num_pages: 880
description: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in BiographyLonglisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionThe definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Khrushchev .Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]. Radhika Jones The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 the USSR. was one of the worlds two superpowers. By 1989 his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he more than anyone else had ended the Cold War and in 1991 after barely escaping from a coup attempt he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet systems gravedigger how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down how he found common ground with Americas arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachevs unique character that by Gorbachevs own admission make him difficult to understand. Was he in fact a truly great leader or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself transcripts and documents from the Russian archives and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries as well as foreign leaders Taubmans intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachevs remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant yet unsparing and honest this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel. 90 illustrations
language: English
title: Gorbachev: His Life and Times
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company