Kremlin Wives

Although news stories report that this ``Kitty Kelley-ish'' peekaboo sold 2.5 million copies in Russia, American readers are apt to find Vasilieva's expose of the lives of Kremlin wives (and their husbands) boring. And whatever scandals she includes smack of irresponsible journalism, for Vasilieva, a member of the nomenklatura who had access to official files, supplies no documentation for her most awesome contentions. For example, she speculatively attributes the 1932 suicide of Stalin's wife Nadezhda to her discovery that her husband was her father. There's a great deal about the lasciviousness of Beria, Stalin's hatchetman, none of it new. The majority of the Kremlin women Vasilieva focuses on, in any case, aren't of great moment to American readers. And Tatyana Andropov and Raisa Gorbachev are given so little attention one wonders at Vasilieva's rare restraint. Photos. (Aug.)