Have you ever been in a heated debate about Leonid’s life and found yourself stumped and humiliated when your opponent put his nose against yours, asking as a sneer rippled across his upper lip: “Okay, wise-guy: if you’re so smart, can you tell me when Brezhnev was elected First Secretary of the Zaporozhye Regional Party Committee, when he was elected First Secretary of the Dnepropetrovosk Regional Party Committee, and when he was elected First and Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan?”He's not kidding.
If your answer to this question is “yes,” then this book is for you.
In preparation for the World War 1990 series in which Yegor Ligachev is the Soviet Premier, we read Ligachev's memoirs, which are just awful. They are a recitation of meetings, plenums, committee assignments and conferences. In spite of their awfulness, Ligachev's memoirs tell us much about the Politburo and the Soviet Union.*
Meetings, congresses, plenary sessions and the like are the essence of communist government. It's impossible to underestimate their importance.
Gorby's big coup against Yeltsin was dragging the drunk mongol out of a hospital bed, drugging him up, and sitting him in front of a party session for hours of ritual denunciation. Commies love that crap.
They gab with one another like 13 year old girls arguing whose the cutest member of One Direction.
*We took this from our intro to Eastern Storm.
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