Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire

After seventy-four years, the Soviet Union, a decrepit gerontocrat like its former pilots, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, shuffled off its mortal coil. Journalist David Remnick, who spent four years in Moscow, compiled a series of thematic events into Lenin's Tomb, and explained how glasnost, initiated in small doses by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, became GLASNOST that proved too potent for the dilapidated Soviet state, and in the end, the Marxist-Leninist foundation on which the State had been build. An overdose of GLASNOST gave the Soviet Union a fatal political cardiac arrest.However, in his indicting assessment, he notes how the Party and the Soviet Union, like Lenin's mummified husk, was politically, spiritually, and economically bankrupt. "The Soviet Union was an old tyrant slouched in the corner with cataracts and gallstones, his muscles gone slack. He wore plastic shoes and a shiny suit that stank of sweat. He hogged all the food and fouled his pants. Mornings, his tongue was coated with the ash-taste of age. ... The state was senile but still dangerous enough." Nice analogy, huh?Remnick further identifies the cause of that decay with the Party and its failure to keep the promises of socialism to the ordinary Soviets: "The men of the Communist Party, the leaders of the KGB and the military and the millions of provincial functionaries who had grown up on a falsified history, could not bear the truth. Not because they didn't believe it. They knew the facts of the past better than anyone else. But the truth challenged their existence, their comfort and privileges. Their right to a decent office, a cut of meat, the month of vacation in the Crimea--it all depended on a colossal social deception, on the forced ignorance of 280 million people. ... When history was no longer and instrument of the Party, the Party was doomed to failure. For history proved precisely that: that the Party was rotten to the core." And once ordinary Soviets realized they had been lied to, that the socialist utopia was a pipe dream, they wanted the riches and luxuries that only a capitalist system could provide. In short, the Party was over.Gorbachev was willing to give the Soviet people an inch, i.e. glasnost. As the caretaker of History, he was willing to demonize Stalin but not Lenin. Denouncing Lenin would mean denouncing Marx and Communism, and flat out telling the Soviet people that they had lived a lie for seventy-four years. Instead, the Soviet people took their miles, GLASNOST, and ran with it to many finish line; for the Russians, it would be the demonstration in front of the parliament building on 20-21 August 1991.Glasnost had thus led to GLASNOST. The influx of information and culture from the West, formerly forbidden books, had led to the ghosts of the past rising up again, be they formerly independent republics absorbed by Russia, or institutions that had been partially banned, such as the church.Glasnost also revealed the failings of t

It's hard to imagine there was any dissention from the Pulitzer committee over "Lenin's Tomb". This book excellently combines top-notch journalism and fine, precise, descriptive writing for an increbidly enjoyable and informative read. Considering how most such "good for you" books are long slogs about as exciting as bran, "Lenin's Tomb" was a surprising pleasure.I came to this book with minimal knowledge of Russia in general, let alone the Soviet transition, and disliking what I had encountered of Russia's culture and people. "Lenin's Tomb" manages to explain the basics to ignorant laypeople like myself without condescending or dragging through too much history. What you need to understand what was happening, Remnick provides, no more and no less. "Lenin's Tomb" proved an eye opener about the Soviet experience, but it also reflects on the larger ramifications of Communist autocracy. So many of the explorations of the Soviet erosion of society and culture gave me a sense of Deja Vu compared with China, only China has perhaps been less scathed by the shorter span of its bureaucratic red terror. Also, while "Lenin's Tomb" did not make me like Russia or Russians any more, it did present the context of how and why people can be a certain way, so that I now hold it against them less."Lenin's Tomb" is almost novelesque in its readability, a page-turner and easily beach or plane fare. I doff my hat to Remnick's ability to carve dense political stuff into an involving, compelling narrative. Perhaps Russia scholars would find points to criticize, but from a journalistic perspective, "Lenin's Tomb" is the book all of us wish we could write.

Remnick's frank, insightful analysis of the Soviet Union's final days filled me with inspiration and sadness. I'm inspired by the inhuman perseverance of the Russian and Soviet bloc people and saddened by the intense and lethal persecution of millions at the hands of their so-called leaders. Remnick shows a society led by decades of fear - citizens who feared persecution and leaders who feared the loss of power. The author flows easily from dissecting the Communist party and power brokers of Soviet society to eating cabbage with Siberian miners who don't expect to live past 35 to intense discussions with the Russian intelligentsia who fought the system quietly and desperately. It is a long book and at times I found myself needing a Russian history reference guide. But Remnick is not writing a history filled with facts and statistics. It is all about the people. Lenin's Tomb should be read by any journalist who feels the urge to go beyond 8 graphs. Truly wonderful.

Remnick's prose makes this history/political science book both readable and entertaining. Arguing that the country's downfall was due to the Soviet leaderships' ongoing assault against its country's collective historical memory and it's feeble attempts to give the country just enough perestroika and glastnost to keep it at bay are chronicled in a series of chapters or themes. Ironically, the limited attempts by Gorbachev to instill some democratic themes was just enough to whet the populace's appetite for more and set the country on a road it could not turn back from. Interestingly, Remnick argues that Gorbachev was at heart, a true communist who only wanted to make adjustments, not change the whole system. One gleans from this whole book that in a modern world, democratization of the body politic is inevitable, once its processes are set in motion. Though the author focuses very little on outside influences contributing to the USS's demise, i.e. the cold war or "evil empire" policies of the U.S. he has written the most compelling account of the country's downfall as orchestrated from within its borders and i nthe process graphically illustrated the moral degradation and vacousness of communisim, its practitioners, and the suffering endured by its people. The Soviet Union was essentially a Third World Country with a first world military, over 80% of the population lived in squalor equal to most thirld world citizens. A stupendous book!