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Library Journal Review
Ligachev has frequently been described by the Western press as a conservative opponent of Mikhail Gorbachev and his perestroika reforms. He was a lifelong member of the CPSU (since 1944) who initially supported the reforms (1985-88) but later became convinced that they had gone too far, too fast. These memoirs cover the period from 1983 (when Ligachev was transferred from a Siberia posting to a senior position in Moscow) until 1989, when he had become disenchanted and gone into opposition. In large part, he defends himself against charges made elsewhere by other officials, especially Boris Yeltsin in Against the Grain (Summit, 1990) and Anatoly Sobchak in For a New Russia ( LJ 12/91), while defending his unwavering belief in the system that nurtured him. Because of its differeing point of view, this title is a worthwhile addition to subject collections.-- Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
After being forced from power in 1990, Ligachev retired to Siberia in a huff to write his memoirs. The putative leader of "conservatives," he was number two at Old Square (the Moscow location of Communist Party headquarters) for most of the Gorbachev era, and in that capacity voiced unwavering support for such pillars of the state as unified territorial control, collectivized agriculture and industrial planning, and maintenance of control over Eastern Europe. But the assumption that he was solely a reactionary neanderthal won't survive his reflections. No Stalinist (his grandfather was executed in the Great Purge), he favored national reforms (first the "acceleration" policy, then perestroika) that Gorbachev initiated. But he became increas~ingly disenchanted with their course, and here he strains to account for the reasons the entire project crashed. His explanation, which doesn't seem wholly convincing, hinges on his antagonists, liberals who he feels could not see the approaching disaster, and who attacked his integrity with accusations of bribe-taking. As they have with other Soviet political memoirists (e.g., Sobchak, Arbatov, Yeltsin), historians will carefully examine Ligachev. The hook for the casually interested would be Ligachev's eyewitness account of Gorbachev's victory in the power struggle of March 1985. ~--Gilbert Taylor
