Ten Years That Shook the World: Gorbachev Era as Witnessed by His Chief of Staff

A key Gorbachev aide offers an inside look at the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union, discussing the skills that propelled Gorbachev to the top, the creation of perestroika, the Chernobyl disaster, and other issues. National ad/promo.

The first thing to be noted about Boldin is that he disapproved of his boss fervently and that he was among the August '91 coup plotters. And although he reveals nothing about the conspiracy, only weaving his self-pitying prison meditations into his narrative, Boldin is today free and, Adam Ulam predicts in his introduction, is unlikely ever to be tried. A Pravda journalist who was assigned to work for Gorbachev in 1981 and rose in the heirarchy with him, Boldin here bears witness to Kremlin chaos. He shows the nomenklatura floundering without a coherent theoretical framework for perestroika , the president turning increasingly indecisive, the citizenry losing faith. Boldin argues that Gorbachev jettisoned his advisers too readily, was suspicious of their loyalty and treated them like personal slaves; that Gorbachev's waffling was indicative of his character, which was spineless, cocky and concerned primarily with popularity ratings. The author baldly maintains that the party was faithful to Gorbachev, who betrayed it and set "the country back several decades." For a more analytically critical depiction of these events, readers are better instructed by Yegor Ligachev's Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reproachful, revelatory recollections of a protracted G”tterd„mmerung from a former aide of the Soviet Union's last emperor. Boldin had a ringside seat in the Kremlin from 1981--when an upwardly mobile apparatchik named Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev raided Pravda to recruit him as an assistant--through 1991, when he was imprisoned for participating in an abortive coup against his erstwhile boss. The author's insider status allows him to offer illuminating insights on those who presided over (or precipitated) the collapse of both the USSR and Communist Party. By his censorious, discontinuous account, Gorbachev was a vain, ambitious opportunist overly mindful of Western opinion, who unleashed forces he did not fully understand and could not control, much less direct. According to Boldin, moreover, Gorbachev was surprisingly indecisive and hence ineffective in crisis situations--from the Chernobyl disaster through the unanticipated consequences of glasnost and perestroika. The author's disclosures and perspectives, however, come at a price. To begin with, readers must wade through a welter of teary prose detailing how, sick or well, Boldin was forced to work like a galley slave for an unappreciative, insensitive, and autocratic master. Further, in addition to assigning Gorbachev sole responsibility for the fall of a once-united state (plus such unwelcome side effects as industrial paralysis, a crime wave, reduced birth rates, and lower standards of living), the author charges him with a host of venial shortcomings. At several points, for example, he goes out of his way to make nasty comments about Gorbachev's regional accent. Nor does Boldin shrink form reiterating the central role selfless patriotism played in his own conversion from comrade to culpable critic. Revisionist history with a vengeance--and residual values for all the bitterness. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

More readable than Vladimir Egorov's Out of a Dead End into the Unknown (Quintessence Pub., 1993), this memoir by another Gorbachev aide is long on juicy details of life at the top in the former USSR but short on any perspective of Gorbachev's role in ending the Cold War and transforming international relations. The author, a former Pravda journalist, served Gorbachev for ten years before becoming a participant in the attempted coup of August 1991. His memoir, begun in jail, is what one would expect from an embittered and overworked underling: Gorbachev is depicted as vain, imperious, and corrupt, and Raisa comes off even worse. Adam Ulam's introduction gives some useful background while casting doubt on Boldin's reliability. Appropriate for most collections.
- Robert Decker, Palo Alto, Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Boldin prepared documents and speeches for the general secretary, but dismayed by the Communist Party's loosening grip on the Soviet Union, he mutinied with the plotters of August 1991. The question is whether the USSR was reformable after Gorbachev, given the initiatives he advanced and such pressures as nationalism. That Boldin thinks so is no compliment to his political acumen, but although he supported Gorbachev's program, his words drip with contempt concerning his boss's fabled tactical maneuvers. Arguing that such machinations materially accelerated the collapse, which is undoubtedly true, Boldin gives the inside view of key moments during Gorbachev's rule: his formulation of uskoreniye (acceleration), then perestroika, the several party congresses, and the elections of 1989--the point of no return in the party's loss of control. Boldin gradually came to dislike Gorbachev, criticizing his (and his wife's) luxurious tastes and penchant for political guile. These themes, common to several memoirs by the leader's associates (for example, Yegor Ligachev's Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin, ), exemplify what are now problems of historical reconstruction, problems the likes of which Sovietologist Adam Ulam (The Communists ), who contributes a typically well written introduction for Boldin, is beginning to tackle. Gilbert Taylor