Autopsy for an Empire : The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime

In accordance with his belief that "it is often easier to become acquainted with the history of a period if it is seen through the lives of individuals," Dmitri Volkogonov's last book before his 1995 death addresses the lives of the seven men who ruled the Soviet Union during its seven decades of existence. Making full use of the access granted to him as a high-ranking officer of the Soviet Army (and later as military advisor to Boris Yeltsin) to the secret archives of the Communist Party, he amplifys and expands upon the themes of his full length biographies of Lenin and Stalin, then proceeds to take on their successors up to Mikhail Gorbachev. With painstaking details drawn from a true insider's perspective, he recreates both the stagnation of the Soviet bureaucracy and the collapse set in motion by perestroika. "Perhaps the only thing I achieved in this life," Volkogonov wrote, "was to break with the faith I had held for so long." That is untrue; he also brilliantly chronicled how that faith came to impose itself upon an entire society. Autopsy of an Empire is a fitting conclusion to that legacy.