Customer Reviews

Autopsy for an Empire : The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the most informative books ever written about the people who ruled the Soviet Union. Being a highly centralized, totalitarian state, the Soviet Union acquired and lost much of its character as its rulers came and went. And the rulers were General Secrertaries of the communist party. Stalin brought crush indurstrialization, famine, and purges--millions of innocent people died, inclduing some of the most devoted communist revolutionaries. Khruschev tried reform, with some success in political liberalization, but his agricultural policy failed miserably. Brezhnev was compromise incarnate and, in his later years, aloof and passive. Andropov had a vision of reform based on social discipline and strict control, and economic accountability. Chernenko, who was a tireless bureaucrat in his youth, was simply a cripple almost the moment he assumed power. Then came Gorbachev and changed the course of history.

The book makes for a fascinating read. The leaders of the Soviet state were all too human, with this exception, that perhaps they craved power more than ordinary people do and could play politics like Paganini could play the violin. However, Stalin's lust for power, combined with his paranoia, may put him in a qualitatively different category--that of the world's most cruel dictators.

The book can be challenging at times, because it presents so many facts. Its highly archival nature does disrupt the smooth flow of the narrative. But for the fact starved Russians at least this may be a welcome change. The Soviet Union, outside the most elite circles, was almost devoid of any meaningful information about politics and political history. Ideology and propaganda ruled. Rhetorical arguments and logical exercises always came before fact, and before feelings of real living Soviet people. Thus in a way, even Volkogonov's factual excess is a welcome change.

In 1937, when Dmitri Volkogonov was 9 years old his father Anton was swept up in Stalin's purges, branded a traitor, and never seen again. Despite, or perhaps because of, his father's alleged criminal activities, Volkogonov enlisted in the Soviet army in 1945. Rising to the rank of Colonel-General, he was appointed the director of the USSR's Institute for Military History, a position he held from 1985 through 1991. From 1991 through 1993 he served as the head of the commission responsible for declassifying Soviet state papers located in their numerous archives. As a result of these appointments Volkogonov had access to the archives of the Ministry of Defense, the Central Party, the General Staff of the Armed Forces and virtually every other Soviet institution where party ad military records were stored. In addition, he had access to Western documentary material not generally available in the USSR. Relying heavily on those resources, Volkogonov penned well received biographies of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Autopsy for an Empire, The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime, was written while Volkogonov fought a last, losing battle against cancer. He died shortly after the completion of this manuscript.

Autopsy for an Empire contains seven sections, each section analyzing the reign of one of the seven Soviet leaders: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and, finally, Gorbachev. Although Volkogonov's writing is down-to-earth and covers a lot of ground in an efficient manner, he was not a historian by training nor was he a writer. There are portions of the book that do not read as fluently as one would hope. I think, however, that Volkogonov's use of previously unknown source material more than makes up for any deficiencies in his prose style.

Volkogonov's Autopsy tracks the arc-like trajectory of the Soviet Union. He shows Lenin achieving and consolidating power both in the USSR and within his party while establishing the police state that reached its apogee under Stalin. Subsequent to Lenin's death we are exposed to Stalin's rise to power, the consolidation of total power, his great purges and the fear and horror of the first days after the Nazi invasion. It is clear, however, that Soviet power reached its peak during Stalin's years. The segment on Khrushchev takes a critical and relatively sympathetic look at a man who sat at Stalin's right hand during the last years of his regime but who managed to denounce the cult of Stalin and institute same slight reforms that came to represent what became known as "the thaw". By the time we get to Brezhnev the ossification of the Soviet state seems to proceed at a pace similar to the increasingly visible ossification of Brezhnev himself. The short-lived reigns of the already aged and decrepit Andropov and Chernenko are disposed of in short order. Finally, we get to Gorbachev, the onset of Perestroika, and the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet empire.

No single section of the book contains a fully formed biography of any individual Soviet leader and as such the book may be disappointing to some. Certainly there is a vast body of literature available about the lives of Lenin, Stalin, and to a lesser extent Khrushchev. Yet, because the leader loomed so large in Soviet life, a nation effectively run from the top down, Autopsy for an Empire represents an excellent starting point for anyone looking for a good general overview of Soviet history.

Volkogonov has not produced his best work here, but a work which is wholly approachable, entertaining and interesting...the way a good history should be written. Reading an historical text need not be like washing down a bowl of cornflakes with sand rather then milk. Volkogonov has become the "Suetonius" of Soviet Russia....and his text with its humor and occasional intimate details and also personal experiences is as interesting a read as the former's "Lives of the Twelve Caesars."

Unfortunately Volkogonov's book fails to live up to its publisher's and other reviewers' claims. First of all its structure is incoherent and the writing is rambling; that makes it look like a hurried undergraduate essay not a well researched book. It also lacks good biographical data on the leaders it purports to preview.

My other issue with the book that it really does not provide any new information. It is but a repetition of well-known facts, self-evident truth (eg. Stalin was evil... Communism is bad). On a professional level there are major deficiencies as well:

1. There is nothing (really) on the power struggle that followed Stalin's death.

2. Volkogonov does not mention the reassessed view on Beria - this must have been known to him since the research went on in the archives that he supervised.

3. Presents a shallow and wrong picture of Khrushchev as a reformer.

4. Contrary to his claims (misinformation?) Imre Nagy was NOT an NKVD agent and material that used to back up this claim is well known to be fabricated by the KGB

5. What about the role of the VPK (The military industrial complex of the Soviet Union)? After all Volkogonov was a member of it. Nevertheless he tries to purvey the impression that it was the Party or a dictator like Stalin who controlled everything.

To sum it up: Not worth reading it. Those who know the subject will gain nothing just be presented with a barrage of outdated and false information. Those who are not well acquainted with the Soviet Union will be deceived and because of the book's poor structure it does not lend itself as a good introduction even to the basic facts.

Ultimately it seems that Volkogonov's role was that of the gatekeeper at archives. He was there not to monopolize them for himself but to keep real sensitive information from other (real) researchers.

The only reason I did not give this book 5 stars was because Volkogonov, while going in to very specific details, did not summarize the big picture. In other words, do not attempt to read this book if you have a vague idea of Russian history.

Why I *would* give this book 5 stars would be for the excellent detail Volkogonov projects about each of the seven leaders.

If you know your Russian history, know your people and who was involved in what then this book is a must. It is a complimentary work that adds a lot to the dark side of the Soviet Union's leaders. From Lenin to Gorby a very good read.

This is an excellent book, but, of course, only those will enjoy it and find it fascinating who are deeply interested in the history and demise of the Soviet Union. The author had access to Soviet documents, which had been top secret previously. So he can reveal new information about the seven leaders of the Soviet Union, namely Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchov, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachov. (The author was a three star general of the Soviet Union.)
I think it would help the reader if he first read the author's detailed biographies of Lenin and Stalin. His bio of Trotsky is also relevant.

This is NOT a text book. It's a brilliant summary from a man who learned of the hollowness of the Soviet Empire in the last phase of his life. A good summary of his previous books with details that are not available in his earlier bios on Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky.

I found Volkogonov's book to be full of facts. It was definitely not for someone who has no idea of Soviet history, as he doesn't stop to tell who (for example)the NKVD or Smersh were. If you don't already know, you aren't going to be guessing it from context.

I have three major issues with this book:

1. It is not easy to read because there is no real structure to the way he tells the story. It is not completely chronological. As an example, with almost every leader he talks about the events leading up to their death. You figure the chapter is soon to be finished. Nope. 20 more pages later after having changed from the subject numerous times, then the chapter finishes.

2. There is a lack of hard economic data. This is a failure of most books on Soviet history. For some reason, most books seem to believe that the Soviet Union disintegrated because the Communists were evil people. Yet plenty of horrible governments last a long time. There is rarely any discussion of the real reason for the failure of the Bolshevik experiment: the Bolsheviks/Communists had absolutely no idea about economic realities. Thinking economics was could just be made up and completely controlled by communist ideology, decision after horrible decision was made. In an economy the size of the Soviet Union's, you can only abuse the market so long before it brings you down. At least this book wasn't filled with the traditional American nonsense that the U.S.'s military spending destroyed their economy. While trying to keep up with the U.S. certainly did devastate their standard of living, the fact is that by the 70s the Soviet Union could no longer feed itself because of too much ideological tinkering with the economy and agriculture made it impossible for them to produce enough grain (let alone anything else). They were spending all of their hard currency just trying to stay alive. The military spending was just another nail in the coffin, but not the cause of death.

3. While painstakingly researched and documented, certain issues make me skeptical of the presentation of the facts in this book. Firstly, there is a real definite trend in books of this sort since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Call it the `Winners write history' syndrome. As in point two, the Communists seemed to have failed because they were `bad' not for any real reasons, such as economics. Secondly, facts about the author which appear in both his and the editor's introductions should really raise some eyebrows. During his researches, the author discovers that his father was `purged' for owning a pamphlet written by an enemy of the state. The author also relates that "...the only thing I achieved in this life was to break with the faith that I had held for so long." The "faith" he had held was communism. It is also stated that late in life he became a Christian. This makes the book seem less a history than a convert repudiating his previous beliefs. Again, I won't argue with his facts, but his presentation of them. As an example: page after page bemoaning the foolishness of Khrushchev and the Cuban missile crisis. Within the pages, one parenthetical reference to the fact the U.S. had missiles in Turkey before that. Again, they were "bad" people, but somehow the U.S. was justified in the exact same behavior.

I enjoyed this read though felt the author's style to be quite repetitive. The obvious strength is Volkogonov's personal experience, proximity to the leaders and issues discussed, and most importantly his access to the Russian archives. There are some truly outstanding quotes pulled out from all those previously off-limits state documents and meeting notes. However the arguments tend to be stated a few times too many, especially on sections for Lenin, Stalin, and Gorbachev. Still a good piece of work and enjoyable for anyone interested in the more inside world of the Kremlin during the Soviet regime.

A wonderful read. Volkogonov has written other biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky which I also highly recommend. THis book is a waltz through the lives of the leaders of the soviet union. VOlkogonov takes for granted that you have some background. He takes you on a jurney into the private lives of the dictators.

For those that say he rambbles the reality is that he is Russian, he is not a writer by trade and yet he overcame geat obstacles to write the books he did before he died. They should be viewed as treasrers and not condemned for their lack of clarity which stems more from the russian mind then from the authors inability to contrust a coheren argument.