Autopsy For An Empire : The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime

Rating:
Summary: Forgive the translation
Review: A wonderful read. Volkogonov has written other biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky which I also highly recommend. THis book is a waltz through the lives of the leaders of the soviet union. VOlkogonov takes for granted that you have some background. He takes you on a jurney into the private lives of the dictators.

For those that say he rambbles the reality is that he is Russian, he is not a writer by trade and yet he overcame geat obstacles to write the books he did before he died. They should be viewed as treasrers and not condemned for their lack of clarity which stems more from the russian mind then from the authors inability to contrust a coheren argument.

Rating:
Summary: Forgive the translation
Review: A wonderful read. Volkogonov has written other biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky which I also highly recommend. THis book is a waltz through the lives of the leaders of the soviet union. VOlkogonov takes for granted that you have some background. He takes you on a jurney into the private lives of the dictators.

For those that say he rambbles the reality is that he is Russian, he is not a writer by trade and yet he overcame geat obstacles to write the books he did before he died. They should be viewed as treasrers and not condemned for their lack of clarity which stems more from the russian mind then from the authors inability to contrust a coheren argument.

Rating:
Summary: A big disappointment.
Review: I found Volkogonov's book to be full of facts. It was definitely not for someone who has no idea of Soviet history, as he doesn't stop to tell who (for example)the NKVD or Smersh were. If you don't already know, you aren't going to be guessing it from context.

I have three major issues with this book:

1. It is not easy to read because there is no real structure to the way he tells the story. It is not completely chronological. As an example, with almost every leader he talks about the events leading up to their death. You figure the chapter is soon to be finished. Nope. 20 more pages later after having changed from the subject numerous times, then the chapter finishes.

2. There is a lack of hard economic data. This is a failure of most books on Soviet history. For some reason, most books seem to believe that the Soviet Union disintegrated because the Communists were evil people. Yet plenty of horrible governments last a long time. There is rarely any discussion of the real reason for the failure of the Bolshevik experiment: the Bolsheviks/Communists had absolutely no idea about economic realities. Thinking economics was could just be made up and completely controlled by communist ideology, decision after horrible decision was made. In an economy the size of the Soviet Union's, you can only abuse the market so long before it brings you down. At least this book wasn't filled with the traditional American nonsense that the U.S.'s military spending destroyed their economy. While trying to keep up with the U.S. certainly did devastate their standard of living, the fact is that by the 70s the Soviet Union could no longer feed itself because of too much ideological tinkering with the economy and agriculture made it impossible for them to produce enough grain (let alone anything else). They were spending all of their hard currency just trying to stay alive. The military spending was just another nail in the coffin, but not the cause of death.

3. While painstakingly researched and documented, certain issues make me skeptical of the presentation of the facts in this book. Firstly, there is a real definite trend in books of this sort since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Call it the `Winners write history' syndrome. As in point two, the Communists seemed to have failed because they were `bad' not for any real reasons, such as economics. Secondly, facts about the author which appear in both his and the editor's introductions should really raise some eyebrows. During his researches, the author discovers that his father was `purged' for owning a pamphlet written by an enemy of the state. The author also relates that "...the only thing I achieved in this life was to break with the faith that I had held for so long." The "faith" he had held was communism. It is also stated that late in life he became a Christian. This makes the book seem less a history than a convert repudiating his previous beliefs. Again, I won't argue with his facts, but his presentation of them. As an example: page after page bemoaning the foolishness of Khrushchev and the Cuban missile crisis. Within the pages, one parenthetical reference to the fact the U.S. had missiles in Turkey before that. Again, they were "bad" people, but somehow the U.S. was justified in the exact same behavior.

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: The only reason I did not give this book 5 stars was because Volkogonov, while going in to very specific details, did not summarize the big picture. In other words, do not attempt to read this book if you have a vague idea of Russian history.

Why I *would* give this book 5 stars would be for the excellent detail Volkogonov projects about each of the seven leaders.

If you know your Russian history, know your people and who was involved in what then this book is a must. It is a complimentary work that adds a lot to the dark side of the Soviet Union's leaders. From Lenin to Gorby a very good read.

Rating:
Summary: A Superb Analysis Of The Soviet Power System
Review: This Book will Take you inside the Kremlin where for seventy years a handfull of men decided the fate of millions of soviet citizens. It explores in great detail the power struggles which brought Stalin to power despite his unpopularity amomgst his comrades. It also examined how and why khruschev was deposed in a Kremlin style Coup and replaced by an extremely weak man Leonid Breshnev. However the most striking aspect to the book is its theme, it being the argument that the system had failed and could neither be reformed to a halfway house between a western style capitalist democracy and its previous existience under the the CPSU.I have to say that even Gorbachev comes under close scrutiny for his acquessience at least to previous policy decisions like the Soviet Excuse for Shooting down the Korean Airliner in 1983. All in all A Fasinating Insight into a world rarely before seen.

Rating:
Summary: Factual and Informative Political History
Review: This is one of the most informative books ever written about the people who ruled the Soviet Union. Being a highly centralized, totalitarian state, the Soviet Union acquired and lost much of its character as its rulers came and went. And the rulers were General Secrertaries of the communist party. Stalin brought crush indurstrialization, famine, and purges--millions of innocent people died, inclduing some of the most devoted communist revolutionaries. Khruschev tried reform, with some success in political liberalization, but his agricultural policy failed miserably. Brezhnev was compromise incarnate and, in his later years, aloof and passive. Andropov had a vision of reform based on social discipline and strict control, and economic accountability. Chernenko, who was a tireless bureaucrat in his youth, was simply a cripple almost the moment he assumed power. Then came Gorbachev and changed the course of history.

The book makes for a fascinating read. The leaders of the Soviet state were all too human, with this exception, that perhaps they craved power more than ordinary people do and could play politics like Paganini could play the violin. However, Stalin's lust for power, combined with his paranoia, may put him in a qualitatively different category--that of the world's most cruel dictators.

The book can be challenging at times, because it presents so many facts. Its highly archival nature does disrupt the smooth flow of the narrative. But for the fact starved Russians at least this may be a welcome change. The Soviet Union, outside the most elite circles, was almost devoid of any meaningful information about politics and political history. Ideology and propaganda ruled. Rhetorical arguments and logical exercises always came before fact, and before feelings of real living Soviet people. Thus in a way, even Volkogonov's factual excess is a welcome change.

Rating:
Summary: interesting history for those who care to read it.
Review: Volkogonov has not produced his best work here, but a work which is wholly approachable, entertaining and interesting...the way a good history should be written. Reading an historical text need not be like washing down a bowl of cornflakes with sand rather then milk. Volkogonov has become the "Suetonius" of Soviet Russia....and his text with its humor and occasional intimate details and also personal experiences is as interesting a read as the former's "Lives of the Twelve Caesars."