The Soviet Union, A Biographical Dictionary

Hardcover with lightly bumped and rubbed spine ends and lower leading corners. Slightly scuffed dust jacket with creases on upper and lower edges, one small tear on lower edge and a few superficial scores. Very slight signs of wear to leading corners of jacket. Pages are clean and tight throughout. T

This urgently needed reference work contains 1400 biographies of Soviet notables (in politics, the military, and the arts) both living and dead, including most of the stars of the Gorbachev era. The authors include some of the leading Sovietologists in the United States and Great Britain, and their high level of writing makes this volume an interesting reading experience for general readers and an excellent reference source for students, researchers, and journalists. Entries on major figures like Lenin and Stalin are unopinionated to the point of being bland, but an obvious effort has been made toward scholarly objectivity. To offer the correct pronunciation of last names would have filled another urgent need, but, as it is, the volume should be a welcome addition to all academic and larger public collections. A more extensive but also more expensive work is A Biographical Dictionary of the Soviet Union 1917-1988 (LJ 8/89).--Ed.
- Robert Decker, Los Angeles
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.