The Future Belongs to Freedom

Alternately a campaign speech, an autobiography and an inside glimpse of perestroika 's achievements and failures, ex-Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze's outspoken narrative documentsto avoid confirm...firm him as a firm believer in the need to dismantle collectivism, to prune the Soviet military behemoth and to institute democratic reforms. He tells how he and Gorbachev looked the other way when, in the 1970s, illegal free enterprise experiments in his native Soviet Georgia were undertaken quietly and proved hugely successful. He also highlights his own role in dealing with the Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, normalization of Soviet-Chinese relations and nuclear arms negotiations. The volume ends with his impassioned 1990 resignation speech in which he predicted the coming of a hard-line dictatorship. Sometimes evasive, often eloquent, Shevardnadze proves he cannot be counted out of the picture. (Oct.)