Russia's Secret Rulers: How the Government and Criminal Mafia Exercise Their Power

One of the last dissidents jailed by the Gorbachev regime discusses the present situation in the former Soviet Union, claiming that the communists still maintain essential underground levers of power

In an important, often shocking expose, a journalist dissident who was jailed by the Gorbachev regime argues that little has changed in the former Soviet Union. The KGB is as strong as ever, maintains Timofeyev, an opinion buttressed by his interview here with ex-KGB general Oleg Kalugin. Moreover, he reports, former Communist Party apparatchiks hoard billions of rubles, grab private property and create "underground" political structures that enable them to retainmuch of their power and privilege. Timofeyev also reveals the pervasiveness of the black market and details the workings of a powerful criminal mafia whose lines of corruption allegedly extend from the factory floor to the Kremlin. His interviews with Elena Bonner and ex-foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze are inconclusive, but elsewhere Timofeyev presents a chilling picture of life in the Commonwealth of Independent States, which he sees drifting toward fascism.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dissident editor and journalist Timofeyev argues that the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms was a conspiracy by the entrenched Communist Party elite to maintain control of the economy. In an economy where all property belonged to the state, control of access to scarce resources represented power. Timofeyev says economic reforms were seen as an admission that by 1985 the command system of control was failing and needed replacement lest the Party be ousted totally. Interviews with well-known figures such as Eduard Shevardnadze and Yelena Bonner lend some support to Timofeyev's theory. Although this speculative work is subject to serious questioning, it does offer an alternative explanation of recent events. For Soviet studies collections.
- Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.