Why Gorbachev Happened; His Triumphs and His Failure

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 476, [4] pages. Map. Chronology. Glossary. Notes on sources. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Presentation copy signed by the author. Robert G. Kaiser (born 1943) is an American journalist and author. He retired from The Washington Post in early 2014 after a career of more than 50 years on the paper. During his career he served as managing editor (1991-98) and associate editor and senior correspondent (1998-2014). He is the author or co-author of eight books. Kaiser began at The Washington Post as a summer intern while still a college student. He has served as a special correspondent in London (1964-67), a reporter on the city desk in Washington, D.C. (1967-69), foreign correspondent in Saigon (1969-70) and Moscow (1971-74). He returned to the national staff in Washington and worked as a reporter for seven years, covering labor, the U.S. Senate, the 1980 presidential campaign and the first Ronald Reagan administration. An illuminating, interpretive report on Mikhail Gorbachev's exercise of power, which concludes that his reforms may do more to expose than remedy the deficiencies of the Soviet Union's sociopolitical and economic institutions. Kaiser seeks to explain how a lifelong Communist and upwardly mobile Party official could evolve from a modest progressive into a revolutionary chieftain who unleashed forces he seems unable to control. Kaiser focuses mainly on his subject's dramatic career after he had climbed the Kremlin's slippery pole early in 1985. Gorbachev showed himself a leader with a sense of direction and a tactician's opportunism. By Kaiser's account, the first summit with Reagan precluded any possibility of a crackdown inside the USSR's crumbling empire. Eastern European satellites gained their freedom. Kaiser notes that Gorbachev never eliminated the mechanisms that make dictatorship possible. A savvy appraisal of an embattled kingpin who has been overtaken by events he initiated.