Uncivil society: 1989 and the implosion of the Communist establishment

was important, as at a later stage were Willy Brandt (who by the time of perestroika was the principal spokesman of Europe’s social democratic parties as President of the Socialist International) and Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González. But conservative foreigners, too, had an impact on Gorbachev. Margaret Thatcher and George Shultz notably helped him to develop and hone his own ideas in the course of vigorous verbal combat. Among Russians whose values were close to his own, Aleksandr Yakovlev (especially between 1983 and 1988), Anatoliy Chernyaev, and Georgiy Shakhnazarov were significant influences. Sandle draws upon politicians’ memoirs in English and Russian, academic books and articles, serious journalism, and numerous writings by and interviews with Gorbachev himself in drawing up his balance sheet. The book is not so much a new analysis of Gorbachev and his times as an assessment of the debate surrounding him. That being so, it is a weakness that the index is scanty in the extreme (three and a half pages) and contains, subjects apart, only the names of political actors. It omits all the analysts whose names appear profusely in the text and whose debates and disagreements are what the book is really about. That makes the very good classificatory job the author has done on the myriad of views of Gorbachev in the West and in Russia less user-friendly. It is, though, an impressive synthesis, to which Sandle has added perceptive reflections of his own.