Why Gorbachev Happened: His Triumphs and His Failure

Robert Kaiser in this very readable book updates the saga of on of the great leaders of the 20th century by asking the question was Gorbachev causing the change, or simply surfing the swell of popular sentiment and a crashing party state and its economy? Kaiser starts with a review of the personality and leadership of Andropov, because Kaiser sees the rise of Andropov as being the crucial enabling sequence of events that ultimately brought Gorbachev to power. Kaiser's review of Andropov is crisp, functional and clean, not the usual "Kremlinologist" review of the supposed workings of the inner circles of Party leadership. Andropov's personal honesty and low tolerance level for dishonest dealings by the state, the party, and the security organs, had a profound influence on Gorbachev. Where Andropov perhaps intuited that `people power' could come to Russia and make a difference, Gorbachev was to refine that thinking, and try to harness it for his personal aspirations to save the Soviet Union. In the end, though, the people and the Party simply could not be reconciled, no matter how clever the conjurer. Kaiser then continues the "background as illuminator" treatment of the subject by taking a close look at the interaction of the Brezhnev regime's interactions with Europe and the Western world. Kaiser postulates that the signing of the Helsinki Accords was a seminal development in the turn of events that Gorbachev was to ride while trying to provoke and control all at the same time. One of Kaiser's central themes is that as events began to accelerate, and then generate their won second and third generation effects, Gorbachev had to shift faster and faster, with the result being that between the beginning of his tenure, when his pronouncements were carefully chosen and well thought through, the second half of his tenure saw him flying by the seat of his pants, with neither time to carefully think through his comments nor properly staff them in advance. Thus his very public persona began to generate its own confusion and chaos, rather than constancy and calm. Kaiser does a very good job of documenting this disintegration over the course, and final demise, of Gorbachev. The best quote of the book that sums up the entire challenge to Gorbachev "It was almost a circus trick. He wanted to jump from the driver's seat of one cart (the Party) to the driver's seat of another cart (his new democratic state) while both careened along at full speed. And both were pulled by the same horse-Russia." The telling of history was always a key indicator of internal struggles, and the passage on page 187 is telling. "Gorbachev and his colleagues were not just struggling with the horros of Soviet history; they were putting at risk the very myths that propped up the very foundations of the Soviet regime. There goal was to be more truthful about the past without being so truthful that their words might undermine the Party's claim to power." At the sam