Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

by David Remnick

Overview

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times 

From the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule leading up to the collapse and gives us the voices of those who lived through it, from democratic activists to Party members, from anti-Semites to Holocaust survivors, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Sakharov. An extraordinary history of an empire undone, Lenin’s Tomb stands as essential reading for our times. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679751250
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/26/1994
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	176,077
Product dimensions:	5.15(w) x 7.98(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

David Remnick was a reporter for The Washington Post for ten years, including four in Moscow. He joined The New Yorker as a writer in 1992 and has been the magazine’s editor since 1998. His most recent book is The Bridge, a biography of Barack Obama. His previous book, King of the World, a biography of Muhammad Ali, was selected by Time as the top nonfiction book of the year. Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire won a Pulitzer Prize.

Editorial Reviews

An engrossing and essential addition to the human and political literature of our time." —The New York Times

The most eloquent chronicle of the Soviet empire's demise published to date.... It is hard to conceive of a work that might surpass it."—Francine du Plessix Gray, Washington Post Book World

"An eloquent and riveting oral history of an epochal moment of change." —Michael Ignatieff, The Los Angeles Times

"Remnick ... has achieved a very rare feat: to make the reader feel he has been present himself at a great turning point in history. It is a stunning book, moving and vivid from the first page to last." —Robert A. Caro

"Utterly absorbing.... If you did not have the opportunity to witness the Soviet empire in its death throes, Lenin's Tomb will take you there." —Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

From the Publisher

01/01/2017
New Yorker editor Remnick was Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post during the time Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were in power. Eloquent, with personal stories and solid reporting, this book frames the end of the Soviet Union. (LJ 6/15/93)

Library Journal

An outstanding account of the unravelling of the Soviet empire; with a new afterword by the author. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

He argues convincingly that what died in the old Soviet leadership...was its unending assault not only on people but on memory.

New York Times Books of the Century

It's hard to imagine any book on the last years of Communism in the Soviet Union surpassing this one by Remnick, who covered the events for The Washington Post. Remnick's story is about far more than simply the economic failure of Communism. For 70 years, he emphasizes, history in the Soviet Union had been the instrument of the Communist Party—and "history, when it returned, was unforgiving." From his own travels, and from conversations with former Soviets at every level of society, Remnick conveys unforgettably the impact of that history. There's the testimony of General Volkogonov, who as a historical researcher and loyal Party member found that on just one day, December 12, 1938, Stalin, after signing the death sentences of about five thousand people—including many the Soviet dictator knew personally—went to his personal theater and watched two movies, including Happy Guys. There's the story of the man Remnick met in Magadan, that "gulag boomtown," who as a young boy lived in a house close to the port, from which long lines of prisoners marched toward the camps scattered for hundred of miles throughout Kolyma. The author spoke to people of every kind—from Politburo leaders to bums in the street; from Gorbachev's first girlfriend to simple people still passionately dedicated to the memory of Stalin—and he has an almost poetic ability to convey character and scenes economically and vividly: One ideologist, he says, "looked like a teacher who specialized in handwriting and never gave an A." Commenting on his findings, Remnick notes that, today, "the fate of Russia hinges, once more, on the skills, inclinations, and heartbeat of one man. This time it is BorisYeltsin...No one knows what would happen should Yeltsin fall from power...The institutions of this new society are embryonic, infinitely fragile." Brilliant, evocative, riveting.

Kirkus Reviews