Russia shakes the world : the second Russian revolution and its impact on the West /

Former U.S. senator and presidential candidate Hart can't seem to decide if Gorbachev is a benevolent revolutionary, who emerged ``like a great mystery of our age,'' or a zigzagging politician now ``intent on making himself a dictator.'' In this generally glowing paean to the Soviet leader, Hart anticipates a Soviet Union lurching toward greater personal freedoms, free-market incentives and a federation of republics with a mixed economy. Although Hart has traveled extensively in the U.S.S.R. and interviewed many high-ranking officials, academics and writers, his portentous screed does little to illuminate the current situation there beyond what one finds in news reports. Hart comes off as a leaden, wordy writer who speechifies and as a fuzzy political analyst. His reappraisal of Lenin, whose brief experiment with free-market reform earns him the tentative sobriquet ``first perestroika man,'' and his strained parallels between Gorbachev, FDR and Lincoln make this a bizarre book. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Former Senator Hart has written an interesting, though uncritical, account of Gorbachev's ``second Russian revolution.'' His access to such leading Soviet reformers and politicians as the economist Abel Aganbegyan and former Foreign Minister Shevardnadze strengthens his book. Hart's interviews about the Soviet military with reformers and the Defense Minister Yazov are valuable, but his own judgment is weaker without the support of an interview. Hart's writing is occasionally insightful, yet his dilemma is to insist on a vaguely described ``new paradigm'' in Soviet politics without having found a Gorbachev ``grand design.'' Nevertheless, his book fills a void between biography and recent history. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/91.-- Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ.-Erie (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Former senator Hart, having discussed perestroika with Gorbachev and most of Russia's top political, academic, and military leadership, delivers a provocative report on the sudden about-face and uncertain future of the USSR. Hart has visited the Soviet Union over two-dozen times in the last few years, researching that nation's volatile situation. Far from being a politician's glance, his substantial account here is written with intelligence and a grasp of complex issues. Hart delivers a lively analysis of the roots of perestroika (discussing whether it may be a continuation of Lenin's interrupted New Economic Policy, which encouraged private ownership and market incentives), explores the forces (economic and otherwise) that drove a superpower to resign from the cold war, assesses the progress of restructuring, and speculates on alternate futures for a tottering but nuclear-armed empire that may shatter into a ring of Northern Irelands surrounding Great Russia. Despite massive shifts at the top, leaders trying to drive restructuring down deeper into the hierarchy face recalcitrant party chieftains and ministers to whom reform spells joblessness. And the people? Hart uses the recurring theme of Dostoevski's Grand Inquisitor, who questioned whether the masses would ever choose freedom over bread. America, having lost its favorite enemy, would be well advised, he says, to rebuild the bridges and schools it neglected while fighting the Reds. Despite some repetition and rambling, an entertaining as well as educational window into the minds of Soviet leaders--along with Hart's all-sided speculations into causes, motives, and outcomes.