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The Gorbachev Factor. By Archie Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 406p. $16.95 paper.
Nearly ten years after the collapse of the USSR, judgments about both Mikhail Gorbachev's intentions and the consequences of his six-year tenure as Soviet leader are extremely varied. The previous enthusiasm and generally positive readings of his policy efforts have given way to mixed-and occasionally quite negative-assessments of his reform legacy. Rejected by most in his native Russia, Gorbachev has become a symbol for an era of unfulfilled dreams and widespread regrets. Today, as Russia is mired in the complex and often tedious challenges of post-Soviet economic transformation, Archie Brown provides a needed reminder of the tensions, excitement, and high drama of the fast-paced perestroika years. Exhaustive and carefully grounded in an impressive diversity of sources (with more than 70 pages of detailed notes and supporting documentation), this volume provides an analysis that will prove to be among the most definitive when future students of politics turn to the final years of the Soviet system.
Reactions to Brown's volume are certain to vary considerably among interested observers. The core thesis-that Gorbachev was seriously interested in political change and economic reform but came to understand that reform was not enough and that the political system would have to be transformed-will provoke a range of reactions. Brown, however, has long studied Gorbachev,...