Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin

Sovietologists and general readers alike should find this book of major interest, not only for its insider's perspective on Gorbachev's Kremlin but also for its insights into the character of Communist leader Ligachev. Ligachev--who was for 17 years First Secretary of Siberia before he was recalled to Moscow by General Secretary Andropov in 1983, then went on to become Gorbachev's second-in-command until his de facto removal in 1988 and ultimate ouster in 1990--was a reformist but a Communist true believer as well. That conflicted view informs his memoirs, which are at once self-serving, instructive and tremendously thought-provoking. Ligachev charges that glasnost and perestroika were abused by high level apparatchiks for personal aggrandizement and careerism, that Gorbachev, drawn to the role of ``enlightened monarch,'' increasingly surrounded himself with ``academic thinkers'' instead of ``practical realists,'' also that Gorbachev came under the radical influence of Alexander Yakovlev, the ambassador to Canada whom he brought home from exile in 1985. Spearheaded by glasnost and in turn by Yakovlev's strategic editorial appointments, the press, according to Ligachev, engaged in a destabilizing propaganda campaign: ``A dictatorship of destructive forces reigned in the mass media. This accelerated economic collapse and intensified ethnic conflicts.'' While damning his critics for their ``unjust calumny'' and for their use of ``Stalinist methods of the witch hunt in the struggle against Stalinism,'' Ligachev attempts to distance himself from the news-making anti-reform actions that have been attributed to him. If his denial of culpability for the publication, in 1988, of Nina Andreyeva's article decrying perestroika rings hollow, the evidence he presents to document his claimed uninvolvement in the 1989 Tbilisi tragedy when Army troops attacked nationalist demonstrators gives one pause--despite Sovietologist Cohen's disbelief expressed in the introduction. Still, as Cohen also notes, Ligachev ``challenges us to understand more by judging less.'' (Feb.)