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Chernenko, the Last Bolshevik - Soviet Union on the Eve of Perestroika (Paperback)
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Chernenko, the Last Bolshevik - Soviet Union on the Eve of Perestroika (Paperback)
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Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko. a fig ure wtm appeared to the
outside worid as a commonplace Russian bureaucrat cut from the mold
of a Gogol short story, was elevated in 1984 to the post of general
sec retary of the Communist party of the So viet Union. Thus, a
post held by such awesome, fearsome figures as Lenin and Stalin
passed into the hands of someone perceived as a nondescript
bureaucrat, de void of ideas or initiative, and crippled by old age
and infirmity.A singular merit of this work is that it shows how
far from the mark were these perceptions. This is the only
full-length treatment of Chernenko. in contrast to the vast tomes
written on his five predecessors as well as on the present
incumbent, Mkrhail Gorbachev. The work delves into archival
materials never before reported in either the East or West. The
picture that emerges is not of some run-of-the-mill ap paratchik,
but of a figure who in the con text of the Brezhnev era came forth
with ideas that were revolutionary, at least in the sense of a
realization of the deep mal aise into which Soviet economy and so
ciety had fallen.Zemtsov's volume explains the paradox of a servile
conservative member of th Politburo becoming an innovative, even
courageous, leader during the thirteen fateful months he held
Soviet power, ft is a tribute to this effort at reconstruction that
what emerges is a rounded human being and not simply a political
actor. This ana lytical study of the transformation of a peasant
into a politician fills out a missing link without which the
current impulse to reform in the U.S.S.R. is hard to under stand or
appreciate
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