A biography of the last Soviet leader written by the renowned American historian and political scientist, Pulitzer Prize winner William Taubman.
Who is Gorbachev, really? This is the question foremost posed by American historian and political scientist, Pulitzer Prize winner William Taubman, in his large-scale study of the life of one of the brightest, most influential, and most extraordinary politicians of the 20th century. Childhood spent in the terrible 1930s–1940s in the village of Privolnoye near Stavropol. Collectivization, famine, Stalinist terror, and then the war and four months of Nazi occupation. An ideal party career, the struggle for power, the position of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and a sharp change in course for the whole country—and with it, the whole world. Glasnost, perestroika, freedom of speech, recognition in the West, and growing discontent at home in Russia. Gorbachev remains to this day one of the most contradictory, enigmatic, and large-scale figures of the century. On the basis of archival documents and personal meetings with the main actors of that era, Taubman methodically examines from every possible angle the phenomenon of the last leader of the Soviet Union.