LEADER 00000pam  2200361 i 4500 
003    DLC 
005    20170901114109.0 
008    170526s2017    nyua     b    001 0beng   
010      2017015009 
020    9780393647013 (hardcover) 
040    DLC|beng|erda|cDLC|dNjBwBT|dUtOrBLW 
042    pcc 
043    e-ur--- 
092    947.0854092|bGOR 
100 1  Taubman, William,|eauthor. 
245 10 Gorbachev :|bhis life and times /|cWilliam Taubman. 
250    First edition. 
264  1 New York :|bW.W. Norton & Company,|c[2017] 
300    xxv, 852 pages :|billustrations ;|c25 cm 
336    text|btxt|2rdacontent 
337    unmediated|bn|2rdamedia 
338    volume|bnc|2rdacarrier 
504    Includes bibliographical references (pages 785-804) and 
       index. 
520    When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet 
       Union in 1985, the USSR was one of the world’s two 
       superpowers. By 1989 he had transformed Soviet Communism. 
       By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War,
       and in December 1991 he unintentionally presided over the 
       collapse of the USSR. In this first comprehensive 
       biography of Gorbachev, William Taubman shows how a 
       peasant boy turned into the Soviet system’s grave digger, 
       why the Communist regime allowed him to destroy it, how 
       Gorbachev’s dream of democratizing Russia through 
       perestroika and glasnost foundered, and why he permitted 
       Eastern Europe to abandon Communism without conflict. 
       Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, Russian 
       archives, interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries as
       well as with foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal
       portrait also extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage 
       to a woman he deeply loved. Nuanced and poignant yet 
       unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has the 
       amplitude of a Tolstoy novel. 
600 10 Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich,|d1931- 
650  0 Heads of state|zSoviet Union|vBiography. 
651  0 Soviet Union|xPolitics and government|y1985-1991.