Volume 33, Number 10 · June 12, 1986
State of the Union
By David Holloway
The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal Decline
by Seweryn Bialer
Knopf, 448 pp., $21.95
Gorbachev
by Zhores A. Medvedev
Norton, 272 pp., $15.95
'The analysis of Soviet policy,' writes Seweryn Bialer in his new book, 'is once again a fascinating enterprise.' Ailing and decrepit leaders have been replaced by a young and vigorous general secretary, who says he wants to shake up the system and drastically improve its performance. Mikhail Gorbachev has criticized in outspoken terms the immobilism and procrastination of the last years of Brezhnev's rule, but it is not at all clear how he is going to tackle the formidable and complex problems that he has inherited. The Soviet Union now stands at a critical turning point, he told the Twentyseventh Party Congress in February, but it is still not apparent where he will lead it. The question that so often preoccupied the Russian intelligentsia in the past has come up once again: Where is Russia heading?
Review, 3917 words
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