonstrators gives one pause--despite Sovietologist Cohen's disbelief expressed in the introduction. Still, as Cohen also notes, Ligachev ``challenges us to understand more by judging less.'' (Feb.)