The history of the Soviet Union is complicated and fascinating. In the course of only seventy
years this country has seen the development of the totally new system of state, economic growth, the
growth of hopes for the 'brighter future', and then the sudden and expected by no one collapse of
the whole system leading to chaos, wars, and confusion. One period is especially important in order
to realize how did things finally started to change after the seventy years of blindly pursuing the
dream of communism which left the Soviet Union in a very bad economical and moral state, and this
period is called perestroika, Russian for restructuring. The main figure behind this process which
began in 1985 is Mikhail S. Gorbachev who became General Secretary of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union Central Committee in March 1985. The three books that concentrate on the
'Gorbachev phenomenon' were all unfortunately written before perestroika was finished, so they do
not analyze the consequences that it had for the Soviet Union as well as for the whole world .
Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev in the White Ho...
English: US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Gen...
English: President George H. W. Bush and President...On
the other hand, all three of these books do a good job in explaining the changes that took place in
the course of the first three years after Gorbachev came to power and why were these changes
necessary.
The first book 'Gorbachev' was written by Zhores A. Medvedev in 1986 and hence the
author is concentrating on the first year of the new course in Soviet history. The book itself basically
consists of two parts: the first part where the author describes the 'making of a General Secretary',
and the second part entitled 'Gorbachev in power' which describes Gorbachev's first year in the
office. The first part of the book gives a lot of background information which allows the reader...