Gorbachev: Profiles in Power Series

Opens up the claustrophobic and intensely personal world of the Soviet leadership

• Written in light of Gorbachev's own uniquely revealing memoirs.
• Explores how much of what Gorbachev achieved had he intended and how much of what he failed to achieve had he misjudged?
• Examines how did Gorbachev make momentous changes without civil war?

Gorbachev is an excellent introduction to Mikhail Gorbachev's rise and fall from power and is written in light of his own uniquely revealing memoirs. It provides an objective assessment of what happened - and why - during the momentous period of Soviet reform, failure and collapse. Mikhail Gorbachev, himself a communist, moved towards social democracy and, in doing so, dismantled a dictatorship that held Russia in a vice for over 70 years. This he achieved without civil war - it itself a huge accomplishment. Gorbachev was less successful in his attempted re-introduction of a market economy, which only sped up Russia's economic failure and he failure to diffuse the nationalist aspirations of Russia's people brought him down. Finally, his hopes of creating a Union of Sovereign States collapsed in the wake of the attempted coup against him in August 1991. Opening up the claustrophobic and intensely personal world of the Soviet leadership Martin McCauley provides an enthralling introduction to the rise and fall of Mikhail Gorbachev. Like the other titles in the Profiles in Power series, it is not a biography, though inevitably it contains much biographical material, it instead analyzes the major features, achievements and failures of Gorbachev's career.

Martin McCauley University of London, is a leading authority on the Soviet era. He has written over 20 books, including Who's Who in Russia Since 1900 and The Longman Companion to Russia Since 1914. He is also a frequent broadcaster on radio and television in the US and Britain.